Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 11-15
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Date: 2011-10-25 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Vampires; Paranormal; Romance
Description: The #1 New York Times bestselling author who "just keeps getting better and better" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) presents five novels in her sensational supernatural series featuring Anita Blake, federal marshal and vampire hunter. Cerulean Sins, Incubus Dreams, Micah, Danse Macabre, The Harlequin
Publisher: Penguin
Rights: Copyright © 2005 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter COLLECTION BOOKS 11-15

Cerulean Sins

Incubus Dreams

Micah

Danse Macabre

The Harlequin

Laurell K. Hamilton

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels by Laurell K. Hamilton

GUILTY PLEASURES
THE LAUGHING CORPSE
CIRCUS OF THE DAMNED
THE LUNATIC CAFE
BLOODY BONES
THE KILLING DANCE
BURNT OFFERINGS
BLUE MOON
OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY
NARCISSUS IN CHAINS
CERULEAN SINS
INCUBUS DREAMS
MICAH
DANSE MACABRE
THE HARLEQUIN
BLOOD NOIR
SKIN TRADE
FLIRT
BULLET
HIT LIST

STRANGE CANDY

Table of Contents

Cerulean Sins

Incubus Dreams

Micah

Danse Macabre

The Harlequin

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cerulean Sins

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2003 by Laurell K. Hamilton

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://us.penguingroup.com

ISBN: 1-101-14658-3

A JOVE BOOK®

Jove Books first published by The Jove Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

Electronic edition: February, 2004

To J.,
who says yes more than he says no; who never makes me feel like a freak, and who came up with the title for this book.

Contents

Acknowledgments

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Karen and Bear, who helped me find new places to hide the bodies. To Joanie and Melissa, who helped entertain Trinity when she needed more playtime than a hardworking mommy can supply. To Trinity, who helped me finish this book by being old enough to entertain herself. Every year just gets better. To Carniffex and Maerda, who helped me with research, and who should have been mentioned here books ago. To Darla, without whom so much would go undone. To Sherry, for keeping the place livable. To Sergeant Robert Cooney of the St. Louis City Police Mobile Reserve Unit, for answering my last-minute questions. He did not have time to read over this manuscript, so all mistakes are mine and mine alone. And, as always, to my writing group: Tom Drennan, N. L. Drew, Rhett McPhearson, Deborah Millitello, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn, and Mark Sumner.

1

IT WAS EARLY September, a busy time of year for raising the dead. The pre-Halloween rush seemed to start earlier and earlier every year. Every animator at Animators Inc. was booked solid. I was no exception; in fact, I’d been offered more work than even my ability to go without sleep could supply.

Mr. Leo Harlan should have been grateful to get the appointment. He didn’t look grateful. Truthfully, he didn’t have the look of anything. Harlan was medium. Medium height, dark hair, but not too dark. Skin neither too pale nor too tan. Eyes brown, but an indistinguishable shade of brown. In fact the most remarkable thing about Mr. Harlan was that there was nothing remarkable about him. Even his suit was dark, conservative. A businessman’s outfit that had been in style for the last twenty years and probably would still be in style twenty years down the road. His shirt was white, his tie neatly knotted, his not-too-big, not-too-small hands were well groomed but not manicured.

His appearance told me so little that that in itself was interesting, and vaguely disturbing.

I took a sip from my coffee mug with the motto, “If you slip me decaf, I’ll rip your head off.” I’d brought it to work when our boss, Bert, had put decaf in the coffeemaker without telling anyone, thinking we wouldn’t notice. Half the office thought they had mono for a week, until we discovered Bert’s dastardly plot.

The coffee that our secretary, Mary, had gotten for Mr. Harlan sat on the edge of my desk. His mug was the one with the logo of Animators Inc. on it. He’d taken a minute sip of the coffee, when Mary had first handed it to him. He’d taken the coffee black, but he sipped it like he hadn’t tasted it, or it didn’t really matter what it tasted like. He’d taken it out of politeness, not out of desire.

I sipped my own coffee, heavy on the sugar and cream, trying to make up for the late work the night before. Caffeine and sugar, the two basic food groups.

His voice was like the rest of him, so ordinary it was extraordinary. He spoke with absolutely no accent, no hint of region, or country. “I want you to raise my ancestor, Ms. Blake.”

“So you said.”

“You seem to doubt me, Ms. Blake.”

“Call it skepticism.”

“Why would I come in here and lie to you?”

I shrugged. “People have done it before.”

“I assure you, Ms. Blake, I am telling the truth.”

Trouble was, I just didn’t believe him. Maybe I was being paranoid, but my left arm under the nice navy suit jacket was crisscrossed with scars—from the crooked cross-shaped burn scar, where a vampire’s servant had branded me, to the slashing claw marks of a shape-shifted witch. Plus knife scars, thin and clean compared to the rest. My right arm had only one knife scar, it was nothing in comparison. And there were other scars hidden under the navy skirt and royal blue shell. Silk didn’t care if it slid over scars or smooth, untouched skin. I’d earned my right to be paranoid.

“What ancestor do you want raised, and why?” I smiled when I said it, pleasant, but the smile didn’t reach my eyes. I’d begun to have to work at getting my smiles to reach all the way up to my eyes.

He smiled too, and it left his eyes as unaffected as my own. Smile because you were smiled at, not because it really meant anything. He reached out to pick up the coffee mug again, and this time I noticed a heaviness in the left front of his jacket. He wasn’t wearing a shoulder holster—I’d have noticed that—but there was something heavier than a wallet in his left breast pocket. It could have been a lot of things, but my first thought was, gun. I’ve learned to listen to my first thoughts. You’re not paranoid if people really are out to get you.

I had my own gun tucked under my left arm in a shoulder holster. That evened things up, but I did not want my office to turn into the O. K. Corral. He had a gun. Maybe. Probably. For all I knew it could have been a really heavy cigar case. But I’d have bet almost anything that that heaviness was a weapon. I could either sit here and try to talk myself out of that belief, or I could act as if I was right. If I was wrong, I’d apologize later; if I was right, well, I’d be alive. Better alive and rude than dead and polite.

I interrupted his talk about his family tree. I hadn’t really heard any of it. I was fixated on that heaviness in his pocket. Until I found out whether it was a gun or not, nothing else much mattered to me. I smiled and forced it up into my eyes. “What is it exactly that you do for a living, Mr. Harlan?”

He drew a slightly deeper breath, settling into his chair, just a bit. It was the closest thing I’d seen to tension in the man. The first real, human movement. People fidget. Harlan didn’t.

People don’t like dealing with people who raise the dead. Don’t ask me why, but we make them nervous. Harlan wasn’t nervous, he wasn’t anything. He was just sitting across the desk from me, chilling, nondescript eyes pleasant and empty. I was betting he’d lied about his reason for coming here and that he’d brought a gun hidden on his person in a place that wasn’t easy to spot.

I was liking Leo Harlan less and less.

I sat my coffee mug gently on my desk blotter, still smiling. I’d freed up my hands, which was step one. Drawing my gun would be step two; I was hoping to avoid that step.

“I want you to raise one of my ancestors, Ms. Blake. I don’t see where my work has any relevance here.”

“Humor me,” I said, still smiling, but feeling it slide out of my eyes like melting ice.

“Why should I?” he said.

“Because if you don’t, I’ll refuse to take your case.”

“Mr. Vaughn, your boss, has already taken my money. He accepted on your behalf.”

I smiled, and this time it held real humor. “Actually, Bert is only the business manager at Animators Inc., now. Most of us are full partners in the firm, like a law firm. Bert still handles the business end of things, but he’s not exactly my boss anymore.”

His face, if it was possible, went quieter, more closed, more secretive. It was like looking at a bad painting, one that had all the technicalities down, yet held no feel of life. The only humans I’d ever seen that could be this closed down were scary ones.

“I wasn’t aware of your change in status, Ms. Blake.” His voice had gone a tone deeper, but it was as empty as his face.

He was ringing every alarm bell I had, my shoulders were tight with the need to pull my gun first. My hands slid downward without me thinking about it. It wasn’t until his hands raised to the arms of his chair that I realized what I’d done. We were both maneuvering to a better position to draw down.

Suddenly there was tension, thick and heavy like invisible lightning in the room. There was no more doubt. I saw it in his empty eyes, and in the small smile on his face. This was a real smile, no fake, no pretense. We were seconds away from doing one of the most real things one human being can do to another. We were about to try to kill each other. I watched, not his eyes, but his upper body, waiting for that betraying movement. There was no more doubt, we both knew.

Into that heavy, heavy tension, his voice fell like a stone thrown down a deep well. His voice alone almost made me go for my gun. “I am a contract killer, but I’m not here for you, Anita Blake.”

I didn’t take my eyes from his body, the tension didn’t slacken. “Why tell me then?” My voice was softer than his, almost breathy.

“Because I haven’t come to St. Louis to kill anyone. I really am interested in getting my ancestor raised from the dead.”

“Why?” I asked, still watching his body, still treading the tension.

“Even hitmen have hobbies, Ms. Blake.” His voice was matter-of-fact, but his body stayed very, very still. I realized, suddenly, that he was trying not to spook me.

I let my gaze flick to his face. It was still bland, still unnaturally empty, but it also held something else . . . a trace of humor.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“I didn’t know that coming to see you was tempting fate.”

“What do you mean?” I was trying to hold on to that edge of tension, but it was slipping away. He sounded too ordinary, too suddenly real, for me to keep thinking about drawing a gun and shooting up my office. It suddenly seemed a little silly, and yet . . . looking into his dead eyes that humor never completely filled, it didn’t seem all that silly.

“There are people all over the world who would love to see me dead, Ms. Blake. There are people who have spent considerable money and effort to see that such a thing would happen, but no one has come close, until today.”

I shook my head. “This wasn’t close.”

“Normally, I’d agree with you, but I knew something of your reputation, so I didn’t wear a gun in my usual manner. You noticed the weight of it when I bent forward that last time, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“If we’d had to draw down on each other, your holster is a few seconds faster than this inner jacket shit that I’m wearing.”

“Then why wear it?” I asked.

“I didn’t want to make you nervous by coming in here armed, but I don’t go anywhere unarmed, so I thought I’d be slick, and you wouldn’t notice.”

“I almost didn’t.”

“Thanks for that, but we both know better.”

I wasn’t sure about that, but I let it go; no need to argue when I seemed to be winning.

“What do you really want, Mr. Harlan, if that is your real name?”

He smiled at that. “As I’ve said, I really do want my ancestor raised from the dead. I didn’t lie about that.” He seemed to think for a second. “Strange, but I haven’t lied about anything.” He looked puzzled. “It’s been a long time since that was true.”

“My condolences,” I said.

He frowned at me. “What?”

“It must be difficult never being able to tell the truth. I know I’d find it exhausting.”

He smiled, and again it was that slight flexing of lips that seemed to be his genuine smile. “I haven’t thought about it in a long time.” He shrugged. “I guess you get used to it.”

It was my turn to shrug. “Maybe. What ancestor do you want raised, and why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to raise this particular ancestor?”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t believe the dead should be disturbed without a good reason.”

That small smile flexed again. “You’ve got animators in this town that raise zombies every night for entertainment.”

I nodded. “Then by all means go to one of them. They’ll do anything you want, pretty much, if the price is right.”

“Can they raise a corpse that’s almost two hundred years old?”

I shook my head. “Out of their league.”

“I heard an animator could raise almost anything, if they were willing to do a human sacrifice.” His voice was quiet.

I shook my head, again. “Don’t believe everything you hear, Mr. Harlan. Some animators could raise a few hundred years worth of corpse with the help of a human sacrifice. Of course, that would be murder and thus illegal.”

“Rumor has it that you’ve done it.”

“Rumor can say anything it damn well pleases, I don’t do human sacrifice.”

“So you can’t raise my ancestor.” He made it a flat statement.

“I didn’t say that.”

His eyes widened, the closest to surprise that he’d shown. “You can raise a nearly two-hundred-year-old corpse without a human sacrifice?”

I nodded.

“Rumor said that, too, but I didn’t believe it.”

“So you believed that I did human sacrifice, but not that I could raise a few hundred years worth of dead people on my own.”

He shrugged. “I’m used to people killing other people, I’ve never seen anyone raised from the dead.”

“Lucky you.”

He smiled, and his eyes thawed just a little. “So you’ll raise my ancestor?”

“If you tell me a good enough reason for doing it.”

“You don’t get distracted much, do you, Ms. Blake.”

“Tenacious, that’s me,” I said, and smiled. Maybe I’d spent too much time around really bad people, but now that I knew that Leo Harlan wasn’t here to kill me, or anyone else in town, I had no problem with him. Why did I believe him? For the same reason I hadn’t believed him the first time. Instinct.

“I’ve followed the records of my family in this country back as far as I can, but my original ancestor is on no official documents. I believe he gave a false name from the beginning. Until I get his true name, I can’t track my family through Europe. I very much wish to do that.”

“Raise him, ask his real name, his real reason for coming to this country, and put him back?” I made it a question.

Harlan nodded. “Exactly.”

“It sounds reasonable enough.”

“So you’ll do it,” he said.

“Yes, but it ain’t cheap. I’m probably the only animator in this country that can raise someone this old without using a human sacrifice. It’s sort of a seller’s market, if you catch my drift.”

“In my own way, Ms. Blake, I am as good at my job as you are at yours.” He tried to look humble and failed. He looked pleased with himself, all the way to those ordinary, and frightening, brown eyes. “I can pay, Ms. Blake, never fear.”

I mentioned an outrageous figure. He never flinched. He started to reach into the inside of his jacket. I said, “Don’t.”

“My credit card, Ms. Blake, nothing more.” He took his hands out of his jacket and held them, fingers spread, so I could see them clearly.

“You can finish the paperwork and pay in the outer office. I’ve got other appointments.”

He almost smiled. “Of course.” He stood. I stood. Neither of us offered to shake hands. He hesitated at the door; I stopped a ways back, not following as closely as I normally do. Room to maneuver, you know.

“When can you do the job?”

“I’m booked solid this week. I might be able to squeeze you in next Wednesday. Maybe next Thursday.”

“What happened to next Monday and Tuesday?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Booked up.”

“You said, and I quote, ‘I’m booked solid this week.’ Then you mentioned next Wednesday.”

I shrugged again. There was a time when I wasn’t good at lying, even now I’m not great at it, but not for the same reasons. I felt my eyes going flat and empty, as I said, “I meant to say I was booked up for most of the next two weeks.”

He stared at me, hard enough to make me want to squirm. I fought off the urge and just gave him blank, vaguely friendly eyes.

“Next Tuesday is the night of the full moon,” he said in a quiet voice.

I blinked at him, fighting to keep the surprise off my face, and I think I succeeded, but I failed on my body language. My shoulders tensed, my hands flexed. Most people noticed your face, not the rest of you, but Harlan was a man who would notice. Damn it.

“So it’s the full moon, yippee-skippy, what of it?” My voice was as matter-of-fact as I could make it.

He gave that small smile of his. “You’re not very good at being coy, Ms. Blake.”

“No, I’m not, but since I’m not being coy, that’s not a problem.”

“Ms. Blake,” he said, voice almost cajoling, “please, do not insult my intelligence.”

I thought about saying, but it’s so easy, but didn’t. First, it wasn’t easy at all; second, I was a little nervous about where this line of questioning was going. But I was not going to help him by volunteering information. Say less, it irritates people.

“I haven’t insulted your intelligence.”

He made a frown that I think was as true as that small smile. The real Harlan peeking through. “Rumor says that you haven’t worked on the night of the full moon for a few months now.” He seemed very serious all of a sudden, not in a menacing way, almost as if I’d been impolite, forgotten my table manners, or something, and he was correcting me.

“Maybe I’m Wiccan. The full moon is a holy day for them you know. Or rather night.”

“Are you Wiccan, Ms. Blake?”

It never took me long to grow tired of word games. “No, Mr. Harlan, I am not.”

“Then why don’t you work on the night of the full moon?” He was studying my face, searching it, as if for some reason the answer were more important than it should have been.

I knew what he wanted me to say. He wanted me to confess to being a shape-shifter of some kind. Trouble was I couldn’t confess, because it wasn’t true. I was the first human Nimir-Ra, leopard queen, of a wereleopard pard in their history. I’d inherited the leopards when I was forced to kill their old leader, to keep him from killing me. I was also Bolverk of the local werewolf pack. Bolverk was more than a bodyguard, less than an executioner. It was basically someone who did the things that the Ulfric either couldn’t, or wouldn’t do. Richard Zeeman was the local Ulfric. He’d been my off-again, on-again honey-bun for a couple of years. Right now, it was off, very off. His parting shot to me had been, “I don’t want to love someone who is more at home with the monsters than I am.” What do you say to that? What can you say? Damned if I know. They say love conquers everything. They lie.

As Nimir-Ra and Bolverk, I had people depending on me. I took the full moon off, so I’d be available. It was simple really, and nothing I was willing to share with Leo Harlan.

“I sometimes take personal days, Mr. Harlan. If they’ve coincided with the full moon, I assure you, it’s coincidental.”

“Rumor says you got cut up by a shifter a few months back, and now you’re one of them.” His voice was still quiet, but I was ready for this one. My face, my body, everything was calm, because he was wrong.

“I am not a shape-shifter, Mr. Harlan.”

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you, Ms. Blake.”

I sighed. “I don’t really care if you believe me, Mr. Harlan. My being a lycanthrope, or not, has no bearing on how good I am at raising the dead.”

“Rumor says you’re the best, but you keep telling me the rumors are wrong. Are you really as good as they say you are?”

“Better.”

“You’re rumored to have raised entire graveyards.”

I shrugged. “You’ll turn a girl’s head with talk like that.”

“Are you saying it’s true?”

“Does it really matter? Let me repeat: I can raise your ancestor, Mr. Harlan. I’m one of the few, if not the only, animator in this country that can do it without resorting to a human sacrifice.” I smiled at him, my professional smile, the one that was all bright and shiny and as empty of meaning as a lightbulb. “Will next Wednesday or Thursday be alright?”

He nodded. “I’ll leave my cell phone number, you can reach me twenty-four hours a day.”

“Are you in a hurry for this?”

“Let’s just say that I never know when an offer may come my way that I would find hard to resist.”

“Not just money,” I said.

He gave that smile again. “No, not just money, Ms. Blake. I have enough money, but a job that holds new interests . . . new challenges. I’m always searching for that.”

“Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Harlan. There’s always someone out there bigger and badder than you are.”

“I have not found it so.”

I smiled then. “Either you’re even scarier than you seem, or you haven’t been meeting the right people.”

He looked at me for a long moment, until I felt the smile slide from my eyes. I met his dead eyes with my own. In that moment that well of quietness filled me. It was a peaceful place, the place I went when I killed. A great white static empty place, where nothing hurt, where nothing felt. Looking into Harlan’s empty eyes, I wondered if his head was white and empty and staticky. I almost asked, but I didn’t, because for just a second I thought he’d lied, lied about it all, and he was going to try and draw his gun from his jacket. It would explain why he wanted to know if I was a shape-shifter. For a heartbeat or two, I thought I’d have to kill Mr. Leo Harlan. I wasn’t scared now or nervous, I just readied myself. It was his choice, live or die. There was nothing but that slow eternal second where choices are made and lives are lost.

Then he shook himself, almost like a bird settling its feathers back in place. “I was about to remind you that I am a very scary person all by myself, but I won’t now. It would be stupid to keep playing with you like this, like poking a rattlesnake with a stick.”

I just looked at him with empty eyes, still held in that quiet place. My voice came out slow, careful, like my body felt. “I hope you haven’t lied to me today, Mr. Harlan.”

He gave that unsettling smile. “So do I, Ms. Blake, so do I.” With that odd comment, he opened the door carefully, never taking his eyes from me. Then he turned and left quickly, shutting the door firmly behind him, and left me alone with the adrenaline rush draining like a puddle to my feet.

It wasn’t fear that left me weak, but the adrenaline. I raised the dead for a living and was a legal vampire executioner. Wasn’t that unique enough? Did I have to attract scary clients too?

I knew I should have told Harlan no dice, but I had told him the truth. I could raise this zombie, and no one else in the country could do it—without a human sacrifice. I was pretty sure that if I turned it down, Harlan would find someone else to do it. Someone else that didn’t have either my abilities or my morals. Sometimes you deal with the devil not because you want to, but because if you don’t, someone else will.

2

LINDEL CEMETERY WAS one of those new modern affairs, where all the headstones are low to the ground and you aren’t allowed to plant flowers. It makes mowing easier, but it also makes for a depressingly empty space. Nothing but flat land, with little oblong shapes in the dark. It was as empty and featureless as the dark side of the moon, and about as cheerful. Give me a cemetery with tombs and mausoleums, stone angels weeping over the portraits of children, the Mother Mary praying for us all, her silent eyes turned heavenward. A cemetery should have something to remind the people passing by that there is a heaven, and not just a hole in the ground with rock on top of it.

I was here to raise Gordon Bennington from the dead because Fidelis Insurance Company hoped he was a suicide, not an accidental death. There was a multimillion dollar insurance claim at stake. The police had ruled the death accidental, but Fidelis wasn’t satisfied. They opted to pay my rather substantial fee in the hopes of saving millions. I was expensive, but not that expensive. Compared with what they stood to lose, I was a bargain.

There were three groups of cars in the cemetery. Two of the groups were at least fifty feet apart because both Mrs. Bennington and Fidelis’s head lawyer, Arthur Conroy, had restraining orders against each other. The third group of two cars was parked in between the others. A marked police car and an unmarked police car. Don’t ask me to explain how I knew it was an unmarked police car, it just had that look.

I parked a little in back of the first group of cars. I got out of my brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee, which was partially purchased by money I got from my now deceased Jeep Country Squire. The insurance company hadn’t wanted to pay up on my claim. They didn’t believe that werehyenas had eaten the Country Squire. They sent out some people to take photos and measurements, to see the bloodstains. They finally paid up, but they also dropped my policy. I’m paying month by month to a new company that will grant me a full policy, if, and only if, I can manage not to destroy another car for two years. Fat chance of that. My sympathies were all for Gordon Bennington’s family. Of course, it’s hard to have sympathy for an insurance company that is trying to squirm out of paying a widow with three children.

The cars closest to me turned out to be those of Fidelis Insurance. Arthur Conroy came towards me, hand outstretched. He was on the tall end of short, with thinning blond hair that he combed over his bald spot, as if that hid it, silver-framed glasses that circled large gray eyes. If his eyelashes and eyebrows had been darker, his eyes would have been his best feature. But his eyes were so large and unadorned that I thought he looked vaguely froglike. But then maybe my recent disagreement with my insurance company had made me uncharitable. Maybe.

Conroy was accompanied by a near-solid wall of other dark-suited men. I shook Conroy’s hand and glanced behind him at the two six-foot-plus men.

“Bodyguards?” I made it a question.

Conroy’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”

I shook my head. “They look like bodyguards, Mr. Conroy.”

I shook hands with the other two Fidelis people. I didn’t offer to shake hands with the bodyguards. Most of them won’t shake hands, even if you do offer. I don’t know if it ruins the tough-guy image or they just want to keep their gun hands free. Either way, I didn’t offer, and neither did they.

The dark-haired bodyguard, with shoulders nearly as broad as I was tall, smiled, though. “So you’re Anita Blake.”

“And you are?”

“Rex, Rex Canducci.”

I raised eyebrows at him. “Is Rex really your first name?”

He laughed, that surprised burst of laughter that is so masculine—and usually at a woman’s expense. “No.”

I didn’t bother to ask what his real first name was, probably something embarrassing, like Florence, or Rosie. The second bodyguard was blond and silent. He watched me with small pale eyes. I didn’t like him.

“And you are?” I asked.

He blinked as if my asking had surprised him. Most people ignored bodyguards, some out of fear of not knowing what to do, because they’ve never met one; some because they have met one and figure they’re just furniture, to be ignored until needed.

He hesitated, then said, “Balfour.”

I waited a second, but he didn’t add anything. “Balfour, one name, like Madonna or Cher?” I asked, voice mild.

His eyes narrowed, his shoulders a little tense. He’d been too easy to rattle. He had the stare down and the sense of menace, but he was just muscle. Scary looking, and knew it, but maybe not much else.

Rex intervened, “I thought you’d be taller.” He made it a joke, with his happy-to-meet-you voice.

Balfour’s shoulders had relaxed, the tension draining away. They’d worked together before, and Rex knew that his partner was not the most stable cookie in the box.

I met Rex’s eyes. Balfour would be a problem if things turned messy, he’d overreact. Rex wouldn’t.

I heard raised voices, one of them a woman. Shit. I’d told Mrs. Bennington’s lawyers to keep her home. They’d either ignored me or been unable to withstand her winning personality.

The nice plainclothes policeman was talking to her, his voice calm, but carrying, in a low, wordless rumble, as he, apparently, tried to keep her fifty feet away from Conroy. Weeks ago she’d slapped the lawyer, and he’d bitch-slapped her back. She’d then put a fist to his jaw and sat him on his ass. That was about the time the court bailiffs had had to step in and break things up.

I’d been present for all the festivities, because I was part of the court settlement, sort of. Tonight would decide the issue. If Gordon Bennington rose from the grave and said he’d died by accident, Fidelis had to pay. If he admitted to suicide, then Mrs. Bennington got nothing. I called her Mrs. Bennington at her insistence. When I’d referred to her as Ms. Bennington, she’d nearly bitten my head off. She was not one of your liberated women. She liked being a wife and mother. I was glad for her, it meant more freedom for the rest of us.

I sighed and walked across the white gravel driveway towards the sound of rising voices. I passed the uniformed cop leaning against his car. I nodded, said, “Hi.”

He nodded back, his eyes mostly on the insurance people, as if someone had told him that it was his job to make sure they didn’t start coming over. Or maybe he just didn’t like the size of Rex and Balfour. Both men had him by a hundred pounds. He was slender for a police officer and still had that untried look in his face, as if he hadn’t been on the job long, and hadn’t yet quite decided whether he wanted to be on the job at all.

Mrs. Bennington was yelling at the nice officer who was barring her way. “Those bastards have hired her, and she’ll do what they say. She’ll make Gordon lie, I know it!”

I sighed. I’d explained to everyone that the dead don’t lie. Pretty much only the judge had believed me, and the cops. I think Fidelis thought my fee had insured their outcome, and Mrs. Bennington thought the same.

She finally spotted me over the cop’s broad shoulders. In her high heels she was taller than the officer. Which meant she was tall, and he wasn’t very. He was maybe five nine, tops.

She tried to push past him, yelling at me now. He moved just enough so that he blocked her way, but didn’t have to grab her. She banged against his shoulder and frowned down at him. It stopped her yelling, for a second.

“Get out of my way,” she said.

“Mrs. Bennington,” his deep voice grumbled, “Ms. Blake is here by order of the court. You have to let her do her job.” He had short gray hair, a little longer on top. I didn’t think it was a fashion statement, more like he hadn’t had time to go to the barbershop in awhile.

She tried to push past him again, and this time she grabbed him, as if she’d move him out of her way. He wasn’t tall, but he was broad, built like a square, a muscular square. She realized quickly that she couldn’t push him, so she moved to walk around him, still determined to give me a piece of her mind.

He had to grab her arm to keep her away from me. She raised a hand to him, and his deep voice came clear in the still October night, “If you hit me, I will handcuff you and put you in the back of the squad car until we’re all finished here.”

She hesitated, her hand raised, but there must have been something in his face, still turned away from me, that said, clearly, that he meant every word.

His tone of voice had been enough for me. I’d have done what he said.

Finally, she lowered her arm. “I’ll have your badge if you touch me.”

“Striking a police officer is considered a crime, Mrs. Bennington,” he said in that deep voice.

Even by moonlight you could see the astonishment on her face, as if somehow she hadn’t quite realized any of the rules applied to her. The realization seemed to take a lot of the wind out of her. She settled back and let her cadre of dark-suited lawyers lead her a little away from the nice police officer.

I was the only one close enough to hear him say, “If she’d been my wife, I’d have shot myself too.”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it.

He turned, eyes angry, defensive, but whatever he saw in my face made him smile.

“Count yourself lucky,” I said, “I’ve seen Mrs. Bennington on several occasions.” I held out my hand.

He shook like he meant business, good, solid. “Lieutenant Nicols, and my condolences on having to deal with . . .” He hesitated.

I finished the sentence for him, “ . . . that crazy bitch. I believe that is the phrase you’re searching for.”

He nodded. “That is the phrase. I sympathize with a widow and children getting the money that is due them,” he said, “but she makes it awful hard to sympathize with her personally.”

“I’ve noticed that,” I said, smiling.

He laughed and reached into his jacket for a pack of cigarettes. “Mind?”

“Not out here in the open, I guess. Besides, you’ve earned it, dealing with our wonderful Mrs. Bennington.”

He tapped the cigarette out with one of those expert movements that longtime smokers use. “If Gordon Bennington rises from the grave and says he offed himself, she is going to go ballistic, Ms. Blake. I’m not allowed to shoot her, but I’m not sure what else I’m going to be able to do with her.”

“Maybe her lawyers can sit on her. I think there’s enough of them to hold her down.”

He put the cig between his lips, still talking. “They’ve been fu . . . freaking useless, too afraid of losing their fee.”

“Fucking useless, Lt. Fucking useless is the phrase you’re searching for.”

He laughed again, hard enough that he had to take the cigarette out of his mouth. “Fucking useless, yeah, that’s the phrase.” He put the cig between his lips again and took out one of those big metal lighters that you don’t see much anymore. The flame flared orangey red, as he cupped his hands around it automatically, even though there was no wind. When the end of his cig was glowing bright, he snapped the lighter shut and slid it back into his pocket, then took the cig out of his mouth and blew a long line of smoke.

I took an involuntary step back to avoid the smoke, but we were outdoors and Mrs. Bennington was enough to drive anyone to smoke. Or would that be drink?

“Can you call in more men?”

“They won’t be allowed to shoot her either,” Nicols said.

I smiled. “No, but maybe they can form a wall of flesh and keep her from hurting anyone.”

“I could probably get another uniform, maybe two, but that’s it. She’s got connections with the top brass because she’s got money, and may end up having a lot more after tonight. But she’s also been fucking unpleasant.” He seemed to relish saying the F-word almost as much as smoking the cigarette, as if he’d had to watch his language around the grieving widow, and it had hurt.

“Her political clout getting a little tarnished?” I asked.

“The papers plastered her decking Conroy all over the front page. The powers that be are worried that this is going to turn into a mess, and they don’t want the mess to land on them.”

“So they’re distancing themselves in case she does something even more unfortunate,” I said.

He took a deep, deep pull off the cig, holding it almost like someone smoking a joint, then let the smoke trickle out of his mouth and nose as he answered me, “Distancing, that’s one word for it.”

“Bailing, jumping ship, abandoning ship . . .”

He was laughing again, and he hadn’t finished blowing out all the smoke, so he choked just a little, but didn’t seem to mind. “I don’t know if you’re really this amusing or if I just needed a laugh.”

“It’s stress,” I said, “most people don’t find me funny at all.”

He gave me a look sort of sideways out of surprisingly pale eyes. I was betting they were blue in sunlight. “I heard that about you, that you were a pain in the ass, and rub a lot of people the wrong way.”

I shrugged. “A girl does what she can.”

He smiled. “But the same people that said you could be a pain in the ass had no trouble working a case with you. Fact is, Ms. Blake,” he threw the cigarette on the ground, “most said they’d take you as backup over a lot of cops they could name.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. There is no higher praise between policemen than that they’d let you back them up in a life or death situation.

“You’re going to make me blush, Lt. Nicols.” I didn’t look at him as I said it.

He seemed to be gazing down at the still-smoldering cigarette on the white gravel. “Zerbrowski over at RPIT says that you don’t blush much.”

“Zerbrowski is a cheerfully lecherous shit,” I said.

He chuckled, a deep roll of laughter, and stomped out his cigarette, so that even that small glow was lost in the dark. “That he is, that he is. You ever met his wife?”

“I’ve met Katie.”

“Ever wonder how Zerbrowski managed to nab her?”

“Every damn time I see her,” I said.

He sighed. “I’ll call for another squad car, try for two uniforms. Let’s get this done and get the hell away from these people.”

“Let’s,” I said.

He went to make the call. I went to fetch my zombie-raising equipment. Since one of my main tools is a machete bigger than my forearm, I’d left it in the car. It tends to scare people. I would try very hard tonight not to scare the bodyguards, or the nice policemen. I was pretty sure there was nothing I could do to scare Mrs. Bennington. I was also pretty sure there was nothing I could do to make her happy with me.

3

MY ZOMBIE-RAISING EQUIPMENT was in a gray Nike gym bag. Some animators have elaborate cases. I’ve even seen one who had a little suitcase that turned into a table like a magician’s or a street vendor’s. Me, I made sure everything was packed tight so nothing got broken or scratched up, but other than that, I didn’t see the point to being fancier than you needed to be. If people wanted a show they could go down to the Circus of the Damned and watch zombies crawl from the grave with actors pretending to be terrified of them. I wasn’t an entertainer, I was an animator, and this was work.

I turned down Halloween parties every year, where people wanted zombies raised at the stroke of midnight or some such nonsense. The scarier my reputation got, the more people wanted me to come be scary for them. I’d told Bert I could always go and threaten to shoot all the partygoers, that’d be scary. Bert had not been amused. But he had stopped asking me to do parties.

I’d been trained to use an ointment spread over face, hands, heart. The smell of rosemary, like breathing in a Christmas tree, still held a great nostalgic for me, but I didn’t use the ointment anymore. I’d raised the dead in emergencies without it, more than once, so it got me to thinking. Some believed it helped the spirits enter you, so the powers that be could use you to raise the dead. Most, in America anyway, believed that the scent and touch of the herbal mixture enhanced your psychic abilities, or helped open them so they’d work at all. I never seemed to have any trouble raising the dead. My psychic abilities were always on line for animating. So I still carried the ointment, just in case, but I didn’t use it much anymore.

The three things I did still need for animating were steel, fresh blood, and salt. Though the salt actually was to put the zombie back in the grave once we were finished with it. I’d cut my paraphernalia to the absolute minimum, and recently, I’d cut it down even more. And I mean that “cut” part literally.

My left hand was covered in little bandages. I was using the clear ones, so I didn’t look like a tan version of the mummy’s hand. There were larger bandages on my left forearm. All the wounds were self-inflicted, and it was beginning to piss me off.

I had been learning how to control my growing psychic powers by studying with Marianne, who had been a psychic when I met her, but had become a witch. She was Wiccan now. Not all witches are Wiccan, and if Marianne had been another flavor of witch, I wouldn’t have had to cut myself up. Marianne as my teacher, shared some of my karmic debt, or so her group—read coven—believed. The fact that I killed an animal every time I raised the dead, three, four times a night, almost every night, had made her coven rant, rave, scream, and basically lose it. Blood magic is black magic to a Wiccan. Taking a life for magical purposes, any life, even a chicken’s, is very black magic.

How could Marianne have tied herself to someone who was being so . . . evil? they demanded to know.

To help Marianne’s karmic burden—and mine, the coven assured me—I’d been trying to raise the dead without killing anything. I’d done it in emergencies without an animal to sacrifice, so I knew it was possible. But—surprise, surprise—while it was true that I could do my job without killing anything, I could not do it without fresh blood. Blood magic is still black magic to Wiccans, so what to do? The compromise was that I would use only my own blood. I wasn’t sure it would work. But it did, for the recently dead, at least.

I’d started out slicing up my left forearm, but that had rapidly lost its appeal, since I needed to do it three or more times a night. Then I’d taken to pricking my fingers. Just a little blood seemed to be enough for those dead under six months. But I’d run out of fingers, and my arm had enough scars already. I’d also found that when I practiced lefthanded shooting that I was slower, because the cuts freaking hurt. I would not cut up my right hand, because I couldn’t afford to be slower with my right. I’d pretty much decided that, while I was sorry I had to kill a few chickens or goats to raise the dead, the animal’s lives were not worth my own. There I’ve said it, a totally selfish judgment call.

I’d really hoped the tiny cuts would heal instantly. Thanks to my ties to Jean-Claude, master vamp of the city, I healed fast, very fast. The little cuts didn’t heal fast. Marianne said it was probably because I was using a magically charged blade to do the cutting. But I liked my machete. Truthfully, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that I could raise the dead with only a prick of blood without a magically charged blade. It was a problem.

I was going to have to call Marianne and tell her I’d failed the Wiccan test of goodness. Why should they be any different? Most right-wing Christian groups hated me too.

I glanced behind me at my audience. Two new uniformed police officers had joined Lt. Nicols and the first officer. The police stood in the middle of the two groups, which had been allowed to come close enough to the grave to hear what the zombie would say. It was way closer than fifty feet, but both parties needed to hear Gordon Bennington, or so the judge had ruled. The judge in question had actually joined us, along with a court reporter and her little machine. He’d also brought along two burly looking bailiffs, which made me think the judge was even smarter than he looked, and I’d been pretty impressed before. Not every judge will take zombie testimony.

For tonight Lindel graveyard was court. I was glad that Court TV hadn’t gotten wind of it. It was just the kind of weird crap that they liked to televise. You know—transsexual’s custody case; female teacher rapes thirteen-year-old boy student; pro-football player’s murder trial. The O. J. Simpson trial had not been a good influence on American television.

The judge said in his booming, court voice, which echoed strangely in the flat emptiness of the cemetery, “Go ahead, Ms. Blake, we’re all assembled.”

Ordinarily I’d have beheaded a chicken and used its body to help me sprinkle a blood circle, a circle of power, to contain the zombie once it was raised so it wouldn’t go wandering all over the place. The circle also helped focus power and raise energy. But I had no chickens at the moment. There was a chance that if I’d tried to get enough blood out of my body to walk even a small circle of power, I’d be finished for the night, too dizzy and too light-headed to do anything else. So what’s a morally upright animator supposed to do?

I sighed and unsheathed the machete and heard several gasps behind me. It was a big blade, but I’d found that in beheading a chicken one-handed you needed a big, sharp blade. I stared at my left hand and tried to find a space that was bandage free. I put the top edge of the blade against my middle finger (the symbolism was not lost on me) and pressed. I kept the machete too sharp to risk drawing the blade down my finger. It would be a bitch to need stitches because I’d cut too deep.

The cut didn’t hurt immediately, which meant I’d probably cut deeper than I wanted. I raised my hand so the moonlight fell on it, and saw the first dark welling of blood. The moment I saw it, the cut hurt. Why was it that everything hurt worse when you realized you were bleeding?

I began to walk the circle, holding the steel point downward, my bleeding finger flat to the earth, so that occasional drops would hit the ground. I’d never truly felt the machete carving the magic circle through the ground, through me, until I stopped killing animals. It had probably always been like a steel pencil tracing my circle, but I’d never ever been able to feel it over the stronger rush of the death. I felt each drop of blood that fell, felt the earth almost hungry for it, like rain in a drought, but it wasn’t the moisture the earth drank, it was the power. I knew when I’d walked the entire circle around the headstone, because the moment I touched the place where I’d begun, the circle closed with a skin-tingling, hair-raising rush.

I turned to face the headstone, feeling the circle around me like an invisible trembling in the air. I went to the headstone, which was at the far end of the circle. I tapped the headstone with the machete. “Gordon Bennington, with steel I call you from your grave.” I touched my bloody hand to the cold stone. “With blood I call you from your grave.” I moved back to the far edge of the circle, at the foot of the grave. “Hear me now, Gordon Bennington, hear and obey. With steel, blood, and power, I command you to rise from your grave. Rise from your grave and walk amongst us.”

The earth rolled like heavy water and just spilled the body upward. In the movies the zombies always crawl from the grave with reaching hands like the ground tries to keep them prisoner, but most of the time, the earth gives freely, and the zombie simply rises to the top, like something floating to the surface of a liquid. There were no flowers to get in the way this time, nothing for the body to trip over, as the zombie sat up and looked around.

One thing I had noticed with not killing the animals was that my zombies weren’t as pretty. With a chicken I could have made Gordon Bennington look like his photo in the paper. With only my own blood, he looked like what he was, a reanimated corpse.

He wasn’t awful, I’d seen much worse, but his widow screamed, long and loud, and began to sob. There had been more than one reason I wanted Mrs. Bennington to stay home.

The nice blue suit hid the chest wound that had killed him. But you could still tell he was dead. It was the odd color of his skin. The way the flesh had begun to sink into the bones of his face. His eyes left too round, too large, too bare, so they rolled in their sockets barely contained by the waxy flesh. His blond hair was patchy and looked like it had grown. But that was illusion, caused by the shrinking of the meat of his body. Hair and fingernails do not grow after death, contrary to popular belief.

There was one more thing I had to do to help Gordon Bennington speak. Blood. The Odyssey speaks of blood sacrifice to get a dead seer’s ghost to give Odysseus advice. It’s a very old truism that the dead crave blood. I walked across the now solid ground and knelt by his puzzled, wizened face. I couldn’t smooth my skirt down in back because one hand was full of machete and the other was bleeding. Everyone got a nice long glimpse of thigh, but it didn’t really matter, I was about to do the thing that disturbed me the most since I stopped sacrificing poultry.

I held out my hand towards Gordon Bennington’s face. “Drink, Gordon, drink of my blood and speak to us.”

Those round, rolling eyes stared at me, then his sunken nose caught the scent of blood, and he grabbed my hand with both of his, and lowered his mouth to the wound. His hands felt like cold wax with sticks inside. His mouth was almost lipless, so his teeth pressed close in my flesh as he sucked at my hand. His tongue whipped back and forth on the wound like something separate and alive in his mouth, feeding from me.

I took a deep, steadying breath, breathe in and out, in and out. I would not be sick. Nope. I would not embarrass myself in front of this many people.

When I thought he’d had enough, I said, “Gordon Bennington.”

He didn’t react, but kept his mouth pressed to the wound, his hands clutching my wrist.

I tapped the top of his head gently with the side of the machete. “Mr. Bennington, people are waiting to talk to you.”

I don’t know if it was the words or the tap with the blade, but he looked up, and slowly began to pull back from my hand. His eyes held more of him now. The blood always seemed to do that, fill them back up with themselves.

“Are you Gordon Bennington?” I asked. We had to be all formal.

He shook his head.

The judge said, “We need you to answer out loud, Mr. Bennington, for the record.”

He stared up at me. I repeated what the judge had said, and Bennington spoke, “I am, was, Gordon Bennington.”

One of the upsides to raising the dead with only my blood was that they always knew they were dead. I’d raised some before where they didn’t know that, and that was a bitch, telling someone that they were dead, and you were about to put them back in the grave. Real nightmare stuff, that was.

“How did you die, Mr. Bennington?” I asked.

He sighed, drawing in air, and I heard it whistle, because most of the right side of his chest was missing. The suit hid it, but I’d seen the forensic photos. Besides I knew what a mess a twelve-gauge shotgun makes at close range.

“I got shot.”

There was a tension behind me, I could feel it over the buzz of the power circle. “How did you get shot?” I asked, voice calm, soothing.

“I shot myself going down the stairs to our basement.”

There was a cry of triumph from one side of the crowd and an inarticulate scream from the other.

“Did you shoot yourself on purpose?” I asked.

“No, of course not. I tripped, gun went off, so stupid, really. So stupid.”

There was a lot of screaming behind me. Mostly Mrs. Bennington yelling, “I told you so, little bitch . . .”

I turned and called, “Judge Fletcher, did you hear all that?”

“Most of it,” he said. He turned that booming voice on overdrive and shouted, “Mrs. Bennington, if you will be quiet long enough to listen, your husband has just said he died by accident.”

“Gail,” Gordon Bennington’s voice was tentative, “Gail, are you there?”

I did not want a tearful reunion on top of the grave. “Are we finished, Judge? Can I put him back?”

“No,” this from Fidelis Insurance’s lawyers. Conroy stepped closer. “We have some questions for Mr. Bennington.”

They asked questions, at first I had to repeat them for Bennington to be able to answer, but he got better at answering. He didn’t look any better, physically, but he was gathering himself up, being more alert, more aware of his surroundings. He spotted his wife, and said, “Gail, I’m so sorry. You were right about the guns. I wasn’t careful enough. I’m so sorry to leave you and the kids.”

Mrs. Bennington came towards us, with her lawyers in tow. I thought I’d have to ask them to keep her off the grave, but she stopped outside the circle, as if she could feel it. Sometimes the people that turn out to be psychically gifted surprise you. I doubt if she was even aware of why she stopped moving forward. Of course, she was holding her hands tight to her body. She was not reaching out to touch her husband. I don’t think she wanted to find out what that waxy looking skin felt like. I couldn’t blame her.

Conroy and the other lawyers tried to keep asking questions, but it was the judge who said, “Gordon Bennington has answered all your questions in detail. It’s time to let him get back to . . . rest.”

I agreed. Mrs. Bennington was in tears, and Gordon would have been too, except his tear ducts had dried up months ago.

I got Gordon Bennington’s attention. “Mr. Bennington, I’m going to put you back now.”

“Will Gail and the children get the insurance money now?”

I glanced behind me at the judge. He nodded.

“Yes, Mr. Bennington, they will.”

He smiled, or tried to. “Thank you, then, I’m ready.” He gazed back at his wife, who was still kneeling on the grass by his grave. “I’m glad I got to say good-bye.”

She was shaking her head, over and over, tears streaming down her face. “Me, too, Gordie, me, too. I miss you.”

“I miss you too, my little hell cat.”

She burst into sobs at that. Hiding her face in her hands. If one of the lawyers hadn’t grabbed her she’d have fallen to the ground.

‘My little hell cat’ didn’t sound like a term of endearment to me, but hey, it proved Gordon Bennington had really known his wife. It probably also proved that she would miss him for the rest of her life. I could forgive her a few temper tantrums in the face of that much pain.

I squeezed on the wound in my finger and thankfully got a little more blood. Some nights I had to reopen a wound, or make another one, to get the zombie put back. I touched my bloody hand to his forehead, leaving a small dark mark.

“With blood I bind you to your grave, Gordon Bennington.” I touched him with the edge of the machete, gently. “With steel I bind you to your grave.” I switched the machete to my left hand and picked up the open container of salt that I’d left inside the circle. I sprinkled him with salt, and it sounded like dry sleet as it hit him. “With salt I bind you to your grave, Gordon Bennington. Go and rise no more.”

With the touch of the salt, his eyes lost their alertness, he was empty as he lay back on the earth. The ground swallowed him, like some great beast had rippled its fur and he was just gone, sunk back into the grave. Gordon Bennington’s corpse was back where it belonged, and there was nothing to distinguish this grave from any other. Not so much as a blade of grass was out of place. Magic.

I still had to walk the circle backwards and uncast it. Normally, I don’t have an audience for that part. The zombie goes back in the grave, everyone leaves. But Conroy of Fidelis Insurance was arguing with the judge, who was threatening to cite him for contempt. And Mrs. Bennington was not in a condition to walk yet.

The police were standing around watching the show. Lieutenant Nicols looked at me and shook his head, smiling. He walked over to me as the circle went down, and I began to clean my new wound with antiseptic wipes.

He lowered his voice so the truly grieving widow wouldn’t hear him. “You could not pay me enough to let that thing suck my blood.”

I half-shrugged, holding gauze over my finger so it would stop bleeding. “You’d be surprised what people pay for this kind of work.”

“It ain’t enough,” he said, an unlit cigarette already in his hand.

I started to give some flip answer, when I felt the presence of a vampire, like a chill across my skin. Out there in the dark, someone was waiting. There was a gust of wind, and there was no wind tonight. I looked up, and no one else did, because humans never look up, never expect death to fall upon them from the sky.

I had seconds to say, “Don’t shoot, he’s a friend,” before Asher appeared in our midst, very close to me, his long hair streaming behind him, his booted feet touching down. He was forced to make a half running step to catch the momentum of his flight, which brought him to my side.

I turned and put myself in front of his body. He was too tall for me to cover all of him, but I did my best, moving us so that if anyone shot at him they’d risk hitting me. Every policeman, every bodyguard had drawn a gun, and every barrel was pointed at Asher, and at me.

4

I STARED AT the half circle of guns, trying to keep an eye on everyone at once and failing, because there were too many of them. I kept my hands out from my body, fingers spread, universal sign for I’m harmless. I didn’t want anyone thinking I was going for my own gun, that would be bad.

“He’s a friend,” I said, voice a little high, but otherwise calm.

“Whose friend?” Nicols asked.

“Mine,” I said.

“Well, he ain’t my friend,” one of the uniforms said.

“He’s not a threat,” I said, pressing my body back enough that I could feel Asher in a long line against me.

He said something in French, everybody gripped their guns a little tighter. “English, Asher, English.”

He took a deep shuddering breath. “It was not my intent to frighten anyone.”

Not too long ago, the police were allowed to shoot a vampire on sight, just for being a vampire. It had only been five years since Addison V. Clark had made vamps “alive” again, at least to the law. They were citizens with rights now, and shooting them without just cause was murder. But it still happened now and then.

“If you shoot with me in the way, you can all kiss your badges good-bye.”

“I don’t have a badge to lose.” It was Balfour, of course, being tough, but he had a big gun to go with his big talk.

I looked at him. “If you shoot, you better kill me, because you won’t get a second chance.”

“Nobody’s shooting anybody,” Nicols said, and I was close enough to hear him mutter, “damn it,” under his breath.

He’d moved his gun to point at the bodyguards. “Put the guns down, now.” The other policemen followed his lead, and suddenly the circle of guns was pointed away from me, and at Balfour and Rex. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, and sagged a little against Asher.

He knew better than to have surprised a bunch of humans, especially policemen, by flying into their midst. Nothing freaked people out like seeing vampires do things that were impossible. He’d also spoken in French, which meant he was scared enough, or angry enough, to have forgotten his English. Something was very wrong, but I couldn’t question him, not yet. First, get out of the line of fire, then fix the rest.

We were standing so close together that his wavy golden hair brushed against my own black curls. He put his hands on my shoulders, and I could feel the tension. He was scared. What had happened?

The police had convinced the bodyguards to put their guns away. The uniforms divided up and walked the two interested parties back to their respective cars. It left Nicols, the judge, and the court reporter standing near us. At least the court reporter wasn’t still typing.

Nicols turned to me, his gun pointed downward, tapping a little against the leg of his slacks. He frowned, eyes flicking to Asher, then to me. He knew enough not to risk staring the vampire in the eyes. They could bespell you with their eyes, if they wanted to. I was immune because I was the human servant of the Master Vampire of the City. Through Jean-Claude I was safe from most of what Asher could do. Not all, but most.

Nicols was obviously unhappy. “Okay, what was so damned urgent that he had to fly in here like that?”

Damn, he was too good a cop. Even though he’d probably dealt very little with vampires, he’d made the logic jump that only an emergency would make Asher appear as he had.

His eyes flicked up to Asher again, then down to my face. “It’s a good way to get yourself shot, Mr. . . .”

“Asher,” I answered for him.

“I didn’t ask you, Ms. Blake. I asked him.”

“I am Asher,” he said in a voice that fell on the air like a caress. He was using vampire powers to make himself more acceptable. If Nicols figured out what he was doing, it would backfire. But it didn’t.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Asher?”

“Just Asher,” and the voice glided across my skin so soothing. I had some immunity to the voice, but Nicols didn’t.

He blinked, then frowned, puzzled. “Fine, Asher, what the hell is the rush?”

Asher’s fingers tightened minutely on my shoulders, and I felt him take a breath. I had a second to hope that he wasn’t going to try an Obi-Wan on Lieutenant Nicols. You know, these are not the droids you’re looking for. Nicols was stronger willed than that.

“Musette has been gravely injured. I came to take Anita to her side.”

I felt the color drain from my face, my breath caught in my throat. Musette was one of Belle Morte’s lieutenants. Belle Morte was the fountainhead, le sourdre de sang of Jean-Claude and Asher’s bloodline. She was also a member of the Council of Vampires that had a home base somewhere in Europe. Every time council members had visited us, people had died. Some of them ours, some of them theirs. But Belle Morte had never sent anyone, until now. There had been some careful negotiations about Musette coming over for a visit. She was due three months from now, just after Thanksgiving. So what the hell was she doing in town a month and some change before Halloween? I didn’t for a minute believe Musette was hurt. That was Asher’s sneaky way of telling me how bad things were in front of witnesses.

I didn’t have to pretend to be shocked, or scared. My face must have looked like someone who’d just gotten bad news. Nicols nodded, as if satisfied. “You close to this Musette?”

“Lieutenant, can we please go? I want to get there as soon as possible.” I was already looking around for my gym bag. I was glad it was already packed. My skin was cold with the thought of what Musette might be doing right now to people I cared about. The very mention of her name had always been enough to make Jean-Claude and Asher go pale.

Nicols nodded again, putting up his gun. “Yeah, go on. I hope . . . your friend is okay.”

I looked up at him, and didn’t try to hide the confusion in my eyes. “I hope so, too.” I wasn’t thinking of Musette, I was thinking of everyone else. So many people she could hurt if she had the blessing of the council, or at least the blessing of Belle Morte. I’d learned that council politics meant that having one member as an enemy didn’t mean that the others hated you. In fact, many of the council seemed to believe the old Sicilian adage, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The judge murmured his thanks, and hopes for speedy recovery of my friend. The court reporter didn’t say anything—she was gazing at Asher as if mesmerized. I didn’t think he’d bespelled her, more like she’d never seen anything so beautiful. Maybe she hadn’t.

His hair in the reflected glow of the headlights was truly gold, a curtain of nearly metallic waves flowing like a shining sea across the right side of his face. The hair looked even more gold against the dark brown of his silk shirt. The shirt was long-sleeved and untucked over blue jeans and brown boots. He looked like he’d dressed in haste, but I knew that was how he usually dressed. He made sure that the left side of his face, that most perfect of profiles was what showed to the light. Asher was a master at using light and shadow to highlight what he wished seen, and hide what he did not. The one eye that was visible was a clear, pale blue like the eyes of a Siberian husky dog. Human beings just didn’t have eyes like that. Even in life he must have been extraordinary.

You got glimpses of that full mouth, the glimmer of his other blue, blue eye. What he was careful not to show to the light was that a few inches past his eye, trailing in a line nearly to his mouth were scars. Rivulets of scars, where holy water had been poured on that most beautiful of faces. More scars ran down the right side of his body, hidden under the clothes.

The court reporter stared at him so still, as if she’d stopped breathing. Asher saw it and stiffened beside me. Perhaps because he knew that with a flick of his head he could show her the scars and watch that adoration turn to horror, or pity.

I touched his arm. “Let’s go.”

He walked towards my Jeep. Normally he sort of glided, as if vampire feet never rolled on gravel but floated just above it. Tonight he moved almost as heavily as a human.

Neither of us spoke until we were inside my Jeep. We had the privacy of the darkened car, no one would overhear us.

I buckled myself in while I talked, “What’s happened?”

“Musette arrived an hour ago.”

I put the Jeep in gear and began to drive carefully over the gravel around the still-parked police cars. I waved at Nicols as we went past, and he waved back, a cigarette flaring in his other hand.

“I thought we hadn’t finished negotiating on how many people she could bring over with her.”

“We had not.” His voice held sorrow so thick you could have squeezed it out, tears in your cup. Jean-Claude’s voice was better at sharing joy, seduction, but Asher was the master at sharing the darker emotions.

I glanced at him. He was staring straight ahead, his face very still, hiding whatever he was feeling. “Then didn’t she break some treaty or law or something by invading our territory like this?”

He nodded, his hair sliding around his face, hiding himself from me. I hated to watch him hide his scars from me. I found him beautiful, scars and all, but he never quite believed me. I think he thought the attraction was part Jean-Claude’s memories in my head, and part pity. There was no pity, but I couldn’t deny Jean-Claude’s memories. I was Jean-Claude’s human servant, and that gave me all kinds of interesting side benefits. One of those benefits was getting glimpses of Jean-Claude’s memories.

I remembered Asher’s skin like cool silk on my fingertips, every inch of him flawless. But it was Jean-Claude’s fingers that had done the touching, not mine. The fact that I remembered the touch of Asher’s skin so strongly that even now, I had the urge to reach for his hand, just to see if the memory was real, was just one of those odd things I had to live with. Even if Jean-Claude had been in the car, he wouldn’t have touched Asher either. It had been centuries since they’d been part of a ménage à trois with Julianna, Asher’s human servant. Julianna had been burned as a witch by the same people that had used holy water to cleanse Asher’s evil. Jean-Claude had been able to save Asher, but he’d been too late for Julianna. Neither of the men had forgiven Jean-Claude for his tardiness.

“If Musette broke the law, can’t we punish her, or kick her out of our territory?” I was at the edge of the cemetery now, watching for nonexistent traffic.

“If it were another master vampire come so rudely, then we would be within our rights to slay her, but it is Musette. As you are Bolverk for the werewolves, so Musette is Belle’s . . .” He seemed to be searching for the word. “I do not know the word in English, but in French, Musette is the bourreau. She is our bogeyman, Anita, and she has been such for over six hundred years.”

“Fine,” I said, “she’s scary, I accept that, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s invaded our lands. If we let her get away with it, she’ll try for more.”

“Anita, it is more than that. She is the . . .” he seemed to grope for a word again. That he was forgetting this many English words spoke to how frightened he was. “The vaisseau—why can I not think of the English for it?”

“You’re upset.”

“I am frightened,” he said, “but Belle Morte has made Musette her vessel. To harm Musette is to harm Belle.”

“Literally?” I asked, as I turned onto Mackenzie.

“Non, it is more like a courtesy than magic. She has given Musette her seal, her ring of office, which means Musette in effect speaks for Belle, we are forced to treat her as we would treat Belle Morte herself. This was most unexpected.”

“What difference does this vaisseau make?” I asked. We were stuck at the light on Watson, staring at the McDonald’s and the Union Planters Bank.

“If Musette were not Belle’s vessel, then we could punish her for coming early and breaking off negotiations. But if we punish her now, then it would mean that we would do the same to Belle if she came here.”

“So? Why wouldn’t we punish Belle for entering our territory so rudely, as you put it?”

Asher looked at me then, but I couldn’t hold eye contact because the light had finally changed. “You do not understand what you are saying, Anita.”

“Explain it to me then.”

“Belle is our sourdre de sang, our fountainhead. She is our bloodline. We cannot harm her.”

“Why not?”

He looked at me full face, letting his hair fall back so that his whole face showed at last. I think he was too shocked at my question to worry about hiding himself.

“It is not done, that is all.”

“What is not done? Defending your territory against all encroachers?”

“Attacking the head of your line, your sourdre de sang, your fountain of blood, it is just not done.”

“And I say again, why not? Belle has insulted us. Not the other way around. Jean-Claude has negotiated in good faith. It’s Musette that’s been the bad little vampire. And if she comes with Belle’s blessing, then Belle is abusing her status. She thinks we’ll just take whatever she dishes out.”

“Dishes out?” he made it a question.

“Whatever she does to us, she thinks we’ll just take it, just suck it up and take it without complaining.”

“She is right,” Asher said.

I frowned at him, then turned, still frowning, back to the road. “Why? Why shouldn’t we treat any threat or insult the same?”

He ran his hands through his thick hair, pulling it back from his face. The streetlights crisscrossed his face in light and shadow. We were stopped at another light with an SUV beside us so that their window was even with ours. The woman behind the wheel glanced at us, then did a double take. Her eyes went round, and Asher didn’t notice. I looked at her and she looked away, embarrassed at being caught staring. Americans are taught not to stare at anything that isn’t perfect. It’s like to look at it is to make it more real. Ignore it, it’ll go away.

Asher never noticed as the light changed and we drove off. He was exposing his face to strangers, and not noticing the effect it was having. No matter how angry, no matter how sad, no matter how anything, he never forgot the scars. They dominated his thoughts, his actions, his life. For him to forget like this said more than anything how serious the situation was, and I still didn’t understand why.

“I don’t understand, Asher. We defended ourselves when council members invaded our territory awhile back. We hurt them, did our best to kill them. Why is this different?”

He let go of his hair and swung it back into place like a curtain. I don’t think he was any less upset, it was just habit. “Last time it was not Belle Morte.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Mon Dieu, do you not understand what it means that Belle is the mother of our line?”

“Apparently I don’t, explain it to me. We’re going to the Circus of the Damned, right? It will take awhile to get there. You’ll have time.”

“Oui.” He stared out the window of the Jeep, as if looking for inspiration in the electric lights, the strip malls, and fast food restaurants.

He finally turned to face me. “How do I explain to you what you have never understood? You have never had a king or queen, you are American and young, and you do not understand the duty owed a liege lord.”

I shrugged. “I guess I don’t.”

“Then how can you understand what it is we owe Belle Morte, and how it would be . . . treason to raise a hand against her.”

I shook my head. “That’s a great theory, Asher, but I’ve dealt with enough vampire politics to know one thing. If we let her push us around, she’ll see it as a sign of weakness, and she’ll push and push until she sees how weak, or how strong we are.”

“We are not at war with Belle Morte,” he said.

“No, but if she thinks we are weak enough, that might be next. I’ve seen how you guys operate. The big vampire fish eat the little vampire fish. We can’t afford for Musette or Belle to think we’re little fish.”

“Anita, don’t you understand, yet? We are little fish, compared to Belle Morte, we are very little fish indeed.”

5

I HAD A hard time believing we were very little fish indeed. Maybe not big fish, but that wasn’t the same thing as being very little. But Asher was so obviously convinced of it that I didn’t argue.

I did call on my cell phone and leave messages around town about Musette’s early arrival. Richard may have been pissed at me, but he was still the other third of our triumvirate of power; Ulfric to Jean-Claude’s Master of the City, and my necromancer. Richard was Jean-Claude’s animal to call, and I was his human servant, whether we liked it, or whether we didn’t. I also called Micah Callahan who was my Nimir-Raj and took care of all the shape-shifters when I was off doing other things. I was so often embroiled in other things, I needed the help. Micah was also my boyfriend, along with Jean-Claude. Neither of them seemed to mind, though it still made me uncomfortable. I was raised to believe that a girl didn’t date two people at once, at least not seriously.

I got only machines, and left messages that were as succinct and calm as I could make them. How do you leave phone messages like this? “Hi, Micah, this is Anita, Musette has come to town early, invading Jean-Claude’s territory. Asher and I are driving to the Circus now, if you don’t hear from me by dawn, send help. But don’t come down to the Circus before that unless I call personally. The fewer people in the line of fire, the better.” I let Asher leave the message on Richard’s machine, sometimes he erased messages from me without listening to them. It depended on how bad a mood he was in that day. Though he’d dumped me, not the other way around, he acted like the wounded party and blamed me for everything. I gave him as wide a berth as I could, but there were times, like now, when we were probably going to have to work together to keep all our people alive and healthy. Survival took precedence over emotional pain. It had to. I hoped Richard remembered that.

The Circus of the Damned was a combination of a live action drama with frightening themes; traditional, if macabre, circus performances; a carnival complete with rides, games, corn dogs, funnel cakes; and a side show that would give even me nightmares.

Behind the Circus was dark and quiet. The calliope music that blared out front was a distant dream back here. Once upon a time I’d only come to the Circus to kill vampires. Now I used the employee parking lot. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

I was actually a few steps from the Jeep, when I realized that Asher was still sitting in the car, immobile. I sighed and went back to the car. I had to tap on his window to get him to look at me. I half expected him to jump, but he didn’t. He just turned his face slowly towards me like someone in a nightmare who knows if they move too fast the monster will get them.

I expected him to open the door, but he just stared at me. I took a deep breath and counted slowly. I did not have time to hold his emotional wounds closed. Jean-Claude, my sweetie, was down under the Circus, entertaining the bogeyman of vampire-kind. Asher had told me no harm had come to anyone, yet. But I wouldn’t actually believe it until I saw Jean-Claude, touched his hand. As much as I cared for Asher, I did not have time for this. None of us did.

I opened the door for him. Still, he did not move. “Asher, don’t fall apart on me here. We need you tonight.”

He shook his head. “You must know. Anita, Jean-Claude didn’t send me to you because I travel faster than anyone else. He sent me to get me away from her.”

“Are you not supposed to go back in?” I asked.

He shook his head again, all those golden waves swimming around his face. His eyes were their normal ice-blue in the dome light. “I am his témoin, his second, I must go back inside.”

“Then you’re going to have to get out of the Jeep,” I said.

He looked down at his hands, limp in his lap. “I know.” But he still didn’t move.

I put one hand on the door and the other on the roof, leaning in towards him. “Asher . . . if you can’t do this, then fly to my house, hide in the basement, we’ve got an extra coffin.”

He did look up then. There was anger in his face. “Let you go in there alone? No, never. If something happened to you . . .” He looked down again, his hair hiding his face like the curtain he’d made of it. “I could not live with the knowledge that I had failed you.”

I sighed again. “Great, thanks for the sentiment. I know you mean it, but that means you have to get out of the car now.”

A gust of wind slapped against my back, too much wind, like the wind Asher had raised in the cemetery. I went for my gun as I dropped to one knee.

Damian landed in front of me. The barrel of the gun was aimed low at his body. If he’d been a little shorter than six feet, it would have been chest high.

I let out a breath slowly and eased my finger off the trigger. “Damn, Damian, you startled me, and that can be real unhealthy.” I got to my feet.

“Sorry,” he said, “but Micah wanted you to have someone else with you.” He spread his hands wide, showing himself both unarmed and harmless. He might have been unarmed, but harmless, never that. It wasn’t just that Damian was handsome—a lot of men, dead and alive, are handsome. His hair fell in a straight, silken curtain, scarlet, like a spill of blood. It was what red hair looked like after more than six hundred years of no sun. He blinked green eyes into the lights of the streetlamps overhead. A green that any cat would envy. The eyes were three shades brighter than the T-shirt that clung to his upper body. Black slacks fell over black dress shoes. A black belt with a silver buckle completed the outfit. Damian hadn’t dressed up, he’d just been wearing slacks and dress shoes. Most of the vamps that had recently come from Europe didn’t feel comfortable in jeans and jogging shoes.

Yeah, he was a treat for the eyes, but that wasn’t the danger. The fact that I wanted to touch him, to run my hands up the white, white skin of his arms. That was the danger. It wasn’t love, or even lust. Through a series of accidents and emergencies, I’d bound Damian to me as my vampire servant. Which was impossible, I mean vamps have human servants, but humans don’t have vampire servants. I was beginning to understand why the Council used to kill all necromancers on sight. Damian was glowing with good health, which meant he’d recently fed on someone, but I knew it had been a willing victim, because I’d forbidden him to hunt. He would do exactly what I said, no more, no less. He obeyed me in all things, because he had no choice.

“I knew I could get here before you went inside,” he said.

“Yeah, flying does have its benefits.” I shook my head and put up my gun. I had to rub my hand on my skirt to keep from touching him. The palm of my hand ached to caress his skin. He wasn’t my lover, or boyfriend, yet I craved his touch when he was near me, in a way that felt disturbingly familiar.

I took a deep breath that seemed to shake just a little. “I told Micah not to send anyone until I’d found out what was up.”

Damian shrugged, hands up. “Micah said, go, so here I am.” He kept his face carefully blank. There was a tension to him that said he was waiting for me to hurt the messenger.

“Touch him,” Asher said.

His quiet voice from right behind me made me jump, but at least he’d gotten out of the Jeep.

“What?”

“Touch him, ma cherie, touch your servant.”

I felt heat climb up my face. “Is it that obvious?”

He smiled at me, but not like he was happy. “I remember what it was like with . . . Julianna.” He said her name in a whisper that still carried on the cool autumn air. It startled me a little to hear him say her name, he avoided her name if he could; saying it, or hearing it.

“I’m Jean-Claude’s human servant, but I don’t feel an overwhelming need to touch him every time I see him.”

He looked up at me. “You don’t.”

I started to say, no, then had to think about it. I did want to touch Jean-Claude when I saw him, but that was the sex, the rush of being a relatively new couple, wasn’t it?

I frowned and concentrated on something else. “Does Jean-Claude feel the same need to touch me?” Like I feel for Damian went unsaid.

“Almost certainly,” Asher said.

I frowned harder. “He hides it well.”

“Because to expose such raw need to you would have made you run away.” He touched my elbow, a light touch. “I did not mean to give away uncomfortable secrets, but we must show a united front for . . . her, this night. When you touch Damian you gain power, just as when Jean-Claude touches you and Richard, he gains power.”

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. One thing I was almost certain of was that Richard wouldn’t be here tonight. He hadn’t come near the Circus of the Damned since we broke up. It weakened us that one-third of our triumvirate was missing. He’d promised to come to the Circus in three months’ time to greet Musette, but he wouldn’t come early. I would bet my life on that, and maybe I was. Who the hell knew what was inside the Circus waiting for us?

I glanced from one vampire to the other, then shook my head. We needed to get inside, and I needed to stop being squeamish. Asher needed it, too, but I couldn’t control what he did, only what I did.

I touched Damian’s arm, and power flared between us like a breath of wind. I slid my hand down the smoothness of his arm, using everything but the tips of my fingers. The tips of my fingers hurt when they brushed things too solidly. His breath came out in a shudder, as I slid my left hand into his right, squeezing my fingers ’round his. As long as I didn’t squeeze too hard, my bandaged fingers were fine. It felt so right to touch him. It was hard to explain, because touching him didn’t make me think of sex. It wasn’t like touching Jean-Claude, or Micah, or even Richard. Richard and I were feuding, but he could still affect me just by being present. When I could be in the same room with Richard and not feel my body tighten, then I’d know that I was truly out of love with him.

“I don’t mind that Micah sent backup.”

I felt his hand, his arm, his body give up the tension I hadn’t even realized he was holding. He smiled and squeezed my hand back. “Good.”

“You’ve mellowed,” a voice behind us called. We all whirled, to find Jason walking towards us over the pavement. He was grinning, proud he’d startled us, I think.

“Damn quiet for a werewolf,” I said.

He was wearing jeans, jogging shoes, and a short leather jacket. Jason was as American as I was, we liked the casual look. His blond hair was still cut short like a young executive. It made him look older, more grown-up. Somehow without the hair to trail around his face, you noticed his eyes more, blue, the color of an innocent spring sky. The color never matched the twinkle in his eye.

“A little warm for a leather jacket,” I said.

He unzipped the jacket in one smooth motion, and flashed his bare chest and stomach, still walking towards us, never missing a beat. Sometimes I forgot that Jason’s day job was as a stripper at Guilty Pleasures, one of Jean-Claude’s other clubs. Then there were moments like this when he managed to remind me.

“I didn’t have time to dress when Jean-Claude sent me out to wait for you.”

“Why the hurry?” I asked.

“Musette has offered to share her pomme de sang with Jean-Claude, if he’ll share me with her.”

Pomme de sang meant literally, apple of blood, it was slang with the vamps for someone that was much more than simply a blood donor. Jean-Claude had once described it as a beloved mistress, except instead of sex you got blood. A kept woman, or in Jason’s case, a kept man.

“I thought it was a faux pas to ask to feed on someone else’s pomme de sang,” I said.

“It can also be a great courtesy and honor,” Asher said. “You may trust Musette to turn custom into torment if she is able.”

“So she’s not offering up her pomme de sang to honor Jean-Claude, she’s doing it because she knows he won’t want to share Jason?”

“Oui,” Asher said.

“Great, just great. What other little vampire customs are going to come up and bite us on the butt tonight?”

He smiled and raised my hand to his lips for a quick, chaste kiss. “Many, I would think, ma cherie, very many.” He looked at Jason. “As truth, I am amazed that Musette allowed you to leave her presence without sharing blood.”

Jason’s grin faded. “Her pomme de sang is illegal in this country, so Jean-Claude had to decline.”

“Illegal,” I said, “in what way?”

He sighed, looking decidedly unhappy. “The girl can’t be more than fifteen.”

“And it’s against the law to take blood from a minor,” I said.

“Jean-Claude informed her of this, which is how I come to be standing out here in the cold.”

“It’s not cold,” Damian said.

Jason shivered. “That is a matter of opinion.” He huddled the still unzipped jacket around his bare body. “Jean-Claude doesn’t want you to be surprised, Anita, but two of the vamps with her are children.”

I could feel my face tightening with anger.

“It’s not that bad, they aren’t new. At a guess I’d say several hundred years old, minimum. Even in the United States they’d be grandfathered in under the current law.”

I tried to ease some of the tension I was holding. I’d let go of everyone’s hand, because I had this urge to have my hands free for weapons. There was nothing to fight, not yet, but the urge was still there.

Damian touched my arm, tentative, afraid the anger would spill over onto him, I think. My usual theory was anybody to be angry at was better than nobody to be angry at. I was trying to be better than that, more fair, but damn, it was hard.

When I didn’t jerk away, or yell at him, Damian touched my hand, and his fingers light across my skin made me feel calmer. “Do you think Musette brought an underage pomme just to see what we’d do?”

“Musette likes the young,” Asher said, voice still very quiet, not a whisper but close, as if he were afraid of being overheard. And maybe he was.

I looked up at Asher. Damian’s fingers were still moving, lightly, over the back of my hand. “She’s not a pedophile, please tell me she’s not.”

He shook his head. “No, not for sex, Anita, but blood, yes, she likes them young.”

Yuck. “She cannot take blood from anyone under eighteen while she’s in this country. Doing that can get you an order of execution with your name on it, and I’m the Executioner.”

“I believe that Musette was carefully chosen by Belle Morte. Belle has other lieutenants that have less objectionable habits. I believe that Musette is an ordeal in the traditional sense of the word. She has been sent by Belle to test us, especially you, I think, you and perhaps Richard.”

“Why do we get special treatment?” I asked.

“Because Belle does not know either of you of old. She likes to test her blades before blooding them, Anita.”

“I am not her blade, I’m not her anything.”

Asher had a patient look on his face. “She is le sourdre de sang, the fountainhead of our bloodline. Belle is like an empress, and all the master vampires that descend from her line are kings that owe her fealty. To owe fealty means to owe so many troops to the cause.”

“What cause?”

He let out an exasperated breath. “Whatever cause the empress wishes.”

I shook my head. “You’re not really making sense to me here.” Damian’s hand was still playing lightly over mine. I think if he hadn’t been touching me, I’d have been more upset.

“Belle considers all who descend from her line, hers, thus through Jean-Claude you and Richard belong to her.”

I shook my head and started to speak. Asher held up his hand. “Please, let me finish. It does not matter, Anita, whether you agree that you and Richard belong to Belle. It matters only that she believes you belong to her. She sees you as more weapons in her arsenal. Can you understand that?”

“I understand what you’re saying, I don’t agree that I belong to anyone, but I can see where Belle Morte might think so.”

He nodded, looked a little relieved, as if he hadn’t been sure what he’d do if I’d continued to argue. “Bon, bon, then you must agree that Belle will want to test the metal of her two newest weapons.”

“Test how?” I asked.

“For one thing, by bringing an underage pomme de sang to America and flaunting it in front of the Executioner herself. If Musette has offered to share pomme de sangs, then she may also offer to share human servants. It is considered a great honor to do so.”

“Share?” I asked, instantly suspicious. Damian’s fingers had sped up, but I didn’t tell him to stop, because anger was tightening my shoulders, my arms.

“Share blood, probably, because most vampires take blood from their human servants. Do not worry about sex, ma cherie, Musette is not a lover of women.”

I half shrugged. “I guess that’s a relief.” I frowned. “If she considers me and Richard part of her . . . whatever, then what about his pack and my pard? Does Belle consider our people her people?”

Asher licked his lips, and I knew the answer before he said it. “It would be like her to assume that.”

“So Musette and company will be testing not just me, or Richard, but the rest of our people.” I made it a statement.

“It is logical to assume so,” he said.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I hate vampire politics.”

“She’s not yelling yet,” Jason said, “I’ve never seen her this calm after this much bad news.”

I opened my eyes and frowned at him.

“I believe it is Damian’s influence,” Asher said.

Jason’s eyes flicked down to where Damian was playing gently with my hand. “You mean just touching her like that is helping her hold her temper?”

Asher nodded.

I had an urge to make Damian stop touching me, but I didn’t, because I was furious. How dare anyone come into our territory and test us? How arrogant! How typically vampire. And I was tired already, tired of the games to come. If Jean-Claude would just let me shoot everyone in Musette’s party tonight, it would save a lot of trouble. I just knew it would.

I did make Damian stop playing with my hand by taking his hand in mine and holding it firmly. The edge of my anger softened. I was still angry, but it was distant, manageable. Damn, Asher was right. I hated that. Hated that some new metaphysical bullshit had reached up to force me into closer personal contact with yet another vampire. Why couldn’t metaphysics work just once without all the touchie-feelie crap?

Jason was looking at us, an odd expression on his face. “I think we should attach Damian to Anita for the night.”

“You think Musette is going to piss me off that badly?” I asked.

“She’s not hurt anyone, yet, Anita, not raised a finger to anyone, yet everyone’s terrified. I’m fucking terrified, and I can’t figure out why. She’s this cute little, blond thing, and she’s gorgeous like a life size Barbie doll, with smaller breasts, but hey a man doesn’t need more than a mouthful, right?”

“You’re over-sharing,” I said.

He didn’t smile at me. His face was way too serious. “Normally, I wouldn’t mind a gorgeous vampire sinking fang into me, but Anita, I do not want this chick to touch me.” He looked scared all of a sudden, scared and younger even than his twenty-two years. “I do not want her touching me.” He stared up at me with haunted eyes. “Jean-Claude’s promised me that Musette isn’t one of those vampires who rots all over you. But it doesn’t matter, I’m still so scared of her that it makes my stomach hurt.”

I reached out my free hand, and Jason came to me. I hugged him and could feel a fine tremble running through him. He was cold, but not the kind of cold that extra clothes would fix. “We’ll keep her off of you, Jason.”

He hugged me so tight it was hard to breath, and he spoke with his face against my neck. “Don’t promise things you can’t deliver, Anita.”

I opened my mouth to promise just that, when Asher interrupted. “No, Anita, do not promise safe passage to any of us, not yet, not until you have met Musette.”

I drew back from Jason and looked up at Asher. “If I just shoot her dead when I walk in the room what would Belle do?”

He paled, and that’s a neat trick for a vampire, even one that’s fed. “You cannot, you must not, Anita . . . I beg of you.”

“You know that if I killed her tonight we’d all be safer.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it. “Anita, ma cherie, please . . .”

Jason stepped back from me and made a motion with his hands. Damian was at my back, hands on my shoulders. The moment he touched me, I felt better, not exactly calmer, not even clearer-headed. Because I was right, we should kill Musette tonight. In the short run it would save so much trouble. But in the long run Belle Morte, maybe even the whole council, would come in force and kill us. I knew that. With Damian’s hands kneading gently on the tight muscles of my shoulders I could even agree with it.

“Why does Damian’s touch make me feel less like killing things?” I asked.

“I have noticed that you seem to gain a measure of calm, an extra layer of thoughtfulness before you pull the trigger when he is touching you.”

“Jean-Claude isn’t one bit less ruthless when I’m around him.”

“You can only gain from your servant what your servant has to offer,” Asher said. “I would say that you have helped make Jean-Claude more ruthless, not less, because that is your nature.” He looked at the vampire standing behind me. “Damian survived for centuries with a mistress that tolerated no anger, no pride. Her will and her will alone was allowed. Damian learned to be less angry, less ruthless, or she-who-made-him would have destroyed him long ago.”

Damian’s hands had gone very still against my shoulders. I patted one of his hands the way you’d pat a friend that was hearing bad news. “It’s alright, Damian, she can’t touch you now.”

“No, Jean-Claude bargained for my freedom from her, and I will always owe him a great debt for that. But that has nothing to do with blood oaths or vampiric bonds. I owe him for bringing me out of a terrible bondage.”

“If you can keep Anita from doing anything unfortunate tonight, then you will have paid part of that debt,” Asher said.

I felt Damian nod. “Then let us go down to the underground, for I know Musette of old and I do not fear her, as much as I fear she-who-made-me.”

I turned so I could see Damian’s face. “Are you implying that you fear Musette only a little less than she-who-made-you?”

He seemed to think about that for a second, or two, then slowly nodded. “I fear my old master more, but yes, I fear Musette.”

“All fear her,” Asher said.

Damian nodded. “All fear her.”

I laid the top of my head against Damian’s chest, shaking my head back and forth, messing up my hair, but I didn’t care. “Damn it, if you’d just let me kill her tonight, now, it would save so much trouble. I’m right, you know I’m right.”

Damian raised my face so I had to meet his eyes. “If you slay Musette, then Belle Morte will destroy Jean-Claude.”

“What if Musette does something really terrible?”

Damian looked behind me at Asher. I turned so I could watch the vampires exchanging glances. Asher finally spoke, “I would never want to tell you that under no circumstances are we to slay Musette, because there may come a time when she gives you no choice. I would not have you endanger yourself by hesitating, if that time comes. But I think that Musette will play the political game very well and will give you no excuse so awful as that.”

I sighed.

“If you don’t handcuff Damian to Anita tonight, she’s never going to make it through Musette’s little show,” Jason said.

“I do not believe that will be necessary,” Asher said, “will it, Anita?”

I frowned. “How the hell should I know? Besides, I’m fresh out of handcuffs.”

Jason drew a pair out of his jacket pocket. “You can borrow mine.”

I frowned harder. “What are you doing carrying around a pair of handcuffs?” I held up my hand. “Wait, I don’t want to know.”

He grinned at me. “I’m a stripper, Anita, I use all sorts of props.”

On one hand it was good to know that Jason didn’t carry the handcuffs around for his own love life. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know that handcuffs were part of his props as a stripper. What kind of shows were they doing down at Guilty Pleasures these days? Wait, I didn’t really want an answer to that question either.

We all trooped to the back door of Circus of the Damned. We didn’t use Jason’s handcuffs, but I did end up walking down all those stairs holding Damian’s hand. There was a growing list of people that walking hand in hand with I would have found romantic or titillating. Damian wasn’t on the list, more’s the pity.

6

DEEP UNDER THE Circus of the Damned were what seemed like miles of underground rooms. They had been the home of St. Louis’s Master of the City, whoever that happened to be, for as long as anyone could remember. Only the huge warehouse above ground had changed. Jean-Claude had modernized the underground, redecorated some of it, but that was all. It was still room after room of stone and torches.

To soften the stone look, Jean-Claude had used huge gauzy drapes to make a sort of tent for his living room walls. The outside was white, but once you parted the first set of hangings the “walls” were silver, gold, and white. Jason had reached out to part the drapes, when Jean-Claude pushed through. He motioned us all back, a finger to his lips.

I swallowed my greeting. He was wearing skin-tight leather pants tucked into thigh-high boots, so it was hard to tell where the pants left off and the boots began. The shirt was one of his typical shirts, something sort of 1700s, with mounds of ruffles at sleeves, and neck. But the color of all that silk was something I’d never seen him in. A vibrant blue somewhere between royal and navy. The color made his midnight eyes bluer than ever. His face was as always flawless, breathtaking. It was, as always, like some wet dream come to life, too beautiful to be real, too sensuous to be safe.

My heart was hammering in my throat. I wanted to fling myself on him, to wrap myself around him like a blanket. I wanted all those black curls to sweep along my body like I was being caressed by living silk. I wanted him. I almost always wanted him, but tonight, I WANTED him. With everything that was happening and about to happen, all I could think of was sex, sex with Jean-Claude.

He glided towards me, and I held out a hand so he wouldn’t touch me. If he laid so much as a finger on me, I wasn’t sure what I’d do.

He looked puzzled, and I heard his voice in my head, “What is wrong, ma petite?”

I still didn’t have the trick of talking mind-to-mind down pat, so I didn’t try. I just held up my left hand and pointed at my watch. It was ten to midnight.

Like Cinderella, I needed to be home by midnight every night. I’d told my coworkers that it was a lunch break, and it was, sometimes I even got food. But what I had to feed every twelve hours didn’t have much to do with my stomach. No, lower places, definitely lower places.

Jean-Claude’s eyes went wide. In my head, he said, “Ma petite, please tell me you have fed the ardeur already.”

I shrugged. “Twelve hours ago.” I didn’t bother to whisper; the vampires behind the curtains would hear it, so I used a normal tone of voice. It wasn’t like I was going to be able to hide the ardeur from them anyway. The ardeur was one of the side effects of being Jean-Claude’s human servant. In another age, Jean-Claude would have been considered an incubus, because he could feed on lust. Not just feed upon it, but cause others to lust after him. It was a way of making more of what you needed. In an emergency, he could feed off of lust and forgo blood for a few days. It was very rare for a vampire to have a secondary power like this. Damian’s master had been able to feed off of fear. She’d been what they call a night hag, or mora.

Belle Morte, of course, held the ardeur. She had used it for centuries to manipulate kings and emperors. Jean-Claude was one of the few of her bloodline to inherit this particular power. And I was, to my knowledge, the only human servant to ever inherit it from anyone.

When the ardeur first awoke in a vamp, it controlled them just like the blood lust, then gradually they learned to control it. Or that was the plan. Since I’d had it, I’d fought like hell so that I only had to feed every twelve hours or so. The feeling didn’t have to involve intercourse, but there did have to be sexual contact. All those old stories about succubi and incubi killing people by loving them to death were true. I could not feed off the same person every time. Micah let me feed off him. Jean-Claude had been waiting to share the ardeur with me for years, though he’d thought it would be him doing the feeding, not me. I’d been forced to make Nathaniel, one of my wereleopards, into my own version of a pomme de sang. Embarrassing as hell, but it beat the heck out of molesting strangers, which was entirely possible if you fought the ardeur. It was a hard taskmistress just like Belle Morte.

The plan for tonight had been to go to my house and meet with Micah, but instead I was here at the Circus. That wasn’t bad in itself, because Jean-Claude was always willing. Unfortunately, we had big bad vampires in the next room, and I didn’t think they’d wait while we had hot monkey sex. Call it a hunch, but I suspected Musette would be sympathetic.

The trouble was, the ardeur wasn’t sympathetic either.

The men were all standing around with that, oh, my god, silence thick on the ground. We were all looking at Jean-Claude to solve this. “What do we do?” I asked.

He looked lost for a moment, then he laughed, that touchable, caressable laugh. It made me shudder, and only Damian grabbing me kept me from falling. I waited for the ardeur to spread to him like the contagious disease it could be, but it didn’t. The moment he touched me, the ardeur receded like the ocean pulling back from the shore. I felt light and clean, clear-headed. I could think again. I clutched Damian’s arm like it was the last piece of wood in the ocean.

I turned wide eyes to Jean-Claude. He was looking very serious. “I feel it too, ma petite.”

We knew through practice that if Jean-Claude concentrated on controlling the ardeur, he could help me control it as well. But when he wasn’t concentrating, the fire burned through us both like some overwhelming force of nature.

I felt Damian’s sorrow at my cool touch, felt it like a taste across my tongue, as if rain could have a flavor.

I knew that Damian wanted me, in that good ol’-fashioned way that had very little to do with hearts and flowers, and everything to do with lust. He craved me the way he did blood, because to be without me was to die. Damian was over six hundred years old, but he’d never be a master vampire. Which meant that literally his original mistress had made his heart beat, his body walk. Then Jean-Claude had been his animating force, and then, accidentally, I’d stolen him from Jean-Claude, and now it was my necromancy that made his blood flow, his heart beat.

I’d been horrified to find that I had, in effect, a pet vampire. I’d tried to ignore what I’d done, run from it. I’d been running from so many things. But I knew that Damian wasn’t one of those things that I could ignore.

If I cut myself off from Damian, he would first go mad, then he would die in truth. Of course, long before he faded away, the other vampires would have had to execute him. You couldn’t have a six-hundred-year-old vampire gone stark raving mad running around the city slaughtering people. It was bad for business. How did I know what would happen if I denied Damian? Because I hadn’t known he was my vampire servant for the first six months after it had happened. He had gone mad, and he had slaughtered innocents. Jean-Claude had imprisoned him, waiting for me to come home, waiting for me to live up to my responsibilities instead of running from them. Damian had been one of my object lessons that you either embraced your power, or others paid the price.

I looked at Jean-Claude. He was still beautiful, but I could look at him without wanting to swarm all over him. “This is amazing,” I said.

“If you would have let Damian touch you like this months ago, we would have discovered it sooner,” Jean-Claude said.

There was a time, not that long ago, that I would have resented being reminded of my own shortcomings, but one of my new resolutions was not to argue about everything. Picking my battles, that was the goal.

Jean-Claude nodded, walked over to me, and held out his hand. “My apologies for the earlier indiscretion, ma petite, but I am master now, no longer pawn of the fire that burns us both.”

I stared at the hand, so pale, long-fingered, graceful. Even without the ardeur’s interference, he was always fascinating in ways that I had no words for. I took his hand, while still clutching Damian’s arm. Jean-Claude’s fingers closed around mine, and my heart stayed calm. The ardeur did not raise its lascivious head.

He raised my hand to his mouth, slowly, touched his lips to my knuckles. Nothing happened. He risked a caress of his lips, sliding along my skin. It did make me catch my breath, but the ardeur did not rise.

He stood upright, my hand still in his. He smiled, that brilliant smile that I valued, because it was real, or as close to real as he could come. He’d spent centuries schooling his face, his every motion to be courtly, graceful, and give nothing away. He found it hard to simply react. “Come, ma petite, come let us meet our guests.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

He wrapped my arm through his and looked at Damian. “Take her other arm, mon ami, let us escort her inside.”

Damian settled my hand on the smooth, muscled skin of his forearm. “With pleasure, master.”

Normally, Jean-Claude didn’t like his vamps calling him master, but tonight we’d be formal. We were trying to impress people who hadn’t been impressed by anything in centuries.

Asher stepped forward to get the drapes, Jason went to the other side, and they held the drapes aside for us so we could enter without having to bat at the drapes. There are reasons that wall-hangings over doorways fell out of favor.

The only downside to having an attractive vampire on each arm was that I couldn’t go for my gun quickly. Of course, if I had to draw a gun as soon as we went through the door, then the night was going to be a bad one. Bad enough that we might survive this night, but not the next.

7

MUSETTE STOOD BY the white brick fireplace. It had to be her, because she was the only little blond Barbie doll in the room, and that’s how Jason had described her. Jason had a lot of faults, but describing a woman inaccurately was not one of them.

She was indeed small, shorter than me by at least three inches. Which made her barely five feet tall, if she was wearing heels under the long white gown, then she was tinier still. Her hair fell around her shoulders in blond waves, but her eyebrows were black and perfectly arched. Either she dyed one thing or the other, or she was one of those rare blonds where body and head hair didn’t match. Which did happen, but not often. The blond hair, pale skin, dark eyebrows and eyelashes framed blue eyes like spring skies. I realized that her eyes were only a few shades bluer than Jason’s. Maybe it was the dark eyebrows and lashes that made them seem so much more vivid.

She smiled with a rosebud mouth that was so red I knew she was wearing lipstick, and once I saw that I knew she was wearing more makeup. Well done, understated, but there were touches here and there that helped a striking, almost childlike beauty along.

Her pomme de sang knelt at her feet like a pet. The girl’s long brown hair was piled on top of her head in a complicated layer of curls that made her look even younger than she was. She was pale, not vampire pale, but pale, and the icy blue of her long, old-fashioned dress didn’t help give her any color. Her slender neck was smooth and untouched. If Musette was taking blood, where was she taking it from? Did I want to know? Not really.

A man stood between the fireplace and the large white couch with its spill of gold and silver pillows. He was the opposite of Musette in almost every way. Well over six feet tall, built like an overly large swimmer, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, narrow-hipped, with legs that seemed longer than I was tall. His hair was black, black like mine was black—with blue highlights. It was tied in a thick braid down his back. His skin was as dark as skin that hadn’t seen much sun in centuries could be. I was betting he tanned with very little effort. He just hadn’t had much opportunity to catch any rays. His eyes were an odd blue green, aqua, like the waters of the Caribbean. They were startling in his dark face and should have added warmth and beauty. But they were cold. He should have been handsome, but he wasn’t, the sour expression on his face stole all that. He looked as if he were always in a bad mood.

Maybe it was the clothes. He was dressed as if he’d stepped out of a century’s-old painting. If I had to go around in tights, I might be grumpy, too.

Though I had a man on either arm, it was definitely Jean-Claude who led us between the two overstuffed chairs, one gold, one silver, with their piles of white pillows. He stopped in front of the white wood coffee table with its crystal bowl of white and yellow carnations. Damian also stopped instantly, standing very still under the touch of my hand. Jason flopped, gracefully, into the gold chair closest to the fireplace. Asher stood on the other side of the silver chair, as far away from Musette as he could get without leaving the room.

Musette said something in French. Jean-Claude replied in French, and I actually understood that he’d told her that I didn’t speak French. She said something else that was a complete mystery to me, then she switched to a heavily accented English. Most vampires have no accent, at least in America, but Musette had a doozy. Thick enough in places that I knew if she spoke too fast, English or not, I wouldn’t be able to understand her.

“Damian, it has been long since you graced our court with your presence.”

“My old mistress did not care for the life of the court.”

“She is an odd one, your mistress Morvoren.”

I felt Damian’s body react to the name like he’d been slapped. I stroked the top of his hand the way you’d sooth a worried child.

“Morvoren is powerful enough to compete for a council seat. She was even offered the Earthmover’s old place. She would not even have had to fight for it. It was a gift.” Musette was watching Damian, studying his face, his body, his reactions. “Why do you think she refused such a bounty?”

Damian swallowed, his breath shaky. “As I said,” he had to clear his throat, to finish, “my old mistress is not one for court life. She prefers her solitude.”

“But to give up a seat on the council without a battle to risk, that is madness. Why would Morvoren do that?”

Each time she said the name, Damian flinched. “Damian answered your question,” I said, “his old master likes her privacy.”

Musette turned those blue eyes to me, and the flat unfriendliness of the stare made me half wish I hadn’t interrupted.

“So, this is the new one.” She walked towards us, and it wasn’t just gliding, it was a sway of hips, there were high heels under the skirt. You didn’t get that sashay without them.

The tall dark and scary man moved behind her like a shadow. The young girl stayed sitting in front of the fireplace, her pale blue skirts spread around her like they’d been arranged. Her hands were very still in her lap. She looked arranged, too, as if she’d been told sit here, like this, and she would sit there, like that, until Musette told her to move. Definitely yucky.

“May I present Anita Blake, my human servant, the very first I have ever called to me. There is no other, there is only she.” Jean-Claude used his hand in mine to sweep me outward away from the coffee table, and incidentally, Musette. It was almost a dance move, as if I was supposed to curtsy, or something. Damian followed the movement, making it look like a very graceful game of crack the whip. The vampires bowed, and, caught between them, I had little choice but to do what they did. Maybe there was more than one reason that Jean-Claude had put me in the middle.

Musette swayed towards us, her hips making a dance of the billowing white skirt. “You know the one I mean, Asher’s servant, what was her name?” There was a look in those blue eyes that said she knew damn well what the name was.

“Julianna,” Jean-Claude said, voice as neutral as he could make it. But neither Asher nor he could say Julianna’s name without some emotion.

“Ah, yes, Julianna, a pretty name for someone so common.” She’d come to stand in front of us. The tall dark man stood behind her, menacing by his very size. He had to be damn close to seven feet tall. “Why is it that Asher and you choose such common women? I suppose there is something comforting about good, sturdy, peasant stock.”

I laughed before I could think. Jean-Claude squeezed my hand. Damian went very still under my other hand.

Musette didn’t like being laughed at, that was plain on her face. “You laugh, girl, why?”

Jean-Claude squeezed my hand tight enough that it was just this side of pain. “Sorry,” I said, “but calling me a peasant isn’t much of an insult.”

“Why is it not?” she asked, and she looked genuinely puzzled.

“Because, you’re right, as far back as anyone can trace my family tree I have nothing but soldiers and farmers. I am good peasant stock and proud of it.”

“Why would you be proud of that?”

“Because everything we’ve gotten, we’ve made with our two hands, the sweat of our brows, that kind of thing. We’ve had to work for everything we have. No one has ever given us anything.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

“I don’t know if I can explain it to you,” I said. I was thinking it was like Asher trying to explain to me what you owed a liege lord. I had nothing in my life that prepared me to understand that sort of obligation. I didn’t say that out loud though, because I didn’t want to bring up the idea that I owed Belle Morte anything. Because I didn’t feel I did.

“I am not stupid, Anita, I would understand if you would explain yourself clearly.”

Asher moved from behind, to the other side of us, still as far as he could stay from Musette, but it was brave of him to draw attention to himself. “I attempted to explain to Anita earlier what one owes a liege lord, and she could not understand it. She is young and American, they have never had the . . . benefit of being ruled here.”

She turned her head to one side, disturbingly like a bird just before it takes a bite out of a worm. “And what has her lack of understanding of civilized ways to do with anything?”

A human being would have licked their lips, Asher went still, quiet. (Hold still enough, and the fox won’t know you’re there.) “You, lovely Musette, have never lived where you were not subject to a lord, or lady, or where you did not rule others. You have never lived without knowing the duties one owes one’s liege.”

“Oui?” she made that one word cold, so cold, as if to say, go on, dig yourself a deeper hole to be buried in.

“You have never dreamt of the possibility that being a peasant, owing no one, would be a freeing experience.”

She waved a carefully manicured hand, as if clearing the very thought from the air. “Absurd. ‘Freeing experience,’ what does that mean?”

“I believe,” Jean-Claude said, “that the fact that you do not understand what that means is Asher’s exact point.”

She frowned at them both. “I do not understand, thus it cannot be that important.” She dismissed it all with a wave of dainty hands. Then she turned her attention back to me, and it was frightening. I wasn’t sure what it was about the mere gaze of those eyes, but it chilled the marrow in my bones.

“Have you seen our present to Jean-Claude and Asher?”

I must have looked as confused as I felt, because she turned and tried to motion behind her, but all I could see was her very large human servant. “Angelito, move so she may see.” Angelito? Somehow the name, “little angel” didn’t fit him. He moved, and she finished the motion towards the fireplace.

It was only the fireplace with it’s painting above it, then something about the painting caught my eye. It was supposed to be a painting of Jean-Claude, Asher, and Julianna in clothing à la the Three Musketeers, but it wasn’t. If there hadn’t been new and strange vampires in the room, I’m sure I would have noticed it sooner. Oh, yes, I would have noticed it sooner.

It was a picture of Cupid and Psyche, that traditional scene where Cupid asleep is finally revealed to the candle-wielding Psyche. Valentine’s Day has robbed Cupid of what he was in the beginning. He was not a chubby sexless baby with wings. He was a god, a god of love.

I knew who had posed for Cupid, because no one else had ever had that golden hair, that long, flawless body. I had memories of what Asher had looked like before, but I’d never seen it, not me, myself. I walked towards the painting like a flower pulled towards the sun. It was irresistible.

Asher lay on his side in the painting, one hand curled against his stomach, the other hand flung outward, limp with sleep. His skin glowed golden in the candlelight, only a few shades lighter than the foam of hair that framed his face and shoulders.

He was nude, but that word didn’t do him justice. The candlelight made his skin glow warm from the broadening of his shoulders to the curve of his feet. His nipples were like dark halos against the swell of his chest, his stomach was flat to the grace of his belly button as if an angel had touched that flawless skin and left a delicate imprint, a line of hair dark gold, almost auburn, traced the edge of his stomach, and ran in a line down, down to curl around him, where he lay swollen, partially erect, caught forever between sleep and passion. The curve of his hip was the most perfect few inches of skin that I’d ever seen. That curve drew the eye down to the line of his thigh, the long sweep of his legs.

I remembered with Jean-Claude’s memories what the curve of that hip had felt like under my fingertips. I remembered arguing about whose hip was the softest, the most perfect. Belle Morte had said that the lines of both their bodies were the closest to perfection she’d ever seen on a man. Jean-Claude had always believed that Asher was the more beautiful, and Asher had believed the same of Jean-Claude.

The artist had painted white wings on the sleeping figure, so detailed they looked as if they’d be soft if you could touch them. The wings were huge and reminded me of renaissance pictures of angels. They seemed out of place on that golden body.

Psyche was peering around the edge of one wing, so that it shielded her upper body, yet revealed a shoulder, the edge of her body, down to that first curve of hip, but most of her was lost behind Cupid’s body. I frowned up at the picture. I knew that shoulder, the curve of the ribs under that white skin. Though traced with golden candlelight, I knew the line of that body. I’d expected Psyche to be Belle Morte, I’d been wrong.

I looked past the long black curls that didn’t so much hide the figure as decorate it, and the face peering around the candle’s edge was Jean-Claude’s. It took me a second to be sure, because he seemed more delicately beautiful than normal, until I realized that he was wearing makeup—that centuries-old version of it, anyway. Things had been done to soften the line of his face, make his lips more pouting. But the eyes, the eyes were unchanged, with their black lace of lashes and that drowning deep color.

The painting was too large for me to stand next to the fireplace and see it all, but there was something about the eyes of the Cupid figure. I had to move close to see that they were open a mere slit, enough to show the cold blue fire that I’d seen when the hunger was upon Asher.

Jean-Claude touched my face, and it made me jump. Damian had moved back, giving us space. Jean-Claude traced the tears on my cheeks. The look in his eyes said clearly that I was crying tears for both of us. He couldn’t afford to appear weak in front of Musette. And I couldn’t help it.

We both turned to Asher, but he was standing as far away as the room would allow. He had turned away, so that all you could see of his face was that golden fall of hair. His shoulders were slightly hunched, as if he’d been struck.

Musette came to stand on the other side of Jean-Claude. “Our mistress thought, since you are together again as of old, that you would enjoy this little reminder of days gone by.”

The look I gave her around Jean-Claude’s shoulder was not a friendly one. I saw the girl who was her pomme de sang on the other side of the couch. I hadn’t even been aware she’d moved away from the fireplace. If the bad guys had wanted to take me out, they could have done it, because I had seen nothing for a few minutes but the painting.

“The painting is our guest gift to our host, but we have a more personal gift just for Asher.”

Angelito moved up beside her like a dark mountain, a much smaller painting in his hands. There were remnants of the paper and twine that had covered it like a discarded skin on the floor. It was half the size of the other, but obviously in the same style, realistic, but in glowing colors, hyperrealistic, very Titian.

The only light in the painting was firelight, the glow of the forge. Asher’s body was colored gold and crimson with the reflected firelight. He was nude again, the edge of the anvil hid his groin, but the right side of his body was bare to the light. Even his hair was tied back in a loose ponytail so that the right side of his face couldn’t be hidden. His arms were still strong as they pretended to forge the blade that lay on the anvil, but the right side of his face, the right side of chest, his stomach, his thigh, were a melted ruin.

These were not the old white scars that I was used to seeing, these were raw, red, discolored, angry lines, like some monster had slashed and gouged at his body. I was suddenly overwhelmed with a memory that was not mine.

Asher lying on the floor of the torture room, freed of the silver chains, the men who had tormented him slaughtered around him, in an explosion of blood. He reached out to us, his face . . . his face . . .

I swooned, and Jean-Claude and I fell in a heap on the floor, because I was experiencing directly what he was remembering.

Damian and Jason moved up beside us, but Asher stayed well back. I didn’t blame him in the least.

8

“ASHER, COME AND see your gift,” Musette called.

Damian was already on the ground beside me, his hands on my shoulders, fingers digging in. I think he was afraid of what I would do. He should have been.

Asher’s voice came strained, but clear, “I have seen that particular gift before. I know it well.”

“Do you wish us to return to Belle Morte and tell her you did not appreciate her gift?”

“You may tell Belle Morte, that I have gotten exactly what she wished me to get out of her gifts.”

“And what is that?”

“I am reminded of what I was, and of what I am.”

I got to my feet, Damian still with a death grip on my shoulders. Jean-Claude rose gracefully like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. I would never be that graceful, but tonight it didn’t matter.

Musette turned back to Jean-Claude. “We have given our gift to you Jean-Claude, and to Asher. We await our guest gifts.”

His voice was empty, so bland it was like listening to silence. “I have told you, Musette, our guest gifts are weeks away from completion.”

“I’m sure you can find something to stand in their stead.” She stared at me.

I found my voice, and it wasn’t bland. “How dare you come here three months early, knowing we won’t be prepared and make demands on us?” Damian was clinging to my back a little frantically, but I was polite, for me. After what she and Belle Morte had just done, I was downright kind. “Your rudeness, will not be used as an excuse to force us to do anything we don’t want to do.”

Damian’s arms slid over my shoulders so he was cradling me against his body. I didn’t fight it, because without his presence I think I would probably have struck her, or shot her. Which sounded like such a good idea.

Jean-Claude tried to smooth things over, but Musette waved him aside. “Let your servant talk, if she has something to say.”

I opened my mouth to call her a heartless bitch, but it wasn’t what came out. “Did you believe that gifts worthy of such beauty could be hurried? Would you really take some poor substitute in the place of the magnificence we had commissioned?”

I stopped talking. All of our men were staring at me, except Damian, who was hugging me for all he was worth.

“Ventriloquism,” Jason said, from the other side of Jean-Claude, “it’s the only answer.”

Jean-Claude nodded. “A miracle indeed.” Then he turned to Musette. “All, save one, pales before your beauty, Musette. How could I offer anything less than something beautiful to grace your loveliness?”

Her gaze turned back to me. “Is she not a beauty to equal mine?”

I laughed. Damian’s arms tightened enough that I had to pat his arm so I could keep breathing comfortably. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this one covered.” I don’t think anyone believed me, but I did, honest. “Musette, I know I’m pretty, I can admit that, but compared to the otherworldly triplets here, I am not the most beautiful person on our side.”

“Triplets,” Jason said, “why do I think I’m not included in that threesome?”

“Sorry, Jason, but you’re like me, we clean up nice, but with these three standing here we are out of our league.”

“You include Asher in the three beauties?” Musette said.

I nodded. “If you are cataloging beautiful people and Asher is in the room, then he always makes the list.”

“Once, oui, but not now, not for centuries,” she said.

“I disagree,” I said.

“You lie.”

I looked at her. “You’re a Master Vampire, can’t you tell when someone’s lying, or telling the truth? Can’t you feel it in my words, smell it on my skin?” I watched her face, those beautiful but frightening eyes. She couldn’t tell if I was lying, or not. I’d only met one other Master Vamp that couldn’t tell truth from lie, and that was because she was lying so badly to herself that truth would have gotten in her way. Musette was blind to truth, which meant we could lie through our teeth to her. That had possibilities.

She frowned at me and waved it all away with those tiny well-manicured hands. “Enough of this.” She was intelligent enough to realize she was losing part of this argument, but she wasn’t bright enough to know why. So she was moving on to something she thought she could win.

“Even Asher with his ruined beauty is more lovely than you are, Anita.”

It was my turn to frown at her. “I think I already said that.”

She frowned again. It was like she had been sent with certain lines to say, and I wasn’t making the replies she’d expected. I was throwing her performance off, and Musette didn’t seem to enjoy improvisation.

“It doesn’t bother you that you are not more beautiful than the men?”

“I had to make peace with being the homely one of the group a long time ago.”

She frowned so hard it looked painful. “You are a very hard woman to insult.”

I shrugged as much as I could with Damian’s arms still wrapped around me. “Truth is truth, Musette. I’ve broken the cardinal girl rule.”

“And that would be?”

“Never date anyone prettier than you are.”

That made her laugh, a surprised burst of sound. “Non, non, the rule is never to admit it.” The smile faded. “You truly have no . . . difficulty with me saying I am more lovely than you.”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

She looked completely lost for a moment, until her own human servant touched her shoulder. She shuddered, took a deep shaking breath, as if remembering who and what she was, and why she was there. The last sign of laughter faded from her eyes.

“You have admitted that your beauty cannot rival mine, thus taking blood from you would not be a gift worthy of replacing the bauble that Jean-Claude is having made for me. You are correct, also, about your wolf. He is charming, but not as charming as the three of them.

I suddenly had a bad feeling about where this was headed.

“Damian is somehow yours. I do not understand it, but I can feel it. He is yours the way Angelito is mine, and you are Jean-Claude’s. As Master of the City, Jean-Claude cannot be drink for the taking, but Asher belongs to no one. Give him to me for my guest gift.”

“He is my second in command, my témoin,” Jean-Claude said, still in that empty, means-nothing voice, “I would not lightly share him.”

“I have met some of your other vampires this night. Meng Die has an animal to call. She is more powerful than Asher, why is she not your second?”

“She is another’s second and will be going back to him in a few months.”

“Why is she here then?”

“I called her.”

“Why?”

The real reason was that while I was off doing my soul-searching Jean-Claude had needed more backup. But I didn’t think he’d share that. He didn’t. “A master calls home his flock periodically, especially if he thinks they will soon become masters of their own territory. A last visit before he loses the power to call them.”

“Belle was most perturbed that you rose to Master of the City without that one last visit, Jean-Claude. She woke speaking your name, saying that you had struck out on your own. None of us thought you would ever rise so high.”

He gave a low, sweeping bow, and she was standing so close that his hair almost brushed her skirt. “It is not often that anyone so surprises Belle Morte. I am most honored.”

Musette frowned. “You should be. She was most . . . unhappy.”

He stood slowly. “Why would my rise to power make her unhappy?”

“Because to be Master of the City is to be beyond the ties of obligation.”

Ties of obligation seemed to mean more to the vampires than it did to me, because I felt them go all quiet. Damian was so still around my body that it was like he wasn’t there at all. Only the weight of his arms let me know he was still clinging to me. The beat and pulse of his body was gone, tucked away somewhere deep inside.

“But Asher has not risen so high. He could still be called home,” she said.

I glanced at Jean-Claude, but his face was utterly blank, that polite nothingness that meant he was hiding his every reaction. “That is, of course, within her purview, but I would need some notice before Asher was called away. America is less settled than Europe, and fights for territory are much less civilized.” His voice was still empty, emotionless, nothing mattered. “If my second were to simply vanish, others would see that as a weakness.”

“Do not worry, our mistress is not going to call him home, but she admits to being puzzled.”

We all waited for her to go on, but Musette seemed content to let the silence stand.

Even with Damian hanging on to me, I broke first. “Puzzled about what?”

“Why Asher left her side, of course.”

Asher moved up closer, though still keeping a much greater distance between himself and Musette than the rest of us. “I did not leave her side,” he said, “Belle Morte had not touched me in centuries. She would not even watch entertainments where I was . . . featured. She said I offended her eye.”

“It is her prerogative to do with her people as she sees fit,” Musette said.

“True,” Asher said, “but she bid me come to America with Yvette as my overseer. Yvette died, and I had no more orders.”

“And if our mistress ordered you home?”

Silence, ours this time.

Asher’s face was as empty of emotion as Jean-Claude’s. Whatever he felt was hidden, but the very blankness of both their faces said that it did matter, and it was important.

“Belle Morte encourages her people to strike out on their own,” Jean-Claude said. “It is one of the reasons her bloodline rules more territories than any other, especially here in the United States.”

Musette turned those beautiful pitiless eyes on him. “But Asher did not leave to become a Master of the City, he left to have revenge on you and your human servant. He wanted to extract payment for his beloved Julianna’s death.”

See, she had known the name all along.

“Yet, here your servant stands, strong, well, and unharmed. Where is your vengeance, Asher? Where is the price Jean-Claude was to pay for his murder of your servant?”

Asher seemed to close in upon himself, so very, very still. I thought if I blinked, he’d have vanished altogether. His voice came distant, empty. “I found that, perhaps, I had blamed Jean-Claude in error. That, perhaps, he too mourned her loss.”

“So,” she snapped her fingers, “like that, all your pain, your hatred is forgotten.”

“Not just like that, non, but I have learned many things that I had forgotten.”

“Such as the sweet touch of Jean-Claude’s body?” she asked.

The silence this time was so thick I could hear my blood roaring in my ears. Damian felt like a ghost against my body. All the vampires, I was sure, were wishing themselves away.

Either Jean-Claude and Asher had been doing it behind my back. Which was not impossible. But if not, to answer the question truthfully would be bad.

Jason caught my eye, but neither of us dared even shrug. I don’t think we were sure what was going on, but that it would end some place painful was almost certain.

Musette swayed around Jean-Claude, to stand closer to Asher. “Are you and Jean-Claude a happy couple, once more, or,” here she looked at me, “is it a happy ménage à trois? Is that why you did not come home?” She pushed past Asher and Jean-Claude, making them move back, so she could stand in front of me. “How can the touch of such as this compare to the magnificence of our mistress?”

I think she’d just implied that I wasn’t as good in bed as Belle Morte, but I wasn’t entirely sure that’s what she meant, and I didn’t care. She could insult me all she wanted. Insulting me was less painful than so many other things she could be doing.

“Belle Morte is sickened at the sight of me,” Asher said, finally, “she avoids me in all things.” He motioned at the painting that Angelito was still holding up. “This is how she sees me. How she will always see me.”

Musette swayed her way back to stand in front of Asher. “To be least among her court is better than ruling anywhere else.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Are you saying it’s better to serve in Heaven than rule in Hell?”

She nodded, smiling, seemingly oblivious to the literary allusion. “Oui, precisement. Our mistress is the sun, the moon, the all. To be parted from her, only that is true death.”

Musette’s face was rapturous, glowing with that inner certainty usually reserved for Holy Rollers and television evangelists. She was, indeed, a true believer.

I couldn’t see Damian’s face, but I was betting it was as carefully blank as the rest. Jason was staring at Musette as if she had sprouted a second head, an ugly, spiky second head. She was a zealot, and zealots are never quite sane.

She turned to Asher with that radiance still suffusing her face. “Our mistress does not understand why you left her, Asher.”

I did. I think everyone in the room did, except maybe for Angelito and the girl who was still standing on the other side of the couch where Musette had put her.

“Look at the painting of me as Vulcan, Musette, see what our mistress thinks of me.”

Musette didn’t bother to look behind her. She gave that Gallic shrug that meant everything and nothing.

“Anita does not see me that way,” he said.

“Jean-Claude cannot look at you without seeing what was lost,” she said.

“The time when you could speak for me, Musette, is long past. You do not know my heart, or my mind, you never truly did,” Jean-Claude said.

She turned to him. “Are you truly telling me that you would touch him, as he is now? Be careful how you answer, Jean-Claude, know that our mistress has seen deep into your heart and mind. You may lie to me, but never to her.”

Jean-Claude was quiet for a time, but finally he told the truth. “We are not currently together in that way.”

“See, you refuse to touch him, as she refuses to touch him.”

I loosened Damian’s arms enough so I could move more easily. “Not exactly,” I said, “sorry, but it’s my fault that they aren’t a couple.”

She turned to me. “What do you mean, servant?”

“You know, even if I was, like a maid, I know enough about polite society to know that you don’t call a maid, simply, maid. You don’t call a servant, servant, not unless you truly have never interacted with servants.” I folded my arms across my stomach, looking puzzled on purpose. Damian’s hands stayed lightly on my shoulders. “Is that it, Musette? Are you not an aristocrat, after all? Is it all pretend, and you simply don’t know any better?”

Jean-Claude gave me a look that she couldn’t see.

“How dare you!” Musette said.

“Then prove you are noble, address me at least like someone who has truly had servants.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then she seemed to hear something that I couldn’t hear. She let out a long breath. “As you like, Blake, then.”

“Blake is fine,” I said, “and what I mean is that I’m not entirely comfortable with this bisexual thing. I won’t share Jean-Claude with another woman, and definitely not with a man.”

Musette did that head to the side movement again, as if she’d spied the worm she intended to eat. “Very good, then Asher has no tie to any of you. He is merely your second.”

I looked from one vampire to another, only Jason looked as confused as I felt. The vamps were acting like a trap had been sprung, and I didn’t see it yet. “What’s going on?” I asked.

Musette laughed, and it wasn’t anywhere near as good a laugh as Jean-Claude or Asher were capable of. It was just a laugh, a vaguely unpleasant one, at that. “I am within my rights to ask for him as my gift for tonight,” she said.

“Wait,” I said, and Damian’s hands tried to pull me back in against him, but I wasn’t moving this time. “I thought you agreed with Belle that Asher isn’t pretty enough to have sex with anymore.”

“Whoever said anything about sex?” Musette asked.

Now I really was puzzled. “Why else would you want him for the night?”

She laughed then, head back, very unladylike, a bray of sound like a hound baying. I hadn’t said anything that funny, had I?

Jean-Claude’s quiet voice came into the silence that followed that laugh. “Musette’s interests run to pain more than sex, ma petite.”

I looked at him. “You don’t mean dominance and submission where you have safe words, do you?”

“There is no word in any language that I have ever heard screamed that would dissuade Musette from her pleasures.”

I licked my suddenly dry lips. They lie about that moisturizing lipstick. Your lips still dry out when you get scared. “Let me test my understanding. If Asher was your lover, or mine, or anyone’s, then he’d be safe from her?”

“Non, ma petite, Asher would only be safe if he belonged to you, or me. Lesser powers cannot protect those they love.”

“But because we’re not doing him, he’s free meat?” I asked.

He seemed to think about that for a time. “That is accurate enough, oui.”

“Fuck,” I said.

“Oui, ma petite, oui.” A thread of tiredness had finally broken through his empty voice.

I looked at Asher, and he was hiding behind that shining hair again. What was I supposed to say, that if I hadn’t been so squeamish this wouldn’t be happening? I’m sorry I have issues with my boyfriend doing other men. I’m sorry I have issues with me doing other men. Why was I always being made to feel guilty because I wasn’t having sex with more people? Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

Musette held her hand out to Asher. He stood there for a second or two, then he took her hand. He looked back once at Jean-Claude, a shine of eyes in all that hair. Jean-Claude never reacted, as if he were trying to pretend he wasn’t there.

I moved forward, only Damian’s fingers digging into my shoulders brought me up short. “We are not letting her do this,” I said.

“She is Musette, and Belle Morte’s lieutenant.” Jean-Claude’s voice had gone small and distant.

Musette didn’t take him through the drapes into another room. She stopped a few yards away, not even that close to the “walls.” She turned Asher to face her, then she drew a knife from her white skirts, and plunged it into his stomach before anyone could react. Asher could move faster than the eye could follow, but he made no move to protect himself. He just let her sink the knife home, grinding it until the hilt met his skin, and she couldn’t push it in any farther.

I had my gun out of the holster, and Jean-Claude grabbed my hand. “The knife is not silver, ma petite, when it is removed he will heal almost instantly.”

I looked up at him, straining to raise the gun, and making some progress. Thanks to his own vampire marks, I was stronger than I should have been. “How do you know it’s not silver?”

“Because I have played this game with Musette before.”

That made me stop trying to bring the gun up. I went quiet in his hands. Their hands, I should have said, because Damian’s hands were plastered to my shoulders. Only Jason hadn’t joined in trying to hold me back. From the look on his face I think he wanted to help me, not hinder me.

I looked past Jean-Claude to see Asher still standing, his hands to his stomach where blood blossomed across the skin of his hands. The brown of the shirt was dark enough to hide the first rush of blood. Musette put the knife to her delicate mouth and licked down the blade.

I knew through Jean-Claude’s memories that vampire blood gives no sustenance. You cannot feed from the dead, not in that way.

Asher looked at us. “It is not silver, ma cherie, it will not kill me.” His breath was cut off in his throat, as Musette plunged the knife in a second time.

The world swam in streamers of colors. I closed my eyes for a second and spoke in a low, careful voice. “Let go of me, Damian.” The hands at my back dropped away instantly, because I’d given a direct order. I opened my eyes and met Jean-Claude’s gaze. We stared at each other, until his hand dropped, slowly, away. His voice echoed like a whisper in my mind, “You cannot kill her for this.”

I put my gun back in its holster. “Yeah, I know.” I couldn’t kill her, because she wasn’t trying to kill Asher, but I would not stand here and watch him be tortured. I would not, could not, do it. I’d once thought that arm wrestling vampires was a bad idea. She was stronger than me, even with Jean-Claude’s marks, but I was also betting she wasn’t trained in hand-to-hand fighting. If I was wrong, I was about to get my ass kicked. If I was right, well, we’d see.

9

MUSETTE MADE NO move to protect herself. Angelito stayed with the other men across the room. It was as if neither of them saw me as a threat. You’d think with my reputation, vampires would stop underestimating me. But dead or alive, there are always fools.

I could feel myself smiling, and I didn’t need a mirror to know that it wasn’t a nice smile. It was the smile I got when I’d been pissed off too much and I’d finally decided to do something about it.

Musette made a big show of licking the knife clean, while Asher stood in front of her and bled. She licked it like a kid with a Popsicle on a hot day—got to lick carefully, but quickly, or it drips down your hand, and you lose some of it. Her eyes were all for me, the show was all for me. It was as if Asher didn’t matter at all to her. Maybe he didn’t.

She had actually turned back to plunge the blade home a third time, when I was within touching distance. I don’t know what she thought I planned to do, because she seemed totally surprised when I grabbed her hand. Maybe she expected me to fight like a girl, whatever the hell that means.

I pushed my shoulder into her, and she tottered backwards on her high heels. I hooked my heel behind hers, and foot swept her leg out from under her. She fell backwards, because I helped. I rode her body down to the ground, turning the knife in her hand with mine, and when she hit the floor, I plunged the knife home. I leaned my knee into the back of our hands and felt the blade come out the back of her body.

I whispered to her, “It’s not silver, you’ll heal.”

She screamed.

I didn’t so much hear Angelito move as feel him. “If you come over here, Angelito, I will force this blade up into her heart, and it won’t matter if it’s silver, or if it’s not. I’ll shred her heart before you can cross the room.”

The far drapes opened and vampires spilled into the room, some ours, some hers. I don’t know what would have happened, but I heard the far door open, behind the drapes. I heard a lot of movement, and I almost tore the blade up through her, not at all sure the metal was strong enough to take the strain. With a better blade I could have dug for her heart, with this one I wasn’t sure.

A split second before I tried it, I heard a sound that raised the hair on my arms. The sound of hyenas hunting. It’s a hell of a lot creepier than the howl of a wolf, but that joined with it. I knew the moment I heard the noises that it was our calvary coming, not Musette’s.

I didn’t look behind, because I didn’t dare take my eyes off the vampire I had pinned to the floor. But I felt the crowd surge behind me, felt the neck-ruffling power of shape-shifters filling the room like an electric cloud.

The touch of so many of them with such tension called my own beast like a snake in my gut to writhe and flow inside my body. I wasn’t a shape-shifter, but through Richard and my tie to the wereleopards, I had the closest thing a human being could have to their very own private beast.

It was Bobby Lee, who was actually a wererat, that came forward enough for me to see him. His southern drawl always sounded so out of place in a fight. “You planning to kill her?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

He knelt on one knee beside us. “You think that’s the smart thing to do?” He glanced up at the vampires on the other side of the room.

“Probably not.”

“Then maybe you should oughta ease up there, before you gut her.”

“Micah send you?” I asked, eyes still on Musette’s pain-filled face. I was happy to see her hurting. I didn’t usually enjoy causing pain to anyone, but I just didn’t mind hurting Musette.

“He didn’t send any of your leopards, cause you told him not to, but he contacted the other leaders, and here we are. If you’re not going to kill her, girl, you should probably let her go.”

“Not yet,” I said.

He didn’t ask again, but stood up near us, like the good bodyguard he was.

I spoke directly to Musette, but I made sure my voice carried. “No one comes into our territory and harms our people. No one, not the council, not even le sourdre de sang of our bloodline. Everyone tells me that when I speak to you I’m speaking to Belle herself, well, here’s the message. The next one of her people to harm one of our people is dead. I will take their heads, their hearts, and I’ll burn the rest.”

Musette found her voice, at long last, though it was strained, and a little afraid. “You would not dare.”

I leaned into the blade, a little bit more, made her grunt with the force of it. “Try me.”

The pain in Musette’s face faded, vanishing like someone wiped it away, and her blue eyes began to darken. I rode the knife into her while Belle’s pale brown eyes swirled to the surface, the dark overwhelming all that blue, until Musette’s eyes were the color of poisoned honey.

I’d seen Belle do this trick once before, but it had been in a mirror, and my own eyes. Fear drove through me like a blade, chilling my skin, bringing my heart into my neck like a trapped thing. Fear can either chase back the beast, or call it. This fear calmed it, dampened it, so that that rising power sank away, leaving me alone, and scared. It wasn’t a vampire trick that made me want to let her go and run away. I’d felt Belle move through my own body, and I never wanted her to be able to do it again. If I took Musette’s heart with Belle inside her, could I kill them both? Probably not, but God, it was tempting.

Belle’s voice came without a trace of fear, or strain. If the knife hurt her too, it didn’t show. “Jean-Claude, have you taught her nothing?” The voice was not Musette’s, it was deeper, richer, a low contralto. The irreverent thought that she’d give really good phone sex crossed my mind.

Jean-Claude started gliding towards us. He motioned for Damian to follow, and the red-haired vampire fell into step behind him. Jean-Claude came to kneel beside us and motioned Damian to do the same. They both bowed their heads, carefully out of reach. “Musette overstepped the bounds for a visitor to my lands. You would not tolerate such treatment of one of your own people. I have learned well the lessons you taught me, Belle Morte.”

“What lesson is this?” she asked.

“Tolerate nothing. No hint of disobedience. No breath of revolution. No insult is tolerated. I admit that I forgot this in the rush of fear that Musette brought with her. The thought of insulting you, even indirectly was unthinkable, but I am no longer your creature. I am a Master of the City now. I am my own creature, and Asher is mine now. I will be what you brought me up to be, Belle, I will truly be your child. I will let ma petite be as ruthless as she likes, and Musette will either learn better manners, or she will not be coming home to you ever again.”

She sat up. With the knife plunged through her body, she sat up, and I could not keep her pinned down. The movement pushed me backwards enough to brush against Damian. He touched my back, and when I didn’t tell him not to, he touched my shoulder.

Belle even dropped Musette’s hand away from the knife, so that my hand held it in place. But she showed no pain, in fact she ignored me to look at Jean-Claude. I began to feel silly with my bloody hands and the knife still stuck in Musette. No, not silly, superfluous.

“You know what I would do to you if you harmed her,” Belle said.

“I know that according to our own laws, the laws you helped enact, that no one is allowed to simply enter a territory without negotiating safe passage. Musette and her people are here three months before we gave them permission to enter, which means, in effect, they are outlaw, and have no rights, no safety. I could slaughter them all and council law would be on my side. You have too many people on the council that fear you, Belle, they would think it a good joke.”

“You would not dare,” she said.

“I will not allow you to harm Asher, not anymore.”

“He is nothing to you, Jean-Claude.”

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, magnificent in your lust; I am humbled by your power, awed by the political maneuvering that you do so effortlessly. But I have been long away from you, and I have learned that beauty is not always what it seems, that lust is not always better than love, that power alone is not enough to fill the bed or the heart, and that I don’t have your patience for the politics.”

She reached out a slender hand towards him. “I showed you love such as no mortal ever could.”

“You showed me lust, mistress, sexual appetite.”

“Oui, amour,” she said, her voice sultry enough to cause goosebumps on my arms.

Jean-Claude shook his head. “Non, lust, not love, never love.”

A look passed over her face, like a badly designed mask moving liquid under Musette’s skin. It reminded me uncomfortably of watching the beast glide under the skin of a shape-shifter before it springs forth. If she changed into Belle completely, I was trying for her heart while I had the chance.

“You loved me once, Jean-Claude.”

“Oui, with all my heart and all my soul.”

“But you do not love me now,” her voice was soft, there might even have been a trace of loss.

“I have learned that love can grow without the touch of sex, and that sex does not always lead to love.”

“I would love you again,” she whispered.

“Non, you would possess me again, and love is not about possession.”

“You speak in riddles,” she said.

“I speak truth as I have come to know it,” he said.

Those pale honey brown eyes turned to me. “You have done this. Somehow, you have done this.”

I was beginning to feel positively silly with the knife still in Musette, but I was afraid to take it out, because I was half expecting Belle to stand up and say, aha, that was what I was waiting for. So I kept the blade in and tried to think what to do. Staring into those pale brown eyes it was hard to think, hard not to either run away or try and kill her. If I can’t run from my fears, I have a tendency to try and kill them. It’s a strategy that’s worked so far.

“What have I done?” I asked, and my voice showed the strain. Damian’s hands kneaded gently at my shoulders, not so much a massage, as a reassurance that he was there, I think.

“You have turned him against me,” she said.

“No,” I said, “you did that all on your own, centuries before I was born.”

That liquid mask moved under Musette’s skin again. If I touched her face I thought I’d feel things underneath that should not have been there. “I took him to my bed, what more does anyone desire of Belle Morte?”

“You showed him what your love was worth when you cast Asher out of your bed.”

“What does Asher’s fate have to do with Jean-Claude’s love?”

That anyone who knew the two of them could ask that was amazing. That the vampire that brought them together could ask that was both frightening and sad.

“You need to leave now, Belle,” I said.

“Why, what have I said to upset you?”

I shook my head. “The list is too long, Belle, we don’t have all night, let me hit the highlights. Go away, for now, please, just leave. I’m tired of trying to explain color to the blind.”

“I do not understand what that means.”

“No,” I said, “you don’t.”

She stared up at me. Her hand came up as if to touch my face. “If you touch me,” I said, “I’ll see if Musette can survive without her heart.”

“Why is the touch of my hand worse then the touch of our bodies one against the other?”

“Call it a hunch, but I don’t want you touching me on purpose. Besides it’s not your body, it’s Musette’s. Although I’m not sure about that, so call me cautious, and just don’t touch me.”

“I will see you again, Anita, I promise you that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“You don’t seem to believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you, I just can’t get too worked up over it.”

“Worked up?” she made it a question.

“She means she cannot get too upset about your threat,” Jean-Claude said.

Belle looked back at me. “Why can you not?”

“I’ve had a lot of vampires threaten me, I can’t panic every time.”

“I am Belle Morte, member of the council on high, do not underestimate me, Anita.”

“Tell that to the Earthmover,” I said. He’d been a council member that had come to town once upon a time. He’d died.

“I have not forgotten that Jean-Claude slew a council member.”

Actually, I’d slain him, but why quibble? “Just go, Belle, please, just go.”

“And if I choose to stay? What will you do? What can you do?”

I thought about several options, most of them fatal to one or both of us. Finally, I said, “If you want to keep this body, fine. It’s not my body. It’s not even my vampire. You want it, knock yourself out.”

I leaned back from her and jerked the knife out. There was no way I was leaving a weapon on Musette. She was too likely to take the blade out and stick it in me. The blade pulling out brought a gasp from Belle that plunging it in hadn’t.

She grabbed my wrist, as if to keep me from hurting her, but I should have known better. Some small, screaming part of me knew I was still kneeling on the carpet in Jean-Claude’s living room, but the rest of me was in a dark, candlelit room. The bed was large and soft, mounded with pillows as if it would rise up in a soft cushioned wave and engulf me. The woman pressed into all that softness lay in a bed of her own dark hair, her eyes a solid golden brown fire, like staring at the sun through a piece of colored glass. Belle Morte stared up at me, her pale body naked. The glory of her spread before me, nothing hidden. I wanted her, wanted her as I’d never wanted anything else in my life.

I came back to myself, with a gasp. Jean-Claude held my other hand in a death grip. Damian was a weight against the back of my body. Jason stood over the rest of us as we knelt. His hands were on Jean-Claude’s shoulder, and against the side of my neck, above Damian’s hand. I could feel the pulse in my neck pounding against the pulse in the palm of Jason’s hand.

I could smell the musty scent of fur, the rich, almost eatable smell of the forest. It was the smell of the pack. The werewolves that had come to guard our back had stepped up through the crowd. I could feel the wolves ranged behind me, feel them like there was an invisible thread between Jason, me, and them. Jean-Claude’s ties to the wolves were direct, they were his animal to call. He didn’t need Richard’s beast to call the wolves. I needed a surrogate wolf to bind me to them. Richard should have been at our back, but he wasn’t. If Jason had not been there to be our third, then Belle might have raised the ardeur, drowned us in memories of her sweet flesh. Flung us out into the room and turned my Mexican standoff into an orgy.

But Jean-Claude gave me his control through the press of his hand; Damian gave me his desperate reserve through his body molded against my back; Jason fed the pulse of the pack into the bend of my neck. We were not merely a triumvirate of power; through Damian’s addition, we were more. And that more was stronger than Belle Morte trapped in Musette’s body. If she’d been here in person, it might have been a different story, but she wasn’t. She was way the hell in Europe somewhere.

A howl broke out behind me, and another, and another. Jason threw his head back, making a long clean line of his throat. A howl trembled from his mouth, to join with the chorus behind us. The sound rose and fell, one wolf’s note dying off, another taking up the call, until the sound rose and fell like music—lonely, trembling, amazing music.

I met Belle’s pale brown eyes and found them full of fire, like staring at flames through brown glass. It did remind me of her eyes in the memory she had chosen, but it was just a memory. There was no bite or pull to it now. The ardeur lay quiet, held behind the bars we had forged for it, from sheer force of will, and months of practice.

“The last time you rolled the ardeur over us, it was new to me. It’s not new anymore,” I said.

Something flowed under Musette’s skin. It was like watching a second face roll underneath her skin. Again, I half expected Belle to burst out through Musette’s body like some kind of shape-shifter. But the rolling shape stopped, and those dark fire eyes stared into mine.

“There will be other nights, Anita,” she said, in that low, almost purring voice of hers.

I nodded. “I know.”

With that she vanished. Musette fell back onto the floor into a . . . dead faint. Her vampires rushed forward. The wolves stayed at my back, the werehyenas stepped up, the wererats drew guns, and Bobby Lee said, “Don’t queer our shot, gentlemen.”

The werehyenas hesitated, forming two groups one to either side of the vampires. Our vampires peeled off from Musette’s and eased through the crowd of wereanimals. “Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt,” Bobby Lee said.

“Let them fetch their mistress,” Jean-Claude said.

Some of the shape-shifters looked his way, none of the wererats did. We had this much backup not because Jean-Claude had a tie to any other animal except the wolves, but because I’d made friends. The wererats and werehyenas were here for me, not him.

“Ease down, Bobby Lee, let them get Musette. I certainly don’t want to have to take care of her.”

The men and women, wererats all, with their guns nicely pointed, moved back in two lines so the vampires had to walk between them to reach Musette. Angelito had joined them, but Bobby Lee motioned him back with a wave of his gun barrel. Angelito was imposing, but he was also one of the few humans among them. I wasn’t sure the big man was the most dangerous person on their side. A little girl of seven or eight with dark curls cut short around an angelic face flashed dainty fangs and hissed at me. An older boy who looked like a young twelve, or an old ten, picked Musette’s shoulders up, raising her limp figure off the ground as if she weighed nothing. He didn’t flash fangs, he just looked at me with dark, unfriendly eyes.

A male vamp in a dark conservative suit got Musette’s feet, though he made no move to take the small woman from the boy. I knew the male vamp could have carried her easily, but he didn’t argue with the boy. The boy didn’t lack strength, just height, and leverage.

They carried her back to Angelito, who took her from the others. Musette looked tiny held in his long arms. There were people in the room who had thicker arms than Angelito. The werehyenas were bodybuilders, but there was no one on our side that had the length and size of Musette’s little angel.

Jean-Claude stood, drawing me to my feet. Damian moved as I moved. Jason, too. “We have rooms prepared for all of you. You will be escorted to them, then we will leave guards outside your doors, for the protection of all concerned.”

Bobby Lee was still holding his gun nice and steady on the vamps. “Anita?” he made my name a question.

“I don’t want them wandering around without guards on them, so yeah, sounds like a good idea to me. You guys able to stick around that long?”

“Honey-child, I would follow you to the ends of the earth. ’Course we can.” He laid the southern accent on thick enough to walk across.

“Thanks, Bobby.”

“Our pleasure.”

“Meng Die, Faust, you know the way to the rooms, show our guards where to go.” Meng Die was lovely, delicate, with perfectly straight black hair cut just above her shoulders; her skin was like pale porcelain. She would have looked like a perfect China doll if she hadn’t liked wearing skintight black leather most of the time. The leather sort of ruined the image. She was a Master Vampire, and her animal to call, I’d been surprised to learn, was the wolf. Strangely, this didn’t make her any more attractive to the wolves or me. She was just too damn unfriendly.

Faust was not much taller than Meng Die, but he didn’t make you think delicate, just short. He was cheerfully attractive—like the boy next door if he happened to be a vampire—and had dyed his hair a dark wine-burgundy. His eyes were the color of new pennies as if the brown had a touch of fresh blood in it. He was a Master Vampire but not strong enough to ever be Master of the City, or at least not hold on to it. A weak Master of the City is usually a dead one.

Meng Die and Faust led the way through the drapes and the far corridor beyond. Musette’s vamps went next. The wererats and the werehyenas brought up the rear. The drapes swished closed behind them. We were left alone with our thoughts. I hoped everyone else’s thoughts were more useful than mine, because all I could think was that Belle wouldn’t like being given her hat and shown the door. She’d find a way to make us eat the insult, if she could. Maybe she couldn’t, but she was over two thousand years old, according to Jean-Claude. You didn’t survive that long without knowing things, things that would make your enemies run screaming. The council member we’d killed had been able to cause earthquakes simply by thinking about it. I was pretty sure Belle had her own special tricks. I just hadn’t seen them yet.

10

LESS THAN AN hour later Jean-Claude and I were in his room, alone. Damian was one of the guards outside our door. We’d split our vamps up among the wereanimals so that, hopefully, the bad vampires couldn’t use mind tricks on the wereanimals without the vamps knowing it. We’d done the best we could do, which had actually been pretty damned good. The ardeur was still in hiding. I wasn’t questioning it, just grateful.

Jean-Claude’s large four-poster bed was draped in blue silk, mounded with pillows in at least three vibrant shades of blue. He traded the drapes and pillows to match whatever color the sheets were, so I knew without looking that the sheets would be blue silk. Jean-Claude did not do white sheets, no matter what they were made out of.

He was sitting in the room’s only chair, slumped down, hands crossed over his stomach. I was sitting on the rug that he’d put beside the bed. The rug was actually fur, thick and soft, and somehow just by touch you knew it had once been alive. We’d both been strangely reluctant to go to bed. I think we were both afraid the ardeur would rise, and we weren’t ready for it.

“Let me test my understanding,” I said.

Jean-Claude looked at me, moving only his eyes.

“Tomorrow night, if Asher is still nobody’s, will they be within their rights to ask for him?”

“Not as they did tonight, no, you have made that impossible now, unless they can take him by force.”

I shook my head. “I’ve been around enough vamp politics to know that if you stop them from doing one thing, they’ll do something else, not because they want to, but because it will cause you pain.”

He frowned at me.

I sighed. “Let me try that again. Here’s the deal, what are they within their rights to ask from us, while they’re here?”

“Hunting rights, or willing donors, lovers—the basic needs to be met.”

“Sex is a basic need?”

He just looked at me.

“Sorry, sorry. So I understand the willing donor part, they’ve got to eat. But the lovers, what does that mean, exactly?”

“It would be déclassé to demand lovers for the servants, so Musette’s lady’s maid and butler are not to be worried over. The two children are special cases. The girl is physically too young, she does not think of such things. The boy is a problem. Bartolomé was precocious, which is why Belle sent Musette to take him.”

I stared at him. “Please, tell me that Musette never had sex with the kid?”

He seemed suddenly tired, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. “Do you wish the truth, or a more pleasant lie?”

“The truth, I guess.”

“Belle Morte can smell sexual appetite, it is one of her gifts. Bartolomé may look like a child, but he does not think like one, nor did he when he was human and a true boy of eleven going on twelve. He was the heir to a great fortune. Belle wanted to control that fortune. He was also notorious in an age when noble sons were allowed almost any indiscretion with women who were not of noble blood.”

“Explain that,” I said.

“He looked like a child, Anita, and he would use that innocent face to maneuver women into compromising situations. By the time they realized that they were in danger of abuse, it was often too late. More than that, he threatened to accuse them of being the aggressor. There was no such phrase as child molestation in that century, but everyone knew it happened. Children were often married as young as ten or eleven, so the people who had such tastes could satisfy their needs within the marriage bed, until their spouses became too old for their tastes, then they would look outside their marriage, or by that time their own children might be old enough.”

I stared at him. “I don’t think I wanted to know that last part. That is beyond disgusting.”

“Oui, ma petite, but it is still true. A fortune as large as Bartolomé’s would normally be Belle’s task. She would never leave such monies, or lands, or titles, to anyone else. But she is not a lover of children, no matter how grown-up they may be, so she cast it to Musette. Who, as you now realize, will do anything our mistress bids her do.”

“I got that impression.”

“So, yes, she seduced, or allowed herself to be seduced by the boy. Belle gave her a touch of the ardeur and Bartolomé was enraptured. Belle did not mean to bring him over to us as a boy. She meant to wait until he grew older, but Bartolomé was thrown from his horse. He had crushed his skull, and was dying. His next brother was only five, and Belle would have no hold on him. She needed Bartolomé, and so she bid Musette finish him.”

“How did he feel when he woke up?”

“He was happy to be alive.”

“How’d he feel when he finally realized he’d be a little boy forever, no matter how precocious?”

Jean-Claude sighed. “He was . . . unhappy. Bringing children over is forbidden for a reason. Musette did not make Valentina one of us. Belle found that one of her Master Vampires was a pedophile and had brought over children to be his permanent . . . companions.” His voice went soft at the end.

I felt ill. I breathed deep and slow. “Sweet Jesus,” I said.

“He had broken our prohibition against bringing over children, and when Belle Morte found out why he had done it . . . she slew him. With full permission of the council, she slew him. They destroyed most of the children he had made. They were vampires trapped in children’s bodies, and they had been abused.” He shook his head. “Their minds did not survive, not whole.”

“So how did Valentina escape?” I asked.

“She was his newest and had yet to be touched. She was a child and a vampire but she was not mad. Belle took her in and found her people to care for her. She had human nannies for many years. She had human playmates. I must say that Belle did her best for Valentina. I think she blamed herself for not realizing what a true monster Sebastian was.”

“Why do I think this ideal picture doesn’t stay ideal?”

“You know us too well, ma petite. Valentina tried to turn some of her playmates into vampires, so she would not be the only one. When her nanny discovered her, Valentina slit her throat. That was the end of human nannies and human playmates.”

“That’s why the vampire nanny,” I said.

He nodded. “She does not truly need one in the traditional sense of a child’s need, but she is forever eight years old, and even today she cannot catch a taxi by herself, register in a hotel, without people wondering. Some well-meaning human will call the police to report the poor abandoned child that’s staying in their hotel.”

“She must hate it.”

“It?”

“Her existence,” I said.

He gave half a shrug. “I do not know. I do not speak to Valentina.”

“You’re afraid of her.”

“Non, ma petite, but I am unnerved by her. The few children that survive for centuries are twisted things. It cannot be otherwise.”

“How did she end up with Musette’s entourage?”

“Valentina was taken before her body grew large enough for much physical pleasure. She has turned such energies into other,” he licked his lips, “avenues of interest.”

I sighed. “Musette is Belle’s torturer, which means that Valentina is what, her little assistant in the torture?”

He nodded, head resting against the chair back, eyes closed. “Valentina has been a very apt pupil.”

“She’s tortured you?”

He nodded, eyes still closed. “I told you that the price for Belle saving Asher’s life was my servitude for a century among them. But Belle wished to punish me for leaving her, and for a long time she gave me to pain rather than pleasure.”

I went to him, crawling on the floor by his chair, smoothing my skirts down automatically, though there was no one there to see. “So Valentina won’t be asking for a lover.”

“Non.”

“Will she try for a . . . what? Submissive?”

“Oui.”

“Can we just refuse?”

“Oui.”

“Can we make the ‘no’ stick?”

He opened his eyes and looked down at me. “I believe so, but to say absolutely would be too close to a lie.”

I shook my head. “If Musette left tonight, and returned in three months, would we have less ground to stand on?”

“She will not leave, ma petite.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, if she had come in three months after good faith negotiations had gone through, would I still have been allowed to get away with what I did tonight? Or would we have faced the council’s wrath?”

“We would have chosen a victim for Musette, or chosen a lover for her, or both before she arrived. It would have been settled and not a surprise.”

“You know most human guests don’t expect their hosts to supply them with sex partners.”

“Nor do most of the bloodlines that descend from the council, but Belle’s line is built upon sex, and it has become custom to offer any of Belle’s line sex when they visit you. It is assumed that we all carry a touch of her succubus within us.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Non, but no one of her line has ever wished to dissuade others of the lie.”

I smiled, thought about laughing, and was too tired. “We can keep Willie and Hannah safe because they’ve got to be in charge of the two clubs. We’ve already negotiated that our businesses are not to be disrupted by the visit,” I said.

“Belle was always one to keep her mind on where the money was coming from, so yes, Willie is my manager for The Laughing Corpse, and Hannah is temporary manager of Danse Macabre. The two weakest of my flock are safe away.”

“Damian is my vampire servant, I’m your human servant, you’re Master of the City, Jason is your pomme de sang, Nathaniel is my pomme de sang, Micah is my lover and my Nimir-Raj, Richard is Ulfric, and the bodyguards can’t guard our bodies if they’re screwing other people.”

“We have made everyone as safe as we can, ma petite.”

“There’s one name that’s conspicuously absent from that list, Jean-Claude.”

“Three actually, ma petite, four if you count Gretchen.”

“Gretchen is crazy, Jean-Claude. You got a special pass for her from Belle because she’s still ill, right?” Gretchen had tried to kill me once, as punishment, she got locked up in a coffin for a while. The isolation had driven her even crazier.

“Oui, Gretchen will keep to her room for Musette’s visit, but that does not protect Meng Die or Faust.”

“Faust likes men, and to my knowledge nobody in Musette’s party is gay, right?”

“Oui, but that is not always a barrier.”

“We laid down the law tonight, that no one was to be hurt again. Forcing someone to have sex with a partner they find repugnant is a form of rape, and thus it’s harm.”

He looked at me, surprised. “Ma petite, you are becoming devious.”

I shook my head. “Nope, just practical. So Faust is safe, because he only likes men and none of Musette’s men likes men. Torture is out, because that’s just harm.”

“Meng Die will fascinate Bartolomé.”

“But again, Meng Die doesn’t like children, so Bartolomé would have to rape her to get his way with her, thus . . .”

“She is safe from his advances.” He seemed to think about that for a second or two. “But what of Angelito?”

“Isn’t he a couple with Musette? Aren’t they doing each other?”

“When they wish to, yes.”

I frowned at him. “Not a hot pair?”

“Musette’s true love is not sex, which is why she and Valentina have been so close for so long.”

“Not our problem. If everyone has access to someone they can fuck, or we have no suitable partners for them outside of rape, then everyone’s covered. Or have I missed something?”

He thought about it quietly for a few minutes. “Non, ma petite. Your machinations are worthy of Belle herself, if her intention were to keep her people safe.” Then he looked at me. “Except for one problem. Musette has had sex with Asher in the past, so you cannot make a charge of rape.”

“Having sex in the past doesn’t mean it can’t be rape in the present,” I said.

He waved that away with his hand. “I know that you believe that, ma petite, I will not even disagree, but Musette will not be dissuaded by the argument. Asher likes both men and women, he has had sex with her and enjoyed it in the past. You have made sure she cannot physically harm him, so it would be merely sex, merely fucking. He would not be harmed by that.”

I raised eyebrows at him. “You believe that, that there’d be no harm to it?”

“Non, nor does Musette in truth. Musette knows, Belle knows, that to have sex with Musette again after all these years will be painful for Asher. It will harm him, but not in a way that Belle will let us negotiate around. To Belle Morte, if a man has an orgasm, then he must have enjoyed himself. It is her reasoning.”

“She really doesn’t understand that there’s a difference between lust and love, does she?”

“Non, ma petite, très non.”

“Why is it always Asher that we can’t protect? Asher that we can’t save?”

He shook his head. “I have asked that for a very, very long time, ma petite. I have yet to find an answer.”

I laid my cheek against his knee. “This is the longest I’ve ever been able to go between feedings.” I glanced a my watch. “It’s almost two.”

“Dawn will come in three, almost four hours. I must rescind the control I have lent you for the ardeur before then. You must feed it.”

“It’s not only your control is it?”

“No, it is fear and exhaustion, and thinking too hard, and your own growing abilities. In a few more months you will be down to one feeding a day, or a night. You will be able to store up the feedings and go longer.”

“My head is practically in your lap, and I don’t feel the least stirrings.”

He stroked my hair, and it was a comforting touch. I wanted to be held more than I wanted sex. I wanted him to hold me while I drifted off to sleep. That sounded better than anything else I could think of right now.

“Once dawn comes my tie with you will weaken, and you will not be able to keep the ardeur at bay. I am sorry, ma petite, but we must feed it.”

“You’re as tired as I am,” I said.

“I want nothing more than to climb between the silk sheets and wrap our nude bodies around one another. I want to hold and be held. Sex is a wondrous thing, but tonight I wish to be comforted more than pleasured. I feel like a child in the dark who knows the monsters are under the bed. I want to be told it will be alright, but I am far too old to believe such comforting lies.”

Maybe it was because I was tired. Maybe it was because Jean-Claude had just said out loud almost exactly how I felt. I remembered other nights when we’d all been this tired, this frightened, this unsure of what the next nightfall would bring. I remembered Asher and Julianna, and I, we, Jean-Claude holding each other. Simply holding each other, the feel of bare skin and warmth, like a grown-up version of a teddy bear. Hold me tonight, Julianna used to say, and unspoken between the two men had been how often her fears allowed them to be as close and frightened as they truly were.

Julianna had been the bridge between the two men. They would never have been able to be so close for so long without her. I had the memories, I knew how many times her needs had brought them together, her love for each of them had bound them close. Jean-Claude had been the brains, Asher the charm, though both were charming and both intelligent, but Julianna had been their heart. One living, beating heart for all three of them.

I could never be Julianna. I didn’t have her kindness, her gentleness, her patience. We were so unalike, but here I was centuries later with the same two men. I let out a long breath, took in another, let it out, listened to it shake.

“Is something wrong, ma petite, I mean more wrong than I know?”

I raised my face from his knee. “If Asher was truly a ménage à trois with us, then Musette would have to leave him alone, wouldn’t she?”

Some expression passed over his face, quickly swallowed away, hidden behind that beautiful, polite mask he wore when he was not sure what expression would help, and what would hurt. “If we had been able to answer truthfully tonight that Asher was in our bed, then Musette could not have asked for him. This is true.”

“If he joined us tonight, then tomorrow he’d be safe.” My voice sounded so matter of fact, as if I were proposing we go shopping, or get dinner.

His voice was even more careful than mine. “That would be true.”

“If I had just let you and Asher be a couple when I wasn’t around, then he would have been safe, but I can’t.” I shook my head. “In theory I don’t have a problem with it. I like men. I see men as attractive, so I understand everyone seeing them as attractive. That men are attracted to men makes perfect sense to me. But in practice I can’t bring myself to share my man with another man. I can’t do it. If I found out you and Asher had been doing it behind my back, I’d dump your ass. I know it’s amazingly unfair. I’m sleeping with Micah, and damn near sleeping with Nathaniel, and was having sex with Richard until a few months ago. Yet you have to be with just me. It’s monstrously unfair, I know that.”

“I am not alienated from your bed when the others are with you, except for Richard, who would never share.”

“I know, you get blood from the men because I still won’t donate blood to you, but it’s not the same.”

“I want no one but you, ma petite. I have made that clear.”

I looked up at him then. “You’ve made it clear, but I know that you do want someone else besides me. I’ve felt what you feel when you look at Asher. I see the way you two look at each other. It hurts sometimes just to watch you be in a room together.”

“I am sorry, ma petite.”

I tucked my knees to my chest and hugged them there. “Let me finish this thought, Jean-Claude, please.”

He motioned for me to go ahead.

“I can’t let you take Asher to your bed, and I can’t take Asher to mine. But I remember what it was like for the three of you. I remember how safe it felt. There are moments when I forget that these aren’t my memories and I long for what the three of you had. It seems a hell of a lot more peaceful than what we’re doing.”

I hugged my legs so tight, my arms trembled with the force of it. “I don’t know if I can go through with it, but I’d like to try.”

“Try what, ma petite?” His voice was very careful.

“I want Asher safe.”

Jean-Claude had gone very still. “I do not understand, ma petite.”

“Yes, you do.”

He shook his head. “Non, I will have no misunderstandings here. You must be precise in your meaning.”

I couldn’t look at him while I said it. “Bring Asher in here for the night. I don’t promise, but I want him warm and nude beside us. I want to chase that hurt from his eyes. I want to show him with my hands and my body that I find him lovely.” I looked up at him, then, and found his face unreadable. “I don’t know at what point I’m going to scream foul and bail on you both. I’m sure there’s going to come a point, there usually is, but if we bring him into our bed tonight, in whatever way, then he’s safe for tomorrow, right?”

“What will your Nimir-Raj say?”

“He assumed that you and I were intimate with Asher when he got to town. A lot of people assume it.”

“You have told him the truth?”

“Yes.”

“And won’t he be angry about sharing you with yet another man?”

I shook my head. “Micah is more practical than I am, Jean-Claude. It’s not just love, or lust, that brings me back to Asher. Tonight it’s securing our power base. If Asher is safe, then we’re all safer. His pain can’t be used against us.”

“How very practical of you, ma petite.”

“I’ve learned from the best.”

He gave me a look, one eyebrow raised. “If I were truly practical in matters of the heart, things would have gone more quickly between us.”

“Maybe, or maybe not, you knew if you pushed too hard, I’d have either run, or tried to kill you.”

He gave that graceful shrug. “Perhaps, but I should ask, so there are no misunderstandings, do you mean to bring Asher to our bed only for tonight?”

“Would it make a difference?” I asked.

“It may to him.”

I tried to wrap my head around it all, and failed. “I don’t know. I know that I don’t want to give up alone time with you, just you. I know that I don’t want to always have company.”

“Julianna and Asher managed alone time even though we were a threesome.”

“For the first time in a long time my personal life is as close as it’s ever been to working. I don’t want to screw that up.”

“I understand.”

“I guess, I want Asher safe, I want to chase that flinching out of his eyes, but in the real world we are just running this up the flagpole. If it works, great, but if it doesn’t work, then what? Will Asher have to leave? Will you lose your second? Will it hurt you and Asher more? Will . . .”

He touched fingertips to my lips. “Shhh, ma petite. I have called Asher. He comes even now.”

I felt my eyes go big, my breath freeze in my throat, while my pulse beat like a crazed thing. What had I done? Nothing yet. The ten thousand dollar question was, what was I about to do, and could I live with it later?

11

ASHER CAME THROUGH the door, slowly, his face carefully hidden behind a fall of golden hair. He’d changed to a fresh, unbloodied shirt. It was white and the color did not suit him. “You called,” he said. I froze, still hugging my knees, my pulse suddenly pounding in my throat. Yet my breath stopped for a second or two.

“We did,” Jean-Claude said in that careful voice.

Asher looked up then, a glimpse of face through all that hair. I think it was the “we” that brought the reaction.

Jean-Claude had sat up very straight before Asher came to the door. He was elegant, poised, in his leather and silk.

I was still huddled on the rug at his feet, staring at Asher like he was the fox and I was the rabbit. Jean-Claude touched my shoulder, and I jumped.

I looked up at him, and he was staring down at me. “It must be your decision, ma petite.”

“Why is everything always my decision?” I asked.

“Because you will not tolerate anything else.”

Oh, I remembered now. “Great,” I whispered.

He squeezed my shoulder gently. “Nothing has been said. We can go on as we are.”

I shook my head. “No, I won’t be the one responsible for tomorrow night if it goes all wrong. I won’t risk him, because of my moral outrage.”

“As you like, ma petite,” he said, in that careful voice that said nothing.

“What has happened now?” Asher asked, and his voice wasn’t quite empty, there was a thread of fear in it. With what was sleeping down the hall, I couldn’t blame him.

I eased my arms from around my knees. They were stiff from holding on too tight. I tried to smooth my numb hands down my legs to touch my skirt and found only my hose. The navy skirt was too short for me to have been sitting the way I was. If there’d been anyone in the room to see, they’d have been able to tell my underwear matched it.

I got my knees under me, moving slowly, stiffly, my body tight with tension.

“What has happened?” Asher asked, and this time his voice was bland.

“Nothing, mon ami,” Jean-Claude said, “or rather, nothing more.”

“It’s my fault,” I said. I got to my feet, still moving slowly.

“What is your fault?” Asher was looking from one to the other of us, trying to read something from our faces.

I stepped off the fur, and my high heels made a sharp sound on the floor. “That you’re in danger from Musette.”

“You have done all you can to protect me, Anita, more than I had ever dreamt. No one challenges Musette for fear of Belle Morte. You have done what many council members would fear to do.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” I said.

He gave me a quick look through the shine of his hair. “What does that mean?”

I walked towards him, where he still stood just inside the door. “It means that maybe I can be brave because I don’t know any better. I’ve never seen Belle in person. Don’t get me wrong, she’s impressive enough from a distance, but I’ve never met the real thing.”

I was standing in front of him now. He had turned his face so that only the perfect half showed. He hadn’t hidden himself from me this completely in months.

I reached up to touch the side of his face he’d turned away, and he flinched, jerking back hard enough to make the door rattle. “Non, non.”

“I’ve touched you before,” I said, and my voice was low, soft, the voice you’d use to talk to a skittish animal or a man on a ledge.

He turned his whole face away from me. “You saw the paintings. You saw what I once was, and you have seen now what I looked like when the . . . wounds were fresh.” He turned his back, hands on the door, shaking his head. “You have seen what Belle Morte saw.”

I shook my head, realized he couldn’t see it, and touched his shoulder.

He flinched.

I glanced back at Jean-Claude, and his face was empty, only his eyes shown the barest glimpse of a pain so deep it had nearly destroyed three people.

I pressed my body against Asher’s back, moved my arms up his sides, hugging him from behind. He froze under my touch, so still, folding himself away, going deep inside where it wouldn’t hurt. I pressed my cheek against his back and held him while his body went quiet under my touch.

I swallowed past tears that I would not shed. My voice was steady, though. “I have seen you through Jean-Claude’s memories long before tonight. I remember the glory of you under my hands, against my body.” I molded my body against his, clung to him. “I needed no painting to show me your beauty.”

A shudder ran through his body, and he tried to turn, to throw me off, but I held on, and he couldn’t move away without hurting me. “Let me go, Anita, let me go.”

“No,” I said, “no, not tonight.”

He made small struggling motions trapped against the door, like a man trying to pace a room that was only an inch wider than his own body.

“What do you want from me?” There was something close to tears in his voice.

“Join us tonight, that’s what I want, join us.”

He stopped his restless movements and went still again, but not like before. I could feel his heart beating against my cheek. I’d have sworn it hadn’t been beating a second before.

“Join you how?” his voice was a strangled whisper.

I grabbed his shirt and used it to turn him around. He moved slowly, like trying to turn the earth against its axis. He pressed his back to the door and showed me only what remained of that perfect profile.

I pulled on the shirt, trying to lead him into the room, but he would not be moved this far. He looked past me to Jean-Claude. “I cannot do this.” His voice held such pain.

“What do you think she is asking?” Jean-Claude’s voice was still so carefully empty.

“She will do anything to keep her people safe, even take a cripple to her bed for one night.”

I wadded the shirt in my hands and was forced to go to him, because he would not come to me. “I do want to keep you safe from Musette, and this will do it, but that’s not why, not really.”

He looked down at me, and there was a world in his eyes, a world of pain and need and horror, so big, so lonely. The first hot tear grazed my cheek. I spoke softly to him in French, and I understood some of what I said.

Asher grabbed my wrists and forced me away from him. “Non, Jean-Claude, not like this. It is either her desire, or it is not to be. I will not divide you from what remains of your triumvirate. I would rather spend a night in Musette’s bed than weaken your power so. You must be strong while they are here, or we will all perish.”

I took a deep breath, and it was as if something had pulled back from me, like a veil being lifted. I turned and glanced at the vampire behind me. “Did you do that on purpose?”

He hid his face in his hands and said, spoke, voice no longer empty, “I cannot help wanting what I want, ma petite, forgive me.”

I turned back to Asher. “It isn’t my desire you want, Asher. You know I’m attracted to you.”

He tried to look away, but I touched his face, and this time he didn’t flinch away. He let me turn him to face me again, my fingers on the edge of his chin. The skin was still smooth there, even though it was on the right side where most was ruined. It was almost as if the people that had done this to him couldn’t bring themselves to ruin the perfect curve of his lips.

“It’s not lust you want from me.”

His gaze dropped. He almost closed his eyes, the expression on his face like a man bracing for a blow. He whispered, “No.”

I went up on tiptoe, put my hands on either side of his face, one so smooth like satin and silk, but softer, the other rough, pitted, hardly feeling like skin at all. “I do love you, Asher.”

His eyes opened, and they were so raw, so full of so many things that could be used to hurt.

“I don’t know how much was Jean-Claude’s memories at first, but whatever it began as, I do love you. Me, no one else.”

“Yet you have not taken me to your bed.”

“I love a lot of people that I don’t sleep with. Okay, that I don’t have sex with.”

The expression in his eyes began to die. I realized what I’d said, “I want you to come to bed tonight, please, Asher, and not just for sleeping.”

He put his hands on either side of mine. “Only to keep me safe from Musette.”

I couldn’t argue that, but . . . “That’s true, but does that matter so very much? Does it matter that that’s why?”

He smiled gently and moved my hands away from his face. “Yes, Anita, it does matter why. You will take me to your bed tonight, but tomorrow you will feel guilty and you will run away again.”

I frowned at him. “You talk like I’ve done this before with you, and I haven’t.”

He patted my hands between his. “You took four men into that bed over there, four of us, yet you have sex with only Jean-Claude. You feed the ardeur from Nathaniel, but you have not fucked him.” He let go of my hands and shook his head, laughing. “Only you could have the strength of will to sleep night after night beside such beauty and not take all that Nathaniel had to offer. I have met saints and priests over the centuries that had not your will to resist temptation.”

“I don’t seem to be resisting all that much anymore,” I said, hands on hips.

He laughed again, smile fading as he did it. “Jason you have put firmly back into the box, marked ‘friend.’ But what of me? I do not wish to join you in that bed again, if tomorrow I will be merely another friend. I cannot bear it.”

I frowned up at him. I’d done my best to forget what happened when Belle Morte caused the ardeur to rise months ago. Thanks to her, I’d participated in the closest thing I hoped to ever get to an orgy. No intercourse, but a lot of hands and bodies touching where they shouldn’t have been. Asher was right; I’d done my best to ignore the whole thing. Ignore it hard enough, and it never happened. But of course it had happened, and I’d not dealt with it.

“What do you want me to say? I’m sorry that I’m a little squeamish about having been in bed with four men at the same time. Yeah, it embarrassed me, so sue me.”

“Tonight will embarrass you, too.”

“A lot of things embarrass me, Asher, I can’t help that.”

“You cannot help but be who and what you are, Anita. I would not change you, but I also will not be just a night of charity in your bed. I tell you I could not bear being cast out again.”

I knew in that instant that he didn’t mean me casting him out from our bed after the ardeur. He meant what Belle had done to him all those centuries ago. She had thrown him away like a damaged toy. After all, you can always buy more toys.

I started to pace back and forth in front of him, not looking at either of them, but doing something, anything for the nervous energy that was building up. “What do you want from me, Asher? A guarantee?”

“Yes,” he said, at last. “That is exactly what I want from you.”

I stopped pacing and looked at him. “What kind of guarantee? That I won’t freak out about this tomorrow?” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I can’t promise, because I don’t know how I’ll feel.”

“What will Micah say, if he finds out you’ve been with me?”

“Micah is okay with it.”

Asher looked at me.

“I know, I know, I keep waiting for him to pitch a fit about something. He’s fine with sharing me with Jean-Claude, and Nathaniel, and, I quote, ‘anyone else that you need to include,’ unquote.”

Asher widened eyes at me. “My, isn’t he understanding.”

“You have no idea,” I said. “When he came into my life, he said he’d do anything to stay with me, anything to be my Nimir-Raj. So far he’s meant it.”

“He seems perfect for you,” Asher said, voice full of a soft irony.

“I know, makes me wonder when the other shoe will drop and he’ll turn on me.”

Asher touched my face, which made me look at him. He was looking full at me now, those ice blue eyes so sincere. “I would never want to do anything that would damage what you have built in your life. If we do this and you run away, then Jean-Claude will have damaged his relationship with you, and I will leave.”

I felt my eyes go wide. “What do you mean, you’ll leave?”

“I mean if you take me to your bed tonight and cast me out tomorrow, I will leave. I will no longer watch Jean-Claude be in love with others while I wait. It will take time to find another Master who will want me, and probably not as a second. I know that I am weak for a master. I have no animal to call,” he shook his head, “so many of my powers are useless except in intimate situations, and once,” he almost touched the scarred side of his face, but let his hand fall away, “once this happened, no one would let me get close enough to use my powers on them.”

He licked his lips, sighing at the same time, and that one gesture made me catch my breath. I did want him, I’d wanted him the way a woman wants a man for a long time. But lust alone had never been enough for me.

“You’re saying that if we take you to our bed tonight, but I freak tomorrow, and it’s only this one time, that you’ll leave us?” I asked.

He nodded. He didn’t even need to think about it.

“You’re giving me an ultimatum, Asher, I’m not good at ultimatums.”

“I know that, but I have to protect myself, Anita. I cannot live this close to heaven and not be allowed inside. I think it will drive me mad in the end.” He leaned back against the door and looked past me to Jean-Claude. “I have been thinking for some months now that I should go. It is too hard on all of us. Know that it has healed some of the wounds to be with you as a friend again, Jean-Claude.” He turned and smiled at me. “And seeing the way you watch me has helped, more than it’s hurt, Anita.” He turned, put his hand on the doorknob.

I put my hand flat on the door, holding it.

Asher looked at me. “Let me go, Anita, you know you don’t want this.”

“What am I supposed to say to that, Asher? That you’re right? That if Musette hadn’t come today that I wouldn’t be making this offer now? You’re right, I wouldn’t be.” I pressed myself against the side of the door. “But the thought of you leaving, of never seeing you again . . .” I shook my head, and damn it if I was going to cry again. “Don’t go, please, don’t go.”

“I have to go, Anita.” He touched my shoulder, tried to move me out of the way so he could open the door.

I shook my head. “No.”

He frowned at me. “Ma cherie, you do not love me, not truly. If you do not love me, and you do not want me, then you must let me go.”

“I do love you, and I do want you.”

“You love me as a friend, you want me, but you want many men, yet you do not give yourself to them. I have all eternity, but my patience is not good enough to out wait you, ma cherie. You have defeated me. I would have tried to seduce you, but . . .” Again he almost touched the scarred side of his face, but his hand fell away, as if he could not bare to touch himself. “I have seen the men you have turned down. Such perfection, and you walk away without so much as a regret.” He frowned as if he didn’t understand it, but he knew it to be true. “What could I offer that they could not?”

He put his hands against my shoulder and gently tried to move me out of the way. I pressed my back into the doorframe, my hand on the doorknob. “No,” was all I could think to say.

“Yes, ma cherie, yes. It is time.”

I shook my head. “No.” I pressed my back into the door so hard that I knew I’d be bruised in the morning. I couldn’t let him go. I knew somehow that if he opened that door, we would never get another chance.

I prayed for words. I prayed to be able to speak my heart and not to be afraid. “I let Richard walk out on me. I think he’d have gone anyway, but I just sat on the floor and watched him go. I didn’t stand in his way. I figured it was his choice, and you can’t hold someone if they don’t want to be held. If someone really wants to be free of you, you have to let them go. Well, fuck that, fuck that all to hell. Don’t go, Asher, please, don’t go. I love the way your hair shines in the light. I love the way you smile when you’re not trying to hide or impress anyone. I love your laughter. I love the way your voice can hold sorrow like the taste of rain. I love the way you watch Jean-Claude when he moves through a room, when you don’t think anyone’s watching, because it’s exactly the way I watch him. I love your eyes. I love your pain. I love you.”

I closed the distance between us, wrapped my arms around him, pressed my cheek to his chest, dried tears on the silk of his shirt, and was still whispering, “I love you, I do love you,” when he raised my face and kissed me, really kissed me, for the very first time.

12

WE BROKE FROM that gentle kiss, and I led Asher to the bed by the hand. He pulled back, coming like a reluctant child.

Jean-Claude stood by the bed, his face as blank as he could make it. “There is one thing I must say before we begin. I am controlling ma petite’s ardeur, but there will come a point in all this where I will lose control. I cannot guarantee what will happen when that control is lost.”

Asher and I stood beside him, holding hands. He was clinging to my hand with a fierceness that was almost painful. His voice did not show the tension I felt in his body. “If I thought it was only the ardeur which made Anita want to take me to her bed, then I would say no, because when the ardeur had cooled, she would cast me aside as she did before.” He raised my hand to his lips and laid the softest touch across my knuckles. “I believe Anita wishes me in her bed. The ardeur may rise, or fall, it is all the same to me now.”

Jean-Claude looked at me. “Ma petite.”

“I would rather do as much of this as possible before the ardeur, but I understand that it’s going to be . . . hard on you.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I know I’m committed to this, so I guess it’s okay.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “You are never convincing when you lie, ma petite.”

“Now that’s just not true,” I said, “I lie very well, thank you.”

“Not to me.”

I shrugged. “I’m doing the best I can here, Jean-Claude.” I looked up at the ceiling as if I could see the sky through all the rock above us. “I know one thing, I want whatever we’re doing done before dawn. I do not want you guys to fade in the middle.”

“Ma petite still finds it unnerving that we die at dawn,” Jean-Claude said.

“What time is it?” Asher asked.

I looked at my watch. “We’re down to about two and a half hours.”

“Barely enough time,” Asher said. And something about what he said, or the way he said it, made Jean-Claude do that masculine chuckle that only men do, and only about women, or sex. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard that sound from Jean-Claude.

I was suddenly very aware that I was the only girl, and they were both men. I know that sounds silly. I mean, I knew that already, but . . . I suddenly felt it. It was like walking into a bar and feeling all those eyes follow you as you walk, like lions watching gazelles.

If either of the men had turned that same look to me, I think I would have bolted, but they didn’t. Jean-Claude crawled onto the bed, still fully clothed, and held out his hand to me. I stared at that long-fingered, pale hand, graceful even in that small movement. Asher’s hand squeezed, more gently, on my other hand.

I realized in that moment that if I chickened out, that would be the end of it. There would be no pressure from either of them. But Asher would be gone, not tonight, but soon. I didn’t want him to be gone.

I took Jean-Claude’s hand, and he pulled me gently onto the silk bedspread. Silk is slippery when you’re wearing hose. Their hands on mine kept me from slipping off the edge of the bed. They half pulled me onto the bed.

“Why is it,” I said, “that you never slide off the bed when you’re wearing silk?”

“Centuries of practice,” Jean-Claude said.

“I recall when you weren’t so practiced. Remember the Duchess Vicante?” said Asher.

Jean-Claude blushed, a faint hint of pink. I hadn’t even known he could blush. “What happened?” I asked.

“I fell,” he said, trying for dignity and failing, because he smiled.

“What he will not say is that he cut his chin on a silver mirror that he broke when he fell off the Duchess and her silk sheets. Blood everywhere, and the cuckold husband on the stairs.”

I looked at Jean-Claude. He nodded, shrugged.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The duchess cut herself on one of the shards of glass and told her husband it was her own blood. She was a very enterprising woman, was the Duchess Vicante.”

“So you both knew each other when you weren’t perfectly suave.”

Jean-Claude said, “No, Asher watched me learn my lessons, but he had five years with Belle before I came to court. If he had rough edges they were worn away by the time I arrived.”

“I had them, mon ami,” Asher said, and he smiled. I was overwhelmed with a flood of images of that smile. That smile when his hair was in long locks and the hat on his head graceful with feathers, that smile by candlelight, that smile while we played chess and Julianna sewed by the fire, that smile in a spill of clean sheets and Julianna’s laughter.

It had been a long time since we’d seen that smile. We drew him to the bed, and the smile vanished. Jean-Claude swept the bedspread aside to reveal sheets a little bluer than Asher’s eyes, blue as the daytime sky, cerulean blue. But Asher stayed on his knees, as if afraid to lay upon the bed. I could see his pulse thudding in his throat, and it had nothing to do with vampire or shape-shifter powers, only fear, I think.

Asher was afraid. I could taste his fear on the back of my tongue. I could swallow it, enjoy the bouquet of it, like a fine wine to whet the appetite.

The fear called to that piece of me that was Richard’s beast. It roiled inside me like a cat stretching, exploring the space it was trapped in. A thin growl trickled from my lips.

“Control, ma petite, do not lose it so soon.”

It was hard to think, let alone talk. I came to my knees and raised Asher’s shirt, my fingers playing along his skin. I wanted to rip his shirt off and put my mouth to that tender skin. But it wasn’t sex I was thinking of. Vampires may not feed off each other, but a werewolf will eat a vampire.

I closed my eyes, forced my hands away from his body. “I’m trying, but you know what happens if I push the ardeur off too long.”

“The other hungers rise, oui, ma petite. I have not forgotten.”

“You can’t help control Richard’s beast.” My voice sounded hoarse.

“Non.”

I looked into Asher’s wide blue eyes, so afraid, so very afraid, and not of my beast. It helped steady me, but I knew it wouldn’t last long, whatever we were going to do had to be done quickly.

“I want to see you nude for the first time without the ardeur riding me, Asher. But there isn’t much time.” I tried to draw him down onto the bed, but he wouldn’t come.

Jean-Claude propped himself up on the pillows and held out his arms, almost the way you’d reach for a baby. He spoke softly in French, but I couldn’t catch it all, most of it was a plea to hurry.

Asher crawled onto the bed completely, though every movement was slow, reluctant. He let himself be settled down against Jean-Claude’s body, but they were both fully clothed, and the way they were sitting, they could have been in any club. It wasn’t so much sexual as comforting.

I looked at the two of them and knew someone was going to have to take off some clothes. Fine. I stripped off my jacket and tossed it to the floor.

Jean-Claude raised eyebrows.

“If we keep going this carefully it’ll be dawn and nothing will have changed.” I had to slide off the bed to get the skirt off, and left it in a pile with my blouse. The panties and bra were a matched pair, a shiny navy satin. When I’d found them, they had reminded me of the color of Jean-Claude’s eyes.

I expected to feel embarrassed standing there in my underwear, but I didn’t. Maybe I’d spent too much time around the shape-shifters and their casual nudist policy. Or perhaps, it just didn’t seem wrong to be undressed in front of Asher. I don’t know, but I didn’t question it. I climbed carefully back onto the cerulean silk, so that I didn’t slide off again.

“You have truly decided to do this,” Asher said, in a voice that was soft, uncertain.

I nodded, as I crawled in my thigh-high hose and high heels across the bed to them. I kept the heels because I knew Jean-Claude liked it, and he’d worn enough boots to bed for me. Turn about can be fair play.

I tapped Asher’s ankles, and he opened his legs a little. I crawled between his legs, having to force my body up between his calves, his knees. Jean-Claude’s legs on either side of his seemed to hold him tight against me. I was left to worm my way between his thighs, using my hips, my legs, and finally impatient, my hands, to spread him wide before me. It left me, finally, kneeling between his legs, my knees pressed up against him, which was actually a lot less erotic than it sounds, because he was still wearing his pants, and the angle was odd.

I reached for the buttons on his shirt. Asher grabbed my hands. “Slowly, ma cherie.”

I raised eyebrows at him. “We don’t have time for slow.”

He rolled his head back so he could see Jean-Claude. “Is she always this impatient?”

“She begins like an American man, but she does foreplay like she’s French.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Let us help you undress, mon ami, and you will not need to ask questions, for you will know.”

Asher’s hands dropped away from mine, and I unbuttoned his shirt. I did do it quickly, because time was not on our side. I did not want to be in the bed with them when they died at dawn. I was still unnerved when Jean-Claude did it with me, I did not want to see it done in stereo.

Jean-Claude raised Asher up, and between the two of us we peeled the long-sleeved shirt off of his upper body. “I would love to linger on every piece of your body, Asher, but I want to see you nude before dawn. Next time, if we start earlier, we can take our time.”

He smiled. “Next time, you have not seen all there is to see, do not promise until you have seen, as they say, the whole show.”

I leaned into him, our faces only inches apart. “I don’t believe there is anything you could show me that would make me not want you.”

“I almost believe that, ma cherie, almost.”

I leaned back enough on my knees to cradle his face between my hands. The difference in texture wasn’t jarring, it was just part of touching Asher. I kissed him, long, slow, exploring him, softly with my lips. I drew back enough to see his face.

“Believe it.” I drew my fingers down the edge of his jaw on either side, tickling nails across the smooth line of his neck, one hand mirroring the other, until I came to his chest. It wasn’t hands I wanted to use there.

I kissed along the scarred edge of his collarbone, but the scars made the skin too thick, I had to move to the other side to nibble along his collarbone, to give him that safe edge of teeth.

He shuddered for me.

I moved back to the right side and kissed down until I found his nipple, stranded in all that hardness. I wasn’t sure if his nipple had the sensitivity it had had before. There was only one way to find out. I licked his nipple, a quick flick of tongue and felt the skin move, contract. I used my hands to help mound that side of his chest so that I could find a mouthful of him. The scars were harsh to my mouth, but his nipple drew tight under my tongue, my mouth, and lightly, teeth. Only when I’d thoroughly explored the right, did I turn to the left. His left nipple was easier to take into my mouth, easier to tease. I used more teeth, and he groaned as I marked him, lightly, nothing that wouldn’t fade within moments.

I licked down the left side of his chest, his stomach, then moved back to the right and explored the scarred flesh as I had the other, because I knew now, that scarred or not, it worked. He could feel my mouth on his skin, my fingers trailing lower. If he could feel then I wanted to give him everything I could.

My mouth came to his waist, the belt, the top of his pants. I licked from one side of his waist to the other, then came back to the right side and licked along the front of his flat stomach, so the tip of my tongue eased inside the very top of his pants, even with the belt.

Asher’s voice came breathy, harsh, “You have taught her well.”

“I can take little credit for it, mon ami, she enjoys her work.”

I rolled eyes up at them. “Please, stop talking about me like I can’t understand you.”

“Our most sincere apologies,” Jean-Claude said.

“Oui,” Asher said, “it was not an insult.”

“No, but you assume that if I’m any good it has to be because a man taught me. That’s so sexist.”

“We can only apologize again, ma petite.”

I undid the buckle on Asher’s belt, and he didn’t stop me this time. I got the top fastener undone, but I’ve never been good at unzipping a man when he’s sitting down. I think I’m always a little afraid I’ll get him caught in the zipper.

“Some help here,” I said.

Jean-Claude lifted, Asher helped, and the zipper came down, revealing that he was wearing royal blue bikini’s in silk, what else? There is no way to get real pants off of anyone gracefully. I peeled the pants down Asher’s long legs, slipped off the shoes that he was still wearing, there were no socks to bother with. He lay back, cradled against Jean-Claude, wearing nothing but the tiny blue silk undies. I wanted to snatch them away from him. I wanted to see him completely nude, it seemed more important than anything else. To finally see if the scars went all the way across.

I crawled forward and licked the edge of his stomach, so that my tongue dipped just below the waistband of the silk, an echo of what I’d done to his pants. I could feel him pressed against the thin cloth, the hardness of him brushing against my chin as I moved around his waist.

I went back to the right side and the scars that dribbled down to mid-thigh. I licked, kissed, and bit along them until he cried out. Then I did the same to his other thigh, going lower until I licked the back of his knee, and he whimpered.

Jean-Claude’s voice came almost strangled, “Ma petite, please.”

I looked up, the tip of my tongue still playing lightly on the very edge of the bend of Asher’s knee. Asher’s eyes were rolled almost back into his head. I knew things through Jean-Claude’s memories that only a lover would know, such as the fact that he loved having the backs of his knees licked.

“Please, what?” I asked.

“Please, finish it.”

I knew what he meant. I crawled back up until I was kneeling between their legs again. The blue silk was stretched tight, and this time it was very erotic.

I slid my fingers in the top of the silk, and it was Asher’s hands that spilled eager, helping slide the silk down his hips. I pulled the silk down his thighs, but was only half paying attention, because I was staring at what had been revealed.

Scars dribbled from his thigh towards the groin like white worms frozen under the skin, but they stopped a few inches short of the groin, and he lay thick, and long, and straight, and perfect.

I had a confused image of him with the scars fresh, and he was misshapen, unable to become fully erect, twisted to one side, unable to perform.

I had to shake my head to clear the memory. I met Jean-Claude’s gaze. I’d never seen him look so utterly lost, shocked, amazed. I had never seen so many different emotions flow across his face. He was finally caught between laughter and tears. “Mon ami, what . . .”

“There was a doctor only a few years ago, who thought that most of the scarring was in the foreskin, and it was.”

Jean-Claude laid his head on Asher’s shoulder, lost in that golden hair, and he wept, and cried. “All this time . . . all this time, and I thought it was my fault, you were ruined, and it was my fault.”

Asher reached back and stroked Jean-Claude’s hair. “It was never your fault, mon ami. If you had been with us when we were taken, they would have done to you what they did to me, and that I could not have borne. If you had not been free to save me, I would be dead now, along with our Julianna.”

They held each other and cried, and laughed, and healed, and I was suddenly superfluous, kneeling on the bed in my lingerie. And for once, I didn’t mind in the least.

13

JEAN- CLAUDE RELEASED THE ardeur with less than an hour to go, before they would die. I did not want to be trapped underneath anyone when that happened. But the ardeur had been denied longer than I’d ever denied it, and it was like a force of nature, a storm that broke over us, washed away Jean-Claude’s clothes and what was left of mine.

I took Asher into my mouth and explored the perfection of him, found the one thin scar that trailed down his scrotum. I sucked the ridge of scar tissue into my mouth and made him cry out above me.

It was chance more than planning that put Jean-Claude underneath me, inside me, with Asher at my back, his weight beating into both of us, but without an opening to claim. Or without an opening I was willing to share. I could feel the length of Asher pressed along my back. Every time Jean-Claude pushed himself up inside me, Asher pushed himself against my back, wedged between the cheeks of my buttocks. They echoed each other perfectly. When one moved, the other moved. Until somewhere in the middle of it all, I begged, Asher to enter me, take me.

Jean-Claude’s voice came as if from a great distance, “Non, mon chardonneret, we have done no preparation. She has never had it done before.”

Dimly I realized what I’d asked and was happy someone could think well enough to stop me from letting others hurt me. But part of me was angry, the ardeur wanted Asher inside, wanted to drink him in.

I rode Jean-Claude’s body, while Asher’s body rode mine. Jean-Claude’s hands were on my waist, holding me in place, steadying me, directing me, the way you lead a dance partner. One of Asher’s hands propped him up on the bed but the other had spilled up to cup my breast, his hand kneading, pulling, just this side of pain.

I felt the building pressure inside me, that feeling that preceded the explosion, and I didn’t want it yet, not yet. I wanted Asher, the way I wanted Jean-Claude. I wanted, needed him to pierce my body. “Please, Asher, please, be inside me, please!”

He drew my hair to one side and bared my neck. The ardeur flared through me. “Yes, Asher, yes.”

That warm deep well was filling up, up inside me, there were only seconds to have him join us. I wanted his release with ours. I wanted him with us.

There seemed like there was something else I should have been remembering but it was lost in the pounding of Jean-Claude’s body, the rhythm of my hips, the feel of his hands on my waist, Asher’s hand on my breast, tight enough for pain now, the feel of him so solid, so wet from his own body, so that he moved in a channel of his own moisture, yet I knew he had not come.

He raised the hand from the bed and cupped my head to one side, holding it, straining my neck in a long, clean line.

It was as if they knew, they both knew what my body was about to do, as if they could smell it, or hear it, or taste it. At the moment that that warmth spilled over the edge, as the first drop of it spilled over my skin, tightened my body; Asher struck. There was one moment of sharp pain, and the pain fed into the pleasure, and I remembered what I had forgotten. Asher’s bite was pleasure.

I rode that pleasure over and over and over until I screamed out, wordless, soundless, skinless, boneless, I was nothing, but the warm spilling pleasure. There was nothing else.

Jean-Claude came screaming, his nails digging into my skin, and that brought me back, reminded me I had a body, that skin contained me, that bones and muscles rode the body underneath me. Asher came in a scalding wave against my back, as his mouth stayed locked on my throat. We fed on one another.

My ardeur drank Jean-Claude up through the warm moistness of my body, through the skin wherever it touched his. His ardeur drank me down, pulling down the long shaft of him like a hand inside my body taking things away. My ardeur drank Asher down, absorbed him where he lay on my skin, sucked him in as he pulled at me. The feel of his mouth locked on my neck was like a trap, the ardeur sucking him down through his mouth, and he, sucking my blood, feeding, swallowing, drinking me down. As long as he fed, he brought orgasm in one crashing wave after another, wave after wave of pleasure, and it wasn’t until Jean-Claude cried out underneath me that I realized, through his own marks, he was able to feel what I was feeling.

Asher rode us both, rode us and brought us, rode us and brought us, until when he drew back there was blood pouring from his mouth and I knew he’d taken more than he needed merely to feed. It wouldn’t kill me, but in that one shining moment I wasn’t sure it mattered. It was the kind of pleasure you’d beg for, kill for, maybe, maybe even let yourself die for.

I collapsed on top of Jean-Claude, twitching, unable to control my body, unable to do more than shiver. Jean-Claude lay trembling underneath me. Asher collapsed on top of us. I felt him tremble against my back. We lay shaking, trembling, waiting for one of us to be able to move enough to walk, or scream, or anything. Then dawn came, and I felt their souls slip away, felt their bodies go slack and empty. I was pressed between the frantic pulse and warmth of their bodies, the fluids not even cooled on our skin, and suddenly, Asher was heavy, and Jean-Claude was totally limp under all the weight.

I struggled to get out from between them, but my arms and legs weren’t working yet. I did not want to lie here while their bodies cooled. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t get Asher off of me. I couldn’t make my body work. How much blood had I lost? Too much? How much?

I was dizzy, light-headed, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the sex, or if Asher had truly taken too much blood. I tried to push him off of me, I should have been able to do that, and I couldn’t. The first edge of nausea hit me, and I knew it was blood loss. I touched my neck and found that blood was still seeping from the puncture wounds. That shouldn’t have been happening. Should it? I never donated blood voluntarily. I didn’t know how long the wounds should bleed.

I tried to lift with my arms, like doing a push-up, and the world swam in streams of colors, dizziness threatened to engulf the world. I did the only thing I could think of—I screamed.

14

THE DOOR OPENED and it was Jason. I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to see him. I managed to say, “Help me.” My voice sounded weak and scared, and I hated it, but I also was feeling nauseous and dizzy, and that wasn’t post-coitial languor, it was blood loss.

Now that I could see again, I realized I was drenched in blood—and other things—but it was mainly the blood that was worrying me, because it was all mine.

Jason rolled Asher off of me. He moved with that boneless ease that only a truly dead body has. I don’t know what the difference between sleep and death is, but you know instantly when you move even an arm whether it’s death, or whether it’s sleep.

Asher lay there on his back, his hair spilled around his face like a halo, crimson blood glittered on his chin, his neck, his upper chest. The scars didn’t take away from the beauty of him nude. They weren’t the first thing you noticed, or even the third. He lay, drenched in my blood, like some fallen god, come down to death at last.

Even sick from loss of blood, I could not find him anything but beautiful. What the fuck was wrong with me?

Jason had to help me slide off of Jean-Claude, catching me in his arms, holding me like you’d hold a child. I was nude, he’d just dragged me from a bed where I’d obviously had sex with two men, yet Jason hadn’t made a single quip, or joke. When Jason had this much ammunition but didn’t tease, things were bad.

I laid my head against Jason’s shoulder, and that helped the dizziness, made the world a little less shaky. He started to turn me away from the bed, but I said, “Wait, not yet.”

He stopped moving. “What?”

“I want to remember this.”

“What?” he asked again.

“The way they look together.” They both lay on their backs, but whereas Asher looked like some fallen death god, Jean-Claude looked like a god of a different kind. His thick black hair lay in a heavy mass around his head, carelessly arranged like a dark frame for that pale, pale face. His lips were half-parted, his lashes thick as lace upon his cheeks. He lay as if he had fallen asleep after some great passion, one hand across his stomach, the other at his side, one knee bent, so that he seemed almost displayed. Only Jean-Claude could die and look this pretty while he did it.

“Anita, Anita,” I realized that Jason had been talking for awhile. “How much blood did they take?”

My voice came out hoarse, my mouth was dry. “Not they, only Asher.”

He settled me closer in his arms, almost like he was hugging me. His leather jacket creaked as he moved. His bare chest was very warm against my naked skin. “He didn’t just feed.” Jason sounded disapproving, which you didn’t hear much.

“He got caught up in the moment, I think.”

He shifted me so that he could free up a hand to touch my forehead, which seemed silly since I was nude, but we often fall into habit when we’re stressed. You check someone’s temperature on their foreheads, even if they’re naked.

“You don’t feel feverish. If anything you feel a little cool.”

That made me remember something, and the fact that I’d forgotten said I was feeling worse than I knew. “Is my neck still bleeding?”

“A little.”

“Should it be?”

He carried me towards the bathroom. “Have you never been bitten this badly before?” He opened the door with his knee and one hand, and carried me through.

“Not without passing out afterwards, non.” I frowned. “Did I just say, non, instead of no?”

“Yep,” he said.

“Shit,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. He sat on the edge of the huge black marble tub, balancing me in his lap while he turned on the water. The water spilled out of a silver swan’s mouth, which I’d always thought was ostentatious, but hey, it wasn’t my bathroom.

The nausea had passed, the dizziness was waning. “Down, put me down.”

“The marble is cold,” he said.

I sighed. “I need to find out how well my body’s working.”

“Just try sitting up in my lap without me holding you. If you’re okay, I’ll fetch towels and you can sit on them, but trust me you don’t want to sit naked on this marble.”

“Practical,” I said.

“Don’t tell anyone I actually made sense, it’ll ruin my image.”

I smiled. “Secret’s safe with me.” I tried sitting up, while Jason fidgeted with the water, trying to get the right temperature. I could sit up. Great. I tried to stand, and only Jason’s arm around my waist kept me from falling on the marble steps leading down from the tub.

He tucked me safely back in his lap. “Don’t try and do so much so fast, Anita.”

I leaned back against him, his arm like a safety belt around my waist. “Why I am so weak?”

“How can you have been around vampires this long and ask me that?”

“I don’t let them feed,” I said.

“I do, and trust me, when you’ve donated this much, it takes a little while to recover.” He seemed satisfied with the water temperature at last. He turned the faucets on harder and had to talk louder over the sound of the water. “We’ll get you cleaned up and see how you feel.”

I could feel myself frowning, and I wasn’t sure why. I felt like I should be angry. I should be something, and I wasn’t. Now that I wasn’t trapped between Jean-Claude and Asher anymore, I was strangely calm. No, not just calm, I felt good, and I shouldn’t have.

I frowned harder, trying to chase this wonderful lassitude away. It was like trying to wake from a bad dream when it didn’t want to let you go. Except instead of fighting to wake from a nightmare, I was fighting to destroy a good dream. That seemed wrong, too. Everything seemed wrong. I felt, vaguely, like I’d missed something important, but for the life of me, I couldn’t place it.

I felt out of sorts and wonderful at the same time. It was as if my natural grumpiness was fighting some warm happy thought. The warm happy thought was winning, but I wasn’t sure that that was necessarily a good thing.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Jason asked.

“I feel good, and I shouldn’t. I feel wonderful. A few minutes ago I was terrified, dizzy, sick, and scared. But once you got me out of the bed, it all seemed better.”

“Just better?” he asked. He was slipping out of his leather jacket, one arm at a time, while he took turns holding me with the other arm.

“You’re right, not just better. Once I wasn’t scared, it was wonderful again.” I frowned and tried to think, and was still having trouble doing it. “Why can’t I think through this?”

He rearranged me in his lap so he could unzip his boots, and push them off with his feet. It finally hit me that he was undressing himself, while still holding me in his lap. Who says that the skills you learn at work don’t come in useful in your everyday life?

“Why are you undressing?”

“You can’t move around without falling down, I’d hate for you to drown in the tub.”

I tried pushing this wonderful feeling farther away, but it was like trying to fight a warm, comforting mist. You could strike out, but there was nothing solid to hit. The mist just moved and reformed, and stayed.

“Stop,” I said, the one word was firm enough, though I didn’t feel very firm inside.

“What?” he asked, as he moved me enough forward so that he could unfasten the tops of his jeans.

“This should bother me, you trying to get naked, while I’m naked, in a tub, that should bother me, right?”

“But it doesn’t, does it,” he said. He was unbuttoning his button fly jeans with one hand. That took talent.

“No, it doesn’t,” I said, frowning again, “why doesn’t it bother me?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” he asked.

“No,” I said, not even sure what I was saying no to.

He’d gotten his jeans unbuttoned. “I can either lay you down on the very cold tile, or I can throw you over my shoulder for a few seconds while I take the pants off, lady’s choice.”

The decision seemed too hard for me. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t ask a second time, just tossed me, as gently as he could over his shoulder, sort of half a fireman’s carry. Being upside down made the world spin again, and I wondered if I was going to be sick all over his back. He balanced me there while he wormed out of his jeans.

I was now staring down his bare back as the jeans slid down the top of his butt. The nausea had passed, and I giggled—I never giggle—“Nice ass.”

He choked, or laughed. “I never knew you noticed.”

“Underwear,” I said.

“What?”

“You had underwear, I caught a glimpse of it.” I had this horrible urge to run my hands over his butt, just because it was there, and I could. It was like I was drunk or high.

“Yeah, I had underwear on, what about it?”

“Can you put it back on?”

“You don’t really care if I have underwear on, or not, do you?” and there was something in his voice that was almost teasing.

“Nope.” I shook my head, which made the world spin again. “Oh, God, I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Stop moving, it’ll pass. You wouldn’t be sick at all if you hadn’t fought to get out from between the two of them. Too much physical exertion right afterwards will make you sick as a dog. Sink into the feeling, just ride it, and it feels wonderful.”

I felt a little silly talking to his ass, but it didn’t seem nearly as silly as it should have. “What feels wonderful?”

“Guess,” he said.

That made me frown. “Don’t want to guess.” God, what was wrong with me? “Tell me.”

“Let’s get you in the tub, a bath will help clear your head.”

He moved me back to his arms, and stepped over the edge of the tub. “You’re naked,” I said.

“So are you,” he said.

That had a certain logic to it that I couldn’t quite argue with, though I felt I should have argued with it. “Weren’t you going to put something back on?”

“The underwear is silk, I’m not going to ruin it by wearing it in the tub, because you think I should put it on. Besides, you don’t really care if I’m naked or not. Remember?”

A headache was beginning just behind one eye. “No,” I said, “but I should care, shouldn’t I? I mean . . .”

Jason lowered us both into the water. It felt wonderful, so warm, so smooth, so good against my skin. Jason moved me gently in the water until I was sitting in front of him, cradled against his body.

The water was so warm, so warm, and I was so tired. It would feel so good to just sleep.

Jason’s arm on my waist jerked me back. “Anita, you can’t sleep in the bathtub, you’ll drown.”

“You won’t let me drown,” I said, and my voice was thick with warmth and sleep.

“No, I won’t let you drown,” he said.

I frowned, as I half-floated in the water. “What is wrong with me, Jason? I feel drunk.”

“You have been well and truly rolled by a vampire, Anita.”

“Jean-Claude can’t, his own marks protect me,” my voice seemed to be coming from a long way away.

“I never said it was Jean-Claude.”

“Asher,” I whispered the name.

“I’ve shared blood with him before, and it is the most amazing thing. Jean-Claude says he always holds back, because he knows I’m not his pomme de sang, I’m just a loaner.”

“Loaner,” I said.

“I don’t think Asher held back with you tonight.”

“The ardeur, we . . . were doing . . . the ardeur.” Each word was thick with effort.

“The ardeur could have made him careless,” Jason said. His hands were very solid on me, cradling me in the water more than against his body.

“Careless?” I said.

“Go ahead and pass out, Anita. When you wake up, we’ll talk.”

“ ’bout what?”

“Things,” he said, and his voice was sinking away into the candlelit dark. I didn’t remember him lighting the candles that Jean-Claude usually kept around the tub.

I started to ask, what things? but the words never made it out loud. I fell into a warm, soft darkness, where there was no fear, no pain. So warm, so safe, so loved.

15

I WOKE TO the phone ringing. I huddled in the sheets, trying not to hear it. God, I was tired. The bed moved, someone else fumbling for it. It wasn’t until Jason’s voice said, “Hello,” softly, as if he were afraid of waking me, that I woke completely. Why was Jason in my bedroom?

That question was answered as soon as I opened my eyes. I wasn’t in my bedroom, in fact, I didn’t know where the hell I was. The bed was a kingsize, but it was only pillows and a bed, no headboard, no footboard, only a bed, very modern, very normal. The only light was from a small door directly across from the foot of the bed, I could catch a glimpse of a bathtub, or shower. I followed the dim light out and found bare stone walls and knew I was still inside the Circus of the Damned, somewhere.

“She’s sick,” Jason said. He was quiet for a second. “She’s asleep. I’d rather not wake her.”

I tried to remember why I was here and came up with nothing, just a blank. I started to roll over, I think to ask who it was, when I realized I was naked. I pulled the sheets up over my breasts and turned over to see Jason.

He was laying on his side, his back to me, the sheet pulled down enough that I could see the top of his buttocks. What the fuck was I doing naked in a bed with Jason? Where was Jean-Claude? Okay, probably in his coffin, or his bed. I never shared the bed when he was stone cold. But why hadn’t I gone home?

“I don’t think she’s going to be well enough to come out today.”

I tried to sit up and found that the world wasn’t quite steady. Maybe sitting up wasn’t such a good idea. I stayed on my back, sheet clutched to my chest, and had to try twice to say, “I’m awake.” My mouth was incredibly dry.

Jason turned towards me. The movement pooled the sheet into his lap and left the backside of his body bare. He covered the receiver with his hand. “How do you feel?”

“How did I get here? Why am I here?” I asked in a voice so hoarse it barely sounded like me.

“Do you remember anything?”

I frowned, and that hurt. My throat hurt. I raised a hand and found a large bandage on the right side of my neck. There was a vampire bite under the bandages, I knew that, and with that knowledge, I remembered.

I remembered everything, and it wasn’t just my mind that remembered it. My body convulsed against the bed, my spine bowing, hands clawing at the sheets, a moan tore from my throat, before my body stole all the breath from me, and I bucked against the bed, caught in a sensory memory. It wasn’t as good as the original, but damn it was close.

I dug my fists into the sheets, balling the cloth up, trying to find something to hold on to. Jason was suddenly beside me, he grabbed my upper arms, tried to hold me still. “Anita, what’s wrong?”

My hands came up, automatically, grabbing his forearms, holding on. My eyes rolled back into my head, my body convulsed, and my hands tore down his forearms. I felt my nails sink into his flesh, felt his skin give under me.

Jason cried out, somewhere between a scream and a moan.

I lay back against the bed, panting, eyes unable to focus. I held onto Jason’s arms, because it was the only solid thing I had.

“Anita,” he said, his voice, strained, “are you alright?”

I tried to say yes, but finally was reduced to nodding. He pried my fingers from his arms, gently, folding my hands across the sheet and my stomach. I felt the bed move as he moved. I realized my eyes were shut. I didn’t remember shutting them.

“What the hell was that?” he asked.

I started to say, I didn’t know, but I did know. I remembered Asher sitting at a long banquet table with his hair in golden ringlets, dressed in gold and crimson. The wife of our host crushed her wine glass in her gloved hand, her mouth half-parted, her breath making the white mounds of her breasts rise and fall. A small sound escaped her, and when she could speak, she asked for her maid and to be helped to her room, for she was ill. She wasn’t ill. Asher had seduced her the night before, on Belle’s orders. He had complained to Jean-Claude that the woman simply lay there, eyes rolled back in her head, true, but with almost no other reaction. It had been most disappointing.

She’d experienced a flashback of the orgasm the night before at the dinner table, but she was a quiet sex partner, which meant that her flashbacks could be explained away in public. Sort of.

I lay there staring up at Jason, seeing him now instead of candlelit rooms long deserted and people long gone to dust. I found my voice, and it was more hoarse than before, as if the screaming had taken the rest of my voice.

“It was a flashback.” I coughed.

“To what?” he asked.

“Water, please?”

He hopped off the bed and knelt by a small refrigerator next to the bed. He got out a small bottle of some athletic juicer. “It helps replace the electrolytes better than water.”

“I don’t like this shit.”

“Trust me, you’ll feel better if you drink it than if you drink water. Water can make you nauseous.”

Suddenly the neon blue drink looked a whole lot better. He opened it and handed it to me. Blood had filled the scratches on his forearms and was slowly seeping down his skin in red rivulets.

“Jesus, Jason, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you up.” I took a sip of the neon bright liquid. The taste was as bad as I remembered, but a few small sips, and I did feel a little better. When I talked, my voice didn’t sound like I’d been in the desert for a month.

He held his arms up. “It’s okay, though normally when I get this cut up it’s because I did a wonderful job entertaining a friend.” He smiled.

I shook my head, and I wasn’t dizzy this time. Good.

“You said this was a flashback, a flashback to what?” he asked.

“To what happened with Jean-Claude and Asher.”

He raised eyebrows at me. “You mean that was a flashback to what, the orgasm?”

I felt heat creep up my face. “Something like that,” I muttered.

He laughed. “You’re joking.”

“I don’t think so.” I drank some more of the vile drink, and avoided looking at him.

“I’ve served as refreshment for Jean-Claude for years and I’ve never had any reaction like that.”

“It’s something Asher can do.”

“What?” he asked.

“You’re bleeding all over the place,” I said.

“I’ll doctor myself in a minute. First I want you to finish this explanation.”

“You know, Asher’s bite can be . . .”

“Orgasmic,” he finished for me.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ve experienced the mild version of it,” Jason said. “So have you once in Tennessee when Asher was dying. He rolled your mind. If I remember right, you didn’t like it much.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, Jason, it was that I liked it maybe too much, so yeah, it scared me.”

“Jean-Claude said that Asher always holds back unless he can keep the person, whatever that means.”

I nodded, took a drink, nodded again. “I think, no, I know that Asher didn’t hold back last night.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

“I’ve got some of Jean-Claude’s memories. I’m reacting like a woman that Belle had Asher seduce once.”

“Acting how?” he asked, “Slicing people up?”

“I said I was sorry.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, one knee tucked up, the other down, so that he was pretty much flaunting himself at me. Generally I don’t have trouble making eye contact with a man, but it was sort of eye catching.

“I’m just teasing, Anita.” He seemed totally unaware of his nudity, like most of the shape-shifters I knew.

I handed him an edge of sheet. “Please cover up a little.”

He grinned. “Why, we slept for,” he glanced at the bedside clock, “four hours naked together. Why should I dress now?”

I frowned at him, and suddenly it was easy to have eye contact. It usually is when I glare.

“How are you acting like this other woman?” he asked.

“Echoes, flashbacks to the pleasure that happened when Asher took blood.”

“Is that going to keep happening?” he asked.

I blushed again. “Off and on, fuck.”

“What?” he asked.

“The woman I’m remembering was quiet in bed, she didn’t jump around a lot, not according to Asher.”

“So?”

“She could hide it better than I can.”

He laughed out loud. “Are you telling me that all this jumping around is normal for you?”

I glared at him. “You should know, you’ve seen me in bed once, you helped bring me, remember.” I was blushing so hard my head was beginning to hurt.

His smile faded. It had taken me months to be comfortable around Jason after that. “The ardeur was riding all of us,” he said, “we were all a little jumpier than usual.”

I shook my head, not looking at him, tucking my knees and the sheet to my chest. “Except for wanting to tear out your throat, that was about normal for me.”

He coughed, laughed, and finally said, “No way.”

I kept my eyes firmly on the sheets. “Fine, make fun.”

He took the bottle from me. “I need a drink.”

I hugged my knees to my chest, huddling in the sheet. “You are so not funny.”

He slid to his knees beside the bed, so I’d see his face. “I’m sorry, really, but . . .” He gave a small shrug. “You can’t blame me. You cannot tell me that you have these violent, amazing, orgasms, then expect me not to tease you. It’s me, Anita, you know I can’t really help it.”

He looked so boyish, so innocent. It was all an act. By the time I’d met Jason he’d been ridden hard and put up wet, and his innocence had been long gone.

He handed the drink back to me. “Forgive me, okay, maybe it’s just envy.”

“Don’t go there,” I said.

“Not of you,” he said, “but hell if Asher’s bite is that good, why didn’t I get the full treatment?”

I tried to frown at him, and only half-succeeded. “You said it yourself, you’re not his pomme de sang, you’re only a loaner.”

“And you’re Jean-Claude’s human servant, not Asher’s, so why do you rate the full orgasmic blowout?”

He had a point, a good point. I shrugged. “I think the ardeur overrode things. I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to ask them when they wake up.” Why would Asher do this to me? Had it been on purpose? I knew only Asher could do with the mere taking of blood what most men couldn’t do with their whole bodies. Asher had done something to me that Jean-Claude alone couldn’t duplicate. The memory of it tightened my body, and I had just enough time to shove the bottle at Jason before I threw myself back on the bed.

It wasn’t as violent as the last time, and Jason made no move to try and touch me. I guess he’d had enough scratches. When I was done, panting on the bed, with the sheet down around my stomach, and my vision clearing, Jason asked from the far side of the bed, “Is it safe now?”

“Shut up,” I managed.

He laughed and bounced back on the bed. He raised me up with one hand and offered the bottle with the other. “Lean against the pillows, drink this slowly, I’m going to put some bandages on my arms.”

“Antiseptic cream, too,” I said.

“I’m a werewolf, Anita, I don’t get infections.”

Oh. “Fine, then why bother with bandages at all?”

“I don’t want to bleed all over my clothes, and I can’t let the police see me like this.”

“Police, why police?”

“That was who was on the phone when you woke up. That is who’s been calling for about the last hour. Lieutenant Storr and Detective Zerbrowski have both called, and have requested your presence. The lieutenant made noises about coming to find you and drag you out of my bed.”

“How did he know I was in your bed?”

He grinned at me in the door of the bathroom, opening it wide so the light framed his body. “I don’t know, maybe he guessed.”

“Jason, you did not tease Dolph, please tell me you didn’t.”

He put a hand to his chest. “Me, tease someone?”

“Sweet Jesus, you did.”

“I’d call him back ASAP, if I were you. I’d hate to have the SWAT team crash our little party.”

“We are not having a party.”

“I don’t think your lieutenant friend will believe that if he finds us naked in the bedroom together.” He held his arms up. “Especially if he sees this.”

“He’s not going to see your arms, or any other part of you. Just give me my clothes and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“And if you have another flashback while you’re driving, what then? And let me just add that I’ve been donating blood to vampires a lot longer than you have. I know how hard it can be when you lose as much as you lost. You may feel fine, but if you overdo it, you’ll get dizzy again, and nauseous. That wouldn’t be good at a crime scene, would it?”

“Dolph does not let civilians at his crime scenes.”

“I’ll sit in the Jeep, but I can’t let you drive yourself around today.”

“Call Micah, or Nathaniel, they’ll come pick me up.”

He shook his head. “Nathaniel passed out at the club last night.”

“What!”

“Micah thinks that feeding the ardeur at least once a day for three months has taken its toil on Nathaniel.”

“Is he alright?”

“He just needs a day off. Jean-Claude only takes blood from me every other day, usually.”

“I switch off with Micah and Jean-Claude for the ardeur,” I said.

“Yeah, but Jean-Claude only needs to feed once a day, you need to feed twice a day. Let’s face it, Anita, you need a larger stable of pomme de sangs.”

“What, you volunteering?”

An expression of delight crossed his face. “Oh, hell yes, I’d love to be on the receiving end of one of those spine cracking orgasms.”

“Jason,” I said, and the one word was warning enough.

“Fine, be that way, but who else are you going to put in Nathaniel’s place while he recovers?”

I sighed. “Damn it.”

“See, you don’t know, do you?”

“I can feed on Asher now.”

“Yes, but he’s not going to wake up for hours and hours. You need some more day-walking donors, Anita. It doesn’t have to be me, but it has to be somebody. Think about it. But today I am your escort, because you can’t go out alone, not with the blood loss, and whatever the hell Asher did to you. You could call Micah, but by the time he drove out here, and the two of you drove out to wherever the police want to be, I think your police friends would be having fits.”

“Fine, you’ve made your point.”

“Have I? It’s always so hard to tell with you. Sometimes I think I’ve won the argument, then you get a second wind and beat me all to hell with it.”

“Just go, Jason, put some bandages on the scrapes.”

“Scrapes hell, if I were human, you’d be taking me to the emergency room. Remember, Anita, you have some of the strength of both a vampire and a werewolf. We can punch our finger through someone’s ribs.”

“Are you really hurt?” I asked, all joking aside, I didn’t want him hurt.

“Not permanently, but it’ll heal almost human slow.”

“I’m sorry, Jason.” I remembered enough to say, “And thanks for taking care of me.”

His grin faded, and something close to a serious look spilled through his eyes, then it was gone, hidden behind another smile. “All in a day’s work, ma’am.” He tipped an imaginary hat and started to shut the door. “I’d turn on the lamp before I close the door, it’s damn dark without windows.”

I reached over and switched on a small lamp beside the clock, on top of the little refrigerator. The glow seemed unnaturally bright.

“Your cell phone is on the floor on my side of the bed. I dropped it when you started convulsing.”

“I was not convulsing,” I said.

“Oh, sorry, I dropped it when you had your raging, overwhelming, screaming orgasm. Was that better? It sounded better didn’t it?”

“Go clean up,” I said, sounding grumpy when I said it.

He was laughing as he closed the door.

I was left alone with the little lamp, the big bed, and no clothes in sight. I was about to debate on whether to try and find some clothes before hunting up my phone, when it rang again. I scrambled across the bed, jerking the sheets off so they wouldn’t tangle me. I half slid, half fell to the floor and found my phone by sitting on it.

It was Dolph, and he wasn’t happy. While he’d been waiting for me, there had been a second call, to a second crime scene. He was pissed with Jason’s antics on the phone, with both crime scenes, and especially, it seemed, with me.

16

THE FIRST CRIME scene was in Wildwood, that new bastion of money and social climbing. The hot addresses used to be Ladue, Clayton, Creve Coeur, but they’ve all become passé. Nope, the hot new place to be is Wildwood. The fact that it’s in the middle of freaking nowhere doesn’t seem to dissuade the nouveau riche, or wanna-be rich. Personally, the only reason I lived in the middle of nowhere, at a much less fashionable address, was the fact that I didn’t want to get my neighbors shot up.

By the time Jason had driven through all the windy roads that led to the murder scene, we’d found out several things. First, my eyes were light sensitive, so my sunglasses were my friends. Second, my stomach didn’t like the twisting roads. We hadn’t had to stop so I could throw up, which was good, since unless we pulled into someone’s drive, there was no shoulder to the road. It was bordered by woods, hills, tame wilderness, where real wolves no longer roam and even the black bears have found deeper holes to hide in.

Normally I love a drive through the country. Today all the bright greens meant was that when my vision swirled, it did it in Technicolor green like a frog smeared across my vision, which actually made the nausea worse.

“How can you endure this?” I asked.

“If you’d slept the day away like a normal pomme de sang or human servant, you wouldn’t be sick at all.”

“Forgive me for having a day job.”

“Also if Asher had taken enough for just a feeding, then you might be a bit sick,” he negotiated a turn, “but I think that whatever Asher did to you along with taking blood made it worse.” He paused. “Truthfully, you shouldn’t be this sick, at all.”

We crested the rise, and the soft hills stretched out for miles, shades of green with a hint of gold here and there.

“At least I’m not nauseous, anymore when I look at the trees.”

“That’s good, but I mean it, Anita. After you’d slept, and then gotten up and around, you should have been fine.” He took the next curve carefully, a lot slower than he’d taken the first one.

“So what went wrong?” I asked.

He shrugged, and slowed even further, trying to see the address on a cluster of mailboxes.

“Dolph said the crime scene was on the main road. You won’t miss it, Jason.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Trust me.”

He flashed me another grin, his own blue eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. “I do trust you.”

“What went wrong?” I asked again.

“What were you doing when dawn broke?” he asked, speeding back up and taking the next curve a little faster than I would have liked.

“The ardeur, Asher was feeding, and . . .” I hesitated only for a second, “having sex.”

“With both of them at once,” he said, voice mock serious, “I am so disappointed in you, Anita.”

“Disappointed why?”

“That I wasn’t invited.”

“You are so lucky you’re driving right now.”

He grinned, but didn’t turn away from the road this time. “Why do you think I said it while I was driving?” He slowed. “I see what you meant about not missing it.”

I turned my attention from Jason’s face to the road. Police cars, marked and unmarked, were everywhere. Two emergency vehicles were parked on the edge of the road, which effectively blocked traffic. If we’d been planning to drive farther on, we’d have had to find another way around. But lucky us, we were stopping here.

Jason pulled the Jeep over, driving into the grass in a vain attempt to leave some space for anyone else that might be coming behind us.

A uniformed officer started walking towards us before Jason had turned off the engine. I got my badge out of my suit jacket pocket. I, Anita Blake, vampire executioner, was technically a federal marshal. All vampire hunters that were currently state licensed in the United States had been grandfathered in to federal status, if they could qualify on a shooting range. I’d qualified, and now I was a fed. They were still arguing in Washington, D.C., about whether they’d be able to give us anything more than the pittance that each state pays us per kill, which is not enough so you could afford to do it as a day job. But then, luckily the vampires haven’t gotten so out of hand that any state needed a vampire hunter full time.

I wasn’t getting any more money, so why had I wanted the badge? Because it meant I could chase the vampires, or other supernatural bad guys, across state lines, different law enforcement jurisdictions, and not have to ask anyone’s permission. I also wouldn’t be up on murder charges if I killed a vamp on the wrong side of a state line where I wasn’t licensed.

But for me, more than most vampire hunters, there was an extra benefit to having a badge of my very own. I no longer had to rely on policemen friends to get me into crime scenes.

I didn’t know the uniformed officer that was about to knock on our Jeep window, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t keep me out of the crime scene. I was a federal marshal—I could stick my nose into any preternaturally related crime I wanted to. A real federal marshal could have intruded into any investigation, and technically my badge didn’t specify that I was relegated to preternatural crime, but I know my limitations. I know monsters, and monster-related crime. A regular cop I am not. What I’m good at, I’m very good at, but what I don’t know shit about, I don’t know shit about. Take me away from the monsters and I wasn’t sure how much use I’d be.

I was out of the Jeep and flashing my badge before the uniform got to us. He sized me up the way men will do from shoes to face—in that order. Any man who starts at my feet and then goes up has lost pretty much any chance he has to impress me.

I read his name tag, “Officer Jenkins, I’m Anita Blake. Lieutenant Storr is expecting me.”

“Storr isn’t here,” he said, arms crossed over his chest.

Great, he didn’t recognize my name—so much for being a celebrity—and he was going to play ‘don’t want the feds pissing in my pond!’

Jason had gotten out on his side of the Jeep. Maybe I looked a little disreputable in my slightly wrinkled suit, with a run in my hose that went from toe to thigh, but Jason didn’t look like a fed, or a cop. He was dressed in blue jeans that had faded through enough washings to be comfortable, a blue T-shirt that almost matched his eyes, still hidden behind the mirrored shades, and white jogging shoes. It had turned out to be one of those unusually warm fall days we get sometimes. Too warm for his leather jacket, so he hadn’t bothered with anything else. The white gauze and tape on his forearms were very noticeable.

He leaned on the hood of the Jeep, smiling pleasantly and looking so not like a federal anything.

Officer Jenkins’s eyes flicked to Jason, then back to me. “We didn’t call the feds in.”

Standing there in my three-inch heels on the slightly uneven road was making me feel light-headed again. I did not have the patience, or the strength, to debate.

“Officer Jenkins, I am a federal marshal, do you know what that means?”

“Nope,” he said, making the word longer than it was.

“It means that I don’t need your permission to enter this crime scene. I don’t need anybody’s permission. So it doesn’t matter if the lieutenant is here or not. I told you who alerted me to this crime out of courtesy, but if you don’t want to be courteous, officer, then we don’t have to be.”

I turned and looked at Jason. Normally, I would have left him at the car, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I could make it up the rest of the hill without falling over. I genuinely didn’t feel well enough to be here. But here I was, and I was going to see this crime scene.

I motioned Jason to me. He came around the Jeep, his smile fading around the edges. Maybe I looked as pale as I felt.

“Let’s go.”

“He’s not a fed,” Jenkins said.

I’d had enough of Jenkins. If I’d been feeling better I would have bullied our way through, but . . . there were other ways to bully.

I waited until Jason was there to steady me, then I moved my hair to one side showing the white gauze and tape on my own neck. I pulled on one side of the tape until it peeled down, and I could flash the bite at Jenkins. It wasn’t a neat puncture wound. Asher had gotten carried away, because the edges of the wounds were torn.

“Shiiit,” Jenkins said.

I let Jason tape the wound back up, while I talked to the other man. “I have had a hard night, Officer Jenkins, and I have the authority to go into any preternaturally related crime scene that I see fit to enter.”

The tape was smoothed back into place, and Jason was standing very close to my left arm, as if he knew how unsteady I was feeling. Jenkins didn’t seem to notice.

“It isn’t a vampire attack,” Jenkins said.

“Am I not speaking English here, Jenkins? Did I say it had anything to do with vampires?”

“No, sir, I mean . . . no.”

“Then either escort us to the crime scene, officer, or step aside and we’ll find our own way.”

Flashing the vampire bite had thrown him, but he still didn’t want a fed messing with his crime. Probably his boss wouldn’t like it, but that wasn’t my problem. I had a federal badge. In theory, I had the right to the crime scene. In actuality, if the local police barred my way there wasn’t much I could do. I could go get a court order and force the issue, but that would take time, and I didn’t have that kind of time. Dolph was already pissed at me. I didn’t want to keep him waiting that long.

Jenkins finally stepped aside. We started walking up the hill. I had to take Jason’s arm about halfway up. My goal in life for that moment was not to fall down, throw up, or faint, while Jenkins was still puzzling over whether he’d done the right thing letting us get past him.

17

MY BADGE ON its little cord around my neck got us past most of the cops. The few that questioned us recognized my name, or had worked with me before. Always good to be known. They questioned Jason’s presence. I finally told them that I’d deputized him.

A big statie, with shoulders wider than either of us was tall, said, “I’ve heard it called a lot of things, but deputy isn’t one of ’em.”

I turned on him, slowly, because I couldn’t move fast, and the very slowness of the turn helped the menace. It’s hard to be menacing to someone when you barely reach their waist, but I have had lots of practice.

Jason must have been afraid of what I’d say, because he said, “You’re just jealous.”

The big man shook his head in his Smokey the bear hat. “I like my women bigger.”

“Funny,” I said, “that’s what your wife says.”

It took him a minute to get it, then he unfolded those beefy arms and took a step towards us. “Why you . . .”

“Trooper Kennedy,” a voice said from behind us, “don’t you have some speeders to go catch?”

I turned to see Zerbrowski walking towards us. He was dressed in his usual—sloppy as hell, as if he’d slept in the brown suit, a yellow shirt with the collar on one side pointing up, and a tie at half-mast, already stained with something, even though he probably hadn’t had breakfast. His wife, Katie, was always neat as a pin. I’d never figured out how she let him go out looking like that.

“I’m on my own time here, detective,” Trooper Kennedy said.

“And this is my crime scene, trooper. I don’t think we need you here.”

“She says that she deputized him.”

“She’s a federal marshal, Kennedy, she can do that.”

The big man looked perplexed. “I didn’t mean anything by the comment, sir.”

“I know you didn’t, Kennedy, just as Marshall Blake here didn’t mean anything by hers. Did you, Anita?”

“I don’t know his wife, so no, just pulling your leg, Officer Kennedy, sorry about that.”

Kennedy frowned, thinking harder than was good for him, I think. “No offense taken, and none meant, ma’am.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to call me officer, or marshal, which was fine with me. The federal status was so new that I didn’t always look up when someone called marshal. I kept forgetting they meant me.

When the big trooper had wandered away to his car, Zerbrowski called over one of the other detectives on the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, affectionately know as RPIT. If you wanted to piss them off, call them RIP.

“See if you can clear out some of the personnel we don’t need.”

“You got it, Sarge,” and the man went to talk with all the nice policemen from all the many jurisdictions.

“Sarge,” I said, “I knew Dolph made lieutenant finally, I didn’t hear your news.”

He shrugged, running a hand through his already messy curls. Katie would make him go in for a haircut soon. “When they moved Dolph up, he needed a second whip, I got tapped.”

“They throw you a party yet?”

He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. They didn’t need adjusting. “Yeah.”

If I’d been a man, I’d have let it go, but I was a girl, and girl’s poke at things more than men. “I was invited to Dolph’s party for making louie, but not yours?”

“I like Micah, Anita, but Dolph . . . didn’t expect you to bring Micah. I don’t think he could take seeing him at my shindig, too.”

“He just can’t handle the fact that my main squeeze is a shape-shifter.”

Zerbrowski shrugged. “Katie gave me strict orders to invite you and Micah over for dinner the next time I saw you. So here it is, and when can you come over?”

There are points where you stop pushing. I didn’t ask if Katie had really told Zerbrowski that, she probably had, but, whatever, he was trying to offer a social peace pipe, and I was going to take it.

“I’ll ask Micah what our schedule looks like.”

His eyes flicked to Jason, and he grinned. The grin reminded me so much of Jason’s grin, that it made me wonder what Zerbrowski had been like in college, when Katie and he met. “Unless you’ve changed guys again?”

“No,” I said, “Jason’s just a friend.”

“The friend speech,” Jason clutched his heart with his free hand, the other still wrapped around mine, “it cuts so deep.”

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to get into her pants for years. She just won’t come across.”

“Tell me about it,” Jason said.

“Both of you, stop it, right now,” I said.

They both laughed, and the laughs were so similar that it was kind of unnerving. “I know you have the right to make him a deputy, but I know what Mr. Schulyer here is, and where his primary residence is.” Zerbrowski leaned in close enough to us that no one else would hear. “Dolph would kill me if I let him into the crime scene.”

“You catch me if I pass out, and he can stay out here.”

“Pass out,” Zerbrowski said, “you’re joking, right?”

“I wish I was.” I had both hands on Jason’s arm now, fighting the urge to totter on my high heels.

“Dolph said that you’d said you were sick. Did he know how sick?”

“He didn’t seem to care, just wanted me to get my ass out here.”

Zerbrowski frowned. “If he’d known you were this shaky, he wouldn’t have insisted.”

“Pretty to think so,” I said. I could feel the blood draining from my face. I needed to sit down, soon, just for a few minutes.

“I would ask if it’s the flu, but I see the bandage on your neck. What did it?”

“Vampire,” I said.

“You want to report a crime?”

“It’s been taken care of.”

“You kill his ass?”

I looked at him through the dark lenses of the glasses. “I really need to sit down for a few minutes, Zerbrowski, and you know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need it.”

He offered me his arm. “I’ll escort you through, but Schulyer there can’t come.” He looked at Jason. “Sorry, man.”

Jason shrugged. “It’s okay, I’m really good at entertaining myself.”

“Behave yourself,” I said.

He grinned. “Don’t I always?”

I would have stayed there and made sure he promised me how good he would be, but I had only about enough energy to walk into the house and sit down before my legs gave. I’d leave the police officers and emergency crews to Jason’s mercy. He wouldn’t do anything bad, just irritating.

I stumbled on the steps leading up to the small front porch. If Zerbrowski hadn’t caught me, I’d have fallen.

“Jesus, Anita, you should be in bed.”

“That’s what I told Dolph.”

He eased me through the door and found me a small straight-backed chair in the hallway. “I’ll tell Dolph how sick you are and let the kid take you home.

“No,” I said, though I did lay my forehead on my knees while the world steadied around me.

“Jesus, Anita, you’re as stubborn as he is. Dolph won’t take no for an answer, so you drag your ass out of a sickbed to come down here. I give you an out, where I’ll take the heat from Dolph, but nooo, you’re going to show Dolph that you’re just as stubborn and bullheaded as he is. You planning to faint in his arms? That’ll really show him.”

“Shut up, Zerbrowski.”

“Fine, you sit there for a few minutes. I’ll come back and check on you, and I’ll escort you through the crime scene. But you’re being stupid.”

I spoke with my face still in my lap. “If Dolph were sick, he’d still be here.”

“That doesn’t prove you’re right, Anita, that just proves you’re both stupid.” With that he walked away, farther into the house. It was good that he left, because for the life of me, I couldn’t have argued with him.

18

WHEN ZERBROWSKI FIRST led me into the room, I thought, there’s a man levitating against that wall. He did look like he was floating. I knew that wasn’t true, but for just a moment my eyes, my mind, tried to make that what I saw. Then I saw the dark lines where blood had dried on the body. It looked as if he’d been shot, a lot, and bled, but bullets wouldn’t have kept him pinned to the wall.

Strangely, I wasn’t faint, or nauseous, or anything. I felt light and distant, and more solid than I’d felt in hours. I kept walking towards the man on the wall. Zerbrowski’s hand slipped away from mine, and I was steady on my high heels in the soft carpet.

I had to be almost underneath the body before my eyes could make sense of it, and even then, I was going to have to ask someone who was more tool-oriented if I was right.

It looked like someone had taken a nail gun, one of those industrial size nail guns, and nailed the man to the wall. His shoulders were about eight feet off the ground, so either they’d used a ladder, or they’d been close to seven feet tall.

The dark spots on the body were at both palms, both wrists, forearms just above the elbows, shoulders, collarbones, lower legs just below the knees, just above the ankles, then through each foot. The legs were apart, not pierced together. They hadn’t tried to imitate the Crucifixion. If you went to this much trouble, it was almost odd to not echo that long-ago drama. The very fact that they hadn’t tried seemed strange to me.

The man’s head slumped forward. His neck showed pale and whole. There was a dark patch of blood on his nearly white hair just behind one ear. If the nails were as big as I thought they were, if that blood had been caused by a nail, the tip should have protruded from the face, but it didn’t. I stood on tiptoe. I wanted to see the face.

The white hair and the face, slack with death, said he was older than the rest of him looked. The body was well cared for—exercise, probably weights, running—only the face and white hair said he was probably over fifty. All that work to maintain health and well-being, and some nutcase comes along and nails you to a wall. It seemed so unfair.

I leaned forward too far and had to put my fingertips out to catch myself. My fingers touched dried blood on the wall. Only then did I realize I’d forgotten my surgical gloves. Fuck.

Zerbrowski was there with a hand on my elbow to steady me, whether I needed it, or not.

“How could you let me come in here without gloves on?”

“I didn’t expect you to touch the evidence,” he said. He fished a bottle of hand sanitizer out of one of his pockets. “Katie makes me carry it.”

I let him pour some into my hands, and I scrubbed them. It wasn’t that I was really worried about catching anything from that one small touch, I did it more out of habit. You didn’t take pieces of the crime scene home if you didn’t have to.

The gel evaporated against my skin making my hands feel wet, though I knew they weren’t. I looked around at the crime scene, taking in what else was there.

Colored chalk had been used on the off-white walls. There were pentagrams of varying sizes on either side of the body. Pink, blue, red, green; almost decorative. Any fool that’s trying to fake a ritual murder knows enough to use a few pentagrams. But there were also Nordic runes drawn among the candy-colored pentagrams. Not every nutcase knows that Nordic runes can be used in ritual magic.

I’d had one semester of comparative religion with a professor who had really liked the Norse. It had left me with a better knowledge of runes than most Christians had. It had been years, but I still recognized enough to be confused.

“This makes no sense,” I said.

“What?” Zerbrowski asked.

I pointed at the wall, while I spoke. “It’s been awhile since I studied runes in college, but the perps used all the runes in a pretty standard order. If you’re really doing ritual, you have a specific purpose. You don’t use all the Norse runes, because some of them are contradictory. I mean, you don’t want to use a rune for chaos and a rune for order. I can’t think of a true ritual where you would use them all. Even if you were doing a working where you wanted to invoke polarity, healing, harming, chaos, order, god, goddess, you still wouldn’t. Some of them aren’t easily made to fit any true polarity/opposite sort of thing. And they’re also in a pretty standard textbook order.”

I backed up, taking him with me, because he was still holding on to my elbow. I pointed to the left side of the body as we looked at it. “It starts with Fehu here and descends straight through, ending with Dagaz at the other side. Someone just copied this, Zerbrowski.”

“I know this sounds funky, but do you feel any magic?” he asked.

I thought about that. “Do you mean was this a spell?”

He nodded. “Yeah, can you feel a spell?”

“No, there’s been nothing of power in this room.”

“How can you be so sure?” he asked.

“Magic, power of any kind of a metaphysical nature, leaves a residue behind. Sometimes it’s just a tingling at the back of your neck, goosebumps on your skin, but sometimes it’s like a slap in the face, or even a wall that you run into. But this room is dead, Zerbrowski. I’m not psychically gifted enough to pick up emotions from what happened here, and I’m glad. But if this had been some big spell, there’d been something left of it, and the room is just a crime scene, nothing else.”

“So if no spell, why all the symbols?” he asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea. From the looks of things he was shot behind the ear and nailed to the wall. The body isn’t arranged to imitate any mystical or religious symbolism that I’m familiar with. Then they threw some pentagrams around and copied runes out of a book.”

“Which book?”

“There are a lot of books on the runes, everything from college textbooks to the occult to New Age. You’d probably have to go to a college store or one of the New Age shops, or you could probably special order it through any bookstore.”

“So this isn’t a ritual murder,” he said.

“There may be ritual to it from the killer’s point of view, but was it done with magical purpose? No.”

He let out a deep breath. “Good, that’s what Reynolds told Dolph.”

“Detective Tammy Reynolds, your one and only witch on staff?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Why didn’t Dolph believe her?”

“He said he wanted confirmation.”

I shook my head, and it didn’t make me dizzy to do it. Great. “He doesn’t trust her, does he?”

Zerbrowski shrugged. “Dolph’s just careful.”

“Bull-fucking-shit, Zerbrowski, he doesn’t trust her because she’s a witch. She’s a Christian witch for heaven’s sake, a Follower of the Way. You can’t get more mainstream in your occult expert than a Christian witch.”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me, I didn’t drag you out of bed to double-check Reynolds’s work.”

“And would he have dragged her down here to check my work, if I’d been first on the scene?”

“You’d have to ask Dolph about that.”

“Maybe I will,” I said.

Zerbrowski went a little pale. “Anita, please don’t go after Dolph angry. He is in a bad, bad mood.”

“Why?”

He shrugged again. “Dolph doesn’t confide in me.”

“Is he just in a bad mood today, or for the last few days, what?”

“The last few days have been worse, but two murders in one night have sort of given him a reason to be grumpy, and he’s taking full advantage of it.”

“Great, just great,” I said. My anger helped me stomp off towards the bank of windows that took up most of the other wall. I stood there and stared off at the amazing view. Nothing but hills, trees, it did look as if the house sat in the middle of some vast wilderness.

Zerbrowski came to stand beside me. “Nice view, huh?”

“Whoever did this had to have scouted the house.” I motioned at the windows. “They had to know for sure that there was no neighbor out there that could see what they were doing. Shooting him, you might take your chances, but putting him up on the wall, and all the symbols, no, they had to be sure they wouldn’t be seen.”

“That’s pretty organized for a wacko,” Zerbrowski said.

“Not if it’s really someone wanting you to think they’re a wacko.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t tell me that you and Dolph haven’t thought of that.”

“What?”

“That it’s someone near and dear to the dead man, someone who stands to inherit all this.” I looked around at the living room, which was as large as the entire downstairs of my house. “I was too sick to really notice when I came in, but if the rest of the house is as impressive as this, then there’s money to be had.”

“You haven’t seen the pool yet, have ya?”

“Pool?”

“Indoors, with a Jacuzzi big enough for twelve.”

I sighed. “Like I said, money. Follow the money, find out who stands to gain. The ritual is only window dressing, a smoke screen that the murderers hope will throw you off.”

He stood staring off at the beautiful view, hands behind his back, sort of rocking on his heels. “You’re right, that’s exactly what Dolph thought once Reynolds said there was no magic to it.”

“I’m not going over to the other scene just to check her work again, am I? Because if that’s the case, I’m headed home. I may not always like Detective Tammy, but she’s pretty good at what she does.”

“You just don’t like that she’s dating Larry Kirkland, your animator in training.”

“No, I don’t like that she and Larry are dating. She’s his first serious girlfriend, so forgive me, but I felt protective.”

“Funny, I don’t feel protective of Reynolds at all.”

“That’s because you’re weird, Zerbrowski.”

“No,” he said, “it’s because I see the way Reynolds and Kirkland look at each other. They are dead gone, Anita, in L-O-V-E.”

I sighed. “Maybe.”

“If you haven’t noticed, it’s because you didn’t want to see it.”

“Maybe I’ve been busy.”

For once Zerbrowski stayed quiet.

I looked at him. “You never answered my first question, am I going to the next murder scene to check Tammy’s work?”

He stopped rocking on his heels and stood quiet, face serious. “I don’t know, probably some.”

“I’m going home then.”

He touched my arm. “Go to the second scene, Anita, please. Don’t give Dolph any more reason to be more pissy.”

“That is not my problem, Zerbrowski. Dolph is making his own life hard on this one.”

“I know, but the couple officers that have been at both scenes say the second one is a bad one. More up your alley than Reynolds’s.”

“Up my alley, how?”

“Violent, real violent. Dolph doesn’t want to know if it’s magic, he wants to know if something that wasn’t human did it.”

“Dolph’s a fanatic about not giving details away to his people before they’ve seen a crime scene, Zerbrowski. What you’ve just told me would piss him off mightily.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t go, if I didn’t . . . add a little.”

“Why do you care if Dolph and I are feuding?”

“We’re here to solve crimes, Anita, not fight each other. I don’t know what’s eating Dolph, but one of you has to be the grown-up.” He smiled. “Yeah. I know things have come to a sorry state when you’re the one, but there it is.”

I shook my head and slapped his arm. “You are such a pain in the ass, Zerbrowski.”

“It’s good to be appreciated,” he said.

The anger was fading, and with it the spurt of energy. I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Get me outside before I start feeling bad again. I’ll go see the second crime scene.”

He put his arm around my shoulders and gave me half a hug. “That’s my little federal marshal.”

I raised my head. “Don’t push it, Zerbrowski.”

“Can’t help myself, sorry.”

I sighed. “You’re right, you can’t help yourself. Forget I said anything, keep saying witty irritating things as you walk me back to Jason.”

He started me across the room, arm still across my shoulders. “How did you end up with a werewolf stripper as your driver for the day?”

“Just lucky I guess.”

19

THE SECOND SCENE was in Chesterfield, which had been a hot address for the up-and-comers before most of the money moved even farther out to Wildwood and beyond. The neighborhood that Jason drove us through was a sharp contrast to the big isolated houses we’d just seen. This was middle-class, middle America, backbone of the nation kind of neighborhood. There are thousands of subdivisions exactly like it. Except in this one, not all the houses were identical. They were still too close together and had a sameness about them, as if a hive mind had designed them all, but some were two-story, some only one, some brick, some not. Only the garage seemed to be the same on all of them, as if the architect wasn’t willing to compromise on that one feature.

There were medium sized trees in the yards, which meant the area was over ten years old. It takes time to grow trees.

I saw the giant antenna of the news van before I saw the police cars. “Shit.”

“What?” Jason asked.

“The reporters are already here.”

He glanced up. “How do you know?”

“Have you never seen a news van with one of those big antennas?”

“I guess not.”

“Lucky you,” I said.

Probably because of the news van, the police had blocked the street. When someone had time, they’d probably bring up those official-looking sawhorses. Right now they had a police cruiser, a uniformed officer leaning against it, and yellow do-not-cross tape strung from mailbox to mailbox across the entire street.

There were two local news vans and a handful of print media. You can always tell print, because they have the still cameras and no microphones. Though they will shove tape recorders in your face.

We had to park about half a block away because of them. When the engine shut off, Jason asked, “How did they hear about it so quickly?”

“One of the neighbors called it in, or one of the news vans was close for something else. Once something hits the police scanners, the reporters know about it.”

“Why weren’t there reporters at the first scene?”

“The first one was more isolated, harder to get to, and still make your deadline. Or there could be a local celebrity involved here, or it’s just better copy.”

“Better copy?” he asked.

“More sensational.” In my own head, I wondered how you could get much more sensational than having someone nailed to their living room wall, but of course, those kinds of details weren’t released to the media, not if it could be kept under wraps.

I undid my seat belt and put a hand on the door handle. “Getting through the press is going to be the first hurdle here. I’m something of a local celebrity now, myself, whether I like it or not.”

“The Master of the City’s lady love,” Jason said, smiling.

“I don’t think anyone’s been that polite,” I said, “but, yeah. Though today they’ll be more interested in the murder. They’ll be asking me questions about that, not Jean-Claude.”

“You seem to be feeling some better,” Jason said.

“I am, not sure why.”

“Maybe whatever caused the bad reaction is fading.”

I nodded. “Maybe.”

“Are we going to get out of the car, or are we going to watch from here?”

I sighed. “Getting out, getting out.”

Jason opened his door and was around to my side before I could get more than one foot on the ground. Today I let him help me. I was feeling better, but I still wasn’t at my best. I’d hate to refuse help and then fall flat on my face. I was really trying to tone down the machismo today. Mine, not Jason’s.

I put my hand on Jason’s arm, and we started down the sidewalk towards the crowd. There were lots of people, and most of them weren’t reporters. The first murder scene had been isolated, no neighbors close enough to walk out their doors and see the show. But this neighborhood was thick with houses, so we had a crowd.

I had my badge around my neck on its little cord, I hadn’t taken it off from the last scene. Now that I was feeling better, it occurred to me that Jason’s arm was in the way if I had to go for the gun under my left arm. I didn’t want him on my right side, because that was my gun hand, but even on my left he was in the way, a little at least.

I was feeling better if I could be worrying this much over my gun. Good to know. Feeling bad sucks, and nausea is one of the great evils of the universe.

I think because I had Jason on my arm it took the reporters longer to realize who I was, and that we weren’t just part of the growing crowd of gawkers. We were actually working our way through the crowd, almost to the yellow tape before one of the reporters spotted me.

The tape recorder was shoved at me, “Ms. Blake, why are you here, was the murdered woman a vampire victim?”

Fuck, if I just said, no comment, they’d be printing possible vampire kill all over this one. “I’m called in on a lot of preternaturally related crime, Mr. Miller, isn’t it? Not just vampires.”

He was happy I’d remembered his name. Most people love to have you remember their names. “So it wasn’t a vampire kill.”

Shit. “I haven’t been up to the crime scene yet, Mr. Miller, I don’t know anymore than you do.”

The reporters closed like a fist around me. There was a big shoulder cam on us now. We’d make the noon news if nothing more exciting happened.

The questions came from all directions, “Is it a vampire kill? What kind of monster is it? Do you think they’ll be more victims?” One woman got in so close that only a death grip on Jason’s hand kept us from being separated. “Anita, is this your new boyfriend? Have you dumped Jean-Claude?”

That a reporter would ask that question with a fresh body only yards away said just how bad the media interest in Jean-Claude’s personal life had gotten.

Once the question was raised, several more asked similar questions. I did not understand why my personal life was more interesting, or even as interesting, as a murder. It made no sense to me.

If I said Jason was a friend, they’d misconstrue it. If I said he was a bodyguard, they’d plaster the fact that I needed a bodyguard all over the papers. I finally stopped trying to answer questions and held my badge up so the uniformed officer could see it.

He raised the tape to let us inside and then had to push back the press of bodies that tried to follow us through. We walked towards the house to a hail of questions that I ignored. God knew what they’d do with the few things I’d said. It could be anything from the Executioner says, vampire attack, to the Executioner says not a vampire, to my love life. I’d stopped reading the papers, or watching the news, if I thought I might be on. First I hate to watch myself on a moving camera. Second, it always pissed me off. I was not free to discuss an ongoing police investigation, no one was, so the press were left to speculate on what few facts they had. And if Jean-Claude and our love life was the topic of choice, I never wanted to see, or read the coverage.

For some reason being caught in the media feeding frenzy had made me feel shaky again. Not as bad as earlier, but not as good as I’d felt when I first got out of the Jeep. Great, just great.

There were fewer cops here, and most of them were faces I recognized, members of RPIT. No one questioned my right to be at the scene, or Jason’s presence. They trusted me. The uniform on the door looked pale, his dark eyes flashing too much white. “Lieutenant Storr is expecting you, Ms. Blake.” I didn’t correct the title to marshal. Marshal Blake made me feel like I should have been guest-starring on Gunsmoke.

The uniform opened the door for us because he was wearing rubber gloves. I’d left my crime scene kit at home, because when I raised a zombie for the higher-end clients, Bert liked me to not be covered in a baggy overall. He said it didn’t look professional. Once he’d agreed to reimburse me for all dry cleaning incurred from this little rule, I’d agreed.

I told Jason, “Don’t touch anything until I get us some gloves.”

“Gloves?”

“Surgical gloves, that way if they find a latent print, they won’t get all excited and then find out it was yours, or mine.”

We were standing in a narrow entryway with stairs leading straight up from the door, a living room to the left, and an opening to the right that led into what looked like a dining room. There was an opening beyond that where I caught a glimpse of countertop and sink.

I couldn’t see the color scheme clearly because I was still wearing sunglasses. I debated whether taking them off would make the headache come back. I slipped them off, slowly. I was left blinking painfully, but after a few seconds, it was okay. If I could stay out of direct sunlight I’d probably be all right.

It was Detective Merlioni who walked into the living room and saw us first. “Blake, thought you’d chickened out.”

I looked up at the tall man with his curling gray hair cut short. The neck of his white long-sleeved shirt was unbuttoned, his tie tugged down crooked, as if he’d loosened everything without caring what it looked like. Merlioni hated ties, but he usually tried to be neater than this.

“It must be a bad one,” I said.

He frowned at me. “What makes you say that?”

“You’ve tugged your tie all crooked like you needed air, and you haven’t called me girlie or chickie, yet.”

He grinned flashing white teeth. “It’s early days, chickie.”

I shook my head. “Do you have some gloves we can borrow? I wasn’t expecting to do a crime scene today.”

He glanced at Jason then, as if seeing him for the first time, but I knew he’d seen him. Cops see almost everything around a crime scene. “Who’s this?”

“My driver for the day.”

He raised eyebrows at that. “Driver, woo-woo, coming up in the world.”

I frowned at him. “Dolph knew I was too shaky to drive, so he gave me permission to bring a driver with me. If there weren’t enough press outside to cover an entire city block I’d have had him leave me at the door, but I don’t want him going back out in that. They’ll never believe he’s not involved in the investigation.”

Merlioni stepped to the big picture window in the living room and lifted the edge of the drape enough to peek out. “They are damned persistent today.”

“How’d they get here so quick?”

“Neighbor called them probably. Everyone wants to be on fucking television these days.” He turned back to us. “What’s your driver’s name?”

“Jason Schulyer.”

He shook his head. “Name doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“I don’t know who you are either,” Jason said, with a smile.

I frowned. “You know Merlioni, I don’t know your first name. I can’t introduce you.”

He flashed those pearly whites at me. “Rob, Rob Merlioni.”

“You don’t look like a Rob.”

“My mama doesn’t think so either, she’s always after me—Roberto, I give you such a nice name, you should use it.”

“Roberto Merlioni, I like it.” I introduced them more formally than I think I’d ever introduced anyone to anyone at a crime scene. Merlioni was stalling, he didn’t want to go back inside.

“There’s a box of gloves in the kitchen, on the counter, help yourself. I’m going outside for a smoke.”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

“I just started.” He looked at me, and his eyes were haunted. “I’ve seen worse, Blake, hell we’ve waded through worse together, you and me, but I’m tired today. Maybe I’m gettin’ old.”

“Not you, Merlioni, never you.”

He smiled, but not like he meant it. “I’ll be back in a few.” Then the smile widened. “Don’t let Dolph know I didn’t make your driver wait outside.”

“Mum’s the word,” I said.

He went out, closing the door softly behind him. The house was very quiet, only the rushing hush of the air conditioning. It was too quiet for a fresh murder scene, and too still. There should have been people all over the place. Instead we stood in the small entryway in a well of silence so thick you could almost hear the blood in your own ears, thrumming, filling the silence with something, anything.

The hair at the back of my neck stood at attention, and I turned to Jason. He was standing there in his baby blue T-shirt, his peaceful face behind the mirrored shades, but the energy trickled off of him, raised the skin along my arms in a nervous creep.

He looked so harmless, pleasant. But if you had the ability to sense what he was, he was suddenly not harmless, or pleasant.

“What’s with you?” I whispered.

“Don’t you smell it?” his voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Smell what?”

“Meat, blood.”

Shit. “No,” I said, but of course his creeping energy along my skin raised my own beast, like a ghost in my gut. That phantom shape stretched inside me like some great cat waking from a long nap, and I did smell it. Not just blood, Jason was right, meat. Blood smells sort of sweet and metallic like old pennies, or nickels, but a lot of blood smells like hamburger. You know it’s going to be bad, really bad, when a human being is reduced to the smell of so much ground meat.

My head lifted, and I sniffed the air, drew in a great breath of air and tested it. My foot was on the bottom step of the stairs before I came to myself. “It’s upstairs.” I whispered it.

“Yes,” Jason said, and there was the thinnest edge of growl to his voice. If someone didn’t know what they were listening to, they’d have thought his voice was just deeper than normal. But I knew what I was hearing.

“What’s happening?” I asked, and I was still whispering, I think because I didn’t want to be overheard. Maybe that was why Jason was whispering, or maybe not. I didn’t ask. If he was fighting the urge to run upstairs and roll around in the murder scene, I did not want to know.

I hugged my arms, trying to rub away the goosebumps. “Let’s go get those gloves,” I said.

He looked at me, and even through the glasses I could feel him struggling to remember what I was saying, or rather what the words meant.

“Don’t go all preverbal on me, Jason, I need you here with me.”

He took a deep breath that seemed to come from the soles of his feet and slide out the top of his head. His shoulders hunched then straightened like he was trying to shake something off.

“I’m okay.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“I can do it, if you can.”

I frowned at that. “Am I going to have more trouble?”

“I don’t have to go up into that room, you do.”

I sighed. “I am so tired of this shit.”

“Which shit?” he asked.

“All of it.”

He smiled. “Come on, marshal, let’s go get those gloves.”

I shook my head, but I led the way through the dining room towards the kitchen. I could see the box of gloves sitting beside an open, nearly full trash bag. There’d been a lot of personnel through here to fill up one of those large bags. So where was everyone, and where was Dolph?

20

DOLPH FOUND US in the kitchen while I was helping Jason with the gloves. There’s an art to putting them on, and it was Jason’s first time, so he was like a small child with his first set of gloves, too few fingers and too many holes.

Dolph came in through the dining room the same way we’d come, though he almost filled the doorway, whereas Jason and I had walked through together with plenty of room to spare. Dolph is built like a pro-wrestler, wide, and he’s six eight. I’m sort of used to him by now, but Jason did what most people do. He looked up, and up. Other than that, he behaved himself, which for Jason was a minor miracle.

“What’s he doing here?” Dolph asked.

“You said if I wasn’t well enough to drive I could bring a civvie driver. Jason’s my driver.”

He shook his head, his dark hair so freshly cut that his ears looked pale and stranded. “Don’t you have any human friends left?” he asked.

I concentrated on helping Jason into the gloves and counted to ten. “Yeah, but most of them are cops, and they don’t like playing chauffer.”

“He doesn’t need gloves, Anita, because he is not staying.”

“We had to park too far back for me to walk without someone to catch me if I needed it. I can’t send him back through that pack of reporters.”

“Yeah, you can,” Dolph said.

I finally got the last finger in place. Jason stood there flexing his hands inside the gloves. “How come it feels wet and powdery all at the same time?”

“I don’t know, but it always does,” I said.

“He is out of here, Anita, do you hear me?”

“If he sits on the front stoop, they’re going to have pictures of him. What if someone recognizes him? Do you really want the headlines to read werewolves attack suburbia?” I slipped into my own pair of gloves with practiced ease.

“Gosh,” Jason said, “that was nifty, you made that look easy.”

“Anita!” It was almost a yell.

We both looked up at Dolph. “You don’t have to shout, Dolph, I can hear you just fine.”

“Then why is he still standing here?”

“I can’t send him back to the car. He can’t sit out front. Where would you like him to be while I check out the crime scene?”

He balled his big hands into even bigger fists. “I—want-him-out-of-here.” Every word was squeezed out through gritted teeth. “I don’t care where he fucking goes.”

I ignored the anger, because it didn’t get me anywhere to pay attention to it. He was in a bad mood, it was a bad scene, and Dolph wasn’t too fond of the monsters lately.

Merlioni came into the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway between kitchen and dining room, as if he’d picked up on the tension. “What’s going on?”

Dolph pointed a finger at Jason. “He is out of here.”

Merlioni glanced at me.

“You do not fucking look at her, you look at me!” The anger was hot in his voice. He wasn’t yelling, but he didn’t really need to.

Merlioni walked around Dolph, carefully, and reached out to take Jason’s arm. I stopped him with one gloved hand on his hand.

Merlioni glanced back at Dolph, then moved a little farther down the kitchen, out of the line of fire, I think.

“Is there a backyard?” I asked.

“Why?” Dolph asked, his voice gone low and growling, not with the edge of any beast, but with anger.

“Merlioni can take him out back. He’ll be out of the house and still safe from the reporters.”

“No,” Dolph said, “he’s out of here. Gone, completely gone.”

My headache was coming back, a flutter of pain behind one eye, but it had the promise of great things to come. “Dolph, I do not feel well enough for this shit.”

“What shit?”

“Your shit with anyone not lily-human,” I said, and I sounded tired, not angry.

“Get out.”

I looked up at him. “What did you say?”

“Get out, take your pet werewolf and go home.”

“You bastard.”

He gave me that look that had been making grown policemen cringe for years. I was too tired and too disgusted with it all to flinch.

“I told you I was too sick to drive when you woke me up. You agreed I could bring a driver, even a civilian. You didn’t say he had to be human. Now after dragging my ass down here, you’re going to send me home without having seen the crime scene?”

“Yes,” Dolph said, that one word almost choking in its brevity.

“No,” I said, “you’re not.”

“This is my murder, Anita, and I say who stays and who goes.”

I was finally beginning to get angry. You can only cut even your friends so much slack. I stepped in front of Jason, closer to Dolph. “I’m not here on your sufferance, Dolph. I’m a federal marshal now, and I have the right to investigate any preternatural crime that I see fit.”

“Are you refusing my direct order?” his voice was very quiet now. Not heated—empty—and that should have scared me more, but I wasn’t scared of Dolph. I never had been.

“If I think your direct orders are jeopardizing this investigation, then, yes I am.”

He took one step towards me. He loomed over me, but I was used to that, a lot of people loomed over me. “Never question my professionalism again, Anita, never.”

“When you act like a professional, I won’t.”

His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides. “You want to see why I don’t want him at this scene? You want to see it?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I want to see it.”

He grabbed me by the upper arm. I don’t know if Dolph had ever touched me before. It caught me off guard, and it wasn’t until he’d half-marched, half-dragged me across the kitchen to the dining room door that I unfroze. I looked behind me and shook my head at Jason. He probably didn’t like it, but he settled back against the cabinets. I caught a glimpse of Merlioni’s shocked face before we were into the dining room.

He dragged me to the stairs, and when I stumbled, he didn’t give me time to get to my feet, but literally dragged me up the stairs.

The door opened behind us, and I heard a man say, “Lieutenant!” I thought I recognized the voice, but I wasn’t sure, and there wasn’t time to look, I was too busy trying not to get rug burns from the stairs.

I couldn’t get my feet under me long enough to stand in the heels. The headache burst full-blown behind my eye, and the world was a trembling thing.

I found my voice, “Dolph, Dolph, damn it!”

He opened a door and jerked me to my feet. I staggered while the world ran in streamers of dark color. He held me with one of his big hands on each of my arms, only his grip kept me on my feet.

My vision cleared in pieces, as if the scene were some sort of video puzzle. There was a bed against the far wall. I glimpsed white pillows against a lavender wall, then a woman’s head, and some of her shoulders. It didn’t look real, as if someone had propped a fake head against the pillows. From about collar bones down, there was only a red ruin. I don’t mean a body. I mean it was as if the bed had been dipped in dark fluid. The blood wasn’t red, it was black. A trick of the light, or the fact that it wasn’t just blood.

The smell hit me then—meat. Everything smelled like hamburger. I saw the pile of bedclothes, black, and red, and sodden, soaked in gore. Gore, not just blood, gore. I looked back at the woman’s head, I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. I looked, and I finally could see. It was all that was left of her, all that was left of an adult woman. It was as if she’d exploded with her head on the pillows, and her body . . . everywhere.

I felt the scream building in my throat, and knew I couldn’t do it. I had to be stronger than this, better than this. I swallowed the scream, and my stomach tried to come up my throat. I swallowed that, too, and tried to think.

“What do you think?” Dolph said, and he pushed me, trapped between his big hands, towards the bed. “Pretty enough for you? Because one of your friends did this.” He pressed me too close to the bed, and my legs squeezed against the gore-soaked bed clothes. The blood was cool to the touch, and it helped keep my beast from curling up my body. What good was blood if it wasn’t hot and fresh?

“Dolph, stop this,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like me.

“Lieutenant,” a voice came from the open door.

Dolph turned with me still gripped between his hands. Detective Clive Perry stood in the doorway. He was a slender African American man, dressed conservatively, neatly, but well dressed. He was one of the most soft-spoken men I’d ever met, and the most soft-spoken policeman.

“What is it, Perry?”

Perry took a deep breath, that moved his shoulders and chest up and down. “Lieutenant, I think Ms. Blake has seen enough of the crime scene for now.”

Dolph gave me a little shake that sent my head rattling and my stomach churning. “Not yet, she hasn’t.” He jerked me around to face back into the room. He dragged me towards the headboard, which was painted a lavender so close to the wall’s color I hadn’t seen it. He pushed me forward until my face was inches from it. There was a fresh claw mark like a pale scar in the wood and paint.

“What do you think did that, Anita?” He jerked me around until he was holding me facing him, his big hands still wrapped around my upper arms.

“Let go, Dolph.” My voice still didn’t sound like me. No one else could have done this to me. I’d have fought back by now, or been scared, or pissed. I still wasn’t any of those things.

“What do you think did that?” And he gave me a little shake. It made my head rattle, my vision stream.

“Lieutenant Storr, I must insist that you let Ms. Blake go.” Detective Perry was behind him, to one side, so I could see his face.

Dolph turned on him, and I think only the fact that his hands were already full kept him from grabbing Perry. “She knows. She knows what did this, because she knows every fucking monster in town.”

“Let her go, Lieutenant, please.”

I closed my eyes, which helped the dizziness. His hands on my arms let me know where his body was. I rammed the pointed heel of my shoe into his instep. He flinched, his hands loosened. I opened my eyes and did what I’d been trained to do. I brought my arms up between his and swept outward, downward. It broke his hold on me, and I drew my right arm back, and hit him a short upper cut into his gut. If he’d been shorter I’d have tried for the solar plexus, but the angle was bad, so I hit what I could get.

The air went out of him in a grunt, and he bent double, hands over his stomach. I still haven’t quite come to terms with being more than human strong. I had a second where I hoped I hadn’t hurt him more than I meant to, then I stepped back, away from him. The world was trembling, like I was looking at everything through wavy glass.

I kept backing up, and my heels hit something slick and thicker than just blood, and down I went. I landed hard on my ass, and blood spattered upwards. It soaked through my skirt and I struggled to my knees to keep it from soaking into my panties. The blood was cool to the touch, and then my knee smeared in something that wasn’t blood.

I screamed and scrambled to my feet. If Perry hadn’t caught me I’d have fallen again. But he was moving too slow for the door. I didn’t want to throw up in here. I pushed away from him and half-staggered, half-ran through the doorway. When I hit the hallway I fell to all fours and threw up on the pale carpet. My head roared with pain, and my vision exploded with starbursts of white, white light.

I crawled towards the head of the stairs, not sure what I planned to do. The floor came up to smack into my body, and there was nothing but a soft, gray nothingness, then the world was black, and my head didn’t hurt at all.

21

THE TILE FELT so good against my cheek, so cool. Someone was moving around. I thought about opening my eyes, but it seemed like too much effort. Someone put a cool cloth against my neck. It made me shiver, and I opened my eyes. My vision took a second to focus, then I saw the knee beside my face was wearing hose, and a skirt.

I knew it wasn’t one of the men, unless they had hobbies I didn’t know about. “Anita, it’s me, Tammy, how you feeling?”

I rolled my eyes, but some of my own hair was in the way, and I couldn’t see up that far. I tried to say, help me sit up, but it didn’t come out. I tried again, and she had to lean close to hear me. She pushed a piece of her straight brown hair behind her ear, as if that would help her hear better.

“Help me,” I swallowed, “sit up.”

She got an arm under my shoulders and lifted. Detective Tammy Reynolds was five ten, and she worked out at least enough to keep the other—read male—cops from giving her grief. She didn’t have much trouble getting me up, my back against the bathtub.

Staying there was my job, and that was a little more trouble. I propped myself on one arm and leaned against the tub.

She picked the rag up from the edge of the sink where she’d laid it, and put it against my forehead. The rag was cold, and I jerked away from her. I felt cold, that was a new symptom. I thought of something.

“Have you been,” I coughed to clear my throat, “putting cool rags on me?”

“Yes, it helps me when I’m sick.”

“Cold rags don’t seem to be helping me.” I didn’t tell her that it was probably one of the worst things she could have done for me. Ever since I had inherited Richard’s beast, or whoever’s beast, cold didn’t seem to help me when I was sick. I healed like a lycanthrope now, and that meant that my temperature ran hot when I was sick, like my body was cooking itself. A well-meaning doctor had almost killed me with ice baths for what they thought was a dangerously high fever.

I started to shiver.

She got up, rinsing the washrag out, and spreading it out to dry on the edge of the sink. “I threw up in the yard,” she said. She put her hands on the sink, head bowed.

I hugged myself, trying to stop the shivering, but it didn’t really help. I was cold. I hadn’t been cold earlier today. Was a new symptom good or bad?

“It’s a bad scene,” I said, “I’m sure you weren’t the only cop who lost their breakfast.”

Tammy looked at me through a trailing edge of her hair. She had to keep her hair above her collar, just like the male policemen, but she kept it as long as she could. “Maybe, but I’m the only one who passed out.”

“Except for me,” I said.

“Yeah, you and me, the only women at the scene.” She sounded so tired.

Tammy and I weren’t actually friends. She was a Follower of the Way, Christianity’s version of witches. Most of the Followers of the Way were zealots, more Christian than the right-wingers, as if they had to prove they really were worthy of salvation. Tammy had mellowed since she’d been dating Larry Kirkland, my fellow animator. But this was the first time I’d realized how much of that bright and shiny exterior had been worn away. Police work will eat you up and spit you out.

As women we needed to be tougher just to be accepted. Today hadn’t helped either of us.

“It’s not your fault,” I said. The shivering was beginning to get a little worse.

“No, it’s my damn doctor’s fault.”

I looked up at her. “Excuse me?”

“He gives me a prescription for birth control pills then prescribes antibiotics, and doesn’t warn me that while I’m taking the antibiotic, the pill won’t work.”

My eyes went wide. “I’m sorry, are you saying . . .”

“That I’m pregnant, yes.”

I know the surprise showed on my face, I couldn’t help it. “Does Larry know?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“What . . .” I tried to think of something good to say, and gave up. “What are you going to do?”

“Get married, damn it.”

Something must have showed on my face, because she knelt by me. “I love Larry, but I didn’t plan on marrying now, and I certainly didn’t plan on having a baby. Do you know how hard it is to get ahead in this job as a woman? Of course, you do. Sorry.”

“No,” I said, “it’s not the same for me. Police work isn’t my entire career.” The shivering had started up again; no amount of astonishment could keep me warm.

She took her own jacket off, showing her gun in its front holster. She wrapped the jacket around me. I didn’t argue, but clutched it closed with my hands.

“Is the shivering from the pregnancy?” she asked. “Someone said you said you were sick, are you?”

It took me a second or two, blinking at her sort of stupidly to understand what she’d said. “Did you just say ‘pregnancy’?”

She made a face at me. “Anita, please, I haven’t told anyone either, but they’re going to guess. I threw up at the murder scene, I’ve never done that. I didn’t pass out cold like you did, but I came close. Perry had to help me out into the yard so I could be sick. It won’t take them long to figure it out.”

“This is not the first scene I’ve thrown up at, not even the fourth,” I said. I haven’t done it in a while, but I’ve certainly done it before. Surely they’ve told you the story about me throwing up on the body. Zerbrowski loves that one.”

“Sure, but I thought he was exaggerating. You know how Zerbrowski is.”

“He wasn’t exaggerating.”

“You can lie to me if you want to, but unless you’re planning to abort, they’ll all figure it out sooner or later.”

“I am not pregnant,” I said, though I had a little trouble saying it, because I was shivering so badly it was hard to talk. “I’m just sick.”

“You’re freezing, Anita, you don’t have a fever.”

How could I explain to her that I was having a bad reaction to a vampire bite and the fact that I shared Richard’s beast. Odd metaphysics weren’t easy to explain. Pregnancy was nice and simple, compared to that.

She grabbed my arms, a lot like Dolph had. “I am three months pregnant. How far along are you? Please tell me, tell me I haven’t been a fool. Tell me I haven’t ruined my life by not reading the fine print on a bottle of medicine.”

I was shivering so hard, it was hard to talk, but I managed to get out, “I—am—not pregnant.”

She stood and turned her back on me. “Damn you for not sharing.”

I tried to say something, I wasn’t even sure what, but she left, leaving the door open behind her. I wasn’t sure being left alone was a good thing, the shivering was getting worse, like I was freezing to death from the inside. Larry Kirkland was off being trained to be a federal marshal. He didn’t have four years as a vamp executioner yet, so he couldn’t get grandfathered in. I wondered if the pregnancy was making it harder for him to be away from Tammy, or easier. Damn it, anyway.

Perry brought Jason up to me. He touched me. “God, you’re cold.” He picked me up in his arms like I weighed nothing. “I’m taking her home.”

“We’ll give you an escort through the press,” Perry said.

Jason didn’t argue. He carried me down the stairs. We waited for a few minutes, while Perry rounded up enough warm bodies to act as a sort of living gauntlet to try and keep the press at bay.

The door opened, the sunlight hit my eyes and the headache roared to life. I buried my face against Jason’s chest. Jason seemed to know what was wrong, because he raised an edge of Tammy’s jacket across my eyes.

“Are you ready?” Perry’s voice.

“Let’s do it,” Jason said.

Normally, I’d have felt humiliated to be carried out of a murder scene like a wilting flower, but I was working too hard on keeping the shivering under control. It took all my concentration not to let my body shake itself apart. What the hell was wrong with me?

We were outside, and moving at a good pace. I could judge how close we were to the press by how loud the yelling was getting. “What’s wrong with Ms. Blake?” “What happened to her?” “Who are you?” “Where are you taking her?” There were more questions, lots more. They all melded into a noise like the ocean against the shore. The crowd surged around us. There was a moment when I felt them closing like a fist around us, but Merlioni’s voice rose to a shout, “Back up, back up now, or we’ll clear this area!”

Jason got me inside the Jeep, leaning his shoulder into me, so he could fasten the seat belt. The jacket was across my face now, and strangely it felt claustrophobic.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

I was already doing what he’d asked, but I didn’t say anything. The jacket moved away, and the sun was bright against my closed eyelids. I felt the sunglasses slip over my eyes, and I opened them cautiously. Better.

There was a line of detectives and uniforms in front of the Jeep, keeping the pack of reporters back, so we could make our getaway. Every camera they had was pointed our way. God knew what the captions would read once they were done with it.

Jason gunned the engine and backed up with a screech of tires. He was a ways down the street before I could chatter out, “you’ll get a ticket.”

“I’ve called Micah. He’s waiting. You and Nathaniel can share the bathtub.”

I managed to get out, “What?”

“I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, Anita, but you’re acting like a shape-shifter that’s been badly hurt. Like your body’s trying to heal some deep wound. You need heat, and the touch of your group.”

“I,” teeth chattering so hard I couldn’t finish, “haven’t . . .” I stopped trying for a sentence and settled for, “Not hurt.”

“I know that you’re not hurt that badly. But even if it was the vampire bite, you’d be warm to the touch, hot, cooking to heal yourself. You shouldn’t feel cold.”

My ears started ringing. It sounded like someone was hitting a chime over and over. The ringing drowned out Jason’s voice, the sound of the engine, and finally everything. I passed out for the second time in less than two hours. This was not turning out to be one of my better days.

22

I WAS FLOATING in water, warm, warm water. Arms held me in place, a man’s body brushed against mine in the water. I opened my eyes to the flickering light of candles. Was I back at the Circus of the Damned? Two things happened to let me know exactly where I was: pale tile gleamed on the edge of the bathtub, and the arms around my shoulders tightened, drew me closer. The moment the back of my body settled firmly against the front of his, I knew it was Micah.

I knew the curve of his shoulder, the way my body seemed to slide into every line and hollow of his body. His tanned arms were delicate for a man’s, but as he snuggled me against him, muscles moved under his skin. I knew how much strength there was in his slender body. He was like me, a lot more than met the eye.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, voice so close to my ear that a whisper seemed loud.

My voice came distant and hollow the way I’d been feeling all day. “Better.”

“At least you’re warmer,” he said. “Jason said you were sick, dizzy. Has that passed?”

I thought about it, trying to feel my body, and not just the comforting warmth and closeness. “Yeah, I do feel better. What the hell was wrong with me?”

He turned me in his arms, so that he held me across him, and we could look at each other. He smiled down at me. The tan that he’d come with had started to fade a little, but he was still dark, and that darkness framed his most startling feature. His eyes were kitty-cat eyes. I’d originally thought they were yellow green, but they were yellow, or green, or any combination of either, depending on his mood, the light, the color of shirt he wore.

His pupils had spread like black pools, and the thin line of color that chased round them was a pale true green. Human eyes weren’t really green, not really. Grayish green, maybe, but a true clear green, rarely. But Micah’s eyes were.

Those eyes sat in a face that was beautiful in the way a woman’s face was beautiful. Delicate. There was a line to the jaw, a chin that was male, but gently so. His mouth was wide, with the bottom lip thicker than his upper, giving him a permanent pout.

I wanted to feel his lips on mine, feel the brush of his skin under my hands. He affected me as he’d affected me almost from the first moment I saw him—like he was a missing piece of myself that I had to bring as close to my body as I could, as if we’d meld together someday.

He didn’t argue as I brought him down for the kiss. He didn’t tell me that I was hurt and needed to rest. He just leaned in and pressed his mouth against mine.

Kissing him was like breathing, automatic, something your body did so that it wouldn’t die. There was no thought to wanting to touch Micah, no waffling indecision like with every other man in my life. He was my Nimir-Raj, and from the moment we had been together it had been deeper than marriage, more permanent than anything words or paper could bind.

My arms slid over his back, his shoulders, the slick wetness of his skin, and our beasts rose. His energy was like a hot breath along my skin, shimmering everywhere we touched. My beast rose up through the depths of my body, and I felt Micah’s beast echoing mine. They moved in our two separate bodies like two swimming shapes, up and up, each racing the other with only our skin to keep them apart. Then it was as if the skin was not enough to contain them, and our beasts swam through each of us. It bowed my back, brought Micah’s voice in something near a scream. Our beasts writhed between our bodies, the energies intertwined more than our bodies ever could. They wove and danced like some invisible rope, knotting, tying, gliding in and out of us, until I raked my nails down Micah’s body, and he set teeth into my shoulder.

I don’t know if it was the pain, the pleasure, the beasts, or all of it together, but suddenly I could think again. Suddenly, I knew why I’d been sick all day.

I felt that long metaphysical cord that bound me to Jean-Claude, saw him in his bed at the Circus of the Damned with Asher still beside him. There was a shadow sitting on Jean-Claude’s bare chest, a dark shape. The longer I looked at it, the more solid it became, until it turned a misshapen face to me, snarling, and showed me eyes burning with dark honey flame.

I looked at the hungry shadow of Belle Morte’s power that had been trying to leech “life” from Jean-Claude all day. But the Master Vampire’s fail-safe systems had kicked in—his human servant, and probably his animal to call. Richard had refused to help us directly, but he was probably paying the price for it today.

The thing hissed at me again, like some great demonic cat, and I decided to treat it like one. I threw my beast down the long line of metaphysical cord. What I hadn’t planned for was that Micah’s beast would follow mine, that when we attacked it would be together, ripping the thing to smoky tatters. It fled through the wall.

I wondered where it had gotten to, and the thought was enough. I saw it in the guest room we’d prepared for Musette. The shadow sat on her chest for a second, then seemed to melt into her body. There was a moment when that swimming thing moved underneath the vampire’s dead skin, then all was quiet.

Angelito’s voice, “Mistress are you there?”

Then I was back in the warm water, and Micah’s arms. “What was that?” he asked, voice soft, strangled.

“The shadowy thing was a piece of Belle Morte’s power that she gave to Musette.”

“It was like it was trying to feed on Jean-Claude, but it couldn’t.”

“I’m his human servant, Micah. I think when Musette tried to steal Jean-Claude’s strength, the attack deflected to me. She’s been sucking on me all day.”

“Did Jean-Claude do that on purpose?” he asked.

“No, he’s truly dead to the world. It’s just the way the system is set up. If she could have sucked Jean-Claude dry, then she could have taken the energy of all of his vamps, everyone that had a blood tie to him.”

“Instead she’s been feeding off of you.”

“Yeah, and probably Richard. I bet he called in sick to school today.”

Micah held me tight against him. “How do we keep it from happening again?”

I patted his arm. “You know that’s one of the things I like most about you. Most people would spend time worrying about what could have happened, how bad it could have been, you go straight to the practical.”

“We need to do something before it hops back through the wall.”

“Is my cell phone in here anywhere?”

“In the pile with your clothes,” he said.

“Can you reach it?”

He stretched out one long arm. His arms were longer than they looked. He used fingertips to move the phone close enough to pick up. He handed it to me without a single question. Micah didn’t make me waste time explaining myself.

I called the Circus of the Damned, the special number that wasn’t in the phone book. Ernie, who was Jean-Claude’s human errand boy and sometimes appetizer, answered. I asked if Bobby Lee was still there. When I described him, Ernie said, “Yeah, can’t get rid of him. Seems to think he’s in charge.”

Since I sort of thought he was in charge, too, that worked for me. Bobby Lee came on the line. “Anita, what’s happening?”

“Ask Ernie to find you some crosses, and put them on the doors to the guest rooms.”

“Can I ask why?”

“To keep the bad vampires from doing anymore metaphysical tricks today.”

“That explains absolutely nothing to me.”

“Just do it.”

“Don’t you need to put crosses on the coffins to keep vampires from using their powers?”

“There’s only one exit from each room, it’s like a bigger coffin. Trust me, it’ll work.”

“You’re the boss, at least until Rafael tells me otherwise.” He asked Ernie for the crosses. I could hear Ernie’s voice protesting in tone, though not the words.

Bobby Lee came back on line. “He’s worried that the crosses being in plain sight on the doors will impede our vampires when they wake.”

“Maybe, but I’m more worried about what our guests are doing right now. When night falls, we’ll worry about it. Until then just do it.”

“Are you ever going to explain to me why I’m doing it?”

“You want to know, fine, the new vamps are using vampire wiles to suck energy from Jean-Claude, and through him, me. I have felt like shit all day.”

“You know, I like you, Anita, you explain things when I ask. I almost never understand what the hell you’re talking about, but you talk to me like I’m bright enough to understand it, and know enough about magic to follow all the big words.”

“I’m hanging up now, Bobby Lee.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I handed the phone to Micah so he could put it close to the pile of clothes, which I had no chance of reaching without dribbling water all over the place.

I leaned back against Micah, and he sank deeper into the water, so that even the tip of my chin was submerged. I wanted to sink in against his body, be held, and drowse. Now that the shadow was off of Jean-Claude, I was tired. It was almost as if now I had permission to sleep.

But there was one other crisis to talk about. “Jason told me that Nathaniel collapsed at work last night.”

“He’s tucked into his room, sandwiched between Zane and Cherry. He’s fine.” Micah kissed the side of my head.

“Is it true that he collapsed because the two of you can’t keep feeding my ardeur twice a day?”

Micah went very still around me, and his silence said it all.

“Did you know that the two of you couldn’t sustain me?”

“You feed on Jean-Claude, too,” he said.

“Fine, did you know that the three of you couldn’t sustain me?”

“Jean-Claude keeps saying that your appetite should go down soon. The three of us could feed you if you only needed to be fed once a day. Twice a day is harder.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

He hugged me, and I let him, but I wasn’t happy.

“Because I know how hard it is for you to take new people to your bed. I was hoping you wouldn’t have to.”

That reminded me. “I sort of did.”

“Did what?” he asked.

“Took someone else to my bed.” I felt like I should be squirming with embarrassment, but my ability to be embarrassed wasn’t what it used to be.

“Who?” he asked, voice soft.

“Asher.”

“You and Jean-Claude,” he made it more statement than question.

“Yeah.”

He cuddled me against him. “Why now?”

I told him my reasoning.

“You are going to make those vampires very unhappy tonight.”

“I hope so.” I turned in his arms enough to see his face. He looked peaceful enough by candlelight. “Does it bother you, about Asher?”

He seemed to think about it for a second or two. “Yes, and no.”

“Explain the yes,” I said.

“While you need the ardeur fed, there’s plenty of your time to go around. I’m a little worried about what happens if you get a string of men now, with the ardeur rising, then the ardeur goes away. You’re going to have some unhappy people, if you get too many of them.”

I frowned. “I hadn’t thought about that. I mean I haven’t had intercourse with anyone but you and Jean-Claude.”

“I’ll say what Jean-Claude would say if he were here: Ma petite, you are splitting hairs.”

“Fine, fine, I don’t plan on kicking Nathaniel out of my bed just because the ardeur is quiet.”

“No, but will you be willing to touch him the way he’s come to expect?”

I turned so I wouldn’t have to meet those honest eyes of his. “I don’t know, that’s the truth, I don’t know.”

“And Asher?”

“One step at a time with him, okay.”

“And Richard?”

I shook my head against Micah’s chest. “That’s moot. Richard can barely stand to be within twenty feet of me.”

“Are you seriously saying that if he showed up today and asked to come back, you’d say no?”

It was my turn to go quiet in his arms. I thought about it, tried to think about it, clearly, level-headed. The trouble was that Richard was never a topic I was logical on.

“I don’t know, but I’m leaning towards no.”

“Really?”

“Micah, I still have feelings for Richard, but he dumped me. He dumped me because I’m more comfortable with the monsters than he is. He dumped me because I’m too blood-thirsty for him. He dumped me because I’m not the person he wants me to be. I will never be the person he wants me to be.”

“Richard will never be the person he wants himself to be,” Micah said, softly.

I sighed. It was true. Richard wanted, more than anything else, to be human. He didn’t want to be a monster. He wanted to be a junior high science teacher, marry a nice girl, settle down, have 2.5 children, and maybe a dog. He was a science teacher, but the rest . . . Richard was like me, he would never have a normal life. I had accepted that, but he was still fighting. Fighting to be human, fighting to be ordinary, fighting not to love me. He’d succeeded on that last.

“If Richard comes back to me, it won’t be for good. He’ll come back because he can’t help himself, but he hates himself too much to love anyone else.”

“That’s harsh,” he said.

“But true,” I said.

Micah didn’t argue with me. He didn’t when he knew he was wrong, or knew I was right. Richard would have argued. Richard always argued. Richard seemed to believe that if he pretended the world was a nicer place than it really was, that that would change the world. It didn’t. The world was what it was. And no amount of anger, or hatred, or self-loathing, or stubborn blindness would change it.

Maybe Richard would learn to accept himself, but I was beginning to believe that he would learn that lesson without me in his life.

I hugged Micah’s arms around me like a warm coat, but I was tired now, achingly tired. If Richard knocked on the door today, and asked to come back, what would I do? Truthfully, I didn’t know. But one thing I knew, Richard wouldn’t let me feed the ardeur off of him. He thought it was monstrous. And he wouldn’t share me physically with anyone but Jean-Claude. Even if he wanted to come back, unless he’d let me feed the ardeur off of others, it wouldn’t work. Pure practicality. The ardeur had to be fed. Richard wouldn’t feed it. Richard wouldn’t let me feed it off of anyone but Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude alone couldn’t sustain my appetite. Hell, Micah, Jean-Claude, and Nathaniel together weren’t sustaining it. If Richard came back today, what would I do, offer him one-third of my bed, on the other side from Micah?

Richard had consented to dating me at the same time I dated Jean-Claude, but never to sharing a bed with him and me at the same time. Richard would try to go back to what we had. I couldn’t do that.

What would I do if Richard knocked on the door right now? Offer to let him join us in the bathtub, watch his face show all the hurt and rage, watch him stomp out again. What would I do if Richard wanted to come back? The only thing I could do, say no. The question was, was I strong enough to say it? Probably not.

23

I DIDN’T SO much wake, as come to the surface of sleep, enough to hear voices. Micah’s voice first, “What did Gregory say?”

“That his father tried to contact him,” Cherry’s voice.

“Why is that bad?”

“His father is the one that pimped him and Stephen out when they were children.”

“Every time I think I’ve heard the worst of people, I’m wrong,” Micah said.

I fought to open my eyes, and it was as if my eyelids weighed a hundred pounds apiece. I blinked and found Micah still curled against me, but propped up on one elbow. Cherry was standing beside the bed. She was tall, slender, long waisted, with blond hair cut boyishly short. She wasn’t wearing any makeup which meant she was in a hurry, and she was actually wearing clothes which was unusual for one of the wereleopards. They usually only got dressed if I insisted. Either she was going out, or something was wrong. But of course, something was wrong.

I fought to wake up enough to say something, and it took more effort than was pretty. My voice came out thick, “What’d you say, ’bout Gregory?”

Cherry bent closer, and it took almost everything I had to keep her in focus as she moved in towards me. “You knew that Gregory and Stephen had been abused as children?” she made it half question.

I managed to say, “Yeah.” I frowned up at her. “Did you say their father pimped them out as children?” Maybe I was dreaming? Either that, or I’d misunderstood.

“You didn’t know,” Cherry said. Her face was so serious.

I was suddenly more awake. “No.”

Zane came through the bedroom door with Nathaniel in his arms. Zane was six feet tall, stretched a little too thin for my tastes, but since he and Cherry were living together, it wasn’t my tastes that counted. His very short hair was white-blond now. It was the first color occurring in nature that I’d ever seen him dye his hair. I had no idea what his true hair color was.

Zane carried Nathaniel tucked in against his chest, like he was a sleeping child. Nathaniel’s nearly ankle-length auburn hair, in its heavy braid, was clutched in one of Zane’s hands. If you tried carrying Nathaniel without controlling all that hair, you had a tendency to trip on it. On either side of the braid his body was bare.

“He’s wearing underwear,” Zane said, “we know the rules. No sleeping naked with you.” He moved the hair enough to flash a pair of the satiny jogging shorts that Nathaniel was fond of wearing for jammies.

I tried to prop myself up on my elbows, but that seemed too hard. I settled for lying on my back with both eyes solidly open. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s fine,” Micah said.

I looked at him. I tried to make the look skeptical, but I failed, so I had to say out loud, “He looks comatose.”

“Say something to her, you lazy cat,” Zane said.

Nathaniel turned his head slowly, almost painfully slow, as Zane carried him around to the other side of the bed. He blinked lavender eyes at me, and gave me a lazy smile. He looked almost as tired as I felt. And why not? Hadn’t he collapsed for the same reason I had—because some vampire had been feeding off of him? The arduer didn’t take blood, but it was still a type of vampirism.

Micah crawled out from the covers, flashing the perfectly tanned line of his body. Mercifully, he kept most of his assets hidden from my view. I think I was too tired to be tempted, but I knew I was too tired to want to be tempted. He pulled clothes on with his back to me, but when he turned around, pants safely zipped, the look on his face said plainly that he knew I’d been watching him.

His dark, dark, brown hair curled around his shoulders. One movement of his head sent all that heavy hair sliding to one side of his face. The dark hair framed those extraordinary eyes, gleaming yellow and green at the same time now.

“If you don’t move out of her line of sight, we’ll be here all bloody day,” Zane said.

“You sound jealous,” Cherry chided him.

“Well,” he said, “you don’t watch me like that.”

“I don’t watch anybody like that,” Cherry said.

Zane grinned at her. “I know.”

They had one of those laughs that is a couple laugh, and you know that you are on the outside of an inside joke. Zane was right about one thing, I was delaying. It wasn’t until I tried getting out of bed that I realized I was still naked. I’d sort of known that, but in a distant, floaty kind of way.

“I need clothes,” I said.

Micah had pulled a polo shirt out of the communal drawer. It was one I’d bought with him in mind, a deep rich forest green. It brought out the green in his eyes. But the shirt fit both of us, as most of our shirts did. Our casual clothes had become common property—only the dress-up clothes were strictly his and hers.

Micah didn’t so much make me lie back down, as touch my shoulder so I’d stop trying to sit up. I didn’t seem to be coordinated enough to sit up in bed, keep the sheet over my breasts, and chew gum at the same time. It was as if my body just wasn’t listening to me yet.

“Anita, if you don’t rest you’re not going to be any good to anyone.”

“Gregory’s my leopard, I’m his Nimir-Ra.”

Micah smoothed his hand down the side of my face. “And I’m his Nimir-Raj. Go back to sleep. I’ll take care of it, that’s what you hired me for, right?”

I had to smile at him, but I didn’t like not going to Gregory’s rescue. It must have shown on my face, because he knelt beside the bed, taking my hand in his. “Gregory is having hysterics because his father’s in town. I’m going to go and see how he’s doing, maybe bring him back here so his father can’t find him through the phone book.”

I was having trouble focusing on Micah’s face. I’d crawled out of sleep, but it was sucking at me again. “Yes,” I said, voice starting to sound distant, even to me, “bring him back here.”

He kissed me gently on the forehead, my hand still in his. “I will. Now sleep, or you’re going to make yourself sick. A sick Nimir-Ra can’t protect anybody.”

Since I couldn’t keep my eyes from giving long blinks, it was hard to argue. Him kissing my hand was the first hint I had that he’d stood up. That had been a long blink.

The bed moved, and Nathaniel cuddled up against me. His arm across my stomach, one leg across my thigh. It was one of his favorite sleeping positions, but something wasn’t right with it. “Clothes,” I said, and I frowned harder, “Can’t feed off Nathaniel again.”

Micah reappeared in my line of sight. “You’ve only been asleep about two hours, that’s why you’re so tired. If you fed the ardeur at dawn, you’ve got at least six hours before you need to feed again. We’re just putting him in here so he won’t be alone.”

The last few words floated out of the dark, and it wasn’t until he’d been quiet for a long time that I opened my eyes to an empty room. Nathaniel was tucked in against me, his face hidden against my shoulder. He snuggled in tighter, leaving me with about an inch of bed to spare. I started to move him over and get out of bed to find the pajamas no one had given me, but I fell back to sleep. The wereleopards were having a bad influence on how comfortable I was being nude.

24

I DREAMED. BELLE Morte sat at her dressing table, her long black hair fell in waves, freshly brushed, gleaming in the candlelight. She wore a gown of deep yellow gold, and I knew before she turned those honey brown eyes to me that the color of the robe brought out the gold in them.

Her lips were red and moist, as if she’d just licked them. She held out her white hand towards me. “Come, ma petite, come, sit with me.” She smiled with that red, red mouth, and I wanted nothing more than to go to her, to take that outstretched hand, and be held.

I actually started forward a step and found I was wearing a gown similar to hers. I could feel the layers of petticoats, the metal of the stays digging in, forcing my posture absolutely straight. The gown was a rich crimson, a color that made my own skin gleam white, my hair blacker for the contrast, my own lips redder than they truly were, my dark eyes nearly black.

I touched the unfamiliar clothes, and it helped me to think, helped me to hesitate. I shook my head. “No,” and my whisper echoed oddly through the room.

She waved that pale hand at me. “As you like, ma petite, but come closer, so I may know you better.”

I shook my head again, forcing my fingers to touch the heavy, unfamiliar fabric of the gown. “I am not your ma petite.”

“Of course, you are, for everything that belongs to Jean-Claude is mine.”

“No,” I said. It seemed like I should have been saying more, but I couldn’t think with her sitting there wrapped in candlelight, a bowl of old-fashioned roses on the table by her elbow. The roses were her rose, created and named for her centuries ago.

She stood in a swish of skirts, that rustling sound that made my pulse beat faster, and my body tighten. Run, run, I screamed it in my head, but my body wasn’t moving.

She walked slowly towards me, her breasts mounded by the tight clothing. I had a sudden flash of memory of what it was like to kiss along that gleaming skin.

I took two handfuls of the long skirt, turned on my high-heeled shoes, and ran. The room vanished, as I ran, and it was a long, endlessly long corridor that I ran down. It was dark, but it was the dark of dreams where even without light you could always see the monsters. Though what lurked in the alcoves along the hallway weren’t exactly monsters.

Couples entwined on either side of me. Glimpses of flesh, pale and dark, images of carnal delights. I didn’t see anything clearly, I didn’t want to. I ran, and tried not to see, but of course, I couldn’t not see everything. Breasts like ripe fruit spilling out of old-fashioned dresses. Full skirts lifted to prove that there was nothing underneath but flesh. A man with his pants around his thighs, and a woman bending over him. Blood gleamed down the pale flesh, vampires raised fangs to the light, and humans clung to them, begging for more.

I ran faster, and faster, struggling against the heavy skirts and the tight upright corset. It was hard to breathe, hard to move, and no matter how fast I ran, the door that I could see at the end of all these carnal nightmares never seemed to get closer.

There was nothing too terribly frightening happening in the alcoves. Nothing I hadn’t either seen or participated in, in one form or another, but somehow I knew that if I stopped running they’d get me. And, more than anything else, I didn’t want them to touch me.

The door was suddenly in front of me. I grabbed the handle, tugged on it, and it was locked. Of course it was locked. I screamed, and knew before I turned around that the things in the corridor weren’t in the alcoves anymore.

Belle’s voice, “Come to me willingly, ma petite.”

I put my forehead against the door, eyes closed, as if, if I didn’t turn around, didn’t see them, they couldn’t get me. “Stop calling me that.”

She laughed, and it felt like sex sliding along my skin. Jean-Claude’s laugh was amazing, but this, this . . . the sound made me spasm against the hard wood and metal of the door.

“You will feed us, ma petite. It will happen, your choice is only in how.”

I turned slowly, the way you do in nightmares. You turn, knowing that the hot breath on your skin really is the monster.

Belle Morte stood in the center of the vast echoing space of the corridor, and through Jean-Claude’s memories I knew it was a real place, this corridor. The people from the alcoves crowded to either side of her and behind her, a huge, hungry-eyed, half-naked mob.

“I offer you my hand, come, take it, and it will be pleasure beyond your dreams. Refuse me . . .” she motioned, and that one small movement seemed to take in all the eager, leering faces. “It can be a dream, or a nightmare. The choice is yours.”

I shook my head. “You don’t give choices, Belle, you never did.”

“Then your choice is . . . pain.”

The mob at her back rushed me, and the dream shattered. I was left gasping in Nathaniel’s worried face. “You cried out in your sleep. Were you having a nightmare?” he said.

My heart was beating so hard I could barely swallow past my pulse. I managed a breathy, “Oh, yeah.”

Then I smelled roses, thick, cloying, old-fashioned, almost sickly sweet. Belle’s voice echoed through my head, “You will feed us.”

The ardeur poured through me, raising heat along my skin. Nathaniel jerked his hands back as if he’d been burned, but I knew it hadn’t hurt. He knelt in the tangle of sheets, eyes wide, the little satin jogging shorts stretched tight over his thighs. They weren’t stretched tight over the front of him yet, he wasn’t excited yet, and I wanted him to be.

I rolled onto my side, reaching for him, one pale hand outstretched. “Come, take my hand.” The moment the words left my mouth, I was back in my nightmare, except that I was playing Belle.

Nathaniel was reaching out towards me, to touch my hand, and I knew if he did, the ardeur would spread to him, and I would feed. Nathaniel had collapsed last night because I’d taken too much from him, what would happen if I fed again this soon?

“Stop,” I said, and it was almost firm. If it had been almost anyone else, they wouldn’t have stopped, but it was Nathaniel and he did what he was told.

He stayed on his knees, those tiny shorts stretched so tight across his body. He let his hand fall back into his lap. He was only inches away from me. All I had to do was close that small distance.

I needed to get out of the bed, to walk away, but that strong I was not. I couldn’t seem to take my eyes away from him, so close, so eager, so young. That thought wasn’t mine.

I frowned, and the confusion helped me push back the ardeur long enough to sit up, long enough to look at the mirror on the dresser against the far wall. I was trying to see if my eyes were shining with honey-brown fire, but they were my eyes. Belle hadn’t possessed me like she had once upon a time. But she’d done something—awakened the ardeur hours ahead of time.

The bed moved, and my head swiveled back, like a predator hearing the mouse in the grass. Nathaniel was exactly where I’d left him, but he must have made some small movement, and that one small movement had been enough. My pulse was in my throat, my body tight and swollen with need. A need like nothing I’d ever experienced. I couldn’t breathe past it, couldn’t move around it. It was as if need had taken me over and there was nothing left of me.

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t me. I managed to shake my head, to let out the breath I’d been holding. I was being messed about with. I even knew who was doing it, but I didn’t know how to stop it.

The door to the bedroom opened. It was Jason. He stood in the doorway rubbing his hands on his bare arms. He’d pulled on his jeans but hadn’t bothered to zip or button them. I caught a flash of a new pair of silk undies, pale blue to match the shirt he wasn’t wearing anymore.

“What are you doing in here, Anita? The power is crawling over my skin.”

I tried to talk around the ripeness of my own pulse and failed twice, before I managed to say, “Ardeur.”

He came farther into the room, still rubbing his arms trying to get rid of the goosebumps. “It’s hours too early.”

I wanted to tell him about the dream, about Belle, but all I could concentrate on was the glimpse of silk through his open jeans. I wanted to go to him, to pull his pants down around his ankles, to take him in my mouth . . .

The visual was so strong I had to close my eyes, had to hug myself tight to keep myself on the bed. There was another small movement from Nathaniel.

He had lain down on the bed, his braid trailing behind him like Rapunzel. His face was peaceful. He would let me do anything I wanted to him, even love him to death.

I drew my legs in against my body, wrapped my arms around myself so tight, and held on. “Get out, Nathaniel, get out.”

I felt the bed move, but didn’t dare look. I kept my eyes tight shut. “Get out!”

“You heard her, Nathaniel,” Jason said, “leave now.”

I heard small sounds as he crossed the room, then the door shut. “You can look now, Anita, he’s gone.”

I opened my eyes, and the room was empty, except for the play of sunlight, and Jason standing beside the bed. His hair was very yellow in the light, the color of butter, his eyes so blue. I followed the line of his body to the broad shoulders, the muscled edge of his arms, his chest with its pale nipples. There was no hair on his chest or stomach. A lot of strippers shaved their body hair. I’d seen Jason nude often enough to know that he was mostly shaved. I just hadn’t really noticed how shaved. He was my friend, so even nude, he was still my friend. You don’t stare at your friend’s crotch to see how much body hair there is.

Now, sitting on the bed, holding myself tight, I didn’t feel friendly, I felt crazed. I wanted to fling myself off the bed, onto him. I wanted him naked.

“What do you need?” Jason asked.

I looked up at him, and didn’t know whether to cry or scream, but finally I found words, a hoarse voice squeezed past my pulse, “I have to feed.”

“I know.” He looked so solemn. “What do you need me to do?”

I wanted to tell him to leave, too, but I didn’t. Micah wasn’t here. The vampires were still dead to the world. Nathaniel was off-limits for today. There were others outside this room, but no one I wanted to touch. No one who was even my friend.

I looked up at Jason. A square of sunlight splashed across his chest, painting him gold and warm.

“What do you want me to do, Anita?”

My voice came out barely above a whisper, “Feed me.”

“Blood, flesh, or sex?” his face was careful as he asked, solemn.

My ardeur was always mixed with other desires, but not today. Today there was only one need. “Sex.” That one word, low, soft, while I kept myself from going to him.

His so-serious face split into a sudden grin. “I’ll take one for the team.”

I slid off the bed, to stand for a moment nude before him. I wanted to run to him, to jump on him, to fuck him. There was no other word for what my body was wanting. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to avoid intercourse, if I could. I’d managed to avoid it with Nathaniel for months. Surely, just this once with Jason I could manage it.

I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, then I dropped to the floor on all fours. I crawled towards him, feeling like I had muscles in places that I shouldn’t have. My beast curled through my body like a cat on its back, stretching in the sunlight. But the ardeur roared over my beast, as if the desire were some great hand, smashing down every other need.

“Aren’t you going to complain about being naked in front of me?”

“No,” I whispered it, not trusting anything louder. His feet were bare. I lowered my face to the smooth skin on top of his foot, licked along it.

His breath came out in a shiver. “God.”

I used my hands to crawl up his legs, tugging on the jeans, until I knelt in front of him. I’d managed to pull the jeans lower on his hips without meaning to, exposing a wide triangle of the blue silk undies. My face was almost level with his groin. I could see him pressed tight and firm under the cloth, the tip of him straining against the elastic of the underwear, trapped. I wanted to lower that cloth, to help him.

I slid my hands around behind him, digging fingers into his jeans, gripping his butt. It drew a sound from low in his throat, but it kept me from ripping off his clothes.

I pressed my face against his thigh, turning it away from his groin. My control hung from a rapidly fraying thread. I’d learned through long practice with Nathaniel that the only way to keep from doing more was to do everything carefully, slowly. But I didn’t want to be careful, and I felt anything but slow. I wanted to beg him to take me. Damn it, I could do better than this.

Jason stroked my hair, and that one gentle touch brought my face back up. I gazed up the line of his body to his face. There was that look that comes on a man’s face when he’s sure of you, sure of what will happen. I never thought to see that look on Jason’s face, not for me. That look in his spring blue eyes brought a sound low in my throat. He touched my cheek. “Don’t stop,” he said, voice soft, “don’t stop.”

I lowered my face towards him, still gazing up. I licked him through the silk, and watched his face while I did it. I licked along the length of him until he threw his head back, his eyes closed. He was so hard, so firm against my mouth, under the cloth. I wrapped my mouth around the head of him through the silk, bringing one hand round to hold him, solid and thick.

He made a noise halfway between a word and a shout, as if I’d surprised him. He looked down at me, and his eyes were wild.

I drew back from him and the silk had turned dark blue where my mouth had touched him.

His hands went to the back of his pants and it was Jason that slid the silk and the jeans down his hips. Him that revealed himself to me while I knelt in front of him.

He was smooth, the head wide and rounded, graceful, straight and fine, running slightly to the side, so that he nestled in the hollow of his own hip.

I took him in my hand, and his breath quickened. I lifted him away from his body just enough so that I could spill my mouth over the head of him, rolling my tongue along that graceful curve.

He shuddered under my touch.

I drew more of him into my mouth, sliding my hand down to cup lower things. He was smooth to the touch, everywhere I could touch with hand or mouth, there was nothing but the smooth perfection of him. He was shaved smooth.

I’d been with men who trimmed, and shaved some, but never one that was perfectly smooth. I liked it. It made so many things easier to take into my mouth, to roll and explore.

Every touch, every caress, every lick, seemed to bring some new noise from him—whimpers, soft cries, breathless words. It became a game to see how many sounds I could draw from him.

I drew his pants down farther, so that I could spread his legs, lick between them, along that thin line of skin between testicles and anus.

He cried out, and I moved up his body, one lick, one nibble at a time. I took him into my mouth again, as much as I could from this angle, wrapping my fingers in a ring around the rest of him, my other hand cupping his testicles, playing along that line that ran between his legs. His breath was coming quick and quicker. His body quivered against me.

He grabbed a handful of my hair, drew me back from him. He looked down at me like a drowning man. “Up,” he said.

I frowned at him. “What?”

He bent down, grabbed my upper arms, drew me to my feet. He kissed me, and it was like he was trying to crawl inside me through my mouth, lips, tongue, teeth—something between a kiss and eating me.

His hands slid down my back, following the curve of my spine, then lower over the swell of my hips, until his fingers found my thighs. He lifted me, with just his hands on my thighs, our mouths still locked together. The movement of his hands spread my legs, pressed me against him. The feel of him so hard, so ready pressed against my body, drew small sounds from me, and he ate those sounds straight from my mouth, as if he were tasting my screams.

He used his hands to draw my lower body away from his, my arms still locked around his shoulders, one hand sliding through the baby silkiness of his hair. He moved one hand to my butt, supporting all my weight on one hand, while he moved the other hand between us. I had a second to realize what he was going to do. I fought the ardeur, I fought the feel of his mouth on mine, the feel of him in my arms, to rear back enough to try and say, something, I managed to say, “Jason,” and he drove his hips forward, upward. But the feel of him inside me was exactly what the ardeur wanted. Exactly what I wanted.

He entered me, and it wasn’t hesitant, or gentle. He fought against the wet tightness of my body, both hands on the backs of my thighs, pulling me to him, as he pushed himself inside me. It drew small screams out of my throat, one after the other.

He walked us backward until he collapsed me on the edge of the bed, most of my lower body still held in his hands, trapped against him. He stayed standing, his body pinning me to the edge of the bed, his hands holding me as if I weighed nothing.

He stared down at me with eyes that were no longer human, but wolf. He drew himself out of my body, slowly, an inch at a time until I was almost free, then he shoved himself back, and made me scream again. It wasn’t a scream of pain.

He found a rhythm that was fast, and deep, and hard, as if he were trying to shove himself out the other side of me. He beat his body into mine with a thick, meaty sound.

The orgasm caught me unprepared. One moment I was caught in the rhythm of his body in mine, and the next I was screaming, writhing underneath him. I raked nails down his body, anywhere I could touch him, and when that wasn’t enough I clawed my own body.

Jason’s screams echoed mine, and his body tightened against me, spine bowing, head thrown back, and a howl spilled from his lips. The ardeur drank him down, his skin, his sweat, his seed.

He collapsed on top of me. His breath came in a painful struggle, and his heart pounded like a trapped thing against my skin. He scooted us more solidly onto the bed, his body still deep within mine. When we were both lying on the bed, breathing hard, pulses quieting, he looked down at me, and there was something in his eyes, something serious, and very un-Jason.

His voice was still breathless, hoarse, when he said, “I know that this may be the only time I get to do this. When I move, let me hold you for just a little while.”

My own voice wasn’t much better than his, “Since I can’t move from the waist down yet, sure.”

He laughed then, and because he was still inside me and partially erect, the movement caused me to writhe underneath him, tightening, setting nails into his back.

He screamed, and his hips ground himself against me again. When he could breath again, he whispered, “Oh, god, don’t do that again.”

“Then get off me,” I said, voice almost as breathless as his.

He raised up on his arms, almost like doing a push-up, and drew himself out of me. Feeling him pulling out made me writhe again. He collapsed beside me, half-laughing.

When I could talk again, I said, “What’s funny?”

“God, you’re amazing.”

“Not bad yourself,” I said.

“Not bad?” he said, and gave me wide eyes.

I had to smile. “Fine, you’re amazing, too.”

“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” he said.

I finally managed to turn onto my side so I could see his face better. “I do mean it. You were amazing.”

He turned on his side so we lay there facing each other, but not touching. “If I never get to do this again, I wanted it to be good.”

I had to close my eyes, to fight off another urge to writhe on the bed. I let out a long, steadying breath, then opened my eyes again. “Oh, it was that. I had a really good time, but are you always this vigorous? Not every girl likes to be pounded into the mattress.”

“I’ve seen the men you’ve been sleeping with, Anita, I knew I could be as hard and fast as I wanted to be, and not hurt you.”

I frowned at him. “Are you implying that you’re small?”

“No, I’m saying that I’m not huge. I’m good sized, but some of the men in your bed are more than good-sized.”

I blushed. I hadn’t blushed the entire time we’d been making love, and now I blushed. “I don’t know what to say, Jason, I feel like I should defend your ego, but . . .”

“But inch for inch I know where I stand, Anita.” He laughed, and slid an arm under my shoulders. I let him bring me into the curve of his shoulder. I slid my hand across his stomach, my other arm underneath the small of his back, my leg sliding over his thigh. We cuddled, almost as close now as we had been earlier.

“You were wonderful,” I said.

“I noticed how wonderful you thought I was.” He raised his free arm up so I could see the fresh bloody scratches I’d put down his arms.

I widened eyes at him. “Does your other arm look that bad?”

“Yes.”

I frowned, and he touched my forehead. “Don’t frown, Anita, I’m going to enjoy every mark. I’ll miss them when they heal.”

“But . . .”

He touched fingertip to my lips, to keep me from finishing. “No, buts, just amazing sex, and I for one want to feel the aches and pains of it as long as I can.” He touched my arm where it lay across his stomach, raised it so I could look at it. There were nail marks, some of them seeping blood, some just red and raised. “These aren’t my marks.”

Of course, once I saw them, they started to hurt. Why is it that small wounds don’t hurt until you see them? “Actually,” I said, “they are your marks, or at least a sign of a job well done. I don’t remember ever marking myself up this badly.”

He gave that low masculine chuckle with an edge of laughter that was pure Jason. “Thanks for the compliment, but I know that whatever I did, it can’t be half as wonderful as what Asher and Jean-Claude did a few hours ago. No amount of inches, or talent, will put a man in that league.”

I shivered, hugging him. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“How can you say that? I’ve felt a fraction of what Asher did to you, and it’s . . .” he seemed to be searching for just the right word, he finally said, “wondrous, mind-blowing.”

“Yeah,” I said, “the kind of pleasure you’d do almost anything to experience again.” My voice sounded less than happy.

Jason touched my chin, raised me to look at him. “Are you thinking of not going back for more?”

I tucked my face against his shoulder. “Let’s just say that I’m not completely happy about it.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“I don’t know exactly.” I shook my head as much as I could pressed against him. “Truth, is that it scares me.”

“What scares you?”

“Sex is great, Jason, but this . . . what Asher can do with his bite.” I tried to put it into words, and knew that whatever I said would fail to describe it. “Asher feels like a Master Vampire in my head, his level of power, but he has no animal to call. He can do the voice trick like Jean-Claude, but that’s a minor power. I was a little puzzled, I mean, he feels like a master, but where’s his power?” I shivered again. “I found out.”

Jason rested his chin on the top of my head and said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean that his power lies in seduction, sex, intimate play. He can’t feed off lust the way Jean-Claude can, and he doesn’t cause lust in those around him the way Jean-Claude does, but damn, once the preliminaries are out of the way, he can cause such . . . pleasure. It really is something that people would kill for, sign their fortunes away for, do whatever Belle Morte wanted them to do, just as long as Asher would keep visiting their beds.”

“So he’s like this amazing lay,” Jason said.

“No, you’re an amazing lay, Micah is an amazing lay, I’m not a hundred percent sure that Jean-Claude is as good as I think he is, because I’m not sure anymore how much of it is true talent and how much is vampire powers. I did not have intercourse with Asher. We just shared blood.”

Jason moved so he could frown down at me. “I’m sorry, but the wolf knows these things. It wasn’t just Jean-Claude I smelled when I walked into the room.”

I blushed again. “I didn’t say Asher didn’t have a good time, I just said we didn’t have intercourse.”

“And your point is what?” he asked.

“My point is that if that was only taking blood, I’m afraid to have real sex with him. I mean how much better could it be?”

He gave a laugh that held an edge of giggling, almost a giddy sound. “I’d love to find out.”

I raised up on one elbow. “Are you telling me you’d do Asher?”

He frowned, the laughter still glinting in his eyes. “I was a little confused for awhile about exactly what my preferences were. I mean I’ve been Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang for about two years now. It’s amazing when he feeds, Anita, a-fucking-mazing. Enjoying being with him this much made me think I might be gay.” He traced his hand down my shoulder. “But I like girls. I’m not saying that with the right person bisexual isn’t a possibility, but not if it means never being able to do this again. I like girls.” He drew “like” out into a multisyllabic word.

It made me laugh. “And I like men.”

“I noticed,” he said, still with a trace of laughter in his voice.

I sat up. “I think we’ve cuddled enough.”

He touched my arm, face serious again. “Are you really not going to bed Asher?”

I sighed. “You know how you said Jean-Claude is so amazing when he takes blood.”

“Yeah.”

“Jean-Claude says that Asher’s bite is orgasmic, literally. So that means that Asher’s bite is more pleasurable than even Jean-Claude’s.”

“Okay,” he said. He propped himself up on pillows, hands folded across his stomach as he listened to me.

I was sitting Indian fashion, still nude, and it didn’t seem to matter. It wasn’t sexual now, just comfortable.

“I’ve had sex with Jean-Claude, but never allowed him to take blood with it.”

“Never?” he said.

“Never.”

He shook his head. “You are the strongest willed person I’ve ever met. No one else would have refused the double pleasure, not this long.”

“You haven’t done both with him,” I said.

He grinned. “It’s considered bad form to fuck your pomme de sang, unless they initiate it. If they initiate it, then it’s an extra treat, and only if they’ve been good.”

“You sound like you asked him about this.”

“I did.”

I raised eyebrows at that.

“Oh, come on, Anita, I’ve slept with him longer than you have. You’d have to be more of a flaming heterosexual than I am to not wonder.”

“He turned you down?”

“Very politely, but yeah.”

I was frowning. “Did he say why?”

Jason nodded. “You.”

I couldn’t frown any harder, so I tried to stop, but I was puzzled. “Why me? You’ve been his pomme longer than I’ve been his girlfriend, and a hell of a lot longer than I’ve been his lover.”

“By the time I asked, you were dating. He seemed to think that you would dump his ass if you found out he was doing another man.”

“You’re making my head hurt,” I said.

“Sorry, but if you don’t want the truth, don’t ask.” He settled the pillows more comfortably at his back. “But you’ve managed to avoid answering my original question.”

“What was it?” I asked.

He looked at me. “Don’t try to be coy, Anita, you’re so bad at it.”

“Fine, Asher, what to do about Asher. I made sort of promises to them both that we’d find a way to be a ménage à trois, or would that be a ménage a quatre.”

“Who’s your fourth?”

“Micah,” I said.

“Darn,” he said.

I frowned at him.

“Couldn’t help myself, sorry.”

“If I go back on that promise we’ll lose Asher.”

“What do you mean, lose?”

I explained about Asher’s plans to leave.

“So if you don’t come across, he’s gone.”

“Yeah.”

He frowned, laughed, then shook his head. “Let me think this through. His bite is overwhelmingly orgasmic, mind-blowing pleasure. You think that if you fuck him while he takes blood that it will be even more amazing.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why is this a problem?” Jason asked.

I hugged myself. “I’m afraid, Jason.”

He sat up beside me. “Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of being . . .” I hesitated, tried to find a the words, and finally, “I’m afraid of being consumed.”

He frowned. “Consumed, I know what the word means, but I don’t understand what you mean by it.”

“Aren’t you afraid of wanting one of them so badly that you’d do anything to have him with you?”

“Do you just mean vampires, or people in general?”

I rested my chin on my knees. “Vampires, of course.”

“No, you don’t mean just vampires, you’re afraid of wanting anybody completely, aren’t you?”

I wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He pushed my hair back behind my ear, but it was too thick to stay. “Don’t lie to Uncle Jason, you didn’t mean just vampires.”

I looked at him, hugging my legs to me. “Maybe not, but the point is the same. I don’t want to want anyone so much that if they aren’t with me, I die.”

A look passed through his eyes that I couldn’t read. “You mean you’re afraid of loving anyone more than life itself?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, and it was gentle, and a little sad. “I would give one of my less favorite body parts for a woman to care for me as deeply as you do for Nathaniel.”

I started to protest that I didn’t love Nathaniel.

Jason touched a finger to my lips. “Stop. I know you haven’t given yourself over heart and soul to Nathaniel, but then you haven’t given yourself over heart and soul to anybody, have you?”

I looked away, because watching that patient, grown-up look in his eyes was uncomfortable to say the least. “One of my goals in life is, just once to have a woman look at me the way you watch Jean-Claude. The way you and Jean-Claude watch Asher. The way you watch Nathaniel. The way Nathaniel looks at you.”

“You left Micah off the list.”

“You and he have this comfort level that you don’t have with any of the others, but it’s almost as if the comfort comes at the expense of something else.”

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I’ve never been in love, how should I know.”

“So, what, I’m not in love with Micah?”

“That is not my question to answer.”

“I cannot be in love with four men at once.”

“Why not?”

I looked at him.

“It’s not a rule,” he said.

“It would be ridiculous,” I said.

“You fought Jean-Claude, because you were afraid of him. Then Richard came along, and I think you loved him, really loved him, and that scared you, so you backed off. I think you dated them both to keep from falling in love with either of them.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Originally, Jean-Claude said he’d kill Richard if he didn’t get a chance to woo me too.”

“And why didn’t you just kill Jean-Claude then? You don’t tolerate ultimatums, Anita, so why tolerate that one?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, or at least not a good one.

“Richard grows more distant, more caught up in his own personal angst, which leaves the field open for Jean-Claude. So suddenly you have Nathaniel bunking with you. I know, I know, he’s your pomme de sang, your house leopard, but it was still interesting timing.”

I wanted to tell him to stop, to not say anymore, but he didn’t, he kept on. I’d never thought of Jason as relentless before.

“Somewhere in all this, Asher comes up on the radar, maybe it’s Jean-Claude’s old memories, maybe not. But whatever caused it, you’re drawn to him, but he’s so full of anger that it’s not a threat. He’s almost as full of self-loathing as Richard is. Then suddenly Richard walks away for real this time. You’re left with just Jean-Claude, and Nathaniel, but Nathaniel isn’t enough of a romantic threat to keep Jean-Claude at bay, and suddenly there’s Micah. Out of the blue, instant lust, instant housekeeping. You have Micah, and now Jean-Claude is back to sharing you with someone else, and you’re safe again. You can’t fall madly in love with Jean-Claude, or anyone else, because you’ve divided your world up into different parts with each of them. Because no one man has your whole world, no one man can rock your whole world.”

I got out of the bed, tugging the sheet around me like a robe. I suddenly didn’t want to be naked in front of Jason anymore.

“I thought it was all accidental, and it was, and it wasn’t. You’re terrified of belonging to just one person, aren’t you?”

I shook my head. “Not of belonging to just one person, Jason, of wanting to belong to just one person.”

“Why, why is that so frightening to you? Most people spend their lives wanting exactly that, I know I do.”

“I loved someone once with my whole heart, and he stomped on it.”

“Please, not the fiancé in college. Anita that was years ago, and he was an asshole. You can’t spend the rest of your life nursing one bad experience.”

I was at the foot of the bed now, wrapped shoulders to feet in the sheet. I was cold, and it had nothing to do with the temperature. “It’s not only that,” I said, voice soft.

“What is it then?”

I took a deep breath in, let it out slow. “I loved my mother with my whole heart and whole soul, she was my world. She died, and it nearly destroyed me.” I thought about everything he’d said, and I couldn’t argue with it, and I couldn’t pretend it didn’t make sense. “I never want to put my whole world in any one person’s hands again, Jason. If they die, I won’t die with them.”

“So you’ll hold a little of yourself back from everybody.”

“No,” I said, “I’ll hold back a piece of myself for myself. No one gets all of me, Jason, no one, except me.”

He shook his head. “So Jean-Claude gets sex, but no blood. Nathaniel gets intimacy, but not intercourse. Asher gets blood but not intercourse. Micah’s getting intimacy and intercourse, what are you holding back from him?”

“I don’t love him yet.”

“Liar.”

“I lust after him, but I don’t love him yet.”

“And Richard, what did you hold back from Richard?”

I stood there wrapped in the damned sheet, feeling the world sinking away to a small screaming thing. “Nothing,” I said, “I held back nothing, and he dumped my ass.”

Jason just sat there for a second or two, then he got off the bed. I think he meant to hold me, comfort me.

I put out a hand to stop him. “If you hug me, I’m going to cry, and Richard has gotten the last tear out of me that he’s going to get.”

“I’m sorry, Anita.”

“Not your fault.”

“No, but it wasn’t any of my business either. I don’t have the right to psychoanalyze you.”

“You’re just jealous,” I said, and I tried to make it light, joking, and failed.

“About what?” he asked.

“That I have so many people that I could be in love with, if I’d only give that one last inch.”

He sat back down on the edge of the bed. “You’re right, damn it, but you’re right. I am jealous, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t understand until the moment you said how afraid you were of being consumed. I want to be consumed, Anita. I want someone to come along and burn me up.”

“You’re a romantic,” I said.

“You make that sound like a dirty word.”

“Not dirty, Jason, just useless.” I started for the door. “I’m going to get cleaned up, help yourself to the upstairs shower if you want.” Jason called to me, but I kept walking. I’d had all the pillow talk I wanted for one day.

25

I LOVED THE new shower that I’d had installed in the downstairs master bathroom. One of the bear lycanthropes in town turned out to be a plumber. I’d still paid full price, but at least I knew he wouldn’t be asking stupid questions about my living arrangements. I liked a good long bath when the occasion called for it, but at heart I was a shower girl.

I set the showerhead on hard, so that the water beat against my neck, head, shoulders. I hadn’t been embarrassed about having sex with Jason, and maybe that was wrong, but it hadn’t felt sinful. Maybe because it was just another way for him to take care of me. But the little talk afterwards, that had bothered me. That hard emotional truths bothered me more than having intercourse with someone I wasn’t in love with probably said something about how far down the well of moral decay I had fallen.

I stood in the hot, hot water, steam foaming against the glass doors of the stall, and was happy that I didn’t owe my heart to anyone. It was mine damn it, and I was keeping it in one piece if I could. Richard had broken some part of me, some last bit that had been trying to hang onto a softer more romanticized view of love. He had left, dumped me because I wasn’t human enough for him. My fiancé in college had dumped me because I wasn’t white bread enough for his mother. My stepmother, Judith, had never let me forget that I was small and dark, and she and her children and my father, were tall and blond, and blue-eyed. People had spent my lifetime rejecting me for things I could not change about myself. So fuck them, fuck them all.

I was sitting on the bottom of the shower. I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t meant to huddle in the water, hiding. Why was I always chasing after the love of people who I could never be enough for? There were plenty of others who wanted me exactly as I was, small, dark, hard, bloody, thick with metaphysical shit. People who loved me just as I was. Unfortunately, none of them were me.

There was a knock on the door, and I realized that someone had been knocking for a while. I always locked the door when I went in, out of habit.

I turned the water down, so I could hear better. “What is it?”

“Anita, it’s Jamil, I need to come in.”

“Why?” That one word held a universe of suspicion. If his reason had been something I wouldn’t hate he’d have already said why he needed to come in.

I actually heard him sigh through the door. “It’s Richard, he’s hurt, and we need to use the big bathtub.”

“No,” I said. I turned off the water and reached for the oversized towel.

“Anita, since the pack sold Raina’s house we don’t have any body of water big enough to soak him and other pack members in. I found him unconscious on his bedroom floor, he’s ice cold.”

I wound a smaller towel around my wet hair. “You are not bringing him in here, Jamil. There’s got to be some place else to take him. Jean-Claude would let you use the tub at his place.”

“Anita, he’s icy, if we don’t get him warm soon, I don’t know what’ll happen.”

I leaned my head against the door. “Are you telling me that he’s going to die?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know. I’ve never seen another werewolf this bad without some kind of wound to show for it. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

I did, unfortunately. Belle hadn’t only fed her people off of me, she’d been feeding off of Richard, too. I’d thought about that earlier in the day, but I hadn’t dreamed that he wouldn’t call his pack and have some of them near him, to strengthen himself on their collected energy. I hadn’t known that he would just let himself die. Because long before he got that bad he’d have known something was very wrong.

“Did he call you for help?” I asked, still leaning against the door.

“No, I needed to ask him about pack business, and I tried him at the school, but he’d called in sick. Then I called his house and got no answer. Anita, please, let us in.”

Mother fucking son of a bitch. I could not believe that I was having to do this. The man that had broken my heart, called me a monster was about to get soaked in my bathtub for God knew how long.

I unlocked the door and opened it with me behind, hiding, so I couldn’t be seen, or see.

Jamil eased through the door with Richard in his arms. It wasn’t weight that made it hard—Jamil could have bench-pressed the entire bathroom—it was that Richard was broad-shouldered, and Jamil wasn’t small himself.

I tried not to look at either of them, getting only a brief glimpse of Jamil’s cornrowed hair, bright red beads intertwined. His shirt was a red to match the beads, his suit jacket black. I didn’t take the time to see if his pants matched the jacket. I just started for the door, towels clutched to me.

“Can you turn on the water for me, Anita?” Jamil asked.

“No,” I said, and I fled.

26

I GOT DRESSED. I couldn’t remember if I’d gotten around to using shampoo on my hair, or only gotten it wet, and I didn’t care. I had an image of Richard’s face burned in my mind. Eyes closed, that perfectly square jaw with its dimple. But there had been no spill of that glorious hair around his shoulders. That wonderful hair that was brown shot with gold and copper, so that it almost glowed in the sunlight. He’d cut his hair. He’d cut his hair.

I remembered the feel of it in my hands, the silken slide of it over my body, the spill of it around his face when he rose over me. Richard lying underneath my body, his hair like a rich cloud on the pillow, as his eyes lost focus and his body thrust into mine.

I was sitting on the bed, crying, when there was a knock at the door. I had jeans on, but had only gotten to my bra. “Just a minute.” My voice was only a little thick.

I slipped the red T-shirt on over the black jeans. I started to say come in, then realized it could be Richard. Unlikely since he was unconscious minutes ago, but I couldn’t take the chance. “Who is it?”

“Nathaniel.”

“Come in.” I scrubbed at my eyes and had my back to the door, while I looked at my shoulder holster and tried to figure out what I’d done with my belt. I needed the belt to slide through the shoulder holster. Where the hell was my belt?

“The police are on the phone,” he said, voice quiet.

I just shook my head. “I can’t find my belt.”

“I’ll find it for you,” he said. I knew from his voice that he was farther into the room now. I hadn’t heard him move. It was like I wasn’t hearing everything, like I was losing pieces of things.

“What’s wrong with me?” I hadn’t actually meant to say it out loud.

“Richard’s here,” Nathaniel said, as if that explained it all.

I kept shaking my head, trying to run my hands through my wet hair. It was tangled. I hadn’t used shampoo, let alone conditioner. It was going to be a mess when it dried. “Fuck!”

He touched my shoulder, and I jerked away. “No, no, don’t be nice to me. If you’re nice I’ll cry.”

“Do you want me to be cruel, would that make you feel better?”

It was such an odd question that it made me look at him. He was still wearing the jogging shorts he’d left the room in, but he’d unbraided his hair and brushed it into a shining auburn curtain. A stray bit of sunlight gleamed in his hair. I knew what all that hair felt like rushing over my body. It was so thick, so heavy, that it made a sound like dry water when it cascaded around me. I’d always denied myself everything that Nathaniel could offer. I’d always backed off from enjoying every part of him. Jason’s words came back to haunt me. That I hadn’t really given myself completely to anyone. That I held back something from everyone. I’d held back huge chunks of myself from Nathaniel. More than any of the other men in my life, he was the one that I’d held back from the most, because I didn’t believe I was keeping him. Once I had the ardeur under control I wouldn’t need a pomme de sang every day. Once I could feed the ardeur from a distance like Jean-Claude could, I’d stop using a pomme de sang. Wouldn’t I?

He looked worried. “What’s wrong, Anita?”

I shook my head.

He took a step towards me, and that small movement sent his hair swirling over one shoulder. He gave a negligible flip of his head, sending it sliding back behind him.

I had to close my eyes, and breathe, in and out, concentrate on just breathing. I would not cry. I would not fucking cry again. Every time I thought Richard had gotten the last tears he’d ever get from me, I always seemed to be wrong. Every time I thought there was no other way he could tear me up, he found a new way. Nothing turns to hate so bitter as what once was love.

I opened my eyes and found Nathaniel close enough to touch. I stared into those compassionate lilac eyes, that soft, caring face, and I hated him. I don’t know why. But I hated him just a little. I hated him for not being someone else. I hated him for the hair that fell to his knees. I hated him because I didn’t love him. Or maybe I hated him because I did. But it wasn’t what I felt for Richard. I hated him, and I hated me. In that one instant I hated everyone in my life, everyone and everything, and me most of all.

“We are out of here,” I said.

He frowned. “What?”

“You, me, Jason, we’re out of here. I need to take Jason back to the Circus before Jean-Claude wakes up anyway. We’ll pack a bag, and we’ll give the house over to Richard.”

Nathaniel widened his eyes. “You mean to leave this house until Richard is gone?”

I nodded, maybe a little too fast, maybe a little too often, but I had a plan, and I was sticking to it.

“What will Micah say?”

I shook my head. “He can join us at the Circus.”

Nathaniel looked at me for a second, then he shrugged. “How long will we be there?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and looked away from him. He hadn’t protested, hadn’t accused me of cowardice. He just stuck to the facts. We were going. How long would we be gone?

“I’ll pack for a couple of days, if we need other things, I’ll come back for them.”

“You do that,” I said.

He moved towards the door, leaving me to stare around the room. “Your belt is at the foot of the bed.”

That made me look at him. There was something in his eyes, something older than he was, something that made me want to squirm and look away, but I was already running from Richard, I couldn’t run away from anything else. One act of extreme cowardice per day was about all my ego could handle.

“Thanks,” I said, and my voice sounded too soft, too hoarse, too something.

“Do you want me to pack a bag for you, too?” His face had fallen back into neutral lines, as if he’d realized the look in his eyes was too raw for me, right now.

“I can pack,” I said.

“I can pack for both of us, Anita, it’s not a problem.”

I started to argue, then stopped. I’d spent the last twenty minutes trying to find a belt that I’d probably walked over twice. If I packed in the state I was in, I’d probably forget to bring underwear. “Fine.”

“What do you want me to tell Sergeant Zerbrowski?” he asked.

“I’ll talk to him while you pack.”

Nathaniel nodded. “Okay.”

I took the time to tuck my shirt in, put my belt on, and thread my shoulder holster. I checked that the clip in my gun was full, automatically. I started to say something to Nathaniel and those old eyes in that young face, but I didn’t have anything worth saying. We were fleeing the house until Richard was gone. With that decision, I didn’t know what to say.

I left Nathaniel and went into the kitchen to get the phone, wondering if Zerbrowski would still be on the other end, or if his patience would have faded before my confusion had.

27

I ENTERED THE kitchen and found the phone on the hook, and Caleb sitting at the kitchen table. Caleb was my least favorite of the new leopards who had come in when Micah and I merged our pards. He was cute enough in a young, boy-hooker, MTV sort of way. Curly brown hair with the lower part shaved short, and the top a crown of thick curls that flopped over his eyes artfully. His tanned skin was dark, not quite as dark as his hair. The tan had faded a little in the few months he’d been in town. His eyes were a nice solid brown with a silver hoop piercing one eyebrow. His smooth upper body was naked so I could see his belly button piercing. I also noted that he’d added two new piercings—both nipples were pierced with tiny silver dumbbells. He routinely went around with the top button of his jeans unfastened, his explanation was that the waistband irritated the belly piercing. I didn’t believe him, but since I had never even pierced my ears, I couldn’t really call him a liar.

He kept one hand on the coffee cup, but the other one traced over his chest and rolled one of the little silver dumbbells between his fingers. “I had them done a couple weeks ago. Like them?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, and I didn’t care that it sounded hostile. I was having a hard day and having Caleb in my kitchen wasn’t going to improve it.

“Taking messages for you.” He hadn’t risen to my grumpy bait. It wasn’t like Caleb to miss an opportunity to bitch.

“What messages?”

He held out a small sheet of paper to me. His face was as neutral as he could manage, only that faint gleam in his eyes that he never quite lost. That look that said, I’m thinking wicked thoughts, about you.

I took a breath, let it out slowly, and went over to him to get the paper. I recognized the notepaper; it was one of the sheets we kept near the phone. Caleb held on to it for a second too long, making me pull a little, but he let it go and didn’t say anything irritating. That was almost a first.

I looked at the note. I didn’t recognize the writing, which probably meant it was Caleb’s. It was surprisingly neat, all block letters. “NO ONE’S DEAD. WHEN YOU HAVE TIME, CALL ME. DOLPH IS ON A TWO-WEEK LEAVE OF ABSENCE. LOVE ZERBROWSKI.” I must have raised an eyebrow at the end part, because Caleb said, “I wrote down exactly what the policeman said. I didn’t add anything.”

“I believe you. Zerbrowski thinks he’s a wit.” I met Caleb’s brown eyes. “Why are you here, Caleb?”

“Micah called me on his cell phone, told me to stay close to you today.” He didn’t look particularly happy about it.

“Did he mention why he wanted you to stay close to me today?”

Caleb frowned. “No.”

“And you dropped everything you had planned today to come baby-sit me, out of the goodness of your heart.”

He tried to keep frowning, then gradually that smile of his that matched the wicked light in his eyes emerged. It was an unpleasant smile, as if he was thinking unkind thoughts, and those thoughts amused him very, very much.

“Merle told me he’d hurt me if I failed Micah on this.”

Merle was Micah’s chief bodyguard, six foot of muscle, and attitude that would make a Hell’s Angel think twice. Caleb was about five six and soft in ways that said he had nothing to do with muscles.

I had to smile. “Merle’s threatened you before, and it hasn’t impressed you much.”

“That was before Chimera died. He liked me better than he liked Merle or Micah. I knew he’d protect me, no matter what Merle said.”

Chimera had been their old pard leader, in a way he’d been like the Godfather of lycanthrope groups. But he was dead now, and we’d divided his people up among ours. Most of them thought it was an improvement because Chimera had been a sexual sadist, a serial killer, and an all-round very bad man. But a few, who had enjoyed helping him mete out his little blood fantasies, seemed to miss Chimera. Since Chimera had been one of the scarier things I’d ever run into in a list that included would-be gods, and millenia-old vampires, I didn’t trust any of his people that were nostalgic for the good ol’ days. Caleb was one of those.

“Great, fine, glad you’re beginning to take orders like a good solider. Tell Micah when he comes back that I’ll be at the Circus of the Damned.”

“I’ll go with you.” He was already getting to his feet. He was barefoot. But of course, because it was Caleb, he was wearing a toe ring.

I shook my head. “No, you are staying here, give my message to Micah.”

“Merle was pretty explicit. I am to stay near you today, all day.”

I frowned. I had the beginnings of an awful idea. “You’re positive that neither Micah nor Merle told you why they wanted you to be glued to my side today?”

He shook his head, but he looked worried. I wondered for the first time if Merle had done more than just “talk” to him.

“What did Merle say would happen if you didn’t stay close to me?”

“He said he’d cut all my piercings with a knife, especially the newest one.” His voice didn’t sound the least bit like teasing. He sounded tired.

“Newest one? The nipples?” I said, and made it half question.

“No.” He shook his head.

His hands went to the top of his jeans and the already partially unbuttoned line. He undid a second button.

I held up my hand. “Stop, that’s plenty. I get the idea. You’ve pierced something . . . there.”

“I thought, why not, I’ll heal in a matter of days instead of weeks, or months for a human.”

I wanted to ask, Didn’t it really hurt? But since silver burned a lycanthrope’s skin, you had to be masochistic to get anything pierced. I’d asked one of the other leopards that was pierced, why not use gold? Answer: their bodies grew over the gold, healing over the wound. But they didn’t heal over silver.

“Thanks for over-sharing there, Caleb.”

There was a shadow of his usual smile, but mostly his eyes looked worried, almost scared. “I’m trying to do what I was told to do, that’s all.”

I sighed. One thing I hadn’t expected was to feel sorry for Caleb. Damn it I didn’t need another person to take care of right now. I was having enough trouble taking care of myself. “Fine, but Nathaniel and I are taking Jason back to the Circus so he’ll be there in time for Jean-Claude to wake up.”

“I’ll go with you.”

I just looked at him.

The worry bloomed to outright fear. “Anita, please, I know I’ve been a pain in the ass, but I’ll be good. I won’t cause any trouble.”

Had Micah really sent Caleb here in case the ardeur rose early? I disliked Caleb, intensely; did Micah really think I’d use him like that? Of course, the first time I’d met Micah I’d fed off of him. It had also been the very first time the ardeur rose, and my control had been nonexistent. I was better now, but what I’d done with Jason proved not that much better.

I’d complain to Micah about his choice of baby-sitters later, and he’d probably argue, if not Caleb, then who? For that, I didn’t have a good answer. Hell, I didn’t even have a bad answer.

28

WHEN MORE WOLVES arrived from Richard’s pack, and the screams started, I left. He had a half dozen baby-sitters. He did not need me. Hell, he didn’t even want me.

I didn’t know what to do for Richard anymore. I could help the pack as a whole, but helping Richard seemed beyond me. He needed healing, and I didn’t know how to do that. If you needed someone killed, or threatened, or even hurt, I was your girl. I did self-defense, murder wasn’t beyond me in a good cause, but suicide, I did not do that. Richard had let himself grow cold, his energy sucked away, and he hadn’t called for help. That was suicide, passive suicide maybe, but the intent was the same.

Jason drove. He pointed out that I’d had weird physical reactions all day, and it would be bad to have one of the fainting spells behind the wheel of the car. I replied that I’d fixed the reason for the fainting spells by putting crosses at the Circus. He’d countered with the fact that we weren’t one hundred percent sure that was the only reason I’d been fainting. Wouldn’t caution be better? With that, I couldn’t argue. My pride was not worth crashing the Jeep with three other people in it. If it had only been my skin at stake I’d have probably taken my chances. I was usually more cautious of other people’s safety than my own.

The fact that all three were lycanthropes and would probably survive a wreck better than I would had nothing to do with it. If you throw the furry through a windshield, do they not still bleed?

We were on Highway 21 turning onto 270, when I smelled roses. “Do you smell that?” I asked.

Jason glanced at me, his hair still damp from the shower, his white T-shirt dark in spots from water as if he’d dried in a hurry and missed places. “What did you say?”

“Roses, I smell roses.”

He glanced behind us at Nathaniel and Caleb. Nathaniel I’d invited. Caleb had nearly cried when I didn’t want to bring him. Whatever Merle had said to him had well and truly scared him.

I could taste the sweet, cloying perfume on the back of my tongue. And no one could smell it but me. Shit.

Belle Morte’s voice whispered through my head, “Did you truly believe you could escape me?”

“I did escape you.”

“What?” Jason asked.

I shook my head, concentrating on the voice in my head, and the thickening scent of roses.

“You did not escape, you fed me, and you will feed me again, and again, until I am sated.”

“Jean-Claude says you’re never sated.”

She laughed in my head, and it was like having the inside of my skull rubbed with fur, as if she could touch things with her voice that no one should have touched with their hands. That purring, contralto laugh rolled through my body, raising goosebumps along my skin.

I had an image, a memory in my head. There was a huge bed, and a mass of bodies on it. It was a jumble of arms, legs, chests, groins, all male. Then one man raised up, only his upper body, and I glimpsed Belle underneath him. He lowered his body and she vanished from view. It was like watching a nest of snakes, so much movement, disconnected in the candlelit dark, as if each limb were something separate and alive without the body. Belle’s arm rose above the mass of bodies, then she swam her way to the top, peeled the men from her naked body, until she stood in the midst of them, their hands reaching up to her, pleading with her. She had released the ardeur upon them, and fed, and fed, and fed, until she rose from the mass of flesh glowing with power, her eyes so bright with dark flames that they cast shadows as she half stepped, half floated from the bed. One man’s body had fallen to the floor, forgotten. He lay very still as she stalked nude and ripe with curves, glowing with power. She walked over the body of the man who had given everything to satisfy her needs, while the other men reached for her, begged for her not to stop. The men began to rise to their knees, or fall off the bed in an effort to follow. At least two other bodies lay on the bed forever still, forever gone. Three of them dead, loved to death, and still the others begged her for more, still they tried to stand and follow her.

I knew it was Jean-Claude that she had tied to a chair and made watch. I knew it was him, and not me, that watched her with fearful, hungry eyes. But when she walked past him, without so much as a caress, I choked on his despair. Part of his punishment for daring to leave her.

“Anita, Anita,” the voice seemed distant. Someone touched my shoulder, I gasped, and was brought back blinking, breath harsh in my throat. I was still seat-belted into the Jeep. We were still on 270, about to turn onto 44. I wasn’t tied to a chair, I wasn’t in Belle’s lair, I was safe. But the sweet scent of roses clung to me like some kind of evil perfume.

Jason had been calling my name, but it was Nathaniel’s hand on my shoulder. “Are you alright?” Jason asked.

I nodded, then shook my head. “Belle’s messing with me.”

Nathaniel squeezed my shoulder. I had opened my mouth to say, maybe you shouldn’t be touching me right now, when the ardeur roared through me. The heat rushed over my skin in beads of sweat, brought my pulse pounding, rising like some ripe fruit to fill my throat, stop my breath, so for a moment I was drowning in the beat and pulse of my own body. I could hear my blood like a roaring flood. I could feel every pulse, every drop to the tingling tips of my fingers and toes. I had never been so aware of how very much blood was coursing through my veins as in that one heart-stopping moment.

I put my hand over Nathaniel’s where it still gripped my shoulder. His skin was so warm, almost hot. I turned towards him. I looked into those lavender eyes, and just the intensity of my gaze, drew him closer, close enough to rest his cheek against my seat. I had enough left of me inside my head to think, dimly, he must have undone his seat belt, but there wasn’t enough left of me to care for his safety. All I could think was that it brought him closer to me, and I wanted him closer.

“Anita,” Jason’s voice, “Anita, what the hell is happening? My skin is crawling with whatever it is, it feels like the ardeur. But it’s not.”

I never took my gaze from Nathaniel’s face. Jason’s voice was like a buzzing insect, noise, something I heard, but didn’t really listen to.

I lifted Nathaniel’s hand from my shoulder and pulled it gently against my lips. His hand cupped the lower part of my face, my breath was warm against him, and the heat of it brought the scent of him to me. His hands smelled not only of warmth, and blood, but of everything he’d touched that day. Faint traces that soap could not erase completely. His hands smelled of life, and I wanted it.

“Anita, talk to me,” Jason said.

“What’s happening?” Caleb asked, “why is it hard to breathe in the car?”

“Power,” Jason said, “I don’t know what kind yet.”

I pulled Nathaniel’s hand past my face, until my lips glided over his wrist, and there, there, just under the skin was a new warmth.

I flicked my tongue across the skin of his wrist, and he shuddered.

“Anita!” Jason said.

I could hear him, but it was utterly unimportant. The only thing that was important was the warmth of skin, and that faint pulse just below. I opened my mouth wide, lips pulled back to taste that pulse.

The Jeep swerved violently, throwing Nathaniel backwards and to one side, tearing his hand from me. He landed in Caleb’s lap.

I looked at Jason then, really looked at him. In the back of my mind I knew it was Jason, but in the front of my mind, all I could really see was the pulse in the side of his neck. It beat against his skin like a trapped thing. I knew I could free it, make it rush red and hot into my mouth.

I unbuckled my seat belt. That froze me for a second, because I was fanatic about seat belt safety. My mother would be alive today if she’d used hers. I never rode in a moving car without one. Never. So deep rooted was that fear, it pushed Belle back, pushed back the blood lust she’d raised in me.

I found my voice, hoarse and strange, but mine, “I thought it was the ardeur she raised, but it’s not.”

“Blood lust,” Jason said.

I nodded, my hands still frozen on the unbuckled seat belt.

“Blood lust feels like the ardeur, but not. Sometimes you don’t know which lust it is until you find out if he’s going for your neck, or your groin.”

I blinked at Jason. “What did you just say?” I never heard the answer, if there was one, Belle roared back through me, and I was suddenly more concerned with the beating of his pulse in his neck, than the fact that his mouth was moving. I heard no sound except that overwhelming thunder of my own blood, my own heart, my own throbbing, pulsing body.

I was sliding over the front seat towards him, and hadn’t remembered moving, or wanting to. He hit the wheel again, sending me back across the car against the far door. The moment my back hit the door I could hear the angry honking of horns, as the Jeep slid through traffic, sideways. Then it evened out, going straight again. Jason was giving me wide eyes.

“I can’t drive with you feeding on me.”

My voice was thick, “I don’t think I care.” I sat up, my hands on the seat to keep him from throwing me against the door again.

“Nathaniel, Caleb, keep her away from me until I can find a safe place to pull over.”

I was awkwardly straddling the gearshift when Nathaniel put his arm in front of my face. He didn’t try and touch me, but held his wrist close enough for me to smell the warmth of his skin, then he slowly drew his arm back into the backseat, and I followed, sliding between the seats, following the pull of his flesh, like there was a line tied from him to me.

I spilled into the backseat. Nathaniel was sitting on his side of the seat now. I knelt over his body, straddling him. I could feel him stretched tight inside his shorts even through my jeans, but today that wasn’t nearly as important as the smooth line of his throat. He’d braided his hair before we left, so that his neck was bare.

The Jeep swerved again, and I fell onto the floorboard, at Caleb’s feet. We’d been lucky so far to avoid an accident or the concrete median on the road. Our luck would run out, and I wasn’t sure I cared.

“If you can’t take sex from Nathaniel yet, I don’t think you should take blood. He’s still weak.” I heard Jason’s voice, as though it were coming from far away.

I stared up at what sat above me, his jean-clad legs brushing my body. For sex, Caleb wasn’t desirable, but for blood . . . I came to my knees between his legs, and began to pull myself up Caleb’s body, fingers digging into the jeans, feeling the flesh underneath.

My hands slid under his untucked, button-up shirt with its loud comic book pictures. His skin was so warm. My fingers slid upward, touching the ring in his belly button. I hesitated there, tracing the edge of the metal ring, pulling on it gently, feeling the skin stretch, until he made a small sound of protest. I stared up into his face, and whatever he saw there widened his eyes, made his lips part in a small ooh of surprise.

I traced my fingers up his stomach, his chest, my arms lost under the oversized shirt, until when my hands slid over his shoulders, the shirt began to raise exposing his stomach. The sight of that bare skin began to raise other hungers, for flesh instead of merely blood. But Belle roared down that metaphysical leash she’d attached to me, and the beast receded before it had truly risen. She wanted me to want what she wanted, and in that moment I knew that though she had animals to call, she did not share their beast, their craving of flesh. The thought was too rational, and the leash loosened and I could think for myself.

“Why do you care if I take blood or flesh, you can feed off both energies? You’ve been feeding on Richard all day.” I asked.

“Perhaps I am tired of flesh.”

I had a flash, as if I read her thought. “You couldn’t make Richard feed. He fought you all day, let you suck him dry, but you couldn’t make him attack anyone else.”

Her anger was like hot metal shoved against my skin. It bowed my back, brought a gasp from my throat. Caleb grabbed my arms, or I would have collapsed.

Belle’s voice purred through my head, “The loup was surprisingly strong, but he is not my animal to call, nor is he attracted to the dead, but you are, ma petite, oh, yes, you are.” Her power poured over me, but it wasn’t the heat of blood lust, it was cold, the coldness of the grave. The moment the energy touched me, my own power flared to life, that part of me that raised the dead. It flared inside me as if Belle’s cold energy was some sort of fuel for my own cool fire. “You are mine, ma petite, mine in ways that the loup cannot imagine. His connection to the dead is accidental, yours was fated from the moment you were born.”

Her power was the power of the grave, of death itself, but so was mine. She meant to prove a point, but she’d wakened my necromancy, and she was just another kind of dead. I knew how to handle the dead.

I drew a breath, drawing in my own magic, getting ready to cast her out. I’d done it before. But her chill changed to heat before I could finish that breath. The blood lust washed my magic away, drowned it in a flood of need.

Her voice dripped across my skin like warm honey, as if the dark-power of her eyes had melted across my skin. “The power of the grave is yours to control, but not the power of desire. Desire, in all its forms, is mine to control.”

If I’d had air to breathe, I would have screamed; but there was no air, and no sight for a swimming, dizzying moment. But I was drowning in sounds, blood rushing through my body, my heart wet and thudding, my pulse like a second heartbeat in a thousand places under my skin. I could hear, and I could feel.

I could feel Caleb’s chest under my hands, feel the roughness of the hair that traced the edge of his nipples, and finally the nipples themselves, growing hard and firm under my fingers. The tiny metal barbells that pierced them were a distraction. I wanted to roll his nipples between my fingertips, and the metal interfered. Like a toothpick in your sandwich, they got in the way. I had a moment where Belle thought about ripping them out, and that was so not my thought that it helped me crawl back into my own head, at least a little.

When my vision cleared, Caleb’s eyes were unfocused, his lips half-parted. Through me, it was almost as if Belle herself touched him, and her touch spread lust, lust of every kind.

I was in my own head, my own skin, but Belle’s hunger was inside me, too, and I couldn’t push it out. She was right; the blood hunger was not death.

I tore my arms through Caleb’s shirt, popping the buttons loose, baring his upper body. When I channeled Jean-Claude’s blood lust, I was always attracted to neck, wrist, bend of the arm, sometimes the inside of the groin, all nice major arteries or veins, but Belle didn’t look high, or low. She gazed at Caleb’s chest like it was a prime piece of steak, cooked just right.

My own logic tried to argue. There were other places where there was more blood, much closer to the surface. The sheer surprise of not going for someplace more usual helped me push her back.

Caleb’s voice came heavy, “Why did you stop?”

“I don’t think it’s sex she’s wanting,” Nathaniel said, voice quiet.

His voice turned my gaze to him. If what was driving me had been the ardeur, it might have been enough to have me crawl to him. But Nathaniel was right, this wasn’t about sex, this was about food, and Nathaniel wasn’t food. Did that mean that Caleb was food? Not a pretty thought.

“What do you mean?” Caleb asked.

I gazed up at Caleb’s bare chest, that young, half-finished face. He looked so puzzled. I said it out loud, though I wasn’t talking to anyone in the car. “He doesn’t understand.”

Belle’s whisper, “He will soon enough.”

“It looks like it’s your turn to take one for the team,” Jason’s voice from the front.

“What?”

“You’re going to get munched on,” Jason said.

The combination of my own moral dilemma with the fact that Belle had picked an odd spot for taking blood, one that just didn’t make sense to me, was helping me swim to the surface. I knelt back in the floorboard, pulling a little free of Caleb’s body.

“No,” I said out loud, and none of the men answered me, as if they’d all caught up to the fact that I wasn’t really talking to any of them.

Belle’s voice in my head. “I have been gentle until now, ma petite.”

“I am not your ma petite, so stop fucking calling me that.”

“If you will not take kindness from me, then I will cease to offer it.”

“If this is your idea of kindness, then I’d hate to see . . .” I never finished the thought, because Belle showed me that indeed she had been kind.

She didn’t roll over me, she crashed into me, in a mind-numbing, breath-stealing, heart-stopping, swat of power. For an instant, or for an eternity, I hung suspended. The Jeep was gone, Caleb was gone, I couldn’t see, or feel, or be. It was neither light, nor dark, nor up, nor down. I’d had near-death experiences, I’d fainted before, passed out, but that moment when Belle’s power fell through me, that was the closest to true nothingness that I’d ever experienced.

Into that nothingness, that void, Belle’s voice fell, “Jean-Claude has begun the dance, but he has left it unfinished between you, the wolf, and himself. He has allowed sentiment to cloud his judgment. It makes me question how well I taught him.”

I tried to speak but couldn’t remember where my mouth was, or how to draw a breath. I couldn’t remember how to answer her.

“I discovered this with the wolf, but could not mend it, for he is not my animal to call. I do not understand dogs, and a wolf is very much a dog.” Her voice whispered through me, low and lower, trembling through my body, but for her voice to dance through my body, I had to have a body for her to use. I fell back into my body as if falling from a great height. I was left gasping on the floorboards, eyes staring up at Caleb’s startled face and Nathaniel’s worried one.

Belle’s voice glided through my body like a knowledgeable hand. I suddenly knew who had trained Jean-Claude to use his voice as a tool of seduction. “But you, ma petite, I understand you.”

I drew a deep, quaking breath and it hurt all the way to my chest, as if I’d gone a long time without breathing. My voice came hoarse, “What are you talking about?”

“The fourth mark, ma petite, without the fourth mark, you are not truly Jean-Claude’s. It is like the difference between engagement and marriage; one is permanent, the other not necessarily so.”

I understood what she meant a second before I saw two dancing honey-colored flames appear in the air over me. I knew it was the second mark because I’d had the second mark three times before; twice from Jean-Claude, and once from a vampire I’d killed. I’d never been able to protect myself from it before. I knew from experience that nothing physical would save me. It wasn’t something you could hit, or shoot. I hated things you couldn’t hit or shoot. But I had other skills now that weren’t exactly physical.

I reached down that long metaphysical cord to Jean-Claude. Belle’s voice floated over me, she was delaying her moment, drawing out her pleasure and my fear. “Jean-Claude is hours dead, he cannot help you.”

The dark flames of her eyes began to descend, like some evil angel coming to eat my soul. I did the only thing I could think to do. I reached down the other half of our metaphysical cord. I reached out to a place that hadn’t helped me for months. I reached out to Richard.

I had an image of Richard in the hot bath water, cradled in Jamil’s arms. Richard looked up as if he could see me. He whispered my name, but either he was too weak to push me away, or he didn’t try. For a moment, it was as if it was meant to be, then I was yanked back, shoved into my own head, my own body again. Richard hadn’t cast me out this time. Dark honey flames hovered over my face, and there was a vague outline, a ghost of long dark hair, the mist of a face.

Caleb was yelling, “What’s in the car with us? I can’t see anything, but I can feel it. What the fuck is it?”

Nathaniel’s voice came hushed, and strangely loud, “Belle Morte.”

I had no time to look up, to see the others, because those phantom lips were speaking. “I will not allow you to gain strength from your wolf. I have given you the first mark and you did not even know it. I will give you the second mark here and now, and tonight with Musette as my proxy I will give you the third. When Jean-Claude and I are equal within you, three for three, then you will come to me, ma petite. You will travel the world if I ask it, do anything, simply to taste my sweet blood.”

That phantom mouth lowered towards mine. I knew somehow that if she laid a ghostly kiss on me that I would be hers. I did what I always did, I tried to hit at that face, and there was nothing to touch. I screamed wordlessly, and sent out a metaphysical cry, “Help me!”

Suddenly, I could smell forest, trees, fresh-turned earth, wet leaves underfoot, and the sweet musk of wolf.

Belle could stop me from reaching out to Richard, but she couldn’t keep him from reaching out to me.

Richard’s power rose like a sweet-scented cloud above me, pushing back those glowing eyes, that phantom mouth.

She laughed, and it slid over my body, made me shudder, my breath catch in my throat. It felt so good, so good, even while my head screamed that it was bad.

“Did you hear someone laugh?” Caleb asked it.

Jason said no. Nathaniel said yes.

Belle whispered along my skin, and even Richard’s power breathing against my body couldn’t keep her voice out. “With the touch of your wolf’s flesh, you might keep me at bay, but not from a distance. The closer the flesh, the closer the ties, and the more powerful. You are already mine, ma petite, you cannot win free of me.” Those eyes began to float lower again. Richard’s power rose above me like a soft shield. Belle’s power floated on the surface of that energy like a leaf on a pond, then she began to push into it, through it.

“Help me!” I screamed it out loud to everyone, anyone, and no one. I felt Nathaniel’s hand on mine, and that phantom kiss did hesitate, did turn and look at Nathaniel. I felt her call him, like a deep thrumming down my bones. Leopard had been her first animal to call. If she owned me, she’d own my pard.

Nathaniel reached out his free hand as if he could see her.

“No!” I jerked free of him and the moment I broke physical contact it was as if Nathaniel was less real to her. She turned those dark-honey eyes back to me.

“I will have them all, ma petite, eventually.”

“No,” I said it, but my voice was soft, because I believed she was right.

“You will give them to me, all of them.”

Fear poured through me as if I’d been plunged into ice water. The thought of what Belle would do to my pard, my friends. No, I could not let this happen.

“Fuck you, fuck you, Belle, and the horse you rode in on.” My anger, my fear, seemed to feed Richard’s power. The sweet, nose-wrinkling musk of wolf was so thick it was like being wrapped in invisible fur.

The Jeep slewed to one side. The angry honking of horns and squealing brakes followed it. Jason had given up on finding a safe place and just stopped against the concrete median. Nathaniel and Caleb were thrown across the seat and into the passenger side doors. I didn’t have time to worry about the fact that no one seemed to be wearing their damn seat belts.

Belle’s eyes pushed through Richard’s power. It wasn’t effortless. He made her work for every inch, but those burning eyes, that ghostly outline got closer, closer . . . until I held my breath as if afraid, if I breathed in too hard it would bring her against my mouth.

I caught movement from the corner of my eye. Jason was between the seats. He’d stopped the Jeep, thrown off his seat belt. He shoved his hand through the ghost thing above me, as if he couldn’t see it. He grabbed my shoulder and the moment he touched me, Richard’s beast welled up inside me. I’d always thought it was my beast that moved through me, but this, whatever this was, was Richard, not me.

His wolf poured into me like scalding water rushing into a cup, filling me to the brim, emptying my skin of leopard or death, until my spine bowed, my hands flailed, my mouth opened in a soundless scream. I could feel fur rubbing inside my body, strong nails, digging. The wolf was struggling to find some way out of my body.

Belle hissed at me like some great ghostly cat. The eyes retreated, hovering in the air near the Jeep roof, as Jason pulled me into the front seat and cradled me against his body. His closeness seemed to quiet the wolf, so that I felt it sit, panting, eager-eyed, staring up at the shape by the ceiling with hungry, arrogant eyes. Jason’s eyes were his wolf’s eyes, and today they seemed perfect for his face. But it was Richard’s power, the power of the Thronnos Rokke clan that wrapped around both of us. I had never felt Richard’s beast so thick inside me. It was as if I was a purse, a bag, holding his beast, feeling it pace inside me as if my flesh were a cage it could not escape from.

Belle’s voice floated down upon us, and this time it stung, hot with her anger. “You can ride all day in the arms of your wolf, but there is still the banquet tonight. Musette will be there, and through her, ma petite, I will be there.”

My voice came out with a low edge of growl, “I am not your ma petite.”

“You will be,” she said, and the eyes slowly faded, until only the lingering scent of roses remained to remind me that we’d won this round, but there would be others. Jean-Claude’s memories knew Belle too well to think otherwise. She would never give up, not once she decided to own something, or someone. Belle Morte had decided that I would be hers. Jean-Claude had never known her to change her mind about something like that. That was so unfair, wasn’t it a lady’s prerogative to change her mind? Of course, Belle wasn’t exactly a lady.

She was a two-thousand-year-old vampire, and they weren’t known for changing their minds, their habits, or their goals. The last time a Master Vamp had come to town and tried to steal me from Jean-Claude, I’d ended up in a coma for a week. Richard had gotten his throat torn out, and Jean-Claude had nearly died for real. Vampires were always either trying to kill me, or own me. God I hated being popular.

29

NATHANIEL HAD GOTTEN one of the extra crosses out of the glove compartment. I always carried spare crosses, just like spare ammo; when you hunt vampires, running out of either one is really bad. It was sheer stupidity on my part to have put crosses around the Circus of the Damned, but not on me. Some days I’m just slow.

I was back in the front seat, but I was shaking. No, that didn’t quite cover it. There was a fine tremble in my hands; small muscles in my body kept twitching at odd moments. I was cold, and it was one of those glorious end of summer days, sun-warmed, sparkling, bright, and soft at the same time. We drove through a wash of blue sky, and sunshine, and I was cold—a cold that no amount of blankets was really going to help.

Nathaniel was curled over my lower body like a living blanket, wedged between my legs and the floorboard. I’d bitched about how dangerous it was, but I hadn’t complained too much. I didn’t have any real blankets in the car. I was spending so much time in shock lately, I’d have to remedy that. The trees along 44 had given way to houses and an occasional old school being rehabbed into apartments, churches, buildings of no discernable use, but old, tired. OK, maybe that last was just me.

I stroked my hand over Nathaniel’s head, over and over, on the warm silk of his hair. His head in my lap, his arms wrapped around my waist, his body wedged between my legs. Sometimes Nathaniel made me think about sex, but sometimes, like now it was just comfort. Just closeness. You can’t have that with most people, because they’re busy thinking about sex. I think that’s why dogs are so damn popular. You can cuddle a dog as much as you like and the dog never thinks about sex, or pushing your social boundaries in any way, unless you happen to be eating. Dogs will invade your social boundaries for table scraps, unless trained to do otherwise. But hey, it’s a dog, not a person in a fur suit. Right now, what I needed was a pet, not a person. Nathaniel could be both. An uncomfortable, but truthful fact.

Jason drove. Caleb had the backseat to himself. No one spoke. I don’t think anyone knew what to say. I wanted Jean-Claude awake. I wanted to tell him what Belle had done. I wanted him to tell me there was a way to keep her from doing anything else, short of giving me the fourth mark. The fourth mark would make me ageless and immortal as long as Jean-Claude didn’t die. Theoretically, he could live forever, and with the fourth mark, so could I. So why had I refused it so far? One, it scared me. I wasn’t sure as a Christian how I felt about living forever. I mean, what happened to heaven, and God, and the judgment thing? Theologically, what would it mean? On a more mundane level, how much closer would it bind me to Jean-Claude? He could already invade my dreams, what would it mean if I took that last step? Or was refusing the fourth mark just another way to not give myself completely to anyone? Maybe. But if the only way to keep Belle from taking me was to let Jean-Claude have me, I knew which choice I was making. I wondered, if I called my priest now, could he get back to me on the theological implications of the fourth mark before full dark tonight? Father Mike had answered questions equally as weird for me over the years.

“Anita,” Jason said, and his voice held a note of anxiety.

I glanced at him and realized he’d probably been trying to get my attention for a while. “Sorry, thinking too hard.”

“I think we’re being followed.”

That raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“When I nearly caused the four-car pileup so I could touch you, I caught a glimpse of a car in the rearview. It was close, like tailgating close. It was one of the cars that nearly hit us when I slammed on the brakes.”

“So, we’re in heavy traffic, a lot of people tailgate.”

“Yeah, but everyone else that was close to us when I stopped got away from us as fast as they could. This car is still behind us.”

I glanced in the side mirror, and saw a dark blue Jeep. “Are you sure it’s the same car?”

“I didn’t get a number, but it’s the same make, same color, and there are two men in it, one dark-haired, one blond with glasses.”

I studied the Jeep that seemed to be following our Jeep. Two men, one dark, one light; it could have been a coincidence. Of course, maybe it wasn’t.

“Let’s go on the theory that it is following us,” I said.

“What?” Jason said, “I lose them?”

“No,” I said, “cut across traffic and take the first exit as long as it doesn’t take us to the Circus. I don’t want to lead them to Jean-Claude.”

“Almost every monster in St. Louis knows that the Master of the City’s lair is under the Circus of the Damned,” Jason said, but he changed lanes, moving us a little closer to the exit row.

“But the guys behind us don’t know that that’s where we’re headed.”

He shrugged and moved over two more lanes, setting up for the exit. The blue Jeep waited until we were actually exiting with two cars between us before it crossed over. If we hadn’t been watching for it, or there had been a taller car between our Jeep and theirs, I wouldn’t have seen them exit. But I was, and there wasn’t, and I did.

“Shit,” I said, but I was feeling warmer. Nothing like action to ground and center a person.

“Who are these guys?” Jason asked out loud what I was wondering.

Caleb glanced behind. “Why would someone be following us?”

“Reporters?” Jason made the word a question.

“I don’t think so,” I said. I’d lost sight of everything but the top of the Jeep floating above the car roofs behind us.

“Which way do I turn?” He’d come to the bottom of the exit ramp.

I shook my head. “I don’t know, dealer’s choice.” Who were they? Why follow us? Usually when people start following me I know that I’m into something. Today, I had no clue. Neither of the current cases that I was helping RPIT with should have had people following me. I wished they were reporters, but the situation didn’t have that feel to it.

Jason turned right. One car turned left, one turned right, and the Jeep pulled in behind it. There were little flags on the street signs, Italian flags with the words, “The Hill,” on them. People on The Hill always let you know you were there and they loved their Italian heritage. Even the fire hydrants were painted green, red, and white like the flags.

Nathaniel raised his head off my thigh enough to say, “Is it Belle?”

“What?” I asked, vision still glued to the side mirror.

“Are they daytime help for Belle?” he asked in his quiet voice.

I thought about that. I’d never run into a vamp that had more than one human servant, but I’d run into several that had more than one Renfield. Renfield is what most American vamps called humans that served them not through mystical connections, but because they acted as blood donors and wanted to be vampires themselves. Back when I hunted vampires and didn’t sleep with them, I’d called all humans associated with vamps human servants, now I knew better.

“They could be Renfields, I guess.”

“What’s a Renfield?” Caleb asked. He was turned in the seat looking directly back at the car between us and the blue Jeep.

“Turn around, Caleb. When that car turns off I don’t want the Jeep to know we’ve noticed them.”

He turned around immediately without arguing, which was unusual for Caleb. I didn’t approve of threatening people to gain their obedience, but there were some that nothing else seemed to work with. Maybe he was one of them.

I explained what a Renfield was.

“Like the guy in Dracula who ate insects,” Caleb said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Cool,” he said, and seemed to mean it.

I’d once asked Jean-Claude what they called Renfields before the release of the book Dracula in 1897. Jean-Claude had said, “Slaves.” He’d probably been kidding, but I’d never had the heart to ask again.

The car behind us pulled into one of the narrow driveways. The blue Jeep was suddenly revealed. I forced myself to not look directly at it and only use the side mirror, but it was hard. I wanted to turn around and stare. Knowing that I shouldn’t made it all the more tempting.

There was nothing ominous about the Jeep, or even the two men visible in it. They both had short hair, clean, well groomed; the Jeep was even shiny and clean. The only thing ominous was the fact that they were still behind us. Then . . . it turned into a narrow driveway. Just like that, not a threat.

“Shit,” I said.

“Ditto,” Jason said, but I saw his shoulder sag, as if tension drained away with that one word.

“Are we becoming too paranoid?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Jason said, but he was still spending almost as much time staring back in the rearview mirror as straight ahead, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. Neither could I, so I didn’t tell him to watch the road. He was watching forward okay, and I, too, was expecting the blue Jeep to pull out and start after us again. Just a ruse, guys, not really harmless after all. But it didn’t happen. We drove down the long car-crowded street, until the Jeep’s driveway was hidden by trees and parked cars.

“Looks like it was just driving our way,” Jason said.

“Looks like,” I said.

Nathaniel rubbed his face against my leg. “You still smell scared, like you don’t believe it.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

“Why not?” Caleb asked, leaning in between the seats from the backseat.

I finally turned around in the seat, but I wasn’t looking at Caleb, I was staring past him at the empty street. “Experience,” I said.

I smelled roses, and a second later the cross around my neck began to glow, softly.

“Jesus,” Jason whispered.

My heart was thumping painfully in my chest, but my voice came solid. “She can’t roll me while I’m wearing a cross.”

“You sure of that?” Caleb asked it, as he moved back away from me into the far reaches of the seat.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m sure of that.”

“Why?” he asked, eyes wide.

I blinked at him as the soft, white luminosity grew brighter in the tree shadows, almost invisible in full sunlight, over and over again. “Because I believe,” I said, voice soft as the glow around my neck, and as sure. I’d seen crosses burst into a white-hot light so bright it was blinding, but that was when I’d been face-to-face with a vamp that meant me harm. Belle was far away, and the glow showed that.

I kept waiting for the scent of roses to grow stronger again, but it never did. It stayed faint, definitely there, but didn’t grow on the air.

I waited for Belle’s voice in my head, but it didn’t come. Every time she had spoken directly in my mind, the smell of roses had been thick. The sweet perfume stayed faint, and Belle’s voice was gone from me. I squeezed the cross with my hand, feeling the heat, the power of it, skin prickling up my arm, thrumming like a continuous heartbeat against my hand. Caleb asked how could I believe. What I always wanted to ask, is, how can you not believe?

I felt Belle’s anger like warmth on the air. Power filled the Jeep, in a neck-ruffling, breath-stealing tide, so much effort and all she could send was an image of herself sitting in front of her dressing table. Her long, black hair was unbound, like a cloak around a dressing gown of gold and black. She watched herself in the mirror with eyes full of honey-fire, like the eyes of the blind, empty except for the color of her power.

I whispered out loud, “You cannot touch me, not now.”

She looked into the mirror as if I were standing behind her, and she could see me. Rage changed her beauty into something frightening, a mere mask of pale beauty that looked as false as any Halloween mask. Then she turned and looked past me, beyond me, and the look of fear on her face was so real, so unexpected that I turned, too, and I saw . . . something.

Darkness. Darkness like a wave, rising up, up over me, over us, like a liquid mountain towering to the impossibly tall sky. The room that Belle had constructed of dreams and power collapsed, shredded like the dream it was, and what ate at the corners of that bright candlelit room was darkness. Darkness absolute, darkness so black that it held shines of other colors, like an oil slick, or a trick of the eye. As if this blackness was a darkness made up of every color that had ever existed, every sight that had ever been seen, every sigh, every scream, since time began. I had heard the term primordial darkness, but until this moment I had never understood what it meant. Now I understood, I truly understood, and I despaired.

I stared up, up at an ocean of darkness that rose above me as if the earth and sky had never existed. This was darkness before the light, before the word of God. It was like a breath of an older creation. But if this was creation, it was nothing I could understand, nothing I wanted to understand.

Belle screamed first. I think I was too awestruck to scream, or even to be afraid. I looked into the primordial abyss, the first darkness, and knew despair, but not fear.

My mind kept trying to find words to describe what it was. It did loom over me like a mountain, because it had weight and that claustrophobic feel of a mountain poised to come crashing down, but it was not a mountain. It was more like an ocean, if an ocean could have risen up taller than the tallest mountain and stood before you, waiting, defying gravity and every other known law of physics. Like with an ocean, I knew—could sense—that I only saw that wide glimpse from shore, that I could only begin to guess at the depth and width, the unthinkable fathoms of darkness that lay before me.

Did strange creatures swim inside it? Were there things within the dark that only nightmares or dreams could reveal? I watched the flickering, liquid dark and felt the numbness of despair begin to wear away. It was as if the despair had been a shield to protect me, to numb me, so that my mind wouldn’t break. For a few moments I had been intellect, thinking, What is it? How can I make sense of it? The numbness began to recede as if that huge blackness sucked it away, fed on it. I was left standing before her, her . . . trembling, shaking, my skin running cold, and I felt that darkness sucking at me, feeding off my warmth. In that moment I knew what I faced. It was a vampire. Maybe the very first vampire, something so ancient, that to think of human bodies or flesh to contain this darkness was laughable. She was the primordial dark made real. She was why humans feared the dark, just the darkness, not what lies in the dark, not what hides there, but why we fear the darkness itself. There was a time when she walked among us, fed on us, and when darkness falls, somewhere in the back of our skulls, we remember the hungry dark.

That shining ocean of blackness reached out towards me, and I knew that if it touched me, I would die. I couldn’t turn away, couldn’t run, because you can’t run from the dark, not really. The light does not last. That last thought wasn’t mine. Wasn’t Belle’s.

I stared up at the darkness as it began to bend over me, and knew it lied. It’s the dark that doesn’t last. Dawn comes and slays the darkness, not the other way around. If I could have found enough air, I would have screamed, but I was left with only a whisper. The darkness bent towards me, and I couldn’t shoot it, or hit it, and I didn’t have enough personal psychic power to keep her at bay. I did the only thing I could think of, I prayed.

I whispered, “Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee . . .” the darkness hesitated, “Blessed are you among women, and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb,” the faintest of shivers ran through the liquid dark, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us . . .” There was suddenly light in the darkness. My cross was around my neck in the dreamscape. The metal shone like a captive star, shining and white, and unlike in real life, I could see beyond the brilliance of it. I watched that pure, white light chase back the dark.

I was suddenly aware of the car seat, the seat belt across my chest, Nathaniel’s body wrapped around my legs. The cross around my neck was glowing hot white even in sunlight, so that I had to look away from it, and still the white, white light blurred my vision. The cross wouldn’t have still been burning if the danger had past. I waited for the Mother of all Darkness to make her next move.

The air in the Jeep was suddenly soft, sweet, like the perfect summer night, when you can smell every blade of grass, every leaf, every flower, like a scented blanket that wraps you in air softer than cashmere, lighter than silk, a sweet blanket of air.

My throat suddenly felt cooler, as if I’d taken a sip of cold water. I could feel it coating my throat, and there was a faint under-taste, like jasmine.

Nathaniel buried his face in my lap to protect his eyes from the light. It was like wearing a white sun around my neck.

“Shit,” Jason said, “I’m having trouble seeing the road. Can you tone it down?”

The world was full of white halos, and I didn’t dare turn my head to look at him. The scent of night was all I could smell as if everything else had vanished. I could almost redrink the cool, perfumed water that coated my throat. So real, so overwhelmingly real. I managed to whisper, “No.”

I kept waiting for words in my head, but there was nothing but silence, and the smell of a summer night, the taste of cool water, and the growing sense that something large was drawing nearer. It was like standing on the train tracks, when you feel that first vibration down the metal lines, and you know you should get off, but you can’t see anything. As far as you can look, the tracks are clear, there’s only that metallic vibration, like a pulse beat against your feet, to let you know that several tons of steel are hurtling towards you. People die every year on train tracks, and often their dying words are I didn’t see the train. I’ve always thought that trains must be magical that way, or otherwise people would see them, and get the fuck off the tracks. I could feel the vibration of her rushing towards me, and I would gladly have gotten off the tracks, but the tracks were inside my head, nailed across my body, and I couldn’t figure out how to run from that.

Something rubbed against my skin, like some large animal pressing its body along the length of mine. I felt Nathaniel draw back, but I couldn’t see him through the white light. His voice came, breathless, frightened, “What is that?”

I opened my mouth, not even sure what I’d say, when that roll of invisible animal hit my chest, and the cross. The cross flared so bright that most of us screamed, cried out. Jason had to hit the brakes and stop the jeep in the middle of the street, blinded by the light, unable to see to drive, I think.

The light began to dim. For a second I wondered if the brilliance had fried my retinas, then my vision began to clear through a veil of spots. I could still feel it, her, pressing against me, pinning me to the seat, pressing over the cross, as if she were eating the light.

Nathaniel stared up at me, his lavender eyes gone leopard, a deep, deep gray, that had a hint of blue in the sunlight. “She’s a shifter,” he whispered. And I knew why. Shape-shifters could not be vampires, or vice versa. The lycanthropy virus seemed to be proof against whatever made you a vampire. You could not be both. It was a rule. But whatever pressed against me now was animal not human. I couldn’t get a sense of what kind of animal, but animal it was.

How the Mother of all Darkness happened to be both a vampire and a shape-shifter at the same time was a problem for another day. Right then, I didn’t care what she was, I just wanted her to leave me the fuck alone.

The cross was still glowing, but only the metal itself, as if it were hollow and candles burned inside it. The light was white and flickering now. I’d never seen a cross look so much like fire before. But it was a cold fire. The shape pushed and rolled like it was trying to climb inside me, but the cross kept glowing, acting as a metaphysical shield to keep her out of me.

“What can we do to help?” Jason asked. The Jeep was still stopped in the middle of the street. A car trapped behind us was honking its horn. There were cars parked on both sides of the residential street leaving the car with no way to get past us. The neighborhood was nothing but small neat houses, none with driveways. Jason hit the blinkers, and the car began to back away, trying to turn around.

I was almost afraid to open my links to Richard and Jean-Claude, what if the primordial dark could spill down the ties and take them, too? Jean-Claude had no faith to fall back on. Richard did, but whether he was actually wearing a cross or not was debatable. It had been a long time since I’d seen Richard wear a cross.

While I was still considering, Jason grabbed my hand. The scent of night didn’t fade, it was added to, like a layer of color painted over another. The clean musk of wolves filled the night. The cool water that seemed to have passed down my throat now tasted more of loam and forest than perfume.

I had an image in my mind of a huge animal head with long teeth, like the largest fangs I’d ever seen. The fur on the head was gold and tawny, and reddish, shaded, rather than striped, more lion than tiger. Eyes like golden fire stared into mine, and that huge mouth opened wide, and screamed its frustration, in a sound like a panther’s scream, but decibels lower. Pioneers were always mistaking panther screams for a woman’s cries. No one would have mistaken this for a woman—a man, maybe, a man being tortured and screaming for his soul.

I screamed back, as if that head were truly right in front of me and not thousands of miles across the world. My scream was echoed by two others. Nathaniel snarled up at me from the floorboard, his mouth showing teeth that were fast becoming fangs. Caleb had slid in between the seats, and his eyes were yellow cat eyes. He started to rub his cheek against my shoulder as if he was going to scent mark me, then stopped, snarling, as if he’d touched that other phantom cat.

Jason didn’t scream, he growled, that low, fur-standing-on-end sound that has nothing to do with hunting and everything to do with fighting, not for food, but for survival. It was a sound for guarding territory, chasing out interlopers, getting rid of troublemakers. The sound that says get out or die.

She screamed back, a sound that should have frozen the blood in my veins, and reminded me that my ancestors had huddled around their small fires and watched in terror for the shine of eyes outside that flame. But I wasn’t thinking like a person. I wasn’t even sure thinking was the word for what was moving through my mind. It was more like I was in the moment, completely, utterly. I could feel the leather seat cupping my body, Nathaniel pressed against my legs, his hands tracing higher, Caleb at my shoulder, his cheek against my face, his jaw straining as he snarled, Jason’s hand on my arm like it had taken root, become a part of me.

I could smell Caleb’s skin, the soap he’d used that morning, and the fear like something bitter under that clean skin. Nathaniel moved up on his knees, higher, so that his face was superimposed behind the saber-tooth’s head for a moment. But I could smell the vanilla scent of his hair, and there was nothing from the phantom cat.

Jason moved in closer, putting his face close to mine, sniffing the air. I smelled soap, shampoo, and the smell of Jason, a scent that had begun to mean home to me, the way the vanilla scent of Nathaniel’s hair, or Jean-Claude’s expensive cologne, or, once, the warm bend of Richard’s neck affected me. I didn’t mean in a sexual way, but the way fresh baked bread or your mother’s favorite cookies make you feel safe and smell like home. I turned my head to Caleb, so that my nose touched his skin, and under the fear, the soap, the soft skin, he smelled of leopard, faint in his human form, but there, a nose-wrinkling, skin-prickling smell. I turned to the weight pressing against the still-glowing cross. I looked into those yellow eyes, gazed upon those fangs that were like nothing that walked the earth today, and it had no scent.

Jason was snuffling the air in front of me. His pale wolf eyes met mine, and I knew that he’d figured it out, too.

As a vampire she smelled of cool evenings and sweet water, vaguely like jasmine. As a wereanimal she had no scent, because she wasn’t here. It was a sending, a psychic sending. It had power, but it wasn’t real, not really real, not physical. No matter how much power you put into it, a psychic sending has limits to what it can do physically. It can frighten you into running into traffic, but it can’t push you. It can try to trick you into doing things, but it cannot hurt you without a physical agent. When she was a vampire, the cross and my faith kept her at bay. As a wereanimal, she wasn’t real.

Nathaniel had literally crawled up through the image I could still see hovering over my chest. He was the one who said it out loud, “It has no scent.”

“It’s not real,” I said.

Caleb’s voice came with an edge of growl so deep that it was almost painful to hear, “I feel it, some great cat, like pard, but not.”

“But do you smell anything?” Jason asked.

Caleb sniffed along my body. Any other time, I would have accused him of getting too close to my breasts, but not now. He was as serious as I’d ever seen him, as he sniffed along my chest, pushed his face almost into that evil face. He stopped, staring into those yellow eyes from inches away. He hissed like any startled cat. “I can’t smell it, but I see it.”

“Seeing isn’t always believing,” I said.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A psychic projection, a sending. The vampire couldn’t get past the cross, so it tried another form, but the kitty-cat doesn’t travel as well as the . . . whatever the hell she is.” I looked into those yellow eyes and watched that massive mouth roar up at me. “You have no scent, you aren’t real, only a bad dream, and dreams have no power unless you give it to them. I give you nothing. Go back to where you came from, go back to the dark.”

I had a sudden image of a dark, dark room, not pitch black, but as if the only light were reflected from somewhere else. There was a bed with a black silk cover and a figure lying under that cover. The room was oddly shaped, not square, not circular, almost hexagonal. There were windows, but I knew somehow that they did not look out upon the world. Windows to gaze down upon the darkness that never lifted, never changed.

I was drawn towards the bed, drawn the way you’re drawn in nightmares. I didn’t want to look, but I had to look; didn’t want to see, and had to see.

I reached out towards that shining black silk, I could tell it was silk because of the way it reflected the light from down below, far down below outside the windows. The light flickered, and I knew it was firelight. Nothing electric had ever touched the darkness of this place.

My fingertips brushed the silk, and the body under the sheet moved in its sleep, moved the way someone will when they dream, but are not yet awake. I knew in that instant that I was a dream to her, too, and I couldn’t truly be standing in her inner sanctum, that no matter how real or exact it was, I could not send myself to her, and pull the sheet away. Dreams could not do that. But I also knew in that same moment that all she had done to me today had been done in a sleep that had lasted long and longer, so long that the others sometimes thought she was dead, hoped she was dead, feared she was dead, prayed she was dead, if they had the courage of prayer left in them. Who do the soulless dead pray to?

A sigh moved through that close, airless room, and on that first breath of air, came a whisper of sound, the first sound that that room had heard in centuries, “Me.”

It took me a moment to realize that it was the answer to my question. Who do the soulless dead pray to? Me, the whisper said.

The figure under the sheet shifted in its sleep again. Not awake, not yet, but she was swimming upwards, filling in herself, coming closer to wakefulness.

I jerked my hand back from that sheet; I stepped back from that bed. I did not want to touch her. More than anything else, I did not want to wake her. But since I didn’t know how I’d gotten into her room, I couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. I’d never been someone else’s dream before, though people had accused me of being their nightmares. How do you stop being in someone else’s dream?

That whisper echoed through the room again, “By waking them.”

She’d answered my question again. Shit. I was beginning to have an awful idea. Could the darkness become lost in sleep? Could the dark become lost in the dark? Could the mother of all nightmares be trapped in the land of dreams?

“Not trapped,” the whisper in the dark said.

“Then what?” I asked it out loud, and the body under the sheet rolled all the way over, feeling the silence with the hissing glide of silk over skin. My throat closed around the words, and I cursed myself for not thinking.

“Waiting,” still the air breathing around me, not a voice, not really.

I thought really hard, waiting for what?

There was no answer from the dark room. But there was a new noise. Someone beside me was breathing, deep, even breathing, as if they slept. Though I would have sworn that the figure on the bed hadn’t been breathing a second ago.

I did not want to be here when she sat up, I so did not want to be here for that. What had she been waiting for all this time?

This time the voice came from the bed, the same voice as the wind, faint, long unused, so hoarse and soft that I couldn’t tell if it were male or female. “Something of interest.”

With that last, I finally felt something from that body. I’d been prepared for malice, evil, anger, but was totally unprepared for curiosity. As if she wondered what I was, and she hadn’t wondered about anything in a millennia, or two, or three.

I smelled wolf, musky, sweet, pungent, so real I could feel it gliding over my skin. I suddenly had a cross around my neck, and the white glow filled the room. I think I could have seen the figure on the bed clearly by the light of the cross, but either I closed my eyes without remembering, or some things you shouldn’t see, even in dreams.

I woke in the Jeep with Nathaniel and Caleb’s worried faces hovering over me. There was a huge wolf sitting in the driver’s seat, its long snout snuffling against my face. I reached up to touch that soft, thick fur, then saw the shine of liquid all over the driver’s seat, where Jason had shape-shifted on the leather.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you couldn’t have shape-shifted in the back in the cargo area. You had to shape-shift on the leather seats. It’ll never come clean.”

Jason growled at me, low and rumbling, and I didn’t have to speak wolf to know what he was saying. I was being an ungrateful wretch. But it was so much easier to concentrate on my ruined upholstery than to think about the fact that I’d been in the presence of the Mother of all Vampires, the Mother of all Darkness, the Primordial Abyss made flesh. I knew through Jean-Claude’s memories that they called her Mother Gentle, Marme, a dozen different euphemisms to make her seem kind, and, well, motherly. But I’d felt her power, her darkness, and finally, at the end an intellect as cold and empty as any evil. She was curious about me the way some scientists are curious about a new species of insect. Find it, capture it, put it in a jar, whether it wants to go with you, or not. It’s just an insect, after all.

They could call her Mother Gentle if they wanted to, but Mommy Dearest was a hell of a lot more accurate.

30

CALEB HAD CLIMBED into the back of the Jeep to get the plastic I’d started carrying, for when I transported something messier than chickens, and spread it on the seat so Nathaniel could drive. I’d tried to insist on driving but Jason had growled at me. He had a point, I wasn’t feeling my steadiest. Nathaniel, his eyes bled back to their normal lilac, had told me, “You passed out. You stopped breathing. Jason shook you, and you did this sort of gasp.” Nathaniel shook his head, face very serious. “We had to keep shaking you, Anita. You kept not breathing.”

If they’d been human I might have argued with them, that they only thought I’d stopped breathing, but they weren’t human. If a bunch of shape-shifters were unable to hear or see me breath, I had to believe them.

Had Mommy Dearest tried to kill me? Or had it been accidental—or incidental? She wouldn’t have meant to kill me, but she might have done it by accident. And I’d touched enough of her thinking to know it wouldn’t bother her. She wouldn’t be sorry, she would feel no guilt. She didn’t think like a person, or rather she didn’t think like a nice, normal, civilized human. She thought like a sociopath—no empathy, no sympathy, no guilt, no compassion. In a strange way, that must be a very peaceful existence. Did you need more emotions than she possessed to be lonely? I’d think so, but I really didn’t know. Lonely was not a word I would have applied to her. If you didn’t understand the need for friendship or love, could you be lonely? I shrugged and shook my head.

“What is it?” Nathaniel asked.

“If you don’t feel love or friendship, can you be lonely?”

He raised eyebrows at me. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“We’ve all just brushed up against the Mother of all Vampires, and she’s more like the Mother of All Sociopaths. Human beings are rarely pure sociopaths. It’s more like they’re missing a piece here and there. True, pure sociopathy is really pretty rare, but Mommy Dearest qualifies, I think.”

“It doesn’t matter if she’s lonely,” Caleb said.

I glanced back at him. His brown eyes were very large, and underneath his fading tan he was pale. I sniffed the air before I could think, and the car was a playground of scents; the sweet musk of wolf, the clean vanilla of Nathaniel, and Caleb. Caleb smelled . . . young. I wasn’t sure how to explain it but it was as if I could smell how tender his meat would be, how fresh his blood. He smelled clean, the scent of some lightly perfumed soap coated his skin, but underneath was another scent. Bitter and sweet all at the same time, the way blood is salty and sweet at the same time.

I turned as far as the seat belt would allow and said, “You smell good, Caleb, all tender and scared.”

He was the true predator, not me, but the look he flashed me was all prey—huge eyes, face soft, lips opened just a breath. I watched his pulse beat against the skin of his neck.

I had an urge to crawl into the backseat and run my tongue over that frantic pulse, set teeth into that tender flesh, and set that pulse point free.

I had this image of Caleb’s pulse like a piece of hard candy that would come free all in one piece and be sucked and rolled around in my mouth. I knew it wasn’t like that. I knew that if I bit down the pulse would be destroyed, that it would die in a spill of red blood, but the candy imagery stayed with me, and even the thought of blood spraying in my mouth didn’t seem terrible.

I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see Caleb’s neck beating and concentrated on my own breathing. But with every breath I drew in more of that bitter sweetness, the taste of fear. I could almost taste his flesh in my mouth.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked that out loud. “I want to tear Caleb’s pulse out of his throat. It’s too early for Jean-Claude to be awake. Besides I don’t usually want blood. Or not only blood.”

“It’s close to full moon,” Nathaniel said. “It’s one of the reasons Jason lost enough control to change all over your seats.”

I opened my eyes, turned my face to look at him, and away from Caleb’s fear. “Belle tried to get me to feed off Caleb, but she couldn’t. So why suddenly does he smell tasty?”

Nathaniel had finally found another exit back onto 44. He eased in behind a large yellow car that needed a major paint job, or maybe was in the middle of getting one, because half of it was covered in gray primer. I caught movement in the rearview mirror. It was the blue Jeep. It was at the end of the narrow street with cars on either side. It had just cleared the corner, and seen us, and now it was hanging back, hoping, I think, that we hadn’t seen it.

“Shit,” I said.

“What?” Nathaniel asked.

“That damned Jeep is at the end of the street. Nobody look back.” Everyone stopped themselves in mid-motion except for Jason. He hadn’t even tried to look back, maybe wolf necks didn’t work that way, or maybe he was staring at other things. I realized that he was looking at Caleb.

I looked at that huge shaggy head. “Are you thinking about eating Caleb?”

He turned and gave me the full force of that pale green gaze. People say that dogs are descended from wolves, but there are moments when I doubt that. There was nothing friendly, or sympathetic, or even remotely tame in those eyes. He was thinking about food. He met my gaze because he knew I’d caught him thinking about eating someone that was under my protection, then he turned back to gaze at Caleb, and think of meat. Dogs never look at people and think, food, hell; they don’t even look at other dogs and think that. Wolves do. The fact that there is no recorded account of a North American wolf attacking a human being for food has always amazed me. You look into their eyes, and you know that there is no one home that you can talk to.

I knew that lycanthropes want fresh meat when they first change shape. New lycanthropes are deadly, but Jason wasn’t new anymore, and he could control himself. I knew that, but I still didn’t like the way he was looking at Caleb, and I liked even less that he was projecting his need onto me.

“What do you want me to do about the Jeep?” Nathaniel asked.

I jerked my attention back to Nathaniel and away from the hunger. It was an effort to think past it, but if the Jeep was full of bad guys, then I needed to be concentrating on them, not some metaphysical craving.

“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t get followed that much. Usually people just try and kill me.”

“I have to either pull out onto the highway, or turn the other way. Just sitting here, they’re going to know we saw them.”

He had a point, a good one. “Highway.”

He moved us forward, angling for the ramp. “Once we’re on it, where are we going?”

“The Circus, I think.”

“Do we want to lead the bad guys there?” Nathaniel asked.

“Jason said it earlier, most people know where the Master of the City bunks during the day. Besides, the wererats are still there, and most of them are ex-mercenaries, or something in that ballpark. I think I’m going to call ahead and ask Bobby Lee’s opinion.”

“Opinion about what?” Caleb asked, from the backseat. His eyes were still too wide, and he still smelled of fear, but he wasn’t looking at the wolf on the seat beside him. Whatever he was afraid of wasn’t something that close.

“About whether we catch them, or turn around and try to follow them.”

“Catch them?” Caleb said, “Catch them how?”

“Not sure, but I know that I know a lot more about catching bad guys than about following people to see where they lead me. I’m not a detective, Caleb, not really. I can spot a clue if it bites me on the ass, and give an opinion about monster-related crime, but at heart I’m in a more direct line of work than detective.”

He looked puzzled.

“I’m an executioner, Caleb, I kill things.”

“Sometimes you have to track things in order to kill them,” Nathaniel said.

I looked at him, that serious profile, his eyes searching the traffic, his hands on the wheel at exactly two and ten. He hadn’t had his license a year, yet. If I hadn’t insisted, I’m not sure he’d have ever had one.

“True, but I don’t want to kill them, I want to question them. I want to know why they’re following us.”

“I don’t think they are,” Nathaniel said.

“What?” I asked.

“The blue Jeep didn’t follow us onto the highway.”

“Knew we spotted them, maybe.”

“Or like everyone else knows where the Master sleeps. So it’s not hard to find his girlfriend,” Nathaniel said, voice quiet, eyes on the road. But he knew I hated being the Master’s girlfriend, or at least being called that. Truthfully, he had a point. If you knew who someone was dating and where they lived, eventually, you could locate them again. I hated being predictable.

Jason’s great shaggy head came around my seat and rubbed against my shoulder, the ruff of his face tickling along my cheek. I reached up and petted that great head without thinking, the way I would have done if he’d been a dog. The moment I touched him, the hunger thrilled through me from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. The hair on my body stood to attention, and it felt like something was trying to crawl up the back of my skull, because the nape of my neck was prickling so badly.

The wolf and I turned as one to stare at Caleb. If my eyes could have bled to wolf, they’d have done it then.

Caleb looked terrified. I think if he’d just stayed still we’d have been okay, but he didn’t. He unfolded his arms from his nearly bare chest and eased across the seat.

Jason growled, and I was out of my seat, on the floorboards in the back, before I had a chance to think, unseatbelted in a speeding car, bad idea. I think that would have put me back in my own head space, but Caleb ran. He spilled over the backseat, and Jason and I spilled after him. It was like being water, following the natural course.

We didn’t pin Caleb, so much as kneel and sit around him. Caleb was pressed tight in the corner of the cargo area, his hands tight against his chest. He tried to take up as little space as possible. I think Caleb knew that touching either of us would be bad. Jason sat on his haunches, flashing fangs and letting the trickle of growl slide out. You didn’t need words to know what it meant, don’t move, don’t fucking move. Caleb didn’t move.

I was on my knees in front of Caleb, and all I could see was the pulse in his neck, thudding, thudding, against the skin, trying to break free. I wanted to help it.

I could suddenly smell forest, trees, and the scent of wolf fur that wasn’t Jason. Richard breathed through my mind like a sweet-scented cloud. I saw him in my bathtub all those miles away. An arm darker than the tan Richard carried most of the year was across his chest, propping him up in the water, holding him. Jamil being a good Hati, making sure his Ulfric didn’t drown. It was what Jason had done for me earlier, minus the sex. Richard was a little homophobic. He didn’t like men who reminded him they liked men, especially if that man was himself. I couldn’t throw stones on that one; I was pretty much the same way around women. No matter how sophisticated I was supposed to be, I kept forgetting that another woman could find me attractive. Always caught me by surprise.

Jamil’s face hovered on the edge of Richard’s, but it was as if in this dream vision all that was truly clear was Richard. I caught glimpses of his body through the water and the faint candlelight. Lycanthropes sometimes had light sensitivity problems, so there were no bright overheads, but the candles made the water dark, and hid more of Richard from view than I wanted. I felt like a metaphysical Peeping Tom. But the hunger was so easily turned to a different kind of hunger, it always had been.

Richard looked up at me, and the sight of his face, shorn of hair, caught at my throat. I wanted to ask, why? but he spoke first. It was the first time we’d spoken mind-to-mind like this, and it startled me. I’d known Jean-Claude and I could do it, but not Richard and me.

“The hunger’s mine, Anita, I’m sorry. Something that creature did to me stripped most of my control.” For a second I thought he meant the Mother of All Darkness, then realized he meant Belle.

I gazed down at Caleb’s frightened eyes, and my eyes were drawn again to his neck, then down the line of his chest to his stomach. He was breathing hard enough, scared enough that there was a pulse low in his belly, vibrating through that line of hair that led down into his pants. The stomach was soft and tender, lots of flesh there.

“Anita,” Richard said, “Anita, hear me.”

I had to blink the image of Caleb’s quivering flesh away, and I was suddenly seeing Richard’s image more clearly than what actually lay in front of me. “What?” I knew that one word wasn’t said out loud, only in my head.

“You can turn the hunger to sex, Anita.”

I shook my head. “I think I’d rather eat Caleb than fuck him.”

“You’ve never eaten anyone, or you wouldn’t say that,” Richard said.

I couldn’t really argue with that. “Are you seriously saying you’d be okay with me fucking Caleb?”

He hesitated, the water flickering in the flame light, as his body moved restlessly. I caught a glimpse of knee, and thigh. “If it’s a choice between eating him, or screwing him, yes.”

“You didn’t even like sharing me with Jean-Claude.”

“We’re not dating, Anita.”

Ouch. “Sorry, forgot that for a moment,” I said. The momentary flare of pain like a half-healed wound helped me think a little more clearly. “Jason is in wolf form Richard. I don’t do furry.”

“That I can do something about.” I saw his beast like some golden shadow leap out of him and into me. It was like being on the receiving end of a metaphysical knife, until that power stabbed through me and into Jason, and I was suddenly in the middle of all that power, all that pain, all that rage. The beast feeds on pain and rage, sort of the ultimate id. I was left kneeling, gasping, too breathless to scream.

Jason screamed for me, and I felt his beast slide away from him, no, into him, like stuffing something impossibly huge into a suitcase that was already full. But this suitcase was Jason’s body, and it hurt. I felt the bones twist, the muscles pop and reattach. Fuck, it hurt. I caught a distant thought from Richard that it was hurting so much because it was forced. When you fight the change it hurts more.

It was as if the fur was absorbed back into the pale flesh that rose through it, like something caught in ice, melting back to the surface. Jason’s body melted back, and the fur sank into him, the longer bones, the muscles. It just all sank into him until he lay pale and shivering on a bed of clear liquid. The fluid had soaked my jeans from the knees down. Jason had changed, but not fed, now he’d been forced to change again less than a half-hour later. Maybe if he’d been allowed to feed he’d have been alright, but now, he lay, shivering, curling into a ball to hold himself and to keep in what warmth he had left and to take up as little space as possible. I think Jason, like Caleb, knew touching me would be bad.

Jason wasn’t a danger to Caleb anymore. Until he rested, he wasn’t a danger to anyone. In fact . . . I stared down at the curve of his butt, so smooth, so firm, so tender. I gazed on him nude, and didn’t think about sex at all. All Richard had done was give me a choice of meals.

I looked at Richard down that vision that held him crystalline, and everything else hazy. “All I can think about is sinking teeth into his flesh. You’ve made him helpless, and I still need to feed, because you still need to feed.”

“I’ll find something here to eat. I will feed, but you don’t have anything safe to hunt, Anita. You don’t want to hurt either of them.”

I screamed, loud and long, letting the frustration fill the Jeep, pour out of my mouth, scald up my throat, ball my hands into fists, and lash out, smashing the side of the Jeep. I heard the metal groan, and that made me blink, look at what I’d done. I’d dented the metal. A rounded dimple the size of my fist. Fuck.

Caleb made a small sound, and I looked down at him, and all I could see was the soft flesh of his stomach, I could almost feel it under my teeth. I was crouched over Caleb, my face sniffing along his stomach. I didn’t remember getting this close.

Richard called to me, “Anita!”

I looked up, as if he were really in front of me. He pushed Jamil’s arm away and leaned back against the side of the tub. He ran his hands over his chest, fingers tracing his nipples, one hand trailing lower, as he pushed himself out of the water. It cascaded down his body in silver flame shot lines, and that hand traced lower, lower. Over his stomach, down the line of hair, and finally to cup himself, play with himself. I watched him grow larger, and the hunger changed like turning a switch. But the moment the hunger became sex, the ardeur flared to life. It came from the center of my being like a flame, spreading, spreading, and Richard’s hand, Richard’s body fanned the heat, brought it in a roaring sheet over my skin.

But Jean-Claude wasn’t here to help us, this time, and Richard couldn’t shield today. The ardeur ran down that metaphysical cord and hit Richard like a truck at full speed. It bowed his back, convulsed his hand where it gripped his body, made him fall back on the edge of the tub, his legs trailing into the water.

I looked into those big brown eyes, that face so empty without its mane of hair, and watched terror fight with desire. I don’t think he’d ever felt the full force of the ardeur before. It overwhelmed him, left him breathless, immobile, but that wouldn’t last. I knew it wouldn’t last.

I told him what he’d told me, “You can turn the ardeur to hunger, but we’re going to have to feed on something, or someone, Richard. It’s too late for anything else.”

Even his voice in my head seemed strangled, “I feel better and worse. I think I can hunt now. I couldn’t have moved that much before.”

“Everything has its upside, Richard, and it’s down.” I was angry with Richard, a fine hot rage that helped keep me treading the water of the ardeur that was trying so hard to engulf me, drown me in desire. But I held my anger to my chest and treaded water for all I was worth.

I felt his hunger change, felt his belly tighten with need for flesh and blood and tearing, and only distant, very distant was the thrill of sex. “I’ll hunt an animal, and I’ll be fine, I think.”

“That won’t help me much, Richard,” and I let the anger trail down the binding between us.

“I am sorry, Anita, I didn’t understand.”

I knew in that moment that I could force his hunger back into the ardeur. That just as he forced Jason to change form, I could force Richard’s hunger to be the form of my choosing. I knew I could run magic down his skin and force him to feed the way I was going to have to feed. But I didn’t. He’d done what he’d done in innocence; I couldn’t return the favor, not deliberately.

“Go hunt your animal, Richard.”

“Anita . . . I am sorry.”

“You’re always sorry, Richard. Now get out of my head before I do something we’ll both regret.”

He pulled away, but it wasn’t a clean break. Normally, his shields were solid like metal doors clanging down. Today, it was like taffy pulling apart, clinging to each other, huge tendrils of sticky, melting candy that even when pulled apart was still two halves of a whole. I wanted to pull us together, to melt into the heat until we were one big hot sticky mess, and today Richard couldn’t stop me. He didn’t have the control to keep me out of him.

Jean-Claude woke. I felt his eyes flash wide, felt him take that first gasping breath, felt life fill him. He was awake.

Jason was gazing at me with his sky blue eyes. “He’s awake.”

I nodded. “I know.”

Nathaniel spoke as if he’d understood way more of the unheard conversation than he should have, “We’re almost to the Circus, Anita.”

“How long?”

“Five minutes, less.”

“Make it less,” I said.

The Jeep leapt forward, accelerating. I crawled into the backseat and fastened the seat belt tight across me. It wasn’t to keep me safe in case we had an accident. It was to remind me not to let myself loose until we got to the Circus, and Jean-Claude.

31

I FOUGHT THE ardeur on the drive to the Circus. I fought the ardeur when I ran through the parking lot and banged on the door. I ran past Bobby Lee’s surprised face and managed to say, “Ask Nathaniel about the Jeep.” Then I was past him and running for the stairs that led down, down to the underground.

Richard was running, too. He was running through the trees, limbs and leaves slashing at him, but he was never quite there, dodging, moving, like water made flesh, flesh made speed. He ran through the trees, and I heard something large crashing ahead of him. His head came up, and the chase was on.

I hit Jean-Claude’s bedroom door, as Richard was catching glimpses of the deer that darted just ahead of him, sprinting for its life. There were other wolves in the forest, most of them in true wolf form, but not all.

I flung the door open and the guards on the door, closed it firmly behind me. I don’t know what they sensed, or what they saw, and that was probably just as well.

There were still blue silk sheets on the bed, and Asher was still framed in them, motionless, dead. Only the Master of the City was awake, only he moved. I sent a questioning thought and felt all the vampires asnooze in their coffins, tucked in their beds. I touched Angelito for a moment, and found him restless and pacing, confused, wondering why his mistress hadn’t succeeded in her diabolical plan.

He looked up as if he saw me, or felt something, then I was back at the bathroom door. Richard had his deer down and struggling. A hoof caught him across the stomach, tore the skin, but there were other wolves there now, and the doe had no chance. A black furred wolf tore into her throat, and I felt Richard riding the deer in human form, holding her as the struggles grew slower, spasmodic, involuntary. The deer’s fear faded, like champagne opened and left to go flat.

The bathroom door flung open, hitting the wall, and I didn’t remember touching it. I was through the door before it slammed shut behind me, and again, I didn’t remember touching it.

Jean-Claude was in the black marble tub. He was kneeling, his long black hair clinging to his shoulders. He’d cleaned up. Feeling me coming towards him like a storm of need, he’d run a bath. Of course, he’d felt me like a storm of desire before, it didn’t always mean the storm would fall on him.

I could smell the fresh, hot blood, as Richard leaned down towards the deer’s throat. The wolf that had actually made the kill had backed off, so the Ulfric could feed. The deer’s skin smelled acrid, almost bitter, as if the fear had bled out of the skin. I did not want to be in Richard’s head when he put his mouth to that flesh.

I climbed into the bathtub in my clothes, the hot water soaking my jeans almost to the tops of my thighs. “Help me,” it came out in a whisper that I’d meant to be a scream.

Jean-Claude stood up, water streaming down the perfect whiteness of his skin, drawing my eyes down the length of his body, finding him soft and not ready for me. I screamed, and Richard sank teeth into skin that was covered in hair.

Jean-Claude caught me, or I would have fallen into the water. I suddenly couldn’t feel Richard anymore. It was as if a door had slammed in my face and there was a second of blessed silence, a quietness that went all the way to my soul.

Jean-Claude spoke into that silence. “I can shield you from our Richard, ma petite, and he from you, but I cannot shield us both from the ardeur.”

I stared up at him, where I’d half-swooned in his arms, his hands at my back, my body bowed down towards the water, my legs soaked with the hot liquid.

I opened my mouth to say something, then he was as good as his word, and the ardeur came roaring back. I convulsed in his arms, and he nearly dropped me, trailing my hair in the water, pulling me upwards, pressing our bodies against one another. My hands, my mouth, my body swarmed over him, traced that slick, perfect skin, caressed the faint tracery of whip scars on his back, which were just another part of his perfection.

He drew back from my mouth enough to gasp, “Ma petite, I have not fed, there is no blood to fill my body.”

I gazed up at him and found his eyes as normal as they ever got, midnight blue, lashed with black lace. But there was no power in them. Usually, by the time we’ve gotten this much foreplay in, his eyes had bled to pure pupilless blue.

I had to swim up through the ardeur, through the need to finally understand what he meant. I pushed my hair to one side, and said, “Feed, feed, then fuck me.”

“I cannot roll your mind, ma petite, it will only be pain.”

I shook my head, eyes closed, my hands tracing over the skin of his shoulders and arms. “Please, Jean-Claude, please, feed, feed on me.”

“If you were in your right mind, you would not offer this.”

I pulled the red T-shirt out of my pants, but had trouble pushing the straps of my shoulder holster down, as if I couldn’t remember how. I screamed my frustration, wordless. Maybe because of that, or because Jean-Claude was trying to fight off too many things at once, I suddenly felt Richard feeding, hot flesh going in great gulps down his throat.

I choked, stumbled, collapsed against the edge of the tub, letting the hot water come up to my waist. I was going to be sick.

Jean-Claude touched my back, and I couldn’t sense Richard anymore. “I cannot shield us from our wolf, fight both your ardeur and mine, and fight my own bloodlust. It is too much.”

I sat on the edge of the tub, hands flat, trying to keep myself steady on the marble. “Then don’t fight it all. Pick your battles.”

“What battle should I choose?” he asked, voice soft.

The ardeur rose like a gentle wave, chasing back the nausea, cleansing me of the sensation of meat and flesh going down my throat. I hadn’t realized the ardeur had any gentleness to it.

As if he’d read my thoughts, Jean-Claude said, “If you do not struggle against the ardeur, it is not so terrible.”

“Like the beast, if you accept it, it doesn’t beat the hell out of you.”

He gave a small smile. “Oui, ma petite.”

The ardeur drew me to my feet, and I wasn’t shaky anymore. I was steady in my desire. I moved through the hot, thigh-deep water, my jeans clinging to me like a second skin, my jogging shoes sliding through the thickness of the water. I stood touching him only with my gaze. The strength of his thighs, the loose swelling of his groin, skin there slightly darker in color than the rest of him, the line of black hair that traced upward, around his belly button, to the smooth lines of his chest with the pale circles of his nipples, and the flat whiteness of the cross-shaped burn scar. I came to the grace of his shoulders, the line of his neck, and finally the face. I was never sure how to look upon his face and not be overwhelmed. If it had just been the dark glory of his hair, I could have borne it, but his eyes, his eyes, the darkest blue they could be and not be black. They were the richest blue I’d ever seen. His eyelashes were so thick they were like black lace. The bones in his face were delicate, small and finely chiseled, as if whoever had made him had paid attention to every curve of his cheek, every turn of his chin, every sweep of brow, and finally the mouth. His mouth was simply beautiful. So red against the whiteness of his skin.

I touched his face, traced the edge of it from temple to chin, and my fingers clung to the beads of water on his skin, sticking, so that touching him wasn’t smooth, or easy. The ardeur was still inside me like a great warm weight, but I’d welcomed it this time, welcomed it chasing back Richard’s beast, and I could think, though only about the man in front of me.

I stared up into that face and said what I was thinking, “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” I slipped my hand behind his neck and began gently to bring him closer as if for a kiss, “And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” I turned my face and swept my hair aside, exposing my neck, “Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!”

He spoke, “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it: Thinkest thou that I who saw the face of God, and tasted the eternal joys of heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss!”

The quote made me turn and look at him. “That’s from Dr. Faustus, too, isn’t it?”

“Oui.”

“I only know the one quote,” I said.

“Let me give you another. ‘I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this, killing myself to die upon a kiss.’ ”

“That’s not Marlowe,” I said.

“One of his contemporaries,” Jean-Claude said.

“Shakespeare,” I said.

“You surprise me, ma petite.”

“You gave me too big a clue,” I said, “Marlowe and Shakespeare are about the only contemporaries that people still quote.” I frowned up at him. “Why are you fighting me on this?”

“Today with the ardeur riding you, you say feed. When your mind has cleared, you will call foul, and I will be punished by your regret.” A look of such longing and frustration crossed his face. “I want more than almost anything to share blood with you, ma petite, but if I take it now when you are intoxicated, you will refuse me later more adamantly than ever.”

I would have liked to argue with him. I would have liked to find another quote from someone to help persuade him, but my control over the ardeur wasn’t as good as his, yet. Just staring up at all that beauty was making me forget. Forget what little poetry I knew. Forget logic, reason, restraint. Forget everything but his beauty, forget everything but my own need.

I didn’t so much kneel as fall down his body. The hot water soaked through my shirt, my bra, my body, holding me in the heat of it, as I gazed up the length of Jean-Claude. He looked down at me, and still his eyes were human, normal, lovely to look at, but I wanted more.

I leaned my face in towards him, slowly, for a kiss on the mouth.

“Ma petite, there is nothing you can do until I have fed.”

I laid a gentle kiss on his groin.

He closed his eyes, and his breath came out in a careful sigh. “I am not saying it is not pleasurable, but I will be of no use to you.”

I took him in my mouth, and he was small and soft, so I didn’t have to fight to get all of him inside. I loved the sensation of him when he was small, not just because I wasn’t fighting the erection to breath and swallow, but the difference in texture. There was nothing on a woman’s body that had this feel to it. I rolled him gently around in my mouth, and he shuddered. I sucked gently, pulling with my lips, rolling my eyes upward to watch him throw back his head, his hands convulse, grabbing at empty air.

I pulled back enough to whisper so that my breath caressed the wet skin of his groin, “Feed, so we can both feed.”

He shook his head and looked down at me, and there was a look I hadn’t seen much on his face. Stubbornness. “Pleasure I will take from you, ma petite, but not blood, not while the ardeur rides you. If you still wish to be embraced after the ardeur is fed, then I will gladly, joyfully, comply, but not like this.”

I slid my hands up the smooth wetness of his hips. “I need to feed now, Jean-Claude, please, please.”

“Non,” and he shook his head at me, again.

The ardeur had been ready to be gentle, as gentle as I’d ever felt it, but being denied didn’t make it, or me feel gentle. Angry, stubborn, cheated. I tried to think past it, and couldn’t. I’d been good, so good for so long. I hadn’t fed on Caleb, and no one would have screamed at me for it. I hadn’t fed on Nathaniel, and he was my pomme de sang. I wanted him to go another day before he got munched on. I didn’t like that he’d passed out at the club.

I hadn’t bothered Jason, who had been too weak to argue. Once I felt Jean-Claude wake, I knew what I wanted. I hadn’t even seen the other men I passed to get to this room. They hadn’t existed for me. Now he was denying me, refusing me, rejecting me. Some small distant part of me knew that wasn’t true, it wasn’t even fair, but that was a distant voice. The voices in the front of my head were screaming, fuck him, feed on him, take him.

I’d fought until there wasn’t enough of me left to fight. There was nothing but the need, and the need had no mercy.

I covered him with my mouth again, and I did something that I could only do when he was at his smallest. I drew his balls, gently, into my mouth, so that I held all of him inside my mouth. It was the most amazing sensation to be able to hold him, to flick my tongue on the loose skin between his testes, to roll the delicate eggs of his body against my teeth and cheeks. He filled my mouth this way, so wide, impossibly wide, but because there was no length to match it, I wasn’t choking or fighting to breathe. It was as if I could have held him inside me like this for days. I sucked on him, the shaft, the balls, all at once, fitting my mouth around the base of him, so that my lips formed a seal against his body, and I sucked him, licked him, rolled him, explored him. I looked up and found his eyes had bled to blue at last, but I didn’t care anymore. I closed my eyes, wrapped my hands around the smooth tightness of his buttocks, and gave myself over to the joy of it.

I heard his cries, felt his body shudder and quiver under my touch, but it was distant. His flesh filled my mouth, rolled so easily under my tongue. I’d always enjoyed the sensation of him when he was loose, but I’d never been able to indulge myself, because after a few touches, like all men, he didn’t stay small.

I wrapped my mouth close and closer to the base of him and grazed my teeth ever so lightly there. There, the base of all of him, so that to bite too hard would take it all. I knew what an act of trust this was for him. I bit just hard enough to make him cry out, then pulled gently against his body, using mostly lips for pressure.

I let his balls slip out and sucked the rest of him back in my mouth hard and fast, pulling harder than I should have, sucking him as hard and fast as I wanted, no control now, no waiting, just the feel of him rolling in and out of my mouth, as I pulled on him.

He screamed my name, half pleasure, half pain, and the ardeur burst over both of us. The heat spread upward through me, and I felt it spread, thrust itself into Jean-Claude. So hot, so hot, so very hot, as if the water around us should boil. I had enough left of me somewhere in all that to let go of him with my mouth, so I didn’t get too carried away. I convulsed against his legs, my nails digging into his butt, hips, thighs, as he rocked above me, and fought to keep his feet.

He finally half-sat, half-collapsed to the edge of the tub and sat there, propped on his arms, breathing too hard, and that he was breathing at all meant he’d fed his ardeur, as I’d fed off of him. Sometimes it was just an exchange of energy, sometimes it was a true feeding.

I climbed out of the tub enough to sit beside him, but didn’t touch him. Sometimes right after the ardeur had been fed, touching of any kind could reignite it, especially between people who both held the ardeur. So it had been between Jean-Claude and Belle, so it was sometimes between us.

His eyes were still solid blue, like midnight skies when the stars have drowned. His voice was breathy, when he said, “You are getting better at feeding the ardeur without true orgasm, ma petite.”

“I have a good teacher.”

He smiled the smile a man gives a woman when they’ve just finished such things, and it isn’t the first time they’ve done them, and it won’t be the last. “An apt pupil, as they say.”

I looked at him, and he was pale alabaster with that black, black hair, those blue eyes. The folds and hollows of his body exposed to the overhead lights were as beautiful and familiar to me as a favorite path that I could walk forever and never tire of.

I stared at Jean-Claude, and it wasn’t the beauty of him that made me love him, it was just—him. It was a love made up of a thousand touches, a million conversations, a trillion shared looks. A love made up of danger shared, enemies conquered, a determination to keep the people that depended on us safe at almost any cost, and a certain knowledge that neither of us would change the other, even if we could. I loved Jean-Claude, all of him, because if I took away the Machiavellian plottings, the labyrinth of his mind, it would lessen him, make him someone else.

I sat on the edge of the tub with my jeans and jogging shoes soaking in the water, looking at him laugh, watching his eyes bleed back to human, and I wanted him, not for sex, though that was in there, but for everything.

“You look serious, ma petite, what are you thinking about so solemn-faced?”

“You,” I said, voice soft.

“Why should that make you look so solemn?” The humor began to leak away from his face, and I knew without being a hundred percent sure that he was thinking I was about to run away again. He’d probably been worried about that from the moment I shared a bed with him and Asher. I usually ran after I’d made some big breakthrough. Or would that be breakdown?

“A surprisingly wise friend told me that I hold back some part of myself from all the men in my life. He said that I do it to keep myself safe, to keep myself from being consumed by love.”

Jean-Claude’s face had gone very careful, as if he were afraid for me to read his expression.

“I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. He was right.”

Jean-Claude looked at me, face still empty, but there was a tightness around his eyes, a wariness that he couldn’t quite hide. He was waiting for the blow to fall, I’d taught him to expect it.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and finished, “What I hold back from you is sharing blood. We fed the ardeur off each other now, but I still won’t let you take blood.”

Jean-Claude opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it. He’d sat up straighter, hands clasped in his lap. It wasn’t just his face he was fighting to keep neutral, even his body language was so very careful.

“I asked you to feed off me a few minutes ago, and you said not while the ardeur was riding me. Not while I was intoxicated.” I had to smile at the choice of words, because intoxicated was a good description of the ardeur. Metaphysical liquor.

“I’ve fed the ardeur, we both have. I’m not intoxicated any more.”

He’d gone very still, that utter stillness that the old vampires could do. It was like if I looked away, he wouldn’t be there when I looked back. “We have both fed the ardeur, that much is true.”

“Then I’m still offering blood.”

He took a deep breath. “I want this, ma petite, you know that.”

“I know.”

“But why now?”

“I told you, I had a talk with a friend.”

“I cannot give you what Asher gave you, gave us, yesterday. With my marks upon you, I may not be able to roll your mind at all. It will be only pain.”

“Then do it in the middle of pleasure. We’ve proven more than once that my pain/pleasure sensors get a little confused when I’m excited enough.”

That made him smile. “As do mine.”

That made me smile. “Let’s fool around.”

“And then?” he asked, voice low.

“When it’s time, take blood, and then let’s fuck.”

He gave a surprised burst of laughter. “Ma petite, you are such a sweet-talker, how can I refuse?”

I leaned into him, pressed a gentle kiss upon his lips, and said, “Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, and all is dross that is not Helena.”

He gazed into my face with such longing. “I thought you said you could not remember more of the play.”

“I remembered more,” I whispered, “do you?”

He shook his head, and we were so close that his hair brushed against mine so that you couldn’t tell where one blackness left and the other began. “Not with you this close to me, no.”

“Good,” I smiled, “but promise some night we’ll get the whole play and take turns reading it to each other.”

He smiled, and it was the smile I’d come to value more than any other, it was real and vulnerable, and I think one of the few things left of the man he might have been if Belle Morte had not found him. “I swear it, and gladly.”

“Then help me peel off these wet jeans and leave the poetry for another night.”

He cupped my face in his hands. “It is always poetry between us, ma petite.”

My mouth was suddenly dry, and it was hard to swallow past my pulse. My voice came breathy, “Yeah, but sometimes it’s dirty limericks.”

He laughed as he kissed me, then he helped me out of the wet jeans, and the wet socks, and the wet shoes, and the wet everything. When my cross spilled out of my shirt, it didn’t glow. It just lay there glinting in the overhead lights. Jean-Claude averted his eyes, as he always did when he saw a holy object, but that was the only hint I had that the cross bothered him. I realized with a start that I’d never worn a cross around Jean-Claude and had it glow at him. What did that mean?

I’m usually pretty straightforward except in emotional areas, but I was trying to be different, change that, so I asked. “Does it really hurt you to look at my cross?”

He looked determinedly at the edge of the bathtub. “No.”

“Then why look away?”

“Because it will start to glow, and I do not want that.”

“How do you know that it’ll start to glow?”

“Because I am a vampire, and you are a true believer.” He was still staring at the water, the marble of the tub, anywhere, and everywhere except at my chest with the cross still hanging around it.

“I’ve never had a cross glow when you were the only vampire around.”

He glanced up at that, then quickly down. “That cannot be true.”

I thought about it some more. “I can’t ever remember it happening. You look away, then I take the cross off, and we go on about our business, but it doesn’t glow.”

He shifted in the water enough to send little splashes against my legs. “Does it matter?” His voice held just how unhappy he was with the line of conversation.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“If you do not wish me to feed, then I will go.”

“It’s not that, Jean-Claude, honest.”

He put a hand on the edge of the tub and stepped out.

“Jean-Claude,” I said.

“Non, ma petite, you do not want this, or you would not cling to your holy object.” He took a vibrant blue towel that matched the sheets on the bed and began to dry off.

“My point is . . . oh, hell, I don’t know what my point is, just don’t go.” I put my hands back to unfasten the clasp of the chain, and the door opened. Asher stepped inside, coated in dried blood, all of it mine. That should have bothered me, but it didn’t. His hair still fell around his shoulders like spun gold, and with Asher, it wasn’t a euphemism for blond. His hair was like gold spun to thick, soft waves. His eyes a blue so pale it was like winter skies, but warmer, more . . . alive. He walked towards us, his long body nude and perfect. The scars didn’t make him less perfect, they were simply a part of Asher, and nothing marred the godlike grace as he moved into the room. He was so beautiful it stopped my breath in my throat, made my chest ache to see him. I wanted to say, come to us, but my voice was gone in the sheer wonder as he glided towards us on narrow bare feet.

The cross flared to life, not the white-hot glow it had had in the Jeep, but bright enough. Bright enough to leave me blinking. Bright enough to help me think. Asher was still beautiful, nothing could change that, but now I could breathe, move, talk. Though I had no idea what to say. I’d never had a cross glow around him either, until now.

It was Jean-Claude who said it, “What have you done, mon ami, what have you done?” He had his back to the glow of the cross and was using the towel to help shield his eyes.

Asher had thrown up an arm to protect his own pale blue gaze. “I tried to roll her mind just enough for pleasure, but the ardeur was too much.”

“What have you done?” Jean-Claude asked again.

I watched them both in the light of the cross, one hiding behind the blue towel, the other his own arm, and I answered for him, “He rolled me. He rolled my mind, completely and utterly.” Even as I said it, I knew he’d done more than that. I’d been rolled before. I’d even been rolled once upon a time by Jean-Claude when first we met. But vampire powers to cloud the mind are a dime a dozen, most of them can do it. Most of the young ones have to capture you with their gaze, but the old ones can simply think at you. I was immune to most of it, partly natural ability as a necromancer, and part Jean-Claude’s marks. But I wasn’t immune to Asher. The cross kept glowing, the vampires kept shielding their eyes, and even with them hiding away from the white light, I still wanted them, both of them, but now I had to wonder how much of it was me, and how much of it was Asher’s mind tricks. Damn it.

32

WE ENDED UP in the bedroom but not for anything fun. I’d dried off and thrown on extra clothes that I kept at the Circus. I had to put the wet shoes back on though. My cross was safely underneath my shirt again. Once it went under the shirt, it stopped glowing, but there was still a pulsing warmth to it.

Jean-Claude had knotted the blue towel around his waist, where it draped nearly to his ankles. He’d put a smaller towel on his hair and the blue of the cloth brought out the blue of his eyes. Seeing his face free of all hair made him look more like a boy to me. It was the bones of his cheeks that saved his face from being utterly feminine. He was still beautiful, but an inch closer to handsome without that black veil of hair.

Asher was still clothed in nothing but the dried blood and the spill of all his own hair. He was pacing the room like some kind of caged beast.

Jean-Claude had simply sat down on the edge of the bed with the blue sheets still stained with blood and other fluids. He looked discouraged.

I stood as far from them as I could, arms clasped across my stomach. I’d left my shoulder holster off, so that I wouldn’t stroke my gun while I argued. I was hoping to tone the hostility down, not ramp it up.

Jean-Claude laid his face in his hands, all pale skin and blue cloth, towels and sheets surrounding him. “Why did you do it, mon ami? If you had only behaved yourself we would even now be together as we were meant to be.”

I wasn’t sure I liked how sure Jean-Claude was of me, but I couldn’t really argue without lying, so I let it go. Shutting the fuck up is seldom a bad move on my part.

Asher stopped pacing and said, “Anita has felt me feed. She knew that I could roll her mind completely. She did not say not to do it. She said for me to take her, to feed from her, so I did. I did what she told me to do, and she was aware of how I would do it, because she has fed me once before.”

Jean-Claude raised his face from his hands like a drowning man, coming up for air. “I know that Anita fed you when you lay dying in Tennessee.”

“She saved me,” Asher said. He’d come to the end of the big four-poster bed.

I watched the two of them framed against the blue sheets, where so recently we’d had a very good time. I stood there wanting them both, and my arms clung to me, as if by holding on tight I could keep it from happening.

“Oui, she saved you, but you did not roll her mind completely then, because I would have felt your touch upon her mind and heart, and it was not there.”

“I tried to roll her mind because it seems to me that every vampire that takes blood from her is in some way under her sway, her power. It is almost as if when a vampire feeds from her, it is she who controls them, not the other way around.”

I stayed where I was, but this I couldn’t let go. “Trust me, Asher, it doesn’t work that way. I’ve had vamps bite me and have me under their sway before.”

He looked at me, with those pale, pale eyes. “But how long ago was that? I think that your powers have grown since then.”

My gaze kept sliding down his body, tracing the blood pattern on that pale, slightly golden tinged skin. I closed my eyes to say the next because I needed to stop watching them. “Do you feel like you have to do what I say?”

He hesitated, and I fought the urge to look at him, to watch him think. “No.” His voice was soft.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, opened my eyes, and fought like hell to stare at Asher’s face and nothing else. “See, you’re not in my power or anything.”

He did a small frown. “Are you in my power then?”

“I can’t stop watching the two of you. I can’t stop thinking about what we did, what we could still do.”

He gave a harsh laugh, and it hurt to hear it, as if it had struck a blow along my skin. “How can you not think about us, while we stand here in front of you like this?”

“Oh, you’re not arrogant,” I said, arms clinging to myself like it was the last safe place for them to be.

“Anita, I am thinking of you, too. The pale spill of your back, the curve of your hip, the mound of your ass, underneath me. The feel of me rubbing along the soft warmth of your skin.”

“Stop,” I said, and had to turn away because I was blushing and it was suddenly hard to breathe.

“Why stop? It’s what we’re all thinking.”

“Ma petite does not like to be reminded of pleasure.”

“Mon Dieu, why not?”

I looked in time to see Jean-Claude give that all-purpose Gallic shrug, which meant everything and nothing. Usually he made it look graceful, today it looked tired.

“Anita,” Asher said.

I looked at him, and this time I could make eye contact, except that staring into those amazing eyes wasn’t much safer than looking at his amazing body.

“You told me you wanted me inside you, as I remember. And when I bared your neck you said, ‘Yes, Asher, yes.’ ”

“I remember what I said.”

“Then how can you be angry at me for doing what you asked?” He took three strides closer to me, and I backed up. The movement stopped him. “How can you blame me for this?”

“I don’t know, but I do. How that’s unfair, or maybe not unfair, I don’t know, but I do.”

Jean-Claude spoke then, his voice like the sigh of the wind outside a lonely door. “If you had but restrained yourself, mon ami, we might even now be together in the bath.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. My voice sounded angry, and I was glad.

Jean-Claude gazed at me with those blue black eyes. “Are you saying that you could refuse such bounty, once having tasted it?”

I didn’t blush this time, I paled. “Well, it’s moot now isn’t it, because he cheated.” I pointed at Asher for dramatic emphasis.

He stared at me openmouthed. “How did I cheat?”

Jean-Claude was back to holding his head in his hands. “Ma petite does not allow vampire trickery to be played upon her.” His voice came muffled but strangely clear.

Asher looked from one to the other of us. “Ever?”

Jean-Claude answered without moving, head still in his hands. “For the most, oui.”

“Then she has never tasted you as you are meant to be tasted,” Asher said, and his voice held a soft astonishment.

“That is her choice,” Jean-Claude said, he raised his face up slowly, so I could meet that blue gaze, and there was something of anger in his eyes.

I didn’t understand all of this conversation, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to, so I ignored it. I’ve always been damn good at ignoring what makes me uncomfortable. “The point is that Asher used vampire wiles on me. He’s done something to cloud the way I think about him. Now I won’t know, won’t ever know, if what I’m feeling is real, or a trick.” There, I felt sure of moral high ground on this one, at least.

Jean-Claude did a sort of voilà gesture with his hands, as if to say, see, I told you.

Asher’s face began to lose its anger and work towards that blankness they both did so well. “So it was just a lie.”

I looked at both of them. “What was a lie?”

“That you wanted me to be with you and Jean-Claude.”

I frowned. “No, it wasn’t a lie. I meant it.”

“Then this faux pas changes nothing,” he said.

“You’ve messed with my mind, I don’t think that’s just a faux pas. I think that’s damn serious.” My hands were on my hips, better than clinging to myself to keep from touching anybody. I embraced my anger, because it made them less beautiful. Of course, it made everything less beautiful.

“So you did lie,” Asher said, his face almost empty of any expression.

I hated watching him shut himself away like this, but I didn’t know what to do to stop it. “Damn it, no, I didn’t lie. You’re the one who changed the rules, Asher, not me.”

“I changed nothing. You said we would be together. You offered me your bed. You begged me to be inside you. Jean-Claude said that your sweet ass was not to be touched, and the deep pleasure of your body was full, where was I supposed to go?”

I fought not to blush and failed. “It was the ardeur talking, and you knew it.”

He backed up until he came to the edge of the bed, and he half-collapsed on the blue sheets, grabbing the post to keep from sliding off the silk. His face was blank, but the rest of him acted as if I’d struck him, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

“I said that once the ardeur was cooled you would find a way to reject me, to reject this,” and he gestured at Jean-Claude at the far end of the bed, and the bed itself, “and you have done just as I said you would do.” He pushed himself up from the bed, clinging to the wooden post for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure his legs would hold him. He took a tentative step away from the bed, almost staggered, then another, and another. Each step was steadier than the last. He was going for the door.

“Wait a minute, you’re not just going to walk out,” I said.

He stopped walking, but didn’t turn around as he answered, giving a clear view of the perfection of the back of his body. “I cannot leave until Musette is gone. I will give her no excuse to take me back to the courts with her. If I belong to no one, she will do it, and I will have no grounds to refuse.” He rubbed his hands over his arms as if he were cold. “When Musette is gone, I will petition for another Master of the City. There are those who would take me in.”

I walked towards him. “No, no, you have to give me some time to think about what you did. It’s not fair to walk off like this.” I was almost to him when he whirled around, and the rage on his face stopped me like I’d hit a wall.

“Fair! What is fair in being offered everything you ever wanted and thought never to have again, only to have it torn from your grasp? Torn from your grasp because you did exactly what you were told you could do, what was asked of you.” He didn’t yell, but his anger filled his voice, so every word was like a red-hot poker flung at my face.

I didn’t know what to say in the face of that anger.

“I will not, cannot, stay and watch you and Jean-Claude. I would rather be without the sight of either of you then so very close, but cast from your bed, your arms, your affections.” He covered his face with his hands and gave a low scream. “To be with us as our lover is to be seduced by our powers.” He tore his hands away from his face and let me see his eyes drowning blue, his anger making up for the lack of blood. “I had never dreamed that Jean-Claude had not done so.” He looked at the other man, still sitting on the edge of the bed. “How could you be with her for so long and resist the temptation?”

“She is most adamantly against such things,” Jean-Claude said. “At least you have had her willing blood, I have never been so blessed.”

Asher frowned, and it sat badly on that lovely face, like an angel frowning. “That astounds me still, though I knew that. But she has bestowed her charms upon you, and now I will never know them.”

This was all happening way too fast for me. “Jean-Claude understands the rules, and we both live by them.” Of course, I’d been just about ready to change the rules, but I didn’t think Asher needed to know right now.

Asher shook his head, sending that foam of gold hair gliding over his shoulders. “Even if I understood the rules, Anita, I could not abide by them.”

That made me frown. “What do you mean?”

“Anita, we aren’t human, no matter how much some of us pretend. But not all of what we are is bad. You have entered our world, but you deny yourself the best of us, while only seeing the worst. But most horrible of all, you deny Jean-Claude the best of his own world.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He is celibate save for you, but he does not pleasure himself fully with you, or anyone else.” He made a gesture that I didn’t understand. “I see that look upon your face, Anita, that American look. Sex is not just intercourse, or even just orgasm, and that is especially true for us.”

“Why, because you’re French?”

He gave me such a serious look that my attempt at humor died in my chest like a cold weight. “We are vampires, Anita. More than that, we are Master Vampires of Belle Morte’s line. We can give you pleasure that no other can give, and we can take pleasure as no other can experience it. By agreeing to limit himself, Jean-Claude has denied himself a great deal of what makes this existence bearable, even enjoyable.”

I looked at Jean-Claude. “How much have you been holding back?”

He wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“How much, Jean-Claude?”

“I cannot make my bite true pleasure as Asher can. I cannot roll your mind completely as he can.” He still wouldn’t look at me.

“That’s not what I asked.”

He sighed. “There are things that I can do that you have not seen. I have tried to abide by your wishes in all things.”

“Well, I will not,” Asher said.

We both looked at him.

“Anita will always find some reason to keep her from openly taking both of us. She cannot even allow her one vampire lover to truly be vampire. How could she possibly endure the full touch of two of them?”

“Asher,” I said, but didn’t know what else to say, all I knew was that my chest hurt, and it was hard to breathe.

“No, you will always find something in your men that is not good enough, not pure enough. You come to us out of need, even out of love, but it is never enough. You will not allow us to be enough even for ourselves.” He shook his head again, in a flurry of brightness that shattered the lights like golden mirrors. “My heart is too fragile to play these games, Anita. I love you, but I cannot live, let alone love, like this.”

“I don’t even get an hour to digest that you used vampire wiles on me.”

He put a hand on either of my shoulders, and the weight of his hands made my skin run warm. “If it’s not this, it will be something else. I have watched you with Richard, Jean-Claude, and now Micah. Micah wins his way through your maze by simply agreeing to everything you ask. Jean-Claude wins his place on the edges of your labyrinth by cutting himself off from unbelievable pleasure. Richard will not walk your maze, because he has his own, and only one person can be this confusing in a relationship at one time. Someone has to be willing to compromise, and neither you nor Richard will compromise enough.”

He let me go, and the absence of his hands almost staggered me, as if he’d taken away a shelter, and I was lost in the storm.

He began to walk backwards towards the door. “I thought I would do anything to be with Jean-Claude and his new servant. I thought I would do anything to be back in the safety of the arms of two people who loved me. But I understand now that your love will always come with conditions and that no matter how good your intentions, something holds you back, Anita. Something will not allow you to give yourself completely to the moment, to that shining thing called love. You hold yourself back, and you hold back those who love you. I cannot live being offered your love one moment and denied it the next. I cannot live being punished for what I cannot change.”

“It’s not punishment,” I said, and my voice sounded strange, strangled.

He gave a sad smile and flung his hair over the scarred side of his face, so he stared at me with nothing but that perfect profile showing. “To quote you, ma cherie, the hell it is not.” He turned and strode for the door.

I called after him. “Asher, please . . .” But he didn’t stop. The door closed behind him, and the room filled with a profound silence.

Jean-Claude spoke into that silence, and his soft voice made me jump. “Gather your things, Anita, and go.”

I looked at him, then, and my pulse was in my throat, and I was afraid, really afraid. “Are you kicking me out?” My voice didn’t even sound like me.

“Non, but at this moment I need to be alone.”

“You haven’t fed, yet.”

“Are you saying you would willingly feed me, now?” He didn’t look at me as he asked it. He was staring at the floor.

“Actually, I’m sort of not in the mood anymore,” I said, and my voice was fighting to get back to normal. Jean-Claude wasn’t kicking me out of his life, but I didn’t like that he wouldn’t look at me.

“I will feed, but it will be only for food, and you are not food. So, please, go.”

“Jean-Claude . . .”

“Just go, Anita, go. I need you not to be here right now. I need to not have to look at you, right now.” The first stirrings of anger had trickled into his voice, like a fuse freshly lit and running with fire, but not truly burning up, not yet.

“Would saying I’m sorry help?” My voice was small when I asked.

“That you understand that you have something to apologize for is a beginning, but it is not enough, not today.” He looked at me then, and his eyes glistened in the lights, not with power, but with unshed tears. “Besides, it is not me that you owe the apology to. Now go, before I say something that we will both regret.”

I opened my mouth, drew a breath to reply, but he held up a hand and said, simply, “No.”

I gathered my gun and shoulder holster from the bathroom. The wet clothes I left on the floor of the bathroom. I didn’t look back, and I didn’t try to kiss him good-bye. I think if I’d tried to touch him, he’d have hurt me. I don’t mean struck me, but there are a thousand ways to hurt someone you love that have nothing to do with physical violence. There were words trapped in his eyes, a world of pain shining there. I didn’t want to hear those words. I didn’t want to feel that pain. I didn’t want to see it, or touch it, or have it rubbed in the wounds in my own heart right that moment. I believed I was right, and a girl’s got to have some standards. I don’t let the vamps fuck with my mind, they just get my body. It had seemed a good rule an hour ago.

I shut the door behind me, leaned into it, and fought to take a breath that didn’t shake. My world had been more solid an hour ago.

33

I WAS STILL leaning against the door, shaking, when Nathaniel came up to me. I didn’t see him at first, even though he was standing right in front of me. I was staring at the floor, and I saw his jogging shoes, his legs, his shorts, before I looked slowly up and found his face. It felt like it took a long time to look up his body, and find that familiar face with those lilac eyes.

“Anita . . .” his voice was soft.

I held out a hand, because if anyone was nice to me, I was going to fall apart. I couldn’t afford that right now. If Asher was up, then probably so was Musette. Normally, the thought would have been enough to let me check on a nearby vampire. Today, it was empty. I was empty. I was what Marianne, my psychic teacher, called head blind. It happens sometimes if you’ve had a shock; physical, emotional, whatever. I wouldn’t be worth shit for metaphysical stuff until this wore off—if it wore off. Right that second it felt like the world should open up at my feet and swallow me down the great black hole that was eating through my heart.

“What is it, Nathaniel?” My voice was a bare whisper. I cleared my throat, sharply, to repeat it, but he’d heard.

“The two men that were following us in the blue Jeep are outside watching the back parking lot. They’ve got a different car, but it’s still them.”

I nodded, and the black hole at my feet began to close. I still hurt, and I was still head blind, but for this it didn’t matter. Guns don’t care if you’re psychically gifted. Guns don’t care about anything. They don’t bitch at you about the rules in your personal life, either. Of course, neither does a dog, but I don’t have to use a pooper-scooper after I’m through shooting my gun. Sometimes a body bag is needed, but that’s not usually my job.

I was feeling better. Steadier. This I could do. “Find Bobby Lee, I want the best people he’s got for car work.”

“Car work?” Nathaniel made it a question.

“We’re going to box them in and find out why they’re following us.”

“What if they don’t want to tell us?” he asked.

I looked at him as I slipped into the shoulder holster and unthreaded my belt, so I could rethread the holster. I didn’t say anything as I readied the gun, got it exactly where I wanted it. I had to carry the butt of the gun a little lower than I might have wanted for speed, but hitting your breast with the edge of the gun slows your fast draw even more. So a little lower angle, to avoid the chest. Legends say that the Amazons chopped off a breast to make them better at archery. I don’t believe that. I think it’s just another example of men thinking a woman can’t be a great warrior without cutting away her womanhood, symbolically, or otherwise. We can be great warriors; we just got to pack the equipment a little differently.

Nathaniel was looking very solemn. “I didn’t bring a gun.”

“That’s great, because you’re not coming.”

“Anita . . .”

“No, Nathaniel. I taught you about guns so you wouldn’t hurt yourself, and so in an emergency you could defend yourself. This isn’t an emergency. I want you to stay inside out of the line of fire.”

Something flitted over his face, something that might have been stubbornness. It faded, but stubborn wasn’t something that I’d ever seen on Nathaniel. I wanted him more independent, but not stubborn. He was about the only person in my life that did what I asked, when I asked. Right that second, I valued that.

I hugged him, and I think it caught us both by surprise. I whispered in his ear, against the sweet vanilla scent of his cheek, “Please, just do what I say.”

He was quiet for a heartbeat, then his arms wrapped around me, and he whispered, “Yes.”

I drew back from him, slowly, searching his face, wanting to ask him if he found my “rules” a burden, if I’d taken half the pleasure out of his life, too? I didn’t ask, because I didn’t really want to know. It wasn’t that my courage failed me, it was more that my cowardice overwhelmed me. I’d had about all the truth I could stand for one day.

I kissed him on the cheek and left to find Bobby Lee. Him, I trusted to be in the line of fire. But it was more than that; I wasn’t sleeping with Bobby Lee. I didn’t love him. Sometimes love makes you selfish. Sometimes it makes you stupid. Sometimes it reminds you why you love your gun.

34

I WAS LOOKING through a pair of binoculars at a car parked at the far corner of the Circus of the Damned employee parking lot. Nathaniel was right, it was the same two men, but now they were in a large gold Impala dating to the 1960s, or some such. It was big, old, but in good shape. It was also very different from the shiny new blue Jeep that they’d been in before. They’d switched so the blond was driving. With the binocs I could see that he looked youngish, under forty, over twenty-five. He was clean shaven, wearing a black mock turtleneck and silver frame glasses. His eyes were pale, gray, or grayish blue.

The dark-haired man had put a billed cap on and changed to a larger pair of sunglasses. His face was thin, clean shaven, with a good-sized mole at one corner of his mouth. What they used to call a beauty mark.

I watched them sitting there and wondered why they weren’t at least reading a newspaper, or drinking coffee, something, anything.

They’d done everything they were supposed to do, according to Kasey Krime Stoppers 101. They’d changed vehicles. They’d made small changes to their appearances. All this might have worked, if they weren’t sitting outside Circus of the Damned, doing nothing. No matter how clever you disguise yourself, very few people sit in a car in the middle of the morning and do nothing. Also the employee parking lot was almost empty before noon. Once darkness fell, they could probably have parked and not been noticed so quickly, but this time of morning there was no hiding.

Bobby Lee was explaining all the Kasey Krime Stoppers tips and more to me. “If they hadn’t changed cars, and they hadn’t done anything to change their appearance, it might mean they didn’t care if you spotted them. Or even that they wanted you to spot them. But they’ve changed enough I think they really are trying to follow you.”

I handed him back the binoculars. “Why are they following me?”

“Usually, when people start following you around, you know why.”

“I thought they might be Renfields working for Musette and company, but I don’t think Renfields would have taken the trouble to change their appearance like this. Most Renfields aren’t the brightest of people.”

Bobby Lee grinned at me. “How can you be friends with so many bloodsuckers, and still be so damn disdainful of them?”

I shrugged, and my shrug wasn’t graceful. It never had been. “Just lucky, I guess.”

The smile stayed, but the eyes began to go serious. “What do you want to do about these two?”

For a second, I thought he meant Asher and Jean-Claude, then I realized he meant the two yahoos in the Impala. The fact that even for a second I thought he meant something else said just how bad my concentration was. Concentration like that will get you killed in a fire fight.

I took a deep breath, another, let them out slowly, trying to clear my head. I needed to be here, now, not worrying about my increasingly complex personal life. Here and now with men and women with guns, about to risk their lives because I asked them to do it. Maybe the two men in the car weren’t dangerous at all, but we couldn’t count on that. We had to treat them like they were. If we were wrong, no harm done. If we were right, well, we’d be as prepared as we could be.

I couldn’t shake the feeling of impending disaster. I looked up at Bobby Lee’s tall frame. “I don’t want to get any of you guys killed.”

“We’d kind of like to avoid that ourselves.”

I shook my head. “No, that’s not what I mean.”

He looked at me, face suddenly very serious. “What’s wrong, Anita?”

I sighed. “I think I’m losing my nerve for this shit. Not for my own safety, but for everyone else’s. The last time the wererats helped me I got one of you killed, and another one cut up pretty badly.”

“I healed up pretty good.” Claudia walked towards us all six feet six and serious muscle. Her long black hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail leaving her face clean and unadorned. I’d never seen her wear makeup, and maybe because I’d never seen her in any, she didn’t need it.

She wore a navy blue sports bra and a pair of dark blue jeans. She usually wore sports bras, I think because she had trouble finding shirts that fit over the spectacular spread of her shoulders and chest. She was a serious weight lifter, but not to that point where you’d ever mistake her for masculine. No, Claudia was definitely all girl.

The last time I’d seen her she’d had her arm damn near shot off. There was a faint tracery of scars on her right shoulder, pale pink and white. Silver shot will scar even a shape-shifter. There’d even been a faint possibility that the silver could have lost her the use of her arm. But the right arm looked as whole and muscular as the left.

“You look great, how’s the arm?” I asked, smiling. One of my favorite things about hanging with the monsters is the healing. Straight humans seemed to get killed on me a lot, monsters survived. Let’s hear it for the monsters.

Claudia flexed the arm, and muscles rippled under her skin. It was downright impressive. I lift weights, but not like that. “Not all the way back to full strength. I still can’t curl more than one hundred and forty pounds with it.”

I could bench-press my own body weight, plus a few pounds, and until now I’d been pretty impressed with doing reps with forty pounds for curls. Suddenly I felt inadequate.

I wanted to ask her if she was okay with putting her life, and that impressive body, on the line for me again, but I didn’t. Some questions you just don’t ask. Not out loud.

I stood there pressed against the black-mirrored glass that, from the outside, looked like part of the wall. I’d always wondered how someone was usually there to meet me at the back door. Now I knew—they had a lookout. We could have watched the bad guys all day, and they’d never have seen us.

It was part of a narrow loft area up above the main part of the Circus of the Damned, but this one small nook was equipped with binocs, comfortable chairs, and a little table. The rest of the loft area was mostly cables, wires, stored equipment, like the backstage areas at a theater. Most of the ceiling of the Circus was open to girders and beams like the warehouse it originally was, but now that I knew the loft was here, I realized that there was a narrow band of enclosed space that went around the entire top of the building. I’d asked if there were other hidden lookouts, and gotten the answer of course. Ask an obvious question, and you get the obvious answer.

“Claudia’s going to drive one of the cars for our little plan,” Bobby Lee said.

“I thought the plan was for someone who looked harmless and normal to drive both cars.”

Claudia gave me a flat unfriendly look.

“No offense, but you look anything but ordinary.”

“She’ll throw a shirt on over the muscles, take out the ponytail, and look like a girl,” Bobby Lee said.

I looked at him and her. She was taller than he was, hell she was as broad through the shoulders as he was, and she had more bulk. “You know Bobby-boy if I had to choose between arm-wrestling you, or Claudia, I’d pick you.”

He blinked at me, totally not getting it.

Claudia got it. “You’re wasting your breath, Anita. No matter how much I work out, I’m still a girl to even the best of them.”

Bobby Lee was looking from one to the other of us. “What are you two talking about?”

I tried being very clear, using small words. “Claudia is more muscled and taller than most of the other wererats you have here today. Why are you putting her out in the first car to look normal and harmless? She looks anything but harmless.”

He blinked at me, frowning. “You won’t see the muscles under the shirt.”

“She’s six-freaking-feet and six-fucking-inches tall, with a pair of shoulders as broad as yours. You’re not going to hide that under a shirt.”

“I’m aware of that, Anita.”

“Then why put her out in front to look harmless?”

Bobby Lee tried to wrap his mind around it, but in the end he was a man that had spent most of his life being muscle—smart muscle, but still muscle. “She’s the only girl we have here today, except you, and they’d recognize you.”

“Are you really telling me that the bad guys would feel less threatened by Claudia than by a short, less-powerfully built man?”

That was clear enough that Bobby Lee finally got it. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, smiled, and gave a small laugh. “I see your point, but truthfully, yeah, they’ll be less intimidated. Men just don’t see women as a threat, no matter how big they are, and all men are suspect no matter how small.”

I shook my head. “Why, because we have breasts and you don’t?”

“Give it up, Anita,” Claudia said, “just give it up. They’re men, they can’t help it.”

Since I wasn’t a man, I took Bobby Lee’s word that the bad guys would panic less if one of the people involved in our mock accident was a woman. I had to admit that even I was less physically afraid of another woman, but it seemed wrong somehow. Claudia threw a man’s pale blue shirt over her jeans and buttoned it up, even the sleeves. She left enough buttons undone in front to flash some cleavage, then she took the tie out of her hair. She shook her hair out, and it fell around her face, over her shoulders, in a slick, brunette flood. The hair softened the strong lines of her face, and I suddenly had a glimpse of what she might look like if she put any effort into being a traditional girl. Spectacular was the word that came to mind.

Bobby Lee watched the hair cascade with nearly openmouthed attention. I think I could have shot him twice before he reacted. Shit. I’d thought better of him than that.

Claudia met my eyes and crooked one shapely eyebrow. It said it all. We had one of those moments of perfect understanding between girls, and I think that for her, like for me, there weren’t that many of them. We both spent far too much time hanging out with the men. But no matter how many times you saved their lives, and they saved yours, no matter how much you could bench-press, no matter how tall, or strong, or competent—you were still a girl. And the fact that you were a girl overshadowed everything else for most men. It wasn’t good or bad, it just was. A woman will forget that a man is male, if they are good enough friends, but men rarely forget that a woman is feminine. Most of the time it bugged the crap out of me, but today we’d use it against the bad guys, because they’d see all that hair, those breasts, and they’d underestimate her, because she was a girl.

35

THEY’D ONLY BEEN following me for one day, as far as I knew, so why such determination to find out why? One: It’s usually better to know than not to know when people are following you, and two: I was in a truly foul mood.

I had no idea what to do about Asher. I didn’t want to lose him, and now I didn’t trust the feeling. In fact I was pretty certain it was really vampire mind tricks. Maybe I’d never really loved him. Maybe that had always been a lie. The logical part of me knew I was kidding myself on that one, but the scared part was happy with the theory. The thing that bothered me the most was I was no longer certain which was the brave thing to do. Was it brave and right to dump Asher for his treachery? Or was he right, and he’d just done what I asked him to do? Was I wrong? And, if I was wrong about this, how many other things had I been wrong about, unfair about? I was losing my sense of rightness about so many things. Without my sense of holier-than-thou anger, I felt shaky and unreal. I didn’t feel like me anymore.

What if I got Claudia killed, the way I’d gotten her friend Igor killed a few months back? Hell, what if I got Bobby Lee killed like his friend, Cris? I’d killed nearly fifty percent of any wererats that Rafael, their king, had loaned me. No one complained about it, but today, the thought of more losses seemed completely unacceptable.

If I wasn’t willing to let people risk their lives, then this plan wouldn’t work. We needed four vehicles to block four roads, and make sure there was no place for the bad guys to go. We’d cut off all escape routes and reason with them. That meant a minimum of four people in danger. More, since Bobby Lee wanted shooters hidden among the few cars in the parking lot. The shooters would move out of the Circus when the bad guys were busy driving around trying to figure a way out of the parking lot. Or, that was the plan.

It was a good plan, unless the bad guys pulled out guns and started shooting. Then we’d have to shoot back, and they might get killed, and I’d be no better off. I still wouldn’t know shit, and I might have gotten some more of Rafael’s people dead.

“You alright, Anita?” Bobby Lee asked.

I was rubbing fingertips against my temples and shaking my head. “No, I’m not. I’m really not okay with this.”

“With what?”

“This, all of it.” Even as I said it, I saw Claudia driving down the back road, and Fredo coming up the other road. I’d made sure I knew his name. You shouldn’t ask people to die for you if you don’t at least know their name. He was a few inches under six feet, a slender dark man, with large graceful hands, wearing more knives than anyone I’d met in a long time. Bobby Lee said that both Fredo and Claudia could make the accident look real, they were both drivers. He said drivers like it should have been in capital letters. I’d asked to be one of the drivers, and I’d been informed that I didn’t know how to DRIVE, and I couldn’t argue with that. But right that moment, waiting and watching other people take the risks for me was harder than risking myself.

I trusted Bobby Lee’s judgment. I really did. What I didn’t trust was the bad guys. They were bad guys, so you couldn’t trust them to be anything but unpredictable and dangerous.

I watched the two cars get closer, and I almost yelled, don’t, don’t do it! But I wanted to know who was following me, and more than that, if I said stop, if my nerve failed here on something so mundane, what good would I be? The trouble was, my nerve had failed. I kept my mouth shut, but I felt like the only thing keeping my pulse in my mouth was the tight line of my lips.

I prayed, Dear God, don’t let anyone get hurt. Then a thought occurred to me, seconds before the fender bender. If Bobby Lee and company could stage this, they could probably have followed the men, trailed them back to wherever. Following just hadn’t occurred to me, only confrontation. Shit.

The cars collided; it did look real, accidental. Claudia got out, all tall and feminine even from a distance. Fredo got out, yelling, waving his arms around.

The bad guys started their car and went for the far entrance of the parking lot, farther down the street that had just been blocked off. They must have smelled a . . . rat.

The Impala stopped before they’d turned completely onto the road, which meant they’d spotted the third car tucked in beside the Circus, blocking the alley between the Circus and the building next door.

Bobby Lee led the way to the stairs, and we clattered down, trusting that the fourth vehicle, a truck, had blocked the far alley where the loading dock was located. We’d both sacrificed being one of the first shooters into the parking lot so we could watch the plan unfold.

By the time we hit the lot, gunmen had sprung up among the few parked cars, like mushrooms after a rainstorm. I felt almost silly drawing my gun and joining the half circle. Claudia, Fredo, and the two other drivers were the other half of the circle, coming in from the other side.

It wasn’t a perfect circle, a perfect circle would have meant we were firing at each other, so the circle was sort of metaphoric, but the effect was perfect.

The Impala sat there in our circle of guns, engine on, and no weapons in sight, yet. The blond had his hands very firmly on the top of the steering wheel. It was the dark-haired one in his billed cap who had his hands out of sight.

There was a lot of shouting on our side, about hands up, and don’t you fucking move. They hadn’t moved, but the engine was still running, and the one guy’s hands were still out of sight. I kept my gun pointed one-handed, but raised a hand. I don’t know if anyone else saw it, or understood what I wanted, but Bobby Lee did. He held up his hand in almost the same gesture, and the yelling quieted. It was suddenly silent, except for the thrum of the car engine.

I spoke into that silence, making sure my voice carried, “Turn off the car.”

The one in the billed cap said something that I couldn’t hear through the windows. The blond very slowly lowered one hand, and the engine died. The ticking of the engine was very loud in the stillness.

Billed-cap man was obviously unhappy. Even with sunglasses covering his face, it showed in the line of his mouth. His hands were still hidden. The blond had put his hand back on the steering wheel.

“Hands where we can see them,” I said. “Now.”

The blond’s hands seemed to vibrate on the steering wheel, as if he would have put his hands where I could see them if they weren’t already there. He said something to his companion, and bill-cap shook his head.

I lowered my gun, took a deep breath, held it, aimed, let the breath out slow and careful as I squeezed the trigger. The gunshot was loud in the stillness, and it took a moment for me to be able to hear the air hissing out of the tire. I aimed my gun back up at the blond’s window.

His eyes flashed wide. He was speaking fast and franticly to his friend.

“Bobby Lee,” I said, “have someone on that side of the car press the barrel of their gun against the passenger side window.”

“You want them to shoot?”

“Not yet, and if they do have to shoot I don’t want to chance hitting the blond with the same bullet.” I looked up at him. “Aim accordingly.”

It was Claudia who stepped forward and put her gun against the window, she angled it slightly down so she’d miss the man on the other side. Bullets have a nasty tendency to travel farther than you want them to.

She asked, without looking at me, never taking her eyes from the man she was aiming at. “Do I get to kill him?”

“We only need one of them to question,” I said.

She smiled, a flash of white teeth, and it was fierce and frightening framed by all that dark hair, that lovely face. “Great.”

“I won’t ask again, put your hands where we can see them, or else,” I said.

He didn’t put his hands up. He was either stupid or . . . “Bobby Lee, does anyone have our backs?”

“You mean backup?” he asked.

“Yeah, he’s awful stubborn, unless he thinks help is coming.”

He said something quick and harsh, it sounded German, but it wasn’t, and his Southern accent vanished when he said it. Some of the wererats turned outward, watching the perimeter. We were in the open, no one was going to sneak up on us. The only real danger would have been if someone had a rifle and scope. There was really nothing we could do about snipers, and because there was nothing we could do about it, we had to let it go, pretend it couldn’t happen, and take care of what was happening. But a spot from between my shoulder blades to the top of my head ran with goose bumps, as if I could feel the scope on me. I was pretty sure it was imagination, but my imagination’s always been a problem when I got overly excited. I tried to think of something else, like why the man wouldn’t put his fucking hands up.

I aimed one-handed so I could free up my left hand. I held a finger up, one, then another finger, two.

The blond was speaking frantically. I could hear snatches of his voice, do it, God, do it.

I actually started to put up that third finger, when the bill-cap man put his hands up, slowly. Empty hands, but I was betting any amount of money that he had some nasty piece of hardware in his lap. Oh, yeah.

Claudia kept her gun against his window. I think because she hadn’t been told to move away. Frankly, I liked her there, close enough to fire if he went for whatever was in his lap.

I made the universal sign for roll the window down, rolling my hand in the air. They were in an old enough car that they actually had to crank it down. The blond unwound the window, slowly, carefully, and kept his other hand glued to the steering wheel. He was a cautious man. I liked that.

He rolled the window down, put his hands back on the steering wheel, and said nothing. He didn’t try to plead innocence, or confess guilt. He just sat there. Fine.

I was short enough that with a little stooping I could see into the other man’s lap. It was empty, which meant whatever he’d been cradling was on the floorboard. He’d dropped it so we wouldn’t see it. What the hell was it?

I raised my voice a little. “You in the cap, put your hands slowly on the dashboard, flat, and if they move from there, you will be shot. Is that clear?”

He wouldn’t look at me.

“Is that clear?”

He began to move his hands towards the dashboard. “It’s clear.”

“Why were you following me?” I asked, mostly to the blond, because I was beginning to realize the other man wasn’t going to volunteer much.

“I do not know what you are talking about.” He had a faint German accent, and I had too many relatives with the same accent not to recognize it. Of course, they were all over sixty, and hadn’t seen the old country for a few decades. I was betting blondie was a more recent import.

“Where’d the pretty blue Jeep go?” I asked.

His face went very still.

“I told you,” the bill-cap said.

“Yeah, we spotted you,” I said. “It wasn’t all that hard.”

“You would not have seen us if you had not been swerving all over the road,” Blondie said.

“Sorry about that, but we had some technical difficulties.”

“Yeah, like one of you turned furry,” the guy in the cap said. He definitely was middle American, middle of nowhere, no accent.

“So you wondered what was wrong, and got close enough to see,” I said.

Neither of them said anything to that.

“You are both going to get, very slowly, out of this car. If either of you goes for a weapon, you may both die. I only need one of you for questioning, the other is just gravy. I’ll do my best to see that one of you lives, but I won’t break a sweat to save you both, because I don’t need you both. Is that clear?”

The blond said, “yes,” the other one said, “Crystal fucking clear.” Oh, yeah, he was American, only we have that poetic turn of phrase.

Then I heard the sirens. They were close, very close, like in front of the building close. I’d have liked to think they were just passing through, but when you’re holding this many guns out in the open, you can’t count on that.

“Never a cop when you need one,” Bobby Lee said, “try to do anything illegal, and they’re all over ya.”

The billed-cap man said, “If you put all your guns away before the cops get in sight, we’ll just pretend this didn’t happen.” He was smiling as he leaned across, so I’d be sure and see the smug expression.

I smiled back, and his smile wilted because I looked too damned pleased. I wasn’t smooth at digging my badge out of my pocket yet, not one-handed anyway, but I managed. I flashed the metallic star in its little case. “Federal marshal, asshole. Keep your hands where we can see them until the nice policemen arrive.”

“What are you arresting us for?” the blond asked in his German accent. “We have done nothing.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We’ll start with carrying concealed weapons without a permit, then suspicion of grand theft auto.” I patted the side of the Impala. “This ain’t your car, and whatever your friend over there dropped on the floorboard is going to be illegal. Just call it a hunch.”

“Bobby Lee, we don’t need this big a crowd.”

He grasped my meaning and barked another order in that odd guttural almost-German.

The wererats melted away in that too-quick-to-follow-with-the-eye blur of speed I’d seen them use once or twice.

Claudia stayed at her post, and Bobby Lee refused to leave, but it was just the three of us when the first policeman saw us. Well, five if you count the bad guys.

Two uniformed officers came up the alley, walking, because the truck that was blocking the road hadn’t moved, but the wererat that had been driving it was walking just ahead of them with his hands laced on the top of his head. With his hands up, it flashed that his shoulder holster was empty. They’d taken his gun.

I made sure my badge was held up as high as I could manage. I was yelling “federal marshall” as they came around the corner.

The cops used the few cars on that side of the lot for cover, and yelled, “Guns down!”

I yelled, “Federal Marshal Anita Blake, the rest of these people are federal deputies.”

Bobby Lee whispered, “Deputies?”

I spoke out of the corner of my mouth, “Just agree with me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I stepped back from the car enough to flash my badge better and yell, “Federal Marshall Blake, glad to see you officers.”

The officers stayed behind the engine blocks of the cars, but had stopped yelling at us. They were trying to figure out how much trouble they’d be in if we really were federal and they messed up what we were doing, but they weren’t worrying about politics so hard as to risk getting themselves shot. I approved.

I lowered my voice and spoke to the men in the car, before I walked towards the policemen. “Carrying concealed without a permit, weapons on you that are illegal no matter what, a stolen car, and I’m betting when your prints hit the system it lights up like a Christmas tree.” I was smiling and nodding at the two policemen hiding behind the cars. The badge had calmed them, but they still had their guns out, and I heard other sirens in the distance. They’d called for backup, I couldn’t blame them. They had no way of knowing any of us qualified as a cop.

I glanced at the blond. “Besides, the police around here take a dim view of criminals following federal marshals around.”

“We did not know you were police,” the blond said.

“Your intel sucks,” I said.

He nodded, his hands still on the steering wheel. “Yes.”

I put my gun up and held my badge up very high, put both hands up to show I was currently unarmed, and walked carefully towards the two uniforms, and the others that were creeping, cautiously, guns drawn, out of the alley. There were days when I truly loved having a badge. This was sooo one of those days.

36

THREE HOURS LATER I was sitting in the outer office of the police station, sipping really bitter coffee, and waiting for someone to let me talk to my prisoners. I had a badge, and I had the right to deputize anyone I saw fit in an emergency. The police had taken Bobby Lee, Claudia, and the one driver in for questioning. They’d been sent home an hour ago. Bobby Lee had tried to insist he stay with me, but his lawyer had told him going home after only two hours was a gift and he should take it. He took it after I insisted. It helped that there had been an MP5 Heckler and Koch submachine gun on the floorboard, not to mention about half a dozen more smaller weapons, four knives, one of those collapsible clubs, an ASP. Oh, and that the car they were driving wasn’t theirs.

The dark-haired guy who’d been so sullen turned out to be ex-army, so his prints came up. Strangely, he had no criminal record. I would have bet almost anything that he was a bad guy. But if he was a bad guy, he was good enough at it to have never been caught.

The blond didn’t exist, his prints weren’t in our system. Because of the German accent and my insistence, they’d forwarded both sets of prints to Interpol to see if our boys were wanted outside the country, but that would take time.

So I had been left to cool my heels in a very uncomfortable desk chair beside the desk of a detective that never seemed to be there. The nameplate read, “P. O’Brien,” but as far as I’d seen in over three hours, he was a myth. There was no Detective O’Brien, they just sat people by his desk and assured them that he’d be coming to talk to them soon.

I wasn’t under arrest, in fact, I wasn’t in trouble at all. I was free to go, but I was not free to speak with the prisoners without someone present. Fine by me, I talked to them with the nice policemen present. None of us learned anything, but that they both knew that they wanted their lawyers. Once they got read their rights that was all either of them would say.

There was enough to hold them for at least seventy-two hours, but after that we were up shit creek, unless their prints came back with an active criminal warrant.

I took another sip of the coffee, made a face, and set it carefully on the desk of the invisible detective. I thought I’d never meet coffee I couldn’t drink. I was wrong. It tasted like old gym socks and was nearly as solid. I sat up straight and wondered about simply leaving. My badge kept me and the wererats out of jail, and made sure the two bad guys didn’t get to go free, but that was about all. The local police weren’t happy with anyone with ‘federal’ as part of their title messing in local crime.

A woman came to stand in front of me. She was about five eight, wearing a black skirt that was longer than was stylish, but then, her comfortable black shoes weren’t exactly cutting edge either. Her blouse was a dark gold that looked like silk but was probably something easier to clean. Her hair had been dark brunette, but was so streaked with gray and silver and white that it looked like she’d streaked it on purpose. Natural punk.

Deep smile lines showcased a truly nice smile. She held her hand out to me. I stood up to shake hands, and her handshake was firm, strong. I glanced at the black suit jacket on the back of Detective O’Brien’s chair and knew who I was talking to even before she introduced herself.

“Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. We’ve had a busy day.” She motioned me to sit back down.

I sat. “Understandable.”

She smiled, but her eyes didn’t match the smile now, as if she didn’t believe me. “I’m going to be in charge of this case, so I just want to get a few things clear.” She laid the folder she’d been carrying on her desk, opened it, and seemed to be reading some notes.

“Sure,” I said.

“You don’t know why these two men were following you, correct?”

“No, I don’t.”

She gave me a very direct look out of her dark gray eyes. “Yet, you felt the matter was so urgent that you deputized,” she checked her notes, “ten civilians to help you capture these two men.”

I shrugged and gave her pleasant, empty eyes. “I don’t like being followed by people I don’t know.”

“You told the officers on sight that you suspected the men of carrying illegal weapons. That was before anyone had searched them, or the car. How did you know they were carrying illegal weapons,” there was the slightest hesitation before she said, “Marshal Blake?”

“Gut instinct, I guess.”

Those warm gray eyes suddenly went as cold as a winter sky. “Cut the bullshit, and just tell me what you know.”

I widened eyes at that. “I’ve told your fellow officers everything I know, Detective O’Brien, honest.”

She gave me a look of such withering scorn that I should have wilted in my seat and confessed all. The trouble was, I had nothing to confess. I didn’t know shit.

I tried for honesty. “Detective O’Brien, I swear to you that I just noticed that I had a tail today on the highway. Then I saw that the same two men were outside where I was in a different car. Until I saw them the second time, I was willing to believe I was being paranoid. But once I knew they were following me, I wanted them to stop doing that, and I wanted to know why they were following me in the first place.” I shrugged. “That is the absolute truth. I wish I knew something to conceal from you, but I am as much in the dark on this one as you are.”

She closed the file with a snap and hit it sharply on the desk as if to settle the papers inside it, but it looked like an automatic gesture, or an angry one. “Don’t try batting those big brown eyes at me, Ms. Blake, I’m not buying.”

Batting my big brown eyes? Me? “Are you accusing me of trying to use feminine wiles on you, Detective?”

That made her almost smile, but she fought off the urge. “Not exactly, but I’ve seen women like you before, so cute, so petite, you give that innocent face and the men just fall all over themselves to believe you.”

I looked at her for a second, to see if she was kidding, but she seemed serious. “Whatever axe you’re grinding, find someone else’s forehead to sink it into. I have come in here and told nothing but the truth. I helped get two men off the streets that were carrying firepower with armor-piercing, cop-killing ammo. You don’t seem very damned grateful.”

She gave me very cold eyes. “You’re free to leave anytime, Ms. Blake.”

I stood, then smiled down at her, and knew my eyes were as cold and unfriendly as hers. “Thanks so much, Ms. O’Brien.” I emphasized the Ms.

“That’s Detective O’Brien,” she said, as I’d almost been sure she would.

“Then it’s Marshal Blake to you, Detective O’Brien.”

“I earned the right to be called detective, Blake; I didn’t get grandfathered in on some technicality. You may have a badge, but it doesn’t make you a cop.”

Jesus, she was jealous. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I would get nowhere rising to the bait and fighting with her. So I didn’t. Bully for me.

“I may not be your kind of cop, but I am a duly appointed federal marshal.”

“You can interfere on any case involving the preternatural. Well, this one doesn’t involve the preternatural.” She gazed up at me, face calm, but still showing signs of anger. “So have a nice day.”

I blinked at her, and counted, slowly, to ten.

Another detective came striding up. He had short curly blond hair, freckles, and a big grin. If he’d been any newer to plainclothes, he’d have squeaked when he walked. “James said we caught some sort of international super spy, is that true?”

A look passed over O’Brien’s face, a look of near pain. You could almost hear her thinking, shit.

I grinned at the other detective. “Interpol came back with a hit, huh?”

He nodded eagerly. “The German guy is wanted all over the place, industrial espionage, suspected terrorism . . .”

O’Brien cut him off, “Go away Detective Webster, go the fuck away from me.”

His smile faltered. “Did I say something wrong? I mean the marshal here brought them in, I thought she . . .”

“Get away from me, now,” O’Brien said, and the growl of warning in her voice would have done a werewolf proud.

Detective Webster walked away, without saying another word. He looked worried, and he should have. I was betting O’Brien carried grudges to the grave, and made sure everyone paid up.

She looked at me, and the anger in her eyes wasn’t just for me. Maybe it was for the years of being the only woman on a detail, maybe the job had made her bitter, or maybe she’d always been a grumpy-grumpy girl. I didn’t know, and I didn’t really care.

“Catching an international terrorist in these days and times could make a person’s career,” I said, sort of conversationally, not really looking at her.

The look of hatred in her eyes made me want to flinch. “You know it will.”

I shook my head. “O’Brien, I don’t have a career in the police department. I don’t even have a career with the Feds. I am a vampire executioner, and I help out on cases where the monsters are involved. Me having a badge is so new and so unprecedented that they’re still arguing on whether we’ll have rank as federal marshals, or be able to move up in rank at all. I’m not a threat to your promotion. Me taking credit won’t help my career a damn bit. So help yourself.”

Her eyes toned down from hatred to distrust. “What’s in it for you?”

I shook my head. “Don’t you get it yet, O’Brien? What did Webster say, international spy, industrial espionage, suspected terrorism, and that’s just the top of the list.”

“What of it?” she said, hands clasped over the file folder on her desk like she was shielding it from me, as if I’d snatch it and run with it.

“He was following me, O’Brien, why? I’ve never been out of the country. What does an international bad ass like this want with me?”

She gave a small frown. “You really don’t know why they were following you, do you?”

I shook my head. “No, and would you want someone like that following you around?”

“No,” she said, and her voice had softened, was uncertain. “No, I wouldn’t.” She looked up at me, eyes hard, but not as hard as they had been. She didn’t apologize, but she did hand me the file folder. “If you really don’t know why they’re after you, then you need to know just how bad a man you’ve dug up . . . Marshal Blake.”

I smiled. “Thank you, Detective O’Brien.”

She didn’t smile back, but she did send Detective Webster for fresh coffee for both of us. She also told him to make a fresh pot, before he poured our cups. I was liking Detective O’Brien more and more.

37

HIS NAME WAS Leopold Walther Heinrick. He was a German national. He was suspected of almost every large crime you could think of. And by large I mean not petty. He wasn’t a purse-snatcher, or a con artist. He was suspected of working for terrorist groups worldwide, mostly those with a decided Aryan bias. It wasn’t that he’d never taken money from people that weren’t out to make the world safe for bigots, but he seemed to prefer to work with them. He’d been linked to espionage that specialized in helping paler people either stay in power or get power over people that were less pale.

The file contained a list of known associates, with pictures of some of them. A few of the pictures were the equivalent of mug shots, but most were grainy faxes of surveillance photos. Faces in profile, faces caught dashing to cars, into and out of buildings in distant countries. It was almost as if the men knew they were being photographed, or feared they would be. There were two faces that I kept coming back to—two men—one in profile wearing a hat, and the other a blur of face staring out at the camera.

O’Brien came over to stand beside me, looking down at the two pictures that I’d laid side by side on the edge of her desk. “Do you recognize them?”

“I’m not sure.” I touched the edge of the pictures, as if that would make them more real, make them give up their secrets.

“You keep coming back to them,” she said.

“I know, but it’s not like I know them–know them. More like I’ve seen them somewhere. Somewhere recent. I can’t place them, but I know I’ve seen them, or two people very similar.” I peered down at the grainy images, gray and white and black, made up of little dots, as if the fax was a copy of a copy of a copy. Who knew where the original had come from?

O’Brien seemed to pick up what I was thinking, because she said, “You’re working from faxes of bad surveillance photos. You’d be lucky to recognize your own mother in these.”

I nodded, then picked up the one with the big dark-haired man in it. He was about to get into a car. There was a generic older building behind him, but I wasn’t a student of architecture, it told me nothing. The man was looking down as if watching his step off a curb, so I didn’t have a full front view even. “Maybe if I could see a front shot. Or did they send us all they had?”

“They sent me all they had, or that’s what they said.” The look on her face said she wasn’t sure she believed that, but she had to act as if she did. “They’re pretty worried that more of Heinrick’s friends might be in the states. We’re going to be giving a stack of these photos to the patrol cops, with orders to follow and report, but not to apprehend.”

“You think they’re that dangerous?” I asked.

She gave me a look. “You’ve read Heinrick’s résumé, what do you think?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, he sounds dangerous.” I went over the list of known associates again. “None of these rings a bell.” I closed the folder and laid it behind the two pictures. I picked up the second photo this time, the one of the pale-haired man. His hair looked white in the photo. White or a very, very pale blond. There wasn’t much background to help me judge his size. It was a full-face shot, up close, only his upper body showing. He was leaning over a table, talking. This was a better photo, more detailed, but I still couldn’t place him.

“Was this taken with one of those concealed spy cameras?”

“Why do you ask?”

I moved the photo so she could look straight down on it. “It’s an odd angle for one thing, up, like the camera is low, about hip level. You don’t usually take photos from the hip. Second, he’s talking but not looking at the camera, and it’s too natural. I’d bet good money he doesn’t know he’s being photographed.”

“You could be right.” She took the photo from me and looked at it, turning it a little to get a better angle on it. “Why does it matter how the photo was taken?” Her eyes had gone nice and cold, good cop eyes, suspicious, wanting to know what I knew.

“Look, I’ve watched you guys try to question Heinrick and his friend. They sound like a fucking broken record. You can hold them for seventy-two hours, but they can spend every hour of that time saying nothing.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“We could go fishing. Tell Heinrick that his friends really need to watch themselves better. You can’t tell where these photos were taken. The blond is just in a room.”

O’Brien shook her head. “No, we don’t know enough to go fishing, not yet.”

“If I remember where I’ve seen these guys, we might,” I said.

She looked at me, as if I’d finally done something interesting. “We might,” her voice was cautious.

“Even if I don’t remember where I saw them, if it gets close to the seventy-two hours, can we try bluffing?”

“Why?” she asked.

I crossed my arms over my ribs, and fought the urge to hug myself. “Because I want to know why this bugger is following me. Frankly, if he wasn’t following me specifically I’d be more worried about St. Louis in general.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“If Heinrick and crew were in town in general, then I’d say we have terrorism to worry about. Probably something with a racial bent.” I touched the folder without opening it. “Though he’s worked a few times for people of color, as the saying goes. Wonder how he justified that to his white supremacist friends?”

“Maybe he’s just a mercenary,” O’Brien said. “Maybe the fact that he’s worked for the white supremacist is coincidental. They were the people who had the money at the time he needed it.”

I looked up at her. “You believe that?”

“No,” she said, and smiled. “You think more like a cop than I thought you would, Blake, I’ll give you that.”

“Thanks.” I took it as high praise, which it was.

“No, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, and his dossier reads like he’s a white supremacist that isn’t above taking money from the very people he wants to destroy. He’s a racist, not a zealot.”

I nodded. “I think you’re right.”

She looked down at me for a second or two, then nodded, as if she’d made up her mind. “If the seventy-two hours gets close, you can come and we’ll play go fish, but I think we’re going to need better bait than a couple of grainy photos.”

I nodded. “I agree. I’ll do my best to come up with more before we have to beard the lion in its den.”

“Beard the lion in its den?” she shook her head. “What have you been reading?”

I shook my head. “I have friends that read to me, if there aren’t pictures, I’m pretty much lost.”

She gave me another of those looks, half disgust, half trying not to smile. “I doubt that, Blake, I doubt that very much.”

Actually, Micah, Nathaniel, and I were taking turns reading aloud to each other at night. Micah had been shocked that neither Nathaniel nor I had ever read the original Peter Pan, so we’d started with that. I’d then discovered that Micah had never read Charlotte’s Web. Nathaniel had read the book to himself as a child, but no one had ever read it to him. In fact, he didn’t ever remember being read to as a child. That was all he said, just that he’d never had anyone ever read aloud to him when he was small, but that one bit of knowledge seemed to speak volumes. So we were taking turns reading aloud to each other, a bedtime ritual that was more homey, and strangely more intimate than sex, or feeding the ardeur. You didn’t read your favorite childhood stories aloud to people you fucked, you read them to people you loved. There was that word again, love. I was beginning to think I didn’t know what it meant.

“Blake, Blake, you in there?”

I blinked up at O’Brien and realized she’d been talking to me, and I hadn’t heard her. “Sorry, really, I guess I’m thinking too hard.”

“Whatever you were thinking about didn’t look too happy.”

What was I supposed to say, some of it was, some of it wasn’t, like most of my personal life. What I said out loud was, “Sorry, it’s unnerved me a little to have someone like Heinrick after my ass.”

“You didn’t look scared, Blake, you looked like you were thinking too damned hard.”

“I’ve had hit men after me before, but not terrorists who specialize in politics. There is nothing political about what I do.” The moment I heard it leave my mouth, I realized I was wrong. There were two types of politics that I was deeply involved in, furry, and vampire. Shit, had Belle hired him? No, it didn’t feel right. I’d touched her mind too intimately; she still thought she could own me. She wouldn’t destroy what she believed she could control, or use.

Richard was still digging out of the political mess he’d made of his pack when he tried to make them a true democracy. You know—one vote per person. It so hadn’t worked, because he’d forgotten to keep that presidential veto power. He was Ulfric, wolf king, but he’d gutted the office of Ulfric and still hadn’t built back up the respect and power base he needed. I was helping him rebuild, but some of the pack saw my involvement as another sign of weakness. Hell, so did Richard.

But to my knowledge no one was trying to move in on Richard’s pack. Neighboring packs were giving us a wide berth until the dust settled. There wasn’t anyone worthy of challenging him for pack leader except Sylvie, and she had held off, because she liked Richard, and didn’t want to have to kill him. If Richard hadn’t been afraid of what Sylvie would do as Ulfric he might have just stepped down for her, but he knew, and Sylvie had admitted, that her first order of business would be to kill anyone she suspected of disloyalty. That could be a dozen, or two. Richard wasn’t willing for that to happen. But Sylvie would have come directly to my face if she had a problem. So . . .

I looked up at O’Brien. She was watching me, trying to read me. I had no idea what she’d seen as the different thoughts played over my face. I was definitely not on top of my game today.

“Talk to me, Blake,” she said.

I decided for half-truth, better than nothing. “I was thinking that there’s one type of politics I do participate in.”

“And that is?”

“Vampires. I’ve got close ties to the Master of the City of St. Louis. I don’t think Heinrick would knowingly work for a vampire, but he might not know. Most people like this work through intermediaries, so no one ever sees faces.”

“Why would some vampire want to kill you just because you’re dating the Master of the City?”

I shrugged. “The last time someone tried to kill me, it was for pretty much that reason. They thought it would weaken . . . the Master, make his concentration bad.”

She leaned on the edge of her desk, arms crossed on her stomach. “You really think that’s it?”

I frowned and shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but it’s the only politics I could think of.”

“I’ll put a note in the file, pass it up the line,” she said. “We could offer you some police protection.”

“You got the extra budget for that?”

She smiled, but not like she was happy. “Heinrick has terrorist in his dossier. Trust me, right now, with the T-word in the picture, I could swing the man power.”

“Wouldn’t that be person power?” I said, straight faced, looking her dead in the eye.

She snorted. “Oh, please, I’m not that P.C., and I don’t think you are either.”

“Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

“Besides you’ve worked with the police long enough to know that it usually is man power.”

“Too true,” I said.

“How about the police escort, or some surveillance?”

“Let me think about it,” I said.

She pushed away from her desk. She didn’t exactly tower over me, but she was tall. “Why won’t you let us help protect you, Ms. Blake?”

“Could I have a copy of the report?”

She smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Apply through channels, I’m sure you’ll have one in a day or two.”

“Can’t I just use the Xerox machine?”

“No,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because you wouldn’t take police protection, which means you are hiding something.”

“Maybe, but if you give me copies of the photos I might be able to I.D. them.”

“How?”

I shrugged. “I’ve got a few connections.”

“You think your connections give better intelligence than the government?”

“Let’s just say that I know the motives and priorities of my connections. I can’t say the same for every branch of my government.”

We looked at each other for a few heartbeats. “I won’t try and debate this with you.”

“Good, now can I have a copy of at least the photos?”

“No.” And it had that ring to it of finality.

“You’re being childish,” I said.

She smiled, but it was more a baring of teeth, a friendly snarl. “And you’re hiding something. If it comes back and bites this investigation on the ass, I’ll have your badge for it.”

I thought about saying try and see how far you get, but I didn’t. I was new enough to the badge that I wasn’t really sure what I could lose it over, and what I couldn’t. I probably should look into those kinds of details.

“I don’t know enough about why Heinrick was trailing me to hide anything, O’Brien.”

“So you say.”

I sighed and stood up. “Fine.”

“Have a nice day, Blake. Go talk to your connections and see where it gets you. I’ll stick with the government and Interpol.” She gave an exaggerated shrug. “Call me old-fashioned.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

“Just go,” she said.

I went.

38

I OPENED THE Jeep and heard my cell phone ringing. I kept leaving it in the car, forgetting I had it. I slid onto the warm leather of the seats, fumbling for the phone from under the seat, even as I closed the door behind me. Yeah, it would have been cooler with the door open, but I didn’t want my legs hanging out the open door while I lay across the seat. Not because bad guys were after me, just normal girl paranoia.

I finally dug the phone out on the fourth and last ring before it went over to message mode. “Yeah, it’s me, what?” I sounded rude and out of breath, but at least I picked up.

“Ma petite?” Jean-Claude made the word almost a question as if he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he’d gotten me.

With the gearshift digging into my side, and the overheated leather against my arm, I still felt better. Better to hear his voice, better to know he’d called me first. He couldn’t be all that mad at me if he called first.

“It’s me, Jean-Claude, I forgot the phone in the Jeep again, sorry.” I wanted to say other things, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the right words out of my mouth. Part of the problem was I wasn’t sure what the right words were.

“The police have taken Jason,” he said.

“What did you say?”

“The police have come and taken Jason away.” His voice was matter of fact, empty even. Which usually meant he was hiding a lot of emotions, none of which he wanted to share.

I moved over an inch so the gearshift wasn’t stabbing me, and lay on the seats for a moment. The first hint of panic was fluttering around in my gut. “Why did they take him?” My voice sounded almost as normal and matter of fact as Jean-Claude’s.

“For questioning about a murder.” His empty, cultured voice said it, as if the M-word hadn’t been there.

“What murder?” I asked, and my voice was getting emptier.

“Sergeant Zerbrowski said you’d figure it out. That bringing Jason to a crime scene was a bad idea. I was not aware you took anyone on your crime scene visits.”

“You make it sound like I’m visiting friends.”

“I meant no insult, but why was Jason with you?”

“I wasn’t feeling well enough to drive, and the police didn’t want to wait for me to feel better.”

“Why were you unwell enough not to drive?”

“Well, it seemed to be because Asher took a hell of a lot of blood. And I was having a bad reaction to having my mind rolled. It left me feeling a bit sick.”

“How sick?” he asked, and there was a note of something in his empty voice now, something I couldn’t quite place.

“I fainted a couple of times, and threw up, okay? Now let’s concentrate on the current crisis. Did they actually arrest Jason?”

“I could not get a good sense of that, but I think not. They did take him away in restraints, though.”

“That’s standard with any known, or suspected, lycanthropes,” I said. I pushed myself up, so I could sit on the seat instead of lying across it. The front of a Jeep just wasn’t made for lying across. “You do know that if they didn’t arrest him then he’s free to walk out of questioning at any time?”

“It is a pretty theory, ma petite,” now he sounded tired.

“It’s the law,” I said.

“Perhaps for humans,” he said, voice mild.

I couldn’t keep the indignation out of my voice. “The law applies to everyone, Jean-Claude, that’s the way the system works.”

He gave a soft laugh, and for once it was just a laugh with nothing otherworldly about it. “You are not usually so naive, ma petite.”

“If the law doesn’t apply evenly to everybody, then it doesn’t work at all.”

“I will not argue this with you, ma petite.”

“If Zerbrowski picked him up, I know where they took Jason. I’m not that far from RPIT headquarters.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked, voice still holding the soft edge of his laughter.

“Get Jason out,” I said, buckling on my seat belt, and trying to pin the phone against my shoulder enough to start the Jeep.

“Do you think that is possible?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, and nearly dropped the phone, but I got the Jeep started. I seemed to be having a little trouble coordinating everything today.

“You sound so confident, ma petite.”

“I am confident.” I was, the fluttering feeling in my stomach wasn’t. “I’ve got to go.”

“Good fortune, ma petite, I hope you rescue our wolf.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Of that, there is little doubt. Je t’aime, ma petite.”

“I love you, too.” We hung up, at least we’d ended with I love you. It was better than screaming at each other. I dropped the phone on the seat beside me and put the Jeep in gear.

One emergency at a time. Save Jason, contact some people I knew to see if they knew anything about Heinrick, then prepare for the big banquet with Musette and company. Oh, and figure out how to keep the mess with Asher from driving a permanent wedge between Jean-Claude and me. Just another day in my life. This was one of those days when I thought that maybe a new life, a different life, wouldn’t be so bad. But where the hell had I put the receipt, and could you return something that was over twenty years old? Where do you go to get a new life when your old one has you so puzzled you don’t know how to fix it? Wish I knew.

39

NO ONE STOPPED me at the door. No one stopped me at the stairs. In fact, people kept saying, “Hi, Anita, how you doing?” I wasn’t an official member of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, but I’d worked with them all for so long that I was like the office furniture, something that was there, accepted, even expected.

It was Detective Jessica Arnet that finally said something to me that wasn’t just, hi. “Where’s that cutie you always have in tow?”

“Which one?” I asked.

She laughed at that, and blushed a little. It was the blush that got my attention. She always flirted with Nathaniel, but I’d never thought much about it, until I saw her blush.

“You do seem to have more than your share of cuties, but I meant the one with violet eyes.”

I’d have bet money that she knew exactly what Nathaniel’s name was. “He stayed home today,” I said.

She laid the stack of folders down on a desk, not her own, and pushed back her hair from her face. There wasn’t enough of her dark hair to push back. It looked like an old gesture from when she’d had longer hair. The short, barely below-ear-level cut really didn’t flatter her face. But the face was still good, triangular, with delicate bones that framed her smile nicely. I’d never really noticed, but she was pretty.

Did Nathaniel ever want to date, just date? Not the dominance and submission stuff, but like dinner and a movie. Someday I’d have the ardeur under control and wouldn’t need a pomme de sang, right? That had been the plan. So Nathaniel should like—date. Shouldn’t he? If I wasn’t going to keep him, he should date.

I had a headache starting right between my eyes.

Detective Arnet almost touched my arm, but stopped in mid-gesture. “Are you alright?”

I forced a smile. “Looking for Zerbrowski.”

She told me what room he was in, because she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to. Hell, I wasn’t even sure she wasn’t supposed to. Technically, this was part of the investigation that Dolph had wanted my input on, so I had a right to be there when they questioned suspects. In my head it all sounded logical, but a little desperate, as if I were trying way too hard to convince myself.

I went up on tiptoe outside the door, so I could look in the little window. Television will make you think that all police interrogation rooms have huge one-way mirrors that take up almost an entire wall. Very few departments have either the budget or the space for that kind of thing. Television uses it because it’s more dramatic and makes camera work easier. It seemed to me that real life is dramatic enough without big windows, and there are no good camera angles, only pain. Or maybe I was just in a rotten mood.

I wanted a quick peek into the room to make a hundred percent sure I had the right place. Jason was at the little table, Zerbrowski was sitting across from him, but what got me flat-footed, was that Dolph was leaning against the far wall. Zerbrowski had said he was on leave for a couple of weeks. Had Zerbrowski lied to me? That didn’t feel right. But what was Dolph doing here?

I gave one sharp knock on the door. I waited, steeling myself to be calm, or at least to look calm. Zerbrowski opened the door a crack. His eyes looked surprised behind his glasses.

“This isn’t a good time,” he said. He tried to tell me with his eyes that Dolph was in the room.

“I know Dolph’s here, Zerbrowski. I thought he was supposed to be on leave for a few weeks.”

Zerbrowski sighed, but his eyes were angry. Angry at me, I think, for not slinking off and making things worse. Making things worse was one of my specialties; Zerbrowski should have known that by now.

“Lieutenant Storr is here because he is still head of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, and he brought this suspect to our attention.”

“Suspect? Why is Jason a suspect?”

“You don’t want to do this in the hallway, Anita.”

“No, I don’t, I want to come in the room, so we can all talk like civilized human beings. You’re the one keeping me out in the hallway.”

He licked his lips, and almost turned and looked at Dolph, but fought the urge. “Come in,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “but stay on this side of the room.”

I followed Zerbrowski inside and went where he motioned so that I ended up with the table between me and Dolph. It was almost as if Zerbrowski didn’t trust what Dolph would do.

“You are not letting her sit in,” Dolph said.

Zerbrowski squared his shoulders and faced Dolph. “We asked her to help us on this crime scene, Dolph.”

“I didn’t,” he said.

“Actually, yeah, you did,” I said.

Dolph opened his mouth, then closed it in a tight thin line. He hugged his arms so tight, it looked like it hurt, as if he didn’t trust what his hands would do if they weren’t wrapped around something. There was a look of such rage in his eyes. He usually had some of the best cop eyes I’d ever seen, empty, gave nothing away. Today his eyes gave everything away, but I didn’t understand where the anger was coming from.

Jason was sitting at the end of the table, trying to seem as small and inoffensive as possible. Since he’s not much taller than I am, he was doing a good job of it.

Zerbrowski shut the door and sat on the side of the table close to Dolph, leaving me the chair farther away.

I didn’t sit. “Why did you pull Jason in?”

“He has defensive wounds on his body consistent with the crime.”

“You don’t actually believe that Jason was involved in that,” I searched for a word, “slaughter, do you?”

“He’s a werewolf and he’s got defensive wounds,” Dolph said, “if he didn’t rape our vic, then he raped somebody.”

“You’re here to observe, Lieutenant,” Zerbrowski said, but his face said plainly that he would have rather been anywhere than sitting here, telling Dolph to mind his own business.

Dolph started to say something, then stopped himself by force of will alone. “Fine, fine, Sergeant, carry on.” Those last two words held more heat than a forest fire.

“Wait,” I said, “did you say rape?”

“We found semen at the first murder site,” Zerbrowski said.

“The crucifixion?” I asked.

“No,” Dolph said harshly, “the woman who was ripped apart.”

“Semen doesn’t mean rape at a scene like that, just that he enjoyed himself. It’s sick, but it doesn’t necessarily mean true sexual contact. I saw the body, there wasn’t enough left of her to know whether he touched her like that, or not.” I had a thought, an awful thought. “Please tell me you don’t mean the head.”

Zerbrowski shook his head, “No. Scattered over the scene.”

It was almost a relief. Almost. “So why did Dolph say rape?”

“There was a little more left of the second female vic,” Zerbrowski said.

I looked at him. “I don’t remember being notified about a second attack.”

“You didn’t need to know,” Dolph said. “You were right, I called you in on the first one, but I didn’t make the same mistake twice.”

I ignored Dolph as best I could and looked at Zerbrowski. He mouthed, “Later.”

Fine, Zerbrowski would fill me in when we had some non-Dolph time. Fine, great. I couldn’t do anything about the psycho shape-shifter we had running around town, not right that second, but I might be able to do something about the current disaster.

“What did Jason say when you asked where he got scratched up?”

“Said a man doesn’t kiss and tell,” Zerbrowski said, “even I thought that one was lame.”

I looked at Jason. He shrugged, as if to say, what was I supposed to say. He knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t want him talking out of school. He was right on that. I so didn’t want Zerbrowski and Dolph to know. Hell, I didn’t want anyone to know. But my embarrassment wasn’t worth Jason getting locked up.

I sighed, and spoke the truth. “The scratches aren’t defensive wounds.”

“He’s cut up, Anita, and we got the Polaroid’s to prove it,” Zerbrowski said. “Dolph noticed some scratches at the first scene. They’re gone, but now he’s got fresh wounds.”

“I cut him up.” My voice sounded bland, because I was fighting to sound bland.

Dolph gave a sound that was more snort than laugh. No words were needed to say he didn’t believe me.

Zerbrowski said his out loud, “Shop it somewhere else, Anita, we’re not buying.”

I raised the sleeves on my shirt and showed my own healing scratches. “When I was afraid I’d hurt him more, I scratched myself.”

Zerbrowski’s eyes went wide. “Jesus, Blake, you always this rough?”

“You’ll never find out Zerbrowski.”

“If that was a yes, then I’m okay with that.” He almost touched some of the deeper scratches on my arm, then stopped and almost touched the scratches on Jason’s arms. “I hope the sex was good.”

Jason looked down at the tabletop, and did his best impression of an aw’shucks look. He managed to look coy and pleased with himself all at the same time.

“That’s answer enough,” I said.

Jason flashed me a grin that made his baby blues sparkle. “Whatever you say, mistress.”

I gave him a very mean look, that didn’t dim his enjoyment one bit.

Dolph pushed away from the wall to peer over the table at my arm. “I don’t buy this, Anita. Maybe you scratched your own arms up on the way here to give him an alibi.”

“The scratches aren’t that fresh, Dolph.”

He started to grab my arm, but I stepped out of reach. “I don’t want to be manhandled again, thanks anyway.”

He leaned across the table at me, and Jason began to ease his chair back, as if he didn’t want to be in the middle.

“You’re lying,” Dolph said. “A shape-shifter heals anything but silver and wounds from another monster, real quick. You taught me that, Anita. He should be healed by now, if you really were the one who hurt him.”

“Wouldn’t that same logic dictate that if the scratches were from the female victim then they’d already have healed?”

“Not if they come from the second victim.” Dolph slapped that bit of information down as if it were a blow, and in a way it was.

I looked at Zerbrowski. “I can’t debate the healed scratches thing if I don’t know the time line. I need a time.”

He opened his mouth, but Dolph answered, “Why, so you can give the perfect alibi?”

“Gee, Zerbrowski, I don’t see your hand up Dolph’s ass, but it must be, because every time I ask you a question, the answer comes out his mouth.” I was leaning across the table now, too.

“His scratches are older than yours, Anita,” Dolph said, voice almost a growl of its own, “more healed. You’ll never prove in court that they happened at the same time.”

“He’s a shape-shifter. He heals faster. I taught you that. Remember?”

“Are you really admitting that you fucked him?” Dolph said.

I was too angry to flinch at his choice of words. “I prefer the term made love to fucked, but yeah, we did the nasty.”

“If that was true, the marks would have healed completely by now. If you’re only human, like you keep telling me.”

The headache between my eyes felt like something was trying to stab its way out of my skull. I really wasn’t in any mood for this. “What I am, or what I am not, is none of your damn business. But I’m telling you that I marked him up in the heat of passion. More than that, chances are good he was with me when the second murder took place. We can give you times, if you want.”

“Times would be good,” Zerbrowski had scooted his chair a little farther down the table, but he hadn’t deserted his post. He’d stayed closer to all that quivering rage than most people would have.

I had to think about it, but I managed to give him approximate times for the last two days. Truthfully, I wasn’t much good on alibiing Jason for the first murder, but on the second, I was pretty sure I had him covered.

Zerbrowski was doing his best to give blank cop face while he wrote down what I said. The entire interview was being recorded, but Zerbrowski, like Dolph, liked to write things down. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but Zerbrowski might have learned that habit from Dolph.

Dolph stayed standing near the table, looming over all of us, as I spoke. Zerbrowski asked small questions to nail the times as clearly as possible.

Jason stayed as quiet and still as he could through all of it. His hands clasped together on the table, head down, eyes taking small quick glances at all of us, without moving his head or body. He reminded me of a rabbit hiding in the long grass, hoping that if he just stayed quiet enough, still enough, that the dogs wouldn’t find him. The analogy should have been laughable. I mean, he was a werewolf. But it wasn’t funny, because it was accurate. Being a werewolf didn’t protect you from the human laws, most of the time it hurt you. Sometimes it even got you killed. We weren’t in that kind of danger, yet, but that could change.

A shape-shifter accused of murdering a human got a speedy trial and an execution. If a shape-shifter was declared rogue, one that was actively hunting humans, and the police couldn’t capture it, then you could get a court order of execution, just like for a vampire. It worked almost the same way. A vampire that was suspected of murder but was still eluding capture and deemed a danger to the public could have an order of execution issued by a judge. Once you had the order of execution in hand you could kill it when you found it. Just insert shape-shifter for vampire into the formula and it worked the same way. There was no trial, no anything—just hunt it down and kill it. I’d done a few jobs like that. Not many, but a few.

There’d been a movement a few years ago to make a magic-using human subject to orders of execution, but too many human right’s organizations had kicked a fit. As a magic-using human, I was happy. As someone who had executed people on orders of the court, I wasn’t sure how I would have felt about hunting a human being down and killing them. I’d killed humans before when they threatened my life, or the lives of those I held dear. But self-defense, even proactive self-defense wasn’t quite the same thing. A human witch or wizard got a trial, but if they were convicted of using magic for murder, it was an automatic death sentence. Ninety-nine percent of the time the witch or wizard was convicted. Jurors just didn’t like the idea of people who could kill by magic walking around free. One of my goals in life was to stay the hell out of a courtroom.

I knew Jason hadn’t done anything wrong, but I also knew enough about the way the system worked to know that for those of us who weren’t exactly human, sometimes innocence didn’t matter much.

“Can anyone else verify these times?” Zerbrowski asked.

“A few people, yeah,” I said.

“A few people,” Dolph said. He looked disgusted, and I didn’t understand this emotion either. “You don’t even know who the father is, do you?”

That made me give him a deer in headlights blink. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He gave me a look, as if I’d already lied to him. “Detective Reynolds told us her little secret.”

I looked at him across the table. He was still leaning over, and I was still standing, so we were almost eye-to-eye. “So?”

He gave a sound between a snort and a cough. “She wasn’t the only one who passed out at the murder scene, and she wasn’t the only one who threw up.” He looked as if he’d made a great point, driven it home with a surgeon’s precision.

I frowned and blinked at him. “I’m sorry, what are you talking about?” I let myself look as confused as I felt.

“Don’t be coy, Anita, you’re not good at it.”

“I’m not being coy, Dolph, you’re making no fucking sense.” Then an idea popped into my head, but that couldn’t be it. Dolph wouldn’t think . . .

I looked at him, and thought, maybe he would think that. “Are you implying that I’m pregnant?”

“Implying, no.”

I relaxed a little. I shouldn’t have.

“I’m asking, do you know who the father is, or have there been too many to guess?”

Zerbrowski stood, and he was close enough to Dolph that it forced him to move a little way from the table. “I think you should go now, Anita,” Zerbrowski said.

Dolph was glaring at me. I should have been angry, but I was too surprised. “I’ve thrown up at murder scenes before.”

Zerbrowski moved a little back from the table. He had a resigned look on his face, like someone who saw the train coming down the track and knew nobody was going to get off in time. I still didn’t think things were that bad.

“You’ve never passed out before,” Dolph said.

“I was sick, Dolph, too sick to drive myself.”

“You seem fine now,” he said, voice low and rumbling, filled with that anger that seemed always just below the surface lately.

I shrugged. “I guess it was just one of those viruses.”

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fang mark on your neck would it?”

My hand went up to it, then I forced myself not to touch it. Truthfully, I’d forgotten about it. “I was sick, Dolph, even I get sick.”

“Have you been tested for Vlad’s syndrome, yet?”

I took in a deep breath, let it out, then said, fuck it. Dolph wasn’t going to let this one go. He wanted to fight. I could do that. Hell, a nice uncomplicated screaming match sounded almost appealing.

“I’ll say this once, I’m not pregnant. I don’t care if you believe me, because you’re not my father, you’re not my uncle, brother, or anything. You were my friend, but even that’s up for grabs right now.”

“You’re either one of us, or you’re one of them, Anita.”

“One of what?” I asked. I was pretty sure of the answer, but I needed to hear it out loud.

“Monster,” he said, and it was almost a whisper.

“Are you calling me a monster?” I wasn’t whispering, but my voice was low and careful.

“I’m saying you’re going to have to choose whether you’re one of them, or one of us.” He pointed to Jason when he said them.

“You join Humans against Vampires, or some other right wing group, Dolph?”

“No, but I’m beginning to agree with them.”

“The only good vampire is a dead one, is that it?”

“They are dead, Anita.” He took that step closer, that Zerbrowski’s moving had given him. “They are fucking corpses that don’t have enough sense to stay in their godforsaken graves.”

“According to the law, they’re living beings with rights and protection under the law.”

“Maybe the law was wrong on this one.”

Part of me wanted to say, you know that this is being recorded? part of me was glad he’d said it. If he came off sounding like a bigoted crazy then it would help keep Jason safe. The fact that it wouldn’t help Dolph’s career did bother me, but not enough to sacrifice Jason. I’d like to save all my friends, but if someone is bent on self-destruction, there is only so much you can do. You can’t shovel other people’s shit for them, not unless they’re willing to pick up a shovel and help.

Dolph wasn’t helping. He got down low, hands flat to the table and pushed his face into Jason’s. Jason moved back as far as he could in the chair. Zerbrowski looked at me, and I gave wild eyes. We both knew that if Dolph touched a suspect the way he’d touched me earlier his career was well and truly over.

“It looks so human, but it’s not,” Dolph said.

I didn’t like the use of the it for one of my friends.

“Did you really let him touch you?”

Him. See, even if you hate the monsters, it’s hard to keep straight in your own head what’s an it, and what’s a him. “Yes,” I said.

Zerbrowski was moving around Dolph, trying to get to Jason, to get between them, I think.

Dolph turned to look at me, still bent over low, way too close to Jason for anyone’s comfort. “And the bite on your neck, was that the bloodsucker you’re fucking?”

“No,” I said, “that was a new one. I’m fucking two of them now.”

He staggered almost as if he’d taken a blow. He leaned heavily on the table, and for just a second I thought he’d fall into Jason’s lap, but he recovered himself with a visible effort. Zerbrowski touched the big man’s arm. “Easy there, Lieutenant.”

Dolph let Zerbrowski sit him down. He made no reaction when the sergeant eased Jason out of the chair and farther away from Dolph. Dolph wasn’t looking at them. His pain-filled eyes were all for me. “I knew you were coffin bait, I didn’t know you were a whore.”

I felt my own face go hard and cold. Maybe if I hadn’t been so tired, so stressed—but there was no real excuse for what I said next, except that Dolph had hurt me, and I wanted to hurt him. “How’s that grandchildren problem coming Dolph? You still got a vampire for a soon-to-be daughter-in-law?”

I felt Zerbrowski react to the news, and knew in that moment that only I had known. “You really shouldn’t piss off people you’ve confided in, Dolph.” The moment I said it, I wished I hadn’t, but it was too late. Too fucking late.

He came up out of the chair, hands under the table, and upended it with a tremendous crash onto the floor. We all scattered. Zerbrowski stood in front of Jason against the far wall. I took a corner near the door.

Dolph trashed the room. There was no other word for it. The chairs hit the walls, and the table followed. He finally picked one chair up and seemed to take a special grievance against it. He smashed the metal chair against the floor, over and over.

The door to the interrogation room opened. Police filled the door, guns drawn. I think they expected to see a rampaging werewolf. The sight of a rampaging Dolph stopped them dead in the doorway. They’d have probably cheerfully shot the werewolf, but I don’t think they wanted to shoot Dolph. Of course, no one volunteered to arm wrestle him either.

The metal chair folded in upon itself, and Dolph collapsed to his knees. His harsh breathing filled the room, as if the walls themselves were breathing in and out.

I went to the door and chased everyone back. I said things like, “It’s okay. He’ll be fine. Just go.” I wasn’t sure he’d be okay, or fine, but I really did want them to go. No one needs to see their Lieutenant lose it. It shakes their faith in him. Hell, my faith wasn’t doing all that well.

I closed the door behind them and looked across the room at Zerbrowski. We just stared at each other. I don’t think either of us knew what to say, or even what to do.

Dolph’s voice came as if from deep inside him, as if he had to pull it up hand-over-hand like the bucket in a well. “My son’s going to be a vampire.” He looked at me with a mixture of such pain and anger, that I didn’t know what to do with it.

“You happy now?” he said. I realized that there were tears drying on his face. He’d cried as he’d destroyed everything. But he wasn’t crying as he said, “My daughter-in-law wanted to bring him over, so he’d be twenty-five forever.” He made a sound that was halfway between a moan and a scream.

Saying I was sorry didn’t seem to be enough. I couldn’t think of anything that would be enough. But sorry was all I had to offer. “I’m sorry, Dolph.”

“Why, why sorry, vampires are people, too.” The tears started again, silent. You’d never have known he was crying if you hadn’t been looking directly at him.

“Yeah, I’m dating a bloodsucker and some of my friends don’t have a pulse, but I still don’t approve of bringing humans over.”

He looked up at me and the pain was flooding over the anger. It made his eyes harder and easier to meet all at the same time. “Why? Why?”

I didn’t think he was really asking me why. I believed what I believed about vampires. I think it was the universal cry of why me? Why my son, my daughter, my mother, my country, my home? Why me? Why isn’t the universe fair? Why doesn’t everyone get a happy ending? I had no answer for that why. I wished to God I did.

I answered the implied why, because I couldn’t answer the other more painful questions. “I don’t know anymore, but I do know that it creeps me out every time I meet someone I knew first as a live human, then as a dead vampire.” I shrugged. “It just seems, I don’t know, unnerving.”

He gave a big hiccuping sob. “Unnerving . . .” He half laughed and half cried, then he covered his face with his hands and he gave himself over to crying.

Zerbrowski and I just stood there. I don’t know which of us felt more helpless. He walked carefully around the room, bringing Jason with him.

Dolph sensed the movement and said, “He goes nowhere.”

“He had nothing to do with this,” I said.

Dolph wiped at his face angrily. “You haven’t alibied him for the first murder.”

“You’re looking for a serial killer. If a suspect is cleared of one of the crimes then he’s usually innocent of all of them.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “We can keep him seventy-two hours, and we’re going to.”

I looked around the destroyed room, met Zerbrowski’s eyes, and wasn’t sure Dolph had enough clout to make those kinds of pronouncements anymore.

“The full moon is in a few days,” I said.

“We’ll put him in a secured facility,” Dolph said.

Secured facilities were run by the government. They were places where new lycanthropes could go and be sure of not accidentally hurting anyone. The idea was you’d stay until you got control of your beast, then they’d let you out to resume your life. That was the theory. The reality was that once you were signed in, voluntarily or otherwise, you almost never got out. The ACLU had started the years of court battles it would take to get them outlawed, or made unconstitutional.

I looked at Zerbrowski. He stared at me with a sort of growing horror and weariness. I wasn’t sure he had the juice to keep Jason out of permanent lockup if Dolph pushed. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t let it happen.

I looked back at Dolph. “Jason has been a werewolf for years. He has perfect control over his beast. Why send him to a secured facility?”

“He belongs in one,” Dolph said, and the hatred had chased back the pain.

“He doesn’t belong in a lockup, and you know it.”

Dolph just glared at me. “He’s dangerous,” Dolph said.

“Why?”

“He’s a werewolf, Anita.”

“So he needs to be locked up because he’s a werewolf.”

“Yes.”

Zerbrowski looked ill.

“Locked up just because he’s a werewolf,” I said it. I wanted him to hear what he was saying, to disagree, to come to his senses, but he didn’t.

“Yeah,” he said. And he said it, on tape, evidenced, un-take-backable. It could and probably would be used against him. There was nothing I could do to help Dolph, but I knew in that moment that Jason wouldn’t be going to a secured facility. Half of me was relieved, half of me was so scared for Dolph that I could taste metal on my tongue.

Zerbrowski went for the door, pushing Jason ahead of him. “We’ll give you a few minutes alone, Lieutenant.” He motioned at me with his head.

Dolph didn’t try and stop us. He just knelt there, face shocked, as if he’d finally heard his words, finally realized what he might have done.

We all went out the door, and Zerbrowski closed it firmly behind us. Everyone in the squad room was looking at us. They tried not to be, but everyone had found something to do to keep them close at hand. I’d never seen so many detectives so eager to do paperwork at their desks, or even somebody else’s, as long as the desk was close to the hallway.

Zerbrowski looked at the near wall of people and said, “Break it up people, we don’t need a crowd.”

They all looked at each other, as if asking should we move, should we listen to him? They would have moved without question for Dolph. But finally, they did move, drifting off in ones and twos to other parts of the big room. The ones who were at their own desks close to the action seemed to remember phone calls they needed to make.

Zerbrowski bent close to me, and spoke low, “Take Mr. Schuyler with you and go.”

“What’ll Dolph say?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I know that Schuyler here doesn’t deserve to go to one of those facilities.”

“Thanks, Sarge,” Jason said, and he smiled.

Zerbrowski didn’t smile back, but he did say, “You’re a pain in the ass sometimes Schuyler, and you’re a furball, but you aren’t a monster.”

They had one of those guy moments. Women would have hugged, but they were men, which meant that they didn’t even share a handshake. “Thanks, Zerbrowski.”

Zerbrowski gave a weak smile. “Good to know I’m making somebody happy today.” He turned back to me. We looked at each other.

“What’s going to happen to Dolph?” I asked.

He looked even more solemn, which considering he’d looked downright depressed before, said a lot. “I don’t know.”

Dolph had said enough on tape to lose him his job, if it got out. Hell, if the head of RPIT was this prejudiced it might bring all their cases under review, going back to the beginning.

“Make sure he takes the two weeks of personal time, Zerbrowski, keep him out of here.”

“I know that,” he said, “now.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, of course you do.”

“Just go for now, Anita, please, go.”

I touched Zerbrowski’s arm. “Don’t go back in there without some backup, okay.”

“Perry told me what Dolph did to you the other day. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.” He glanced back at the closed door. “Please, Anita, go before he comes out.”

I wanted to say something. Something comforting, or helpful, but there wasn’t anything. The only helpful thing I could do was leave. So we did.

Leaving felt cowardly. Staying would have been stupid. When it’s a choice between being cowardly or stupid, I choose stupid every single time. Today I opted for the better part of valor. Besides, I wasn’t sure that Dolph might come out of the room like some rampaging bull and try to attack Jason, or me. We might be able to hush it up in an interrogation room, but if he trashed the entire squad room, it would mean the end of his career. Right now, he maybe had shot his career in the foot. Even probably. But maybe and probably were better than certainly. I left Zerbrowski to pick up the pieces, because I didn’t know how.

I was so much better at destroying things than fixing them.

40

JASON LEANED HIS head back against the passenger seat of the Jeep. His eyes were closed, and he looked weary. There were hollows under his eyes even with them closed. Jason was fair-skinned, not pale. He didn’t tan dark, but nicely golden. Today he looked vampire pale, and his skin gave the illusion that it was too thin, as if some great hand had been rubbing around his eyes and across his face, rubbing him down like you’d worry a pebble in your hand.

“You look like shit,” I said.

He smiled, without opening his eyes. “You sweet-talker.”

“No, I mean it, you look terrible. Are you going to be okay about tonight, the banquet, and everything?”

He opened his eyes enough to slide his gaze towards me. “Do I have a choice? Do any of us really have a choice?”

Put that way . . . “No, I guess not.” My voice suddenly sounded tired, too.

He smiled again, his head still back against the seat, eyes almost closed. “If the Lieutenant hadn’t popped a major gasket, would I be on my way to a secured facility, right now?”

I buckled myself into the driver’s seat and started the Jeep.

“You didn’t answer me,” he said, voice low but insistent.

I put the Jeep in gear. “Maybe, I don’t know. If Dolph hadn’t been popping a major gasket, as you put it, then he’d never have even thought of putting you in a facility. I eased out of the parking area. “But he might have called you in for questioning. You are pretty scratched up, and you are a werewolf.” I shrugged.

He stretched his arms up over his head, arching his body against the seat, stretching all the way to his toes. It was an oddly graceful gesture. The movement flashed the cuts on his arms, making his T-shirt sleeves ride up, and he added a writhing movement, like a shudder, or a wave that flowed from the tip of his fingers, down his arms, his chest, the arch of his neck, his waist, the ripeness of his hips, down the muscles of his thighs, to his calves, to his toes.

A loud honking and the screech of brakes brought me back to the road, and the fact that I was driving. I managed not to hit anyone, but it was close. I threaded my way through a forest of rude gestures and Jason’s laughter.

“I feel better now,” he said, laughter still thick in his voice.

I glanced at him, frowning. His blue eyes were sparkling, his face suddenly glowing with glee. I struggled, but finally had to smile back. Jason had always been able to do that to me, make me smile when I didn’t want to.

“What is so damned funny?” I said, but there was an edge of laughter in my voice that I couldn’t quite swallow.

“I was trying to flirt, and it worked. You’ve never reacted to my body before, not even when I was naked.”

I concentrated on the road, really hard, while the blush burned my face.

He chortled. “You’re blushing for me. Oh, God, yes!”

“Keep it up and you are going to piss me off.” I turned onto Clark, and headed for the Circus.

“You don’t get it, do you?” He looked at me, and I couldn’t read the look on his face. Puzzlement, delight, and something else.

“Get what?” I asked.

“I’m not invisible on your guy-radar anymore.”

“What?”

“You notice men, Anita, but you’d never noticed me. I was beginning to feel like the court eunuch.”

I gave him a quick frown before turning back to the road. I did not want to risk another near miss. I’d had my adrenaline rush for the day.

“Come on, you know what I mean.”

I sighed. “Maybe.”

“Maybe it’s because you don’t do casual sex, but it means more to you than just fucking, even with the ardeur on.”

If I’d been standing I would have shuffled my feet. I had to settle for concentrating really hard on my driving. “If you’ve got a point to make, Jason, make it.”

“Don’t get all grumpy, Anita. My point is that even if we never touch each other again, I’m on your radar screen now. You see me. You really see me.” He looked deeply content.

I was confused. When I’m confused I usually try and concentrate on work. “Do you think the lycanthrope that’s raping and killing these women is local?”

“I know he’s not,” Jason said.

I looked at him, because he sounded so positive. “How can you be that sure?”

“It was a werewolf, it wasn’t one of our pack. There are no werewolves in the St. Louis area that are not part of the Thronnos Rokke Clan.”

“How do you know it was a werewolf? It could have been any of a dozen types of half-men predators.”

“It smelled like wolf.” He frowned at me. “Didn’t you smell it in the house?”

“Mostly all I smelled was blood, Jason.”

“Sometimes I forget you’re not one of us, yet.”

“Is that a compliment or a complaint?”

He grinned. “Neither.”

“How can you be so sure it wasn’t one of our werewolves?”

“It didn’t smell like pack.”

“Forget that I am human, and my nose isn’t four hundred times more sensitive and scent discriminating, and explain it to me simply.”

“My nose in human form isn’t as good as my nose in wolf form. The world is so alive. Scenting is almost like sight. If you’ve never experienced it, it’s hard to explain, but in human form touch is probably secondary to sight. In wolf form scent is secondary to sight, or in some cases, ahead of it.”

“Okay, say that’s so, what does that mean for this investigation?”

“It means that I know the killer is a werewolf, and I know he’s not one of ours.”

“Your opinion won’t fly in court,” I said.

“I didn’t think it would. Honest, I would have mentioned what I’d smelled in the house sooner if I hadn’t assumed you smelled it, too.” He looked worried now, and suddenly younger because of it, all schoolboy charm.

What he’d said got me thinking.

“Most breeds of scent hounds won’t track a werewolf, or any wereanimal for that matter. They go all shit-face, howling and whining and freaking out. They basically tell the hunters, you’re on your own,” I said.

“I knew dogs didn’t like us, but I didn’t know they didn’t like us that much.”

“Depends on the breed of dog, but most dogs don’t want to mess with you guys. I can’t say I blame them.”

“So I guess going down to the pound and picking out a dog is out then.”

“You’d set the place on its ear.”

“Okay, did you have a point?” he asked, and grinned again.

“Yes, could a werewolf in wolf form track this killer?”

Jason thought about that, face all serious again. “Probably, but I don’t think the police will go for it. They don’t like us much, either.”

“Probably they won’t, but I’ll float it by Zerbrowski when he calls.”

“You’re sure he’s going to call?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because we’ve got two dead women, and it’s probably all over the media.”

“If you watched television, read a newspaper occasionally, or even listened to the radio, you might know these things,” Jason said.

“Probably true, but there’s heat to solve this case, and more innocent lives at risk. Zerbrowski will call, because they’re grasping at straws or they wouldn’t have brought you in. If Dolph had a more promising lead, even out of his head like he is, he wouldn’t have been busting your chops, or mine.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“He’s a cop, above all else. If he had anything else to chase, he’d have been out chasing it, not wasting time with you.”

“I don’t know, Anita, I didn’t see much of the cop left today. He seems like a man who’s let his personal problems eat everything else.”

I would have argued if I could have, but I couldn’t. “I’ll mention the idea to Zerbrowski, if they get desperate enough they may go for it.”

“How desperate would they have to be?”

I turned the Jeep into the parking lot of the Circus. “Maybe two more bodies, maybe three. Using a werewolf to track a werewolf might appeal to Zerbrowski’s sense of humor, but getting the upper brass to agree would be the problem.”

“Two more women, maybe three, Jesus, Anita, why not try the desperate measures before things get so damned bad?”

“The police are like most people, Jason, they don’t like thinking outside the box. Using a werewolf in animal form as a sort of preternatural scent hound is way outside the freaking box.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I smelled what was upstairs, Anita. So much blood, so much meat. A human being shouldn’t be reduced to meat and blood.”

“Aren’t we all just food on the hoof?” I tried to make a joke of it, but Jason looked offended.

“You of all people should know better than that.”

“Maybe,” I said, feeling my own smile slide away from my face. “Okay, I’m sorry, no offense meant, but I’ve had too many shape-shifters threaten me to have any illusions about where I am on the food chain. And there are an awful lot of shapeshifters that still believe they are at the top.”

“I don’t buy that radical crap about us being the top of the evolutionary ladder,” Jason said, “if we were really the perfection of evolution, why have we been around for thousands of years, but yet, you poor humans outnumber us, and usually outkill us?”

I parked near the back door and turned off the engine. Jason opened his door, but said, over his shoulder as he was getting out, “Don’t fool yourself, Anita, plain old humans kill more of us than we ever will of them.” He smiled, but not like it was funny, “They even kill more of each other than we kill of them.” Then he was striding across the parking lot. He never looked back.

I had offended Jason. Until that moment I hadn’t been sure it was possible to offend him. Either he was growing up, or I was getting less diplomatic. Since I couldn’t possibly get less diplomatic than usual, Jason must have been growing up. For the first time in a while, I wondered if he would always be content to be Jean-Claude’s lap wolf and appetizer. And stripper, too. But you can’t strip and feed the vampires forever, can you?

41

BOBBY LEE MET me at the door. Tall, light-haired, and almost shiny compared to the dim storeroom behind him. But his mood was not shiny. “The police should have let me stay with you.”

“I don’t think they believed my story about making you all deputies.”

“You should have just said that we were your bodyguards.”

“I’ll do that next time, Bobby Lee.” I filled him in on what I’d learned at the police department while we walked down the nearly endless steps that led from the storeroom to the lower parts of the Circus of the Damned. The stairs were wide enough for four people to walk abreast, but the steps themselves were oddly spaced, as if whatever they were originally carved for wasn’t very human. They definitely had not been made for bipeds.

“I don’t know the name Heinrick,” he said.

I looked at him, so suddenly, that I stumbled, and he caught my arm. I realized in that moment that I didn’t know that much about Bobby Lee, not really. “You work for Rafael, you can’t be a white supremacist.”

He let go of my arm when he was sure I was solidly on one of the odd wide steps. “Honey-child, I know white supremacists that specialize in hating people a little darker than Rafael.”

“Real Southerners don’t say honey-child.”

He grinned at me. “They do if you Northern bastards expect it.”

“We’re in Missouri, that ain’t exactly north.”

“It is from where I came from.”

“And that was?”

His smiled widened. “When we’re not in the middle of an emergency we can sit down and share personal time over a beer, or coffee. Right now, concentrate, honey-child, cause we are neck-deep and sinkin’.”

“If you don’t know Heinrick, how do you know we’re sinking?”

“I was a mercenary before Rafael’s people recruited me. I know people like Heinrick.”

“What would somebody like that want with me?”

“They were watching you for a reason, Anita, you probably know what that reason is, ya’ just got to think of it.”

I shook my head. “You sound like a friend of mine. He’s always telling me that when the shit hits the fan that I should know why the bad guys are after me.”

“He’s right.”

“Not always, Bobby Lee, not always.” But the conversation did make me think of Edward. He’d started his professional life as a hit man, then killing humans became too easy, so he switched to monsters. Monsters covered a lot of ground for Edward. No, among the vampires and shape-shifters, he’d include serial killers, snuff film actors, anyone and anything that caught his fancy. Though the price had to be right. Edward didn’t work for free. Well, not often. Sometimes he’d work simply for the thrill of chasing something that scared the rest of us mere mortals to death.

“Does anyone in Rafael’s operation have contacts in nongovernmental channels? I don’t want anyone owing anyone a favor for this. I don’t want anyone getting in trouble. I just want to know what the regular government channels either don’t know, or aren’t sharing with the St. Louis police department.”

“We have some ex-military, special forces, things like that. I’ll ask around.”

I nodded. “Good.” And I’d call Edward, see if he knew Heinrick. I started walking down the steps again. Bobby Lee fell in beside me, though since he was six feet and I so wasn’t, it was probably an awkward stride for him. He didn’t complain, and I didn’t offer to speed up. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing Jean-Claude or Asher again. I still didn’t know what to say.

We were within sight of the big heavy door that led into the underground areas. It was partially ajar, waiting for us. “By the way, Jean-Claude and Asher request your presence in Jean-Claude’s room.”

I sighed, and my unhappiness must have shown on my face, because he touched my arm. “Don’t look so glum, honey, they said something about owing you an apology.”

My eyebrows went up at that. An apology, them owing me. I liked the sound of that. I liked the sound of that a lot.

42

IT WASN’T THE apology I was expecting, but under the circumstances, any apology was better than none. Especially if I wasn’t having to give it. Of course, it took them nearly five minutes to get me to hear the apology, because once I got a good look at the two of them in their banquet finery, I was rendered speechless, deaf, and damn near blind to anything else.

I don’t think it was magic or vampire trickery. They just looked fine. Asher wore a jacket of pale gold with darker gold embroidery, and an edge of true metallic gold thread shot through the embroidery itself. There was a touch more gold at collar, lapels, wide cuffs. Just enough extra sparkle to mingle with the gold of his hair as it cascaded over his shoulders and add emphasis to the gestures of his hands. His shirt was a foam of white frills at chest and wrist, like a tamed cloud. I knew from rifling through Jean-Claude’s closet that the shirt wasn’t nearly as soft as it appeared. The pants were the same pale gold as the jacket with a line of embroidery down either side of his leg. Boots the color of oyster shells graced his legs, their tops folded down just above the knees, tied with pale brown leather belts and small gold buckles, which could be glimpsed as he moved.

I noticed Asher first, maybe because of his powers, or maybe because he was all shiny and gold and eye-catching. It was like noticing the sun. You couldn’t help but see it, to turn to face the heat of it, to bask in the glory of it. But often when the sun is high in the sky, the moon is up there, too. A dim memory of what she will be in the night, but there, nonetheless, dim and misty, hard and white. At night, there is only the moon, the sun is nowhere to be seen. There are no distractions when the moon rules the night sky.

Jean-Claude’s coat was a black velvet so soft and fine that it shown like fur. It was opera length, flowing down to his ankles. There was embroidery on the lapels and wide cuffs, a deep royal blue. The embroidery on the coat matched that on the black vest, but the shirt that showed in all that black and royal was the same shade of blue of the silk sheets on the bed. Cerulean blue, a color caught between the skies of day and night. It brought out the blue of his eyes so that they were like living jewels set amid the black of his hair, the near pure whiteness of his skin.

The silk was mounded into soft ruffles at his chest, and tucked into the vest. A gold and sapphire stickpin pierced the ruffles at his chest. The stone was almost as large as one of his blue eyes. Cuff links winked as he gestured, gold, with sapphires almost as large as the one on his chest. The sapphires were that cornflower blue, like a drop of Caribbean Sea water made solid.

His hair was a mass of black curls. It was almost as if he’d done less to it than normal, letting it tousle around his face and shoulders. The black of his hair blended into the black of his coat, so that the hair was like a living accessory.

For a moment I thought he was wearing leather pants, until I realized the black boots ran up the entire length of his leg. He was wearing black pants but they were barely visible. I got just a flash of the back of the boots when he moved. The entire length of the boot from ankle to ass was tied with a blue cord that matched the startling blue of his shirt.

I was caught between going yippy-skippy I get to play with them both, and running like hell. I managed to simply stand there in the middle of the room and not run, or fall at their feet like a groupie. Though that last part took more determination than I’d ever admit out loud.

“Ma petite, have you heard a word that we have said?”

I remembered that their mouths had been moving while I gazed at all that masculine splendor, but for the life of me I couldn’t repeat a word of it. I blushed as I admitted, “Not really.”

He looked exasperated, hands on hips, spreading the coat backwards, flashing more of the blue cord as he paced towards me. “It is as I feared, Asher. She is besotted with you. If we cannot,” he made a waffling motion with his hands and I saw the sapphire ring for the first time, winking at me in the candlelight, “tone this effect down, she will be useless tonight.”

“If I had dreamt that she could be so totally affected I would have held back.”

Jean-Claude turned and faced Asher. I could see that there was blue embroidery on the back of the coat. It made a pattern or picture, but I couldn’t figure it out through the spill of hair. “Would you, mon ami, would you truly have withheld such pleasure? Could you have resisted?”

“If I had known this, oui. I would not have weakened us with Musette and her people here, not for any pleasure.”

I frowned and shook my head. “Hold it guys.” They turned and looked at me. They both looked surprised, I think because I sounded so normal. “This can’t be Asher’s powers, not unless his fascination extends to Jean-Claude, because you both seem equally nifty. I feel like jumping up and down and saying yippee, I get to play with them both.” I blinked and fought not to blush. “I’m sorry, did I just say that out loud?”

The two men exchanged glances, then Jean-Claude turned back to me, and Asher directed that pale blue gaze on me. “What are you saying, ma petite? I have never seen you stand so speechless and insensible before me.”

I looked at the two of them and shook my head. “Fine, you need a reminder, I can do that.” I walked past them to the full-length mirror that sat on the opposite side of the room. I motioned them both over. “Come on, come on, we don’t have all night.”

They finally drifted over to me, looking puzzled. I got a little distracted watching them glide towards me in all that silk and leather and sparkly stuff. But finally, I had them standing in front of the mirror, though they weren’t looking at the mirror, they were looking at me, still puzzled.

I finally had to touch each of them lightly on the arm and maneuver them so that the golden cream of Asher’s coat spilled against the black velvet of Jean-Claude’s. So that black curls intermingled with golden waves. I pushed them together until the startling blue of Jean-Claude’s shirt and the sapphire pin brought out the blue of both of their eyes.

“Look at yourselves, and tell me that any mere mortal isn’t going to stand there and say wow, for a few minutes.”

They looked into the mirror, they looked at each other, and finally Jean-Claude smiled. Asher didn’t.

“If it were merely Asher’s powers then, you are correct, ma petite, it would not extend to me.” He turned to face me, still smiling. “But I have never seen you this besotted.”

“You just haven’t noticed.”

He shook his head. “Non, ma petite, I would have noticed such a phenomenon before.”

I shrugged. “Maybe I’ve never seen you both dressed to kill before. The double impact is a little overwhelming.”

He moved away enough to turn in a graceful circle, arms out, showing off the outfit. “You think it is too much?”

I smiled, almost laughed. “No, not even close, but I’m allowed to stand dumbfounded in the presence of such beauty.”

“Très poetic, ma petite.”

“Looking at the two of you, I only wish I was a poet, because I can’t do you justice. You look amazing, wondrous, specfuckingtacular.”

Asher walked to stand at the far end of the room beside the false fireplace. It was hard to see in the dimness, but tonight someone had put two tapered candles on the mantel piece, each encased in crystal, so they glimmered like jewels. Asher’s hair sparkled in the uncertain light. He put one hand on the mantel, his head down to stare at the cold hearth, as if the new fire screen Jean-Claude had added was très fascinating. The fire screen was a huge antique fan encased in glass. The colors were vibrant reds, greens, a brilliant spray of flowers and delicate lace. It was pretty, but not that pretty.

I looked at Jean-Claude for some clue, and he merely motioned me to follow Asher across the room. When I just stood there, Jean-Claude took my hand and led me over to the other man.

Asher must have heard us coming, because he said, “I was very angry with you, Anita, very angry. So angry I did not think you might have just cause to be angry with me.”

Jean-Claude squeezed my hand as if to tell me not to interrupt, but I seemed to be ahead on the discussion, so I hadn’t planned to say a word. Never interrupt when you’re winning.

“Jason told us how ill you were after I took blood from you. If you were as ill as he has reported then you would naturally fear my embrace.” He looked up, suddenly, eyes wide and almost wild, lost in the glow of his hair and the flickering candlelight. “I would not have hurt you. It has never been so . . .” he seemed to be searching for a word, “terrible for any of my other,” again he hesitated, “victims.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, because I agreed with part of what he’d said. I felt that he’d made me a victim of his powers, by not asking first. But whether I’d been aware of it, or not, somewhere in the back of my mind I must have been thinking about the problem all damn day, because I knew one thing for certain. I wasn’t completely in the right, either. Damn it.

I let go of Jean-Claude’s hand, because the feel of his skin against mine made it harder to concentrate right now.

“I can see where you might have gotten the idea that I understood what sharing blood with you would mean. I did ask you to bite me, I did offer to feed you, and you were right, I did know that your bite could overwhelm my natural defenses.” It was my turn to look down at the pretty fire screen that would never know the touch of flame. “I just was so out of my head with,” I almost couldn’t say it, “desire that I wasn’t thinking clearly. But that wasn’t your fault. You could only go with what I said out loud.”

I looked up, met those eyes. “Oh, hell, Asher, even if you could have read my mind at that moment I wanted you to take me, whatever that meant. There were no rules or stop signs in my head.” I let out a long breath, and it shivered, because I was afraid of this, afraid of admitting it out loud, afraid of it all. I was afraid of being consumed by desire or love or whatever the hell you want to call it. “I wanted you to take me while Jean-Claude made love to me. I wanted us all to be together as of old.”

“It is not of old for you, Anita,” Asher said. He looked past me at Jean-Claude. “See, it is as we feared, she is besotted with me through your memories. It is not real what she feels for me. With my powers of fascination or without them, it is not real.”

“That sounds like what I’ve been saying, Asher,” I said. “That because you mind-fucked me I’ll never know if what I feel for you is real. But I can tell you this, what I felt for you before, that was real. It isn’t you before the holy water that I think of, it’s you now, just as you are.”

He shook his head and looked away, making his hair a barrier between us, so I couldn’t see his face. “But I did use my powers to fascinate you, as a snake fascinates a bird. I captured your mind, and I meant to do it.”

I touched his hair, and he jerked away from me, moved down the mantel out of reach. I didn’t try and follow. I took in a lot of air and blew it slowly out. I’d have rather faced a dozen bad guys than this next bit of conversation.

“In your defense, I think we were naked and doing the nasty before you rolled my mind.”

He looked up, face barely clear enough through the shadows and uncertain light for me to see he was puzzled. “Nasty?”

“Having sex,” Jean-Claude said. “It is a quaint American slang term for it, to do the nasty.”

“Ah,” Asher said, though he didn’t look any less puzzled.

I plowed on. I’m nothing if not determined once I’ve made up my mind. “My point is this, we were already having sex. You hadn’t rolled my mind when I agreed to everybody taking their clothes off. You hadn’t rolled my mind when we had foreplay. You hadn’t rolled my mind when I was licking the back of your knees, and other things.” I forced myself to meet his slowly calming eyes. “I volunteered for all that. If I could have figured out a way for you to be inside me that didn’t include fangs I would have, but I wanted you both inside me.”

I had to close my eyes, because I suddenly had a visual so strong that it nearly made my knees buckle. With the visual came the wave of sensation. It didn’t make me claw the air this time. But I was left with a death grip on the mantelpiece, and my breath coming in gasps.

“Ma petite, are you well?”

I shook my head. “Compared to the first time I flashed back on the orgasm, yeah, I’m peachy.”

“Quelle?” Asher asked.

“She has experienced the pleasure of us earlier today.”

Asher looked even less happy. “She has every symptom. I did not believe she would. I thought her necromancy would protect her.”

“I should also tell you that I think Belle Morte had something to do with how sick I was. She was feeding on me and Richard through you two.”

Jean-Claude leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “Jason had told us that ma petite. But I still believe that your power has struggled with Asher’s power all day. It is the old question of what would happen if an irresistible force met an immovable object.”

“Asher being the irresistible force and me the immovable object,” I said.

“Oui.”

I’d have liked to argue with the division of labor, but it was too damned appropriate. “So what does that mean for us being together as a ménage à trois again?”

Jean-Claude had a moment of something showing on his face, then he went to his blankest of blank faces. It was Asher who spoke, “You would be willing to do this again?”

I started to let go of the mantelpiece, decided not to, just in case, and said, “Maybe.” I looked at Jean-Claude, his careful beautiful face. “I think Jean-Claude has finally found something that he won’t compromise on.”

“Whatever do you mean, ma petite?”

“I mean if I cost you Asher, it will drive a wedge between us.”

“So I am something that you will take to your bed to be with Jean-Claude!” He was suddenly enraged, eyes full of liquid blue fire. His humanity folded away before my eyes to leave him pale and still beautiful, but it was the beauty of carved rock and jewels, a hard, bright beauty with no life to it, no softness, nothing human. He stood before me with his golden hair moving around his face like a halo, blown by the wind of his own power. He was wondrous and horrible, a terrible beauty, like the angel of death come to find you.

I wasn’t afraid of him. I knew Asher wouldn’t hurt me, on purpose. I knew more that Jean-Claude wouldn’t allow it. But I’d had enough. Enough of Asher and of me. In some perverse way Asher and I were well matched in a bad need-therapy sort of way. We both had so many issues about personal intimacy and so many hoops that people had to jump through, that even I was tired of it.

I unbuckled my belt and started sliding it through the loops, when it was far enough back; I slid the belt out of the loop on my shoulder holster.

Asher asked in a voice that echoed through the room, crawled down my spine, “What are you doing?”

I finished taking my belt off, then shrugged out of my shoulder holster. “I’m getting undressed. I assume that Jean-Claude’s got some clothes around here somewhere for me, too. Though I am so not wearing an outfit that matches yours if it has like petticoats and stays and stuff. You can’t move in that shit.”

“Have no fear, ma petite, I have held your preferences in the forefront of my thoughts, as I chose the clothing.” He held his hands out to the side and struck a lovely, if overly dramatic poise. “Even our clothing is comfortable and easy to move about in.”

We were both ignoring the vampire that was glowering at us. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails when you’re trying to be scary like being ignored.

I started to take my shirt off, but stopped. I did not want to have to go through the glowing cross routine again. I did not want to mess with it. So I went for the bed, where I could take off my shoes in comfort.

“So Jason told you what else Belle did?”

“She has given you the first mark, oui.”

“She knows, Jean-Claude, she knows that Richard and I don’t have the fourth mark.” I hopped up on the bed, laying my belt and shoulder holster beside me. I concentrated on untying my shoes, because I did not want to go where I feared the discussion would go.

“You will not look at me now, ma petite. Why, is it that you fear what I will say?”

“I know that if you gave me the fourth mark that she couldn’t mark me again. I’d be safe from her.”

“Non, ma petite, no lies between us. She could not mark you as hers, but you would not be safe. I could use this as an excuse to claim that last bit of you, but I will not, because I fear what Belle would do.”

I looked up at him, one shoe in my hand. “What do you mean?”

“For now, she thinks she may be able to claim you as her human servant. She may be able to use you to increase her own power. If she finds you are beyond her reach in that way, she may decide that you are better off dead.”

“If she can’t have me, then nobody else gets me either, is that it?”

He gave a small nod, and an almost apologetic shrug. “She is a very practical woman.”

“No, she’s a very practical vampire. Trust me, Jean-Claude that is a whole new level of practicality.”

He nodded. “Oui, oui, I would argue if I could, but it would be lies.”

Asher was walking towards us now. His eyes were still glowing that drowning blue as if a winter’s sky had filled his skull, but for the rest, he looked as ordinary as he ever did. Which was extraordinary. But at least he wasn’t raising a small wind of his own otherworldly power or levitating a few inches off the floor.

“You are both weakened by not sharing the fourth mark. Neither of you is as powerful without it. You know that, Jean-Claude.”

“I do, but I also know Belle. She destroys that which she cannot use.”

“Or casts it aside,” Asher said, voice soft, holding sorrow enough to make my throat tight.

I had my shoes off, my jogging socks tucked into them on the floor. “Casting you aside did destroy you,” I said. I meant it to be soft, but it came out pretty much like I usually sound.

He glared at me, his pupils swimming up through the blue fire like an island reborn from the sea.

“What I mean, Asher, is that she chose what would hurt you worse than death. To be cast out from her affections, from Jean-Claude’s bed, since his bed was hers.”

“She would not kill me because she promised Jean-Claude she would not.”

I glanced at Jean-Claude.

“I came back to her for a hundred years, if she could save Asher’s life. If he died, I was free of her.”

“So she worked to keep me alive,” Asher said, and his voice was bitter enough to choke on. “There were nights when I cursed you for my life, Jean-Claude.”

“I know, mon ami. Belle Morte often pointed out that if only I would allow you to die, you could be spared such humiliation.”

“I did not know that she gave you that choice.”

Jean-Claude looked away, not meeting the other man’s eyes. “It was selfish on my part. I would rather you alive and hating me, than dead and past all hope.” He looked up then, and his face was raw with emotion, so unlike his usual polite blankness. “Was I wrong, Asher? Would you rather have died all those years ago?”

I sat on the bed, watching them, waiting for the answer. In a way I was an audience, in a way I wasn’t there at all.

“There were moments when I longed for death.”

Jean-Claude turned away. Asher touched his arm, fingertips on the velvet. That small touch seemed to freeze Jean-Claude. If he was breathing, I couldn’t see it. “Last night was not one of those moments.”

They stared at each other. Asher’s fingertips barely touching Jean-Claude’s arm. There was so much between them, centuries of pain and love and hate. It was as if all of it boiled in the air, almost visible in the flickering light. I wanted to say kiss and make up, but I knew they wouldn’t. I don’t know what issues they had about each other, but they seemed unable to do things like that without their Julianna. She’d been the bridge between them. The thing that allowed them to love each other. Without her, they stood on the brink of the abyss and gazed at each other, separated by a chasm that neither knew how to cross.

I could never be Julianna. I had too many memories of her. For God’s sake she’d done embroidery. She’d been gentle and kind and everything I didn’t think I was. But there was one thing I might be able to do.

I slid off the bed, and went first to Asher, because I didn’t want to set him off again. I went on tiptoe, and he had to bend down a little for me to kiss him, but he didn’t fight me. I held his face in my hands like it was a cup carved of some delicate stone, something that would shatter if you abused it. I kissed him softly, drinking from that cup as the sacred gift it was. I went to Jean-Claude with the taste of Asher still on my lips. I cupped his face as I had held Asher’s, and I kissed him. He barely moved under my mouth.

I stood back from the two of them. “Now, we’ve kissed and made up. We need to get me dressed, and we need to talk before the banquet.”

Jean-Claude’s voice came out low and hoarse, as if he wasn’t breathing well. “Talk of what, ma petite?”

“The Mother of All Darkness.”

“Jason spoke of her, too, but I hoped he was misunderstanding.”

“It cannot be the Sweet Mother,” Asher said, “she has not woken in a millennium.”

“She’s not awake, Asher, but she’s moving around like a restless sleeper.”

The two men looked at each other. It was Asher who said, “I would put aside petty differences until we are at the bottom of this most grave mystery.”

“What petty differences?” I asked.

“Whether we are to be a ménage à trois, or no.”

I shook my head. “I adore you, Asher, but I don’t have enough energy left to shovel this much emotional shit. Do you realize that you have more hang-ups about personal intimacy than I do?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then gave that Gallic shrug.

“We’re actually well-matched in a I-haven’t-beaten-you-to-death-yet, sort of way. But for now, let’s both try to put our personal mess aside. Okay, please.”

He gave a graceful bow. “As my lady commands, so shall I obey.”

“For as long as it suits you,” I said.

He laughed then, and it was a good laugh, a sound that glided down my skin and jerked at things low in my body. It brought a sigh from my lips. “Now, where are my clothes for this little disaster tonight?”

43

I HAD, OF course, complained about my clothes. The black velvet and blue silk seemed to be offering my breasts up like pale ripe fruits. The colors emphasized the near translucence of my skin with the undertone of blue highlights. But I knew what the blue highlights really were—blood. Blue blood inside my veins that would burst red when oxygen hit it.

Stephen had done my hair and makeup. He’d done them before, for these little get-togethers. He regularly did it for the other strippers at Guilty Pleasures. I had let him put my hair in a pile of loose curls on top of my head, so that my neck looked white and bare. Asher’s bite marks stood out starkly against all that flesh.

“My neck and breasts look like they should be on a plate with a sign saying ‘come and get it.’ ”

Stephen stepped back from applying the last bit of eyeliner. “You look lovely, Anita.” He probably meant it, but his blue eyes were all for the makeup, for his work. He saw me as a canvas. He frowned slightly, did some minute adjustment near my eyes that left me blinking. He dabbed with a Kleenex then stepped back again.

He looked me over from the top of my head to the end of my chin, then nodded. “It’s good.”

“It’s positively appetizing,” Micah’s voice came from the doorway. He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. The moment I saw him, I knew I’d lost all rights to bitch about what I was wearing.

The color was turquoise blue, with enough green to make his eyes blaze green. The shirt had holes at the top of his shoulder, in the middle of his upper arm, and two in the middle of his forearm. Black cord was threaded through the cloth and tied around his elbow, above and below the holes to keep the cloth from sliding around. The cuffs were wide and stiff, with shiny black buttons, with cutouts on the underside so the skin of his wrists was bare, just as the holes at his elbows left those spots bare. His skin looked very tanned, very smooth, very warm against the turquoise.

The pants matched the shirt—and not just in color. There were holes on the sides that flashed the perfect smoothness of his hip, down to glimpses of thigh. The holes probably went farther down, but black boots cut off the view just above his knee.

The pants were so tight that he really didn’t need a belt, but there was a black cord threaded through the unnecessary belt loops that swung as Micah walked. He was actually almost to me when I realized there were holes on the inside of the pants legs, too.

I shook my head. “There’s more holes than cloth.”

He smiled at me. “I’m food, so you’ve got to be able to reach the blood. Jean-Claude didn’t want anyone to have an excuse to undress anyone.”

I glanced at Jean-Claude. “He’s not feeding any of these people.”

“Non, ma petite, he is ours, and ours alone, but we do not want to have to undress him either. If all of us keep our clothes firmly in place, then so will they. It would be a faux pax of gigantic proportions if they undress their food and we do not. It is our house, and our rules.”

Put that way it was hard to argue, but I still wanted to. Then I looked at Micah’s face more closely. “He’s wearing eye makeup.” I got off the chair that I’d sat in while Stephen fixed me and walked closer to Micah. He was wearing more than just eye makeup, but it was all so artfully done that you didn’t see it at first.

“I could not resist those eyes,” Jean-Claude said, “they deserved to be decorated.”

Micah’s hair was tied completely back from his face in a bun that was a graceful mix of French braid and sheer art. “Where did all the curl go?” I asked.

“It has been blow dried straight,” Jean-Claude said. He came and almost touched Micah’s hair, to show how lovely it was. “He did not protest anything that we did to make him so pretty.” Jean-Claude gave me a look, out of his own black-lined eyes. “It was a refreshing change.”

Micah blinked those amazing eyes that someone’s art had made even more amazing. “You don’t like it?”

I shook my head. “No, I like it. I mean, you’re beautiful.” I shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s just a very different look for you.” I turned to Jean-Claude. “I’ve never seen you in this much makeup.”

“Belle Morte broke me of wishing to see myself this way.” He was shielding as he said it, as if whatever memory went with those words was nothing he wanted to share.

“So why pretty Micah up like this?”

“You don’t like it,” Micah repeated.

I frowned. “That’s not it. Why do it now? What do we gain by having you look like this, because don’t try and tell me there’s no purpose to it.” I turned to include Asher in his chair across the room in the look I gave Jean-Claude. “Neither of you would go to this much trouble tonight without a reason. I’ve heard nothing but both of you complaining that we don’t have enough time to get everyone presentable for the banquet.” I gestured at Micah. “This took a lot of time that could have been used elsewhere. So I’m asking, both of you, what gives?”

They exchanged a look, then Asher looked studiously at the floor. He pretended to be studying his perfectly manicured fingernails, but I wasn’t fooled.

I turned back to Jean-Claude. “Out with it,” I said.

He shrugged. It wasn’t so much graceful as almost embarrassed. “Musette was finally forced to give us the complete guest list. She has withheld only three names, because they are part of the gift from Belle.”

“So three mystery guests, what does that have to do with why you dolled Micah up?”

“One of the vampires coming tonight has an eye for a beautiful man. Both Asher and I fell afoul of him, more than once.”

“And,” I said.

“To flaunt such delectable meat in front of his table, yet not allow him a taste or a touch, pleases us.”

“So you’re being petty,” I said.

Jean-Claude was suddenly angry, it showed in his face, filled his eyes with blue fire. “You do not understand, ma petite. Belle has sent Paolo to torment us. He is to remind us what we were, and how helpless we were. We went to anyone that Belle gave us to, anyone. She did not do it casually, but if our bodies in another’s bed would gain her something she wished, then she used us, and let others do the same.”

He stalked in a tight circle, the black coat floating out around him like dark wings. “The thought of sitting at the same table with Paolo again sickens me, and Belle knew that it would. I loathe him in a way that I do not wish to describe. But we cannot harm him, ma petite. Belle has sent him to torment both of us by his mere presence. He will smirk and leer and remind us with every look, every touch of his hands on someone else, what he once was allowed to do to us.”

Jean-Claude came to stand in front of me, his anger beating in the air like invisible flames. “But this we can do, ma petite, we can flaunt the bounty at hand. We can show Paolo what I am able to touch, and Asher is able to touch, but Paolo cannot have. Paolo is one of those men who always wants what others have. It eats at his soul if he cannot have, in every way, whomever he desires.” He touched fingertips down my neck and left a trail of heat on my skin that made me gasp, almost pain, almost pleasure. “I want Paolo to suffer, if only a little, because I do not have it within my power to make him suffer a great deal.”

I looked up into Jean-Claude’s angry, angry face, and sighed. “It’s going to be like this all night, isn’t it? Belle’s only sent people that make you uncomfortable, or that you hate, or hate you.”

“Non, ma petite. We fear Musette, and Valentina. I believe Bartolomé came because he is bored. Paolo is the first name that truly incenses me.”

I touched Jean-Claude’s face, holding that anger against the palm of my hand. His eyes bled back to normal, or as normal as they ever get. I looked past him to Micah. “You okay with fang-teasing some male vampire?”

“As long as I don’t have to come across, I’ll play.”

That made me smile. “If Micah’s okay with it, so am I.” I cradled Jean-Claude’s face between my hands, but was trying for eye contact not a kiss. “But let’s keep our eye on the ball, revenge is not why we’re here tonight.”

He put his hands over mine and held them both against his face. “We are here tonight because Belle Morte is le sourdre de sang of our line, and we cannot refuse her right to send visitors our way. But make no mistake, ma petite, Musette and her company are here to have revenge upon us.”

“Revenge for what?” I asked.

Asher answered from across the room, “Revenge for us leaving her, of course.”

I looked at him. “Why of course?”

They exchanged another look, one that I couldn’t read. It was Jean-Claude who said, “Because Belle Morte believes herself to be the most desirable woman in the world.”

I gave him raised eyebrows. “She’s beautiful, I’ll grant you. But the most beautiful woman in the world, come on! I mean it depends on what you consider beautiful. Some people like brunettes, some people like blonds.”

“I said the most desirable, ma petite, not beautiful.”

“I don’t get the difference.”

He frowned at me. “Men have killed themselves when she exiled them from her bed. Wars have been fought between rulers who were driven mad at the thought of any other man sharing Belle Morte’s favors.”

It was my turn to frown. “Are you saying that once you’ve had Belle Morte that no one else will do?”

“That is her belief.”

I looked at him. “You and Asher left, twice apiece.”

“Exactement ma petite, do you not see?”

“Not really.”

“If we left her bed, if there is any touch that we prefer to hers, then perhaps she is not the most desirable woman in the world.”

I thought about that for a second. “So, this entire expedition is to punish you two?”

“Not entirely. I believe Belle does want to test the ground, as it were, before she visits herself.”

“Why does she want to visit at all?”

“It will be something political, of that you can be sure,” Jean-Claude said.

“So punishing the two of you this time is what, an extra treat?”

They started to do another of those looks, but I touched Jean-Claude’s face, forced him to look at me. “No, no more mysterious looks, just say it.”

“Belle is the most desirable woman in the world, her entire power base, her entire self-image is built on that. She must find a way to understand why we left, and why we prefer to stay away, even now.”

“So,” I said.

“You are being too subtle,” Asher said, pushing himself to his feet and striding over to us.

“Fine, you tell me,” I said.

“Just as Belle saw Julianna as a threat, so she will see you. But we hope to convince her that it is not another woman alone that keeps us entertained, but a man. Belle never did see men as competition, not as she did a woman.”

“So that’s why you’ve prettied Micah up.”

“And others,” Asher said.

I looked at Jean-Claude. “Others?”

He had the grace to look embarrassed, but it didn’t work completely, his eyes looked pleased. “If Musette can report to Belle that I have a harem of men, then Belle will cease to be worried about you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Jean-Claude. I think she’s got a taste of me now. She’s either going to be afraid of me, or attracted to the power.”

“I believe she marked you once to torment me, ma petite. She does not truly want you as her human servant, but she is angry with me, angry with you for having me.” He shook his head. “She thinks like a woman, ma petite, and not a modern one. You think more like a man, so it is hard to explain to you.”

“No, I think I’ve got an inkling. You’re going to try and convince Belle’s people that you didn’t dump her for any woman, but for a lot of men.”

“Oui.”

“And if the sight of a lot of gorgeous men torments Paolo, too, so much the better.”

He smiled, but it left his eyes hard and unpleasant. “Oui, ma petite.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but Belle Morte wasn’t the only one who rarely did anything without having more than one motive.

44

THE BANQUET WAS in one of the inner rooms of the Circus. One I’d never seen before. I knew that the place was huge and I’d seen only a fraction of it, but I hadn’t realized I’d missed a room this size. It was literally cavernous, because it had originally been a cave, a huge, towering, space that water had carved out of solid stone over a few million years. There was no water now, only rock and the cool air. It was the way the air tasted, the way it touched your skin that let you know somehow that all this dark splendor was nature’s handy work, not man’s. I don’t know what the difference between natural caves and man-made ones is, but the air feels different, it just does.

I expected torches for the night, but was surprised to find that there was gas. Gas lamps placed around the room, chasing back the dark. I asked Jean-Claude when he’d installed the gas, and he said that some bootleggers had done it during prohibition, that the cavern had been a speakeasy. Nikolaos, the Master of the City before Jean-Claude, had let the bootleggers pay rent for the space. Her vampires had also fed on the drunken revelers. It was a good easy way to feed without getting caught. Since the prey was already breaking the law, it wouldn’t go to the police, to say where the vampire attack had happened.

I’d never been in a room that was lit entirely by gas lamps. It had that soft edge of firelight, but it was steadier and burned cleaner. I’d half expected there to be an odor of gas, but there wasn’t. Jean-Claude informed me that if I smelled gas it would mean there was a leak, and we should probably run like hell. Okay, what he actually said was we should leave as quickly as possible, but I knew what he meant.

The banquet table was both beautifully—and oddly—arranged. It gleamed with golden flatware, and the gold picked up the delicate gold pattern in the white fine-boned china. There were gold napkin rings around white linen napkins. The tablecloth was triple layered, one long and white that nearly dragged the floor, a gold edge of leaves and flowers embroidered around its hem. The middle layer was a delicate gold lace. The top was a different layer of gold—white and gold—as if someone had taken gold paint and dabbed it sponge-like on white linen.

The chairs had white and gold cushioned seats and richly carved backs in a dark, dark wood. The table sat like a gleaming island in the midst of the gaslit dark. But two things confused me. First, there were way more golden utensils at each place than I knew what to do with. What the hell do you use a tiny two-tined fork for anyway? It was set at the top of the plate, so it was either for seafood, salad, dessert, or something I hadn’t thought of. I was hoping for seafood or dessert, since I thought I knew which fork was for salad. Having never been to a formal vampire banquet, I tried not to speculate on other possible uses for the two-tined fork.

Secondly, there were a number of complete place settings on the floor. Each setting had a white linen napkin spread under it, like miniature picnics. The place settings on the floor were spaced between the chair settings, so there was room to pull the chairs in and out. It was . . . odd.

I stood there in my black and royal blue gown with its faint sparkles of deep blue, tapping the toe of my black high heel, trying to figure out why there were plates on the floor.

Jean-Claude glided through the long black drapes that covered the entrance between this room and the smaller adjacent chamber. Everyone was mingling in the other room. I hated mingling under any circumstances, even at normal dinner parties. But tonight was like small talk, combat style. Everything had double or triple meanings. Everyone was trying to be subtly insulting. All so polite, so back-stabbing, so painful. My small talk skills were pretty limited, and among Musette and her crew, I was unarmed. I’d needed a break, before I started breaking things for real. At least Musette’s underage pomme de sang was missing from tonight’s festivities. We’d been told the girl had been sent back to Europe because her presence seemed to upset me so. My guess was Musette just didn’t want to lose her toy, if things went badly.

Asher slipped through all that blackness like a golden vision, but he didn’t glide after Jean-Claude, he hurried. Musette wasn’t entirely ready to believe that Asher was truly ours. Since I wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was either, it was hard for her not to smell a lie on me, even though it wasn’t exactly a lie. I should never have left Asher on his own, but I was tired. Tired of vampire politics. Tired of digging out from problems that I didn’t start, and didn’t truly understand.

“Ma petite, our guests are asking after you.”

“I’ll just bet they are.”

Jean-Claude did that long, slow, graceful blink that usually meant he was trying to figure out what I’d meant with a bit of slang or sarcasm. I used to think the blink was to show off his impossibly long eyelashes, but trust him to make something enticing out of what for anyone else would have been an irritating habit.

“Musette really is asking after you,” Asher said, and he imitated her voice, “Where is your new beloved? Has she abandoned you so soon?” His pale blue eyes flashed white, showing that edge of panic that was just below the surface.

“It is not like you to wander off on such an important and potentially dangerous occasion. What is the matter, ma petite?”

“Oh, I don’t know, an international terrorist following me around, the vampire council back in town, an evening of some of the most politely vicious small talk I’ve ever heard, Asher being his usual temperamental self, one of my friends and favorite policemen having a nervous breakdown, a serial killer werewolf on the loose in my town, oh, and the fact that Richard and his wolves haven’t arrived yet, and no one’s answering their phones. Pick one.” I knew the smile on my face wasn’t pleasant when I finished. It was a challenging smile. It said why wouldn’t I be uptight?

“I do not believe anything has happened to Richard, ma petite.”

“No, you’re afraid he’s going to take a pass on the whole evening. That would make us look damned weak.”

“Damian flies almost as well as I do,” Asher said, “he’ll find them, if they are close.”

“And if they’re not? I mean, Richard is shielding so hard that neither Jean-Claude nor I can reach him. He doesn’t usually do that without a reason, usually a pissy one.”

Asher sighed. “I do not know what to say about your wolf king, but I know that he is not our only problem.” He looked at me, and there was a stubborn set to that handsome face. “I am not being temperamental.”

I didn’t bother to debate him. Asher was temperamental, he just was. “Fine, but the problem is that Musette can smell this lie. She asks me if you’re mine, I say, yes, she doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t believe me because I don’t quite believe it. You aren’t totally mine. It’s too new to feel that real, and that’s what she’s picking up on. She’s practically chased me around the room finding new ways to ask if I’m fucking you, and even that caught me.” I shook my head, and missed the feel of my hair against my skin. I touched the back of my bare neck and it felt vulnerable.

“If it is only for their visit, I understand,” Asher said.

“No, no, damn it, it’s that we haven’t had intercourse.”

Asher looked at me, then raised his gaze to Jean-Claude. “In this she is very American. If you have not had intercourse, you have not had sex with ma petite. It is a very American mind-set.”

“I covered her back in my seed, and that does not count?”

I blushed so suddenly that I felt dizzy. “Can we please change the subject?”

Jean-Claude touched my shoulder, and I jerked away. I desperately wanted comforting, and thus I couldn’t let him do it. I know it made no sense, but it was still true. I’d stopped trying to talk myself out of myself and begun to try and work with what I had. I was a mess of contradictions. Wasn’t everybody? Though admittedly, I might be a teensy bit more contradictory than most.

I walked away from him, from both of them, but that also took me away from the lights, closer to the waiting pools of darkness. I stopped. I didn’t want to walk into the dark. I spoke half turned around, as if I didn’t trust my back to the dark completely. “Why are there plates on the floor?”

Jean-Claude moved towards me, graceful in those amazing boots, the dark coat swirling around him, the embroidery catching the light here and there like faint blue stars. The blue shirt seemed to float from the darkness, bringing his face to my almost painful attention, emphasizing how truly lovely he was. Of course, he’d probably planned for exactly that effect.

His voice seemed to fill the cavern like a warm whisper, “Be at peace, ma petite.”

“Stop that,” I said, and realized I turned my back on the greater darkness, turned towards him like a flower turns to the sun, turned because I couldn’t not look at him. This wasn’t vampire powers, it was the effect he had on me, had almost always had on me.

“Stop what?” he asked, voice still warm and peaceful, like a comforting blanket.

“Trying to use your voice on me. I’m not some tourist to be soothed by pretty words and a good delivery.”

He smiled, then gave a small bow. “Non, but you are as nervous as a tourist. It is not like you to be so . . . jumpy.” The smile had vanished, replaced by a small frown.

I rubbed my hands up and down on my arms, wishing the silk and velvet wasn’t there. I needed to touch my own skin, with my own hands. The cave was around fifty degrees, I needed the long sleeves, but I needed the skin contact more. I looked up to the towering ceiling above us, and the darkness that seemed to press down from it, hovering over the gaslight, pressing at the edges of the glow like a dark hand.

I sighed. “It’s the dark,” I said, at last.

Jean-Claude came to stand next to me; he made no immediate move to touch me, because I’d drawn away once. I’d taught him caution. He looked up briefly at the ceiling, then back to study my face. “What of it, ma petite?”

I shook my head and tried to put it into words, while I huddled into myself, as if I could hold in the warmth. I was wearing a cross. The silver chain traced down my neck into the generous cleavage revealed by the low-necked dress. There was a piece of black masking tape over the silver cross itself, so that it wouldn’t spill out at the wrong moment. After the earlier visits from Belle and Mommy Dearest, I was not going anywhere without a holy item on me. I wasn’t sure what that might mean to having sex with Jean-Claude, or any vampire, but for the short term, I wasn’t sure that any sex was worth the risk.

Jean-Claude touched my hand gently. I jumped, but didn’t move away. He took that as an invitation. He’d always taken anything that wasn’t an outright rebuke as an invitation. He moved to stand behind me, putting his hands over mine where I still gripped myself. “Your hands are chilled.” He pressed me in the circle of his body, arms sliding around me, pinning me gently against him.

He rested his cheek against the top of my head. “I ask again, ma petite, what is the matter?”

I settled into the circle of his arms, relaxing by inches against him, as if my very muscles couldn’t stand the thought of giving in to anything soft, or comforting. I ignored the question and asked again, “Why are there plates on the floor?”

He sighed and held me close. “Do not be angry, because there is nothing I can do to change this. I knew you would not like it, but Belle is old-fashioned.”

Asher came to join us. “Her original request was to put humans on large trays, like suckling pigs, bound and helpless. Then everyone could have picked a vein and enjoyed.”

I turned my head against the velvet of Jean-Claude’s coat, so I could stare at Asher’s face. “You’re joking, right?”

The look on his face was enough. “Shit, you aren’t.” I rolled my head up so I could look at Jean-Claude. He obligingly looked down at me. His face was more unreadable, but I was pretty sure Asher hadn’t lied.

“Oui, ma petite, she suggested three humans would be enough for all of us.”

“You can’t feed this many vampires off of three people.”

“Not true, ma petite,” he said, softly.

I kept looking at him, until he looked away. “You mean drain them dry from multiple bites.”

“Yes, yes, that is what I mean.” He sounded tired.

I forced myself to settle back into his suddenly tense arms, and sighed. “Just tell me, Jean-Claude, I believe you that Belle insisted on it, whatever it is. I believe you that she wanted worse things done, just tell me.”

He bent his head so that he whispered against my hair, his warm breath touching my ear. “When you have steak, do you invite the cow to sit at table with you?”

“No,” I said, then turned my head to the side so I could see his face. The look in his eyes was enough. “You don’t mean . . .” He did mean. “So who’s sitting on the floor?”

“Anyone who is food,” he said.

I gave him a look.

He spoke quickly to the look in my eyes. “You will be seated at table, ma petite, just as Angelito will sit at table.”

“What about Jason?”

“Pomme de sangs will eat from the floor.”

“So Nathaniel, too.” I said.

He gave a small nod and let me see how worried he was about how I’d take all this.

“If you were this worried about how I’d react, why didn’t you warn me ahead of time?”

“In truth, there has been so much happening that I forgot. This was once very normal for me, ma petite, and Belle holds with the old ways. There are older still than she, who would not even allow the food to sit on the floor.” He shook his head, hard enough that his hair touched my face, smelling of his cologne and that indefinable something that was simply his scent. “There are banquets, ma petite, that you would not wish to see, or even know of. They are indeed horrible.”

“Did you think they were horrible while you were participating in them?”

“Some, oui.” His eyes filled with that wistful look, that lost innocence, centuries of pain. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes in his eyes I could glimpse what he’d lost.

“I won’t argue if you tell me there’s worse out there than this arrangement. I’ll just believe you.”

He gave me a look of disbelief. “No arguing?”

I shook my head and leaned back into his chest, held his arms around me like a coat. “Not tonight.”

“I should leave this miracle alone, but I cannot. You have taught me bad habits, ma petite. I think I must ask, once more, what is wrong?”

“I told you, it’s the dark.”

“You have never been afraid of the dark before.”

“I’d never met the Mother of All Darkness before.” I said it softly, but her name seemed to echo into the darkness, as if the darkness itself were waiting for the words, as if the words could conjure her to us. I knew it wasn’t true. All right, I was pretty sure it wasn’t true, but it made me shiver just the same.

Jean-Claude tightened his grip around me, pulling me tight in against his body. “Ma petite, I do not understand.”

“How could you?” came a voice behind us.

Jean-Claude turned me in his arms as he moved to face the voice, making it a dance-like movement, ending with my left hand in his right. His coat and my skirt swirled out and settled in a cloth whisper around us. Our outfits were designed to move and flow like some goth version of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Asher walked quickly to us, and even the way he moved was wrong. His posture was still perfect, but there was a hunching to it, like a dog that expects to be hit. He hurried in those white boots, hurried, and though still beautiful, there was little grace to his movement. There was too much fear in him to allow for grace.

Jean-Claude held out his hand, and Asher took it. We stood there, the three of us holding hands like children. It should have been absurd, considering the vampire we faced, but it wasn’t Valentina that we wanted to huddle together against. I think for all three of us, it was the night in general. It was everything in the next room, and what it represented.

Valentina stood in front of the drapes. She looked like a tiny doll dressed all in white and gold so that she, like Asher, would match the table settings. Everyone in Musette’s party matched the table, which meant that that, too, had been something they negotiated. Somehow clothes wouldn’t have been high on my list, but then that was me.

Valentina’s outfit was a miniature seventeenth-century dress with the skirt flared out to either side so that she was shaped like an oval. The skirt was very full and gave glimpses as she walked of tiny gold slippers and numerous petticoats. She even had a white wig that hid her brunette curls from view. The wig looked too heavy for that slender white throat, but she walked as if the jewels and feathers and powdered hair weighed nothing. She had absolutely perfect posture, but I knew that was from the corset that was under the dress. Those dresses don’t fit right without the proper undergarments.

There had been no need for powder to make her skin white, rouge and red lipstick had been enough. Oh, and a black beauty mark in the shape of a tiny heart near that rosebud mouth. She should have looked ridiculous, but she didn’t. She was like a sinister doll. When she flipped open her gold and lace fan with a sharp snap, I jumped.

She laughed, and only the laughter was childlike, a hint of how she might have sounded long ago.

“She has stood on the brink of the abyss and stared into it, and the abyss has looked back, has it not?”

I had to swallow hard to be able to answer, because my pulse was pounding, and I was suddenly shivering. “You talk like you know.”

“I do.” She walked towards us, gliding and graceful. She wore the body of a child, but she didn’t move like one. I guess centuries of practice can teach anyone to glide.

She stopped farther back than an adult-sized person would, so she didn’t have to strain to look up at me. I’d noticed she did that while everyone was mingling. “Once I was truly the child this body pretends to be. I wandered away from everyone, exploring as children do.” She looked up at me with enormous brown eyes. “I found a door that was not locked. A room with many windows . . .”

“And none of them looked outside,” I finished for her.

She blinked up at me. “Exactement. What did the windows look out upon?”

“A room,” I said, “a huge room.” I looked up at the cavernous roof. “Like this one, but bigger, and the windowed room sits above it all.”

“You have not been in our inner sanctum, of that I am sure, but you speak as if you stood where I stood.”

“Not physically, but I have stood there,” I said.

We looked at each other, and it was a look of shared knowledge, shared terror, shared fear.

“How close did you get to the bed?” she asked.

“Closer than I wanted to,” I whispered.

“I touched the black sheets, because I thought she was only sleeping.”

“She is sleeping,” I said.

Valentina shook her head, solemnly. “Non, to say she sleeps is to say any vampire sleeps. It is not sleep.”

“She’s not dead, not dead the way the rest of you are when you sleep.”

“True, but she is not asleep either.”

I shrugged. “Whatever you call it, she’s not awake.”

“And for that we are truly grateful, are we not?” She spoke softly enough that I leaned in towards her to hear the words.

“Yes,” I whispered back, “we are.”

She reached up and touched my neck, and I flinched, not from the touch, but from the tension of our words. She didn’t laugh this time. “Only you and I have been touched by that dark.”

“Belle Morte, too,” I said.

Valentina looked a question at me.

“Belle has called me into some kind of dream when the Darkness rose around us.”

“Our mistress has not informed us of this,” Valentina said.

“It only happened today, early today,” I said.

“Hmm,” Valentina said, folding her fan tight, running it through her tiny hands, each tiny nail done in gold. “Musette should know of this.” She gazed up at me, and there was so much more of her than there should have been. She would always appear to be eight, a petite eight, but her eyes held an adult’s awareness, and more.

“There are some unexpected guests that are about to make their appearance. I cannot spoil the surprise, for that would anger Musette, and through her, Belle, but I think that you and I will be equally unhappy with them. I think that you and I more than any will see it for the disaster it is.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Jean-Claude will explain their presence to you, when they appear, but only you and I will truly grasp why the mere fact that they are here is bad, very bad.”

I frowned. “I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me.”

She sighed and unfurled her fan with a practiced movement. “We will speak again after the surprise.” She turned to walk back towards the curtain.

I called after her. “What saved you from the dark?”

She turned, the fan folding away again, as if playing with it had become habitual. “What saved you?”

“A cross, and friends.”

She gave a small smile that left her eyes as empty and gray as a winter storm. “My human nurse.”

“Did she see what was on the bed?”

“No, but it saw her. She began to shriek. She shrieked, and shrieked, and stood there, staring at nothing, until she fell down dead. Her body lay there for a very long time because no one wished to enter the room.”

Valentina opened her fan with a snap. I managed not to jump this time. “The smell got to be quite atrocious.” She smiled, and made a joke of it, a vicious joke, but she couldn’t make her expression match the humor. Her eyes were haunted, no matter how cruel the smile. She left through a flick of black drapes.

All three of us visibly relaxed when the drapes swung shut, and we shared a glance. “Why do I think I’m not the only one too tense to pull this off tonight?” I said.

Asher kept Jean-Claude’s hand, but moved around so he was facing both of us. “Musette smells a lie, and she will not let it rest.”

“Valentina and I just finished talking about the mother of all bad vampires, and you’re already back to harping on Musette.”

Jean-Claude squeezed my hand, and sighed.

“The Sweet Dark will not take me tonight, Anita. It will not pin me to a table and unfasten my clothes and force itself upon me. Musette will.”

“You’re in our bed now, rules say she can’t have you.”

“But she smells that it is a lie.”

“I can’t help that the fact that we haven’t had intercourse comes up on vampire radar as lying about fucking you.”

“Musette wishes it to be untrue, ma petite. She is searching for anything that will allow her more room to play. Your doubts, Asher’s doubts, give her that room.”

I closed my eyes and counted slowly to ten. When I opened them, they were both giving me their best blank faces. It was like looking at two superb paintings, suddenly made three-dimensional, very lifelike, but not alive.

I squeezed Jean-Claude’s hand, and he squeezed back. “Don’t go all strange on me, guys. I’m having enough trouble tonight.”

They both blinked, one long graceful blink, and they were “alive” again. I shivered and took my hand back from Jean-Claude. “That is so disturbing,” I said.

“Pourquoi, ma petite?”

“Why. He has to ask, why.” I shook my head, and crossed my arms. I had to cradle my breasts, because, thanks to the bra and the neckline, there was no way to cross my arms over my chest.

Damian came through the black drapes. His scarlet hair glowed against the cream and gold of his old-fashioned clothes. He could have stepped out of a seventeenth-century painting, complete with white hose below knee-length pants and those odd high-heeled buckle shoes the noblemen wore. Only his hair, loose and blazing, was untamed, and recognizably him. He had not volunteered to be one of Jean-Claude’s pretty men. Damian was a touch homophobic. Boy, had he fallen in with the wrong bunch of vampires.

He strode across the carpet and went to one knee in front of me. For tonight we were being formal, so I didn’t argue, and offered him my left hand. He took it, laying a kiss on my fingers. “The Ulfric and his party are almost here.”

“Where have they been?” Jean-Claude asked.

Damian looked up, giving us the full force of his grass green eyes. He almost looked underdressed without eye makeup. I think almost every other person at this little party was wearing makeup. The corner of his mouth gave the smallest twitch, and I realized he was trying not to laugh. “They had to find someone to repair the Ulfric’s hair. No one in their pack was a hairdresser.”

“What does this mean, ‘repair his hair’?” Jean-Claude asked.

I sighed. “You know how you forgot to tell me about the plates on the floor?”

“Oui.”

“I forgot to mention that Richard cut his hair off. I don’t mean like go-to-the-beauty-parlor-and-get-it-styled. I mean hacked it off with scissors, himself.”

Jean-Claude looked almost as horrified as I had. “His beautiful hair.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know.” I’d done my best not to think about it. I mean, Richard had said it, we weren’t dating. It wasn’t any of my business what length his hair was. My major concern was that sane happy people don’t hack their hair off at home with scissors. Cutting your hair like that is usually a substitute for hurting yourself in other more permanent ways. Any counselor will tell you that.

Damian spoke, still on one knee, still holding my hand lightly. “They found someone to salvage what they could, but he is all but shorn.”

Jean-Claude looked ill, which for a vampire is a neat trick. “Is he well enough for all this tonight?” I wasn’t sure who he’d asked it of, maybe everyone, maybe no one. But Jean-Claude had grasped how bad a sign it was that Richard was “mutilating” himself.

“I’m not sure any of us are,” I said.

He gave me an unfriendly look. “We are stronger than this, ma petite.”

“Strong, yes, but tired. I guess, I can only speak for myself, but if Musette comes up to me one more time and asks me about Asher, I’m going to smack her.”

“That is against the rules, ma petite.”

“What would make her stop nagging us about Asher? Does she have to see us fucking in front of her to back off?”

Damian was stroking my hand in his. I jerked back from him. “I don’t want to calm down. I’m pissed, and I have a right to be pissed.”

“A right, oui, but not the luxury, ma petite.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Anger without purpose is luxury tonight, ma petite, and we cannot afford it. We do not wish to give Musette any reason to cross the boundaries that we have so carefully negotiated.”

He was right, and I hated it. “Fine, fine, you’re right, you’re always fucking right about the political shit. But then what are we going to do to make Musette stop asking about Asher?”

“I have one possible solution,” Jean-Claude said.

The solution had to wait, because Micah came through the curtain with Nathaniel and Merle in tow.

Nathaniel’s outfit was mostly cream colored strips of leather that covered almost nothing. A white thong covered his front, but left his buttocks bare. He had cream colored boots that were over the knee but open in back, so you got glimpses of his legs to mid-calf when he walked away from you. There was a three-inch heel on the boots, and Nathaniel knew how to make the heel work for him. I knew he wore less than this almost every night at Guilty Pleasures, but it bugged me, until Nathaniel assured me he was fine with it. Stephen had styled Nathaniel’s auburn hair, looping it back and over itself, to form the largest French braid I’d ever seen. French braids just aren’t meant to hit the knees. The delicate eye makeup was almost overwhelming to his violet eyes, making them almost painfully, shockingly beautiful. Lipstick had shaped his mouth and made it kissable, even from a distance. He would have looked like a girl, except that the outfit left no doubt that the body it was almost covering was very male.

Merle was wearing a variation of what all the bodyguards would be wearing: black leather. Black leather pants over black boots with silver points, a black T-shirt under a black leather jacket. Merle had had his own outfit. He was six feet plus with gray-streaked hair that fell to his shoulders and a mustache and partial beard that were both a darker gray than his hair. He looked like what he was—a longtime biker and hard case. At the moment he was livid, so angry that his beast was rolling in the air around him like an almost visible presence.

“What happened?” I asked.

Merle growled, “If that bastard touches my Nimir-Raj one more time, I’m going to tear off his arm and shove it up his ass.”

Jean-Claude and Asher said in unison, “Paolo.”

“Yes,” Merle growled.

Micah looked amused. I don’t think it bothered him, but not much bothered Micah. He was one of the most easygoing people I’d ever met. I guess he had to be to survive as my boyfriend.

“It isn’t bothering me, Merle.”

“That’s not the point,” the big man said. “It’s insulting. It shows he has no respect for us.”

“It’s Paolo,” Asher said, “he has no respect for anyone, except Belle.”

“Let me guess,” I said, “Paolo’s pawing Nathaniel, too.”

Merle gave a low, skin-crawling growl.

The curtains opened, and Bobby Lee stuck his head and shoulders in. “Unless we can just start tearing people up, you better get back in here.”

We exchanged a look, sighed almost as a group, and we got back in there.

45

THERE WAS A wall of our black leather-clad bodyguards—wererats, werehyenas, wereleopards—so that we couldn’t see who was making a high piteous noise.

“Make a hole,” I said. I was ignored.

Merle yelled, “Make a hole, people,” and the bodyguards parted like a black leather ocean.

It was Stephen making the noise. He had pressed himself up against the far wall, as if he were trying to shove himself into it and out the other side. Valentina was in front of him. She wasn’t doing anything to him that I could see, or even feel. But she was standing very close, one tiny hand hovering in front of him.

Gregory was pressed into a different space. Bartolomé stood just in front of him, a look of near rapture on his young face. I concentrated on the vampire and I felt him feeding, feeding on Gregory’s terror. I’d known a vampire or two that could cause fear in others, then feed. I hadn’t known it was a power that Belle’s line carried.

Stephen screamed, and the sound whipped me around to see that Valentina had laid a tiny hand on his bare stomach. She wasn’t feeding on his fear. She wasn’t hurting him in any way that I could see. Stephen hid his face, his long blond curls tangling across his made-up face, his naked upper body pressed into the stone, as if he thought he could make himself disappear.

Valentina slid her tiny hand down his waist, to the hips of his white leather pants, and that tore another scream from Stephen’s throat. I suddenly had a clue why the twins were terrified of the children.

Bobby Lee pushed his way beside me. “Bodyguards are supposed to go first, Anita, not second.”

I ignored the anger, because I knew it was frustration. We’d told the guards that we could not start violence under any circumstances, that Musette and her crew had to break truce first. As far as I was concerned this did break truce.

I started towards Stephen, and a strange vampire barred my way. I knew suddenly why our guards were simply standing there with their hands in their proverbial pockets. The vampire wasn’t that tall, but he was bulky, and it wasn’t just muscle. There was something to the hunch of his shoulders. The shape of his head was wrong, somehow. There was nothing specific I could put a finger on, except that he hit the radar as not human. Not human in ways different from other vampires.

He was also one of the few Black vampires I’d ever seen. Some people theorized that the same genetics that made many people of African descent immune to malaria also made them less likely to become vampires. He stood there looking at me, with his dark skin still somehow strangely pale, like chocolate ivory. His eyes were golden yellow, and the moment I looked into them, the words not human came to mind.

Another scream tore the air. It didn’t matter what the thing in front of me was, or wasn’t. I didn’t care.

I tried sidestepping, and the vampire moved with me, not threatening, but not letting me through either. The room was suddenly quiet, so quiet. Gregory’s voice came first, unnaturally loud in the tense silence. “Don’t make me do this, oh, God, don’t make me do this!”

Jean-Claude was murmuring to Musette, and I heard her voice, just a word or two in French. She was basically saying they hadn’t broken truce, this was only entertainment.

I felt my shoulders relax, felt the decision settle into the center of my body. I stared up at the vampire. “You are a coward, an ugly, child-abusing coward.”

The vampire didn’t react, he ignored me, and I didn’t think it was simply bodyguard cool. I tried a few more choice insults, concerning everything from his parentage to his physical appearance, and got glazed blinks. He didn’t speak English. Good.

“Bobby Lee,” I said.

He leaned in close to me, trying even now to insinuate his body between me and the big bad vampire. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Overwhelm him with numbers.”

“Can we cut him up?”

“No.”

“Then we can’t overwhelm him for long.”

“I only need a minute.”

He gave a small nod. “I might just squeeze a minute out of this mess.”

I met his eyes. “Do it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He made a signal with his hand, and all the wererats moved at once. I sidestepped the mass of black leather, and went quickly to Valentina and Stephen.

I was talking before I’d really gotten to them. I wouldn’t have much time. Micah appeared beside me. Merle and Noah, Micah’s second bodyguard, were practically pressed to his back. I’d made sure all my bodyguards were busy with the vampire. If things went wrong, I wasn’t sure either Merle or Noah would protect me if it meant endangering Micah. Oh, well.

“Stephen had been abused as a child. He was used for sex by his own father, and sold to other men,” I said as I moved forward. I remembered what Jean-Claude had said, that Valentina hated child molesters because of her own past.

She turned that tiny heart-shaped face to me, her hand still caressing Stephen’s shoulder. He had collapsed to the floor, huddled in an almost fetal position.

I was beside them now, and the noises behind me were escalating. There was going to be a fight soon, a bad one. “I swear to you that what I say is true. Look at him, look at the terror your touch inspires in him.”

Stephen wasn’t looking at either of us. His eyes were squeezed closed, and his tears had smeared the eye makeup to black tracks down his face. He hugged his body tight. He’d given himself up and over to what was happening, as if he were still a child.

Valentina looked down at him, and something like horror began to grow on her face. She stared at her tiny hand, as if it were something awful that had just appeared at the end of her arm.

She shook her head. “Non, non,” and more French that I couldn’t follow.

“He’s coming,” Merle said, and I felt him and Noah brace themselves in front of Micah and me.

I touched Valentina’s arm, and she raised eyes glassy with shock and turned towards me. “Call off Bartolomé, tell him why Gregory’s afraid of him.”

I felt the impact of the vampire slamming into Merle and Noah, and they pressed forward, taking the fight away from us by a few feet. Micah stood over me, ready. He could shape-shift and use claws, but he just didn’t have enough body mass to stop the vampire.

Valentina’s voice cut through the fighting, echoed through the room, and I realized she was using vampire powers to make herself heard, “We broke truce first, first blood is on our hands.”

Musette screamed, “Valentina!”

Valentina repeated herself in French this time. The fighting slowed at Valentina’s words, slowed, and began to die.

Valentina turned to face Musette, who was in a dress of all white, so that she looked like a bride. “It is truth, Musette. These two men have been abused enough by us. I will not let it continue.”

“He was so afraid of me Valentina, such fear to feed on,” Bartolomé said, “now you’ve spoiled it.” The slender boyish figure was dressed in nearly solid gold, old-fashioned, very seventeenth century, cloth, so that he sparkled as he moved.

Valentina spoke low and soft, in rapid French. Bartolomé’s face didn’t pale, but he looked back at Gregory. He turned to look at me. “Is this true? Their own father?”

I nodded.

Gregory’s sobs were loud in the sudden stillness.

“To force yourself on children is an evil thing,” Bartolomé said, “to use your own sons,” he spat on the floor and said something in what I recognized was Spanish but couldn’t follow.

“I brought them here tonight so they’d be under my protection, safe. Their father has returned recently, and is trying to meet with them again. They are here so he couldn’t find them. I didn’t think about the two of you.”

“We would not have done this if we had been told,” Bartolomé said.

“Musette was told,” Jean-Claude’s voice seemed to fill the tension like water in a cup.

We all turned to Jean-Claude, who was standing not too far off, near the mass of bodyguards that had taken on a second vampire like the one that had kept me from Stephen. “I told her of Gregory and Stephen’s past, because the moment Stephen saw Valentina and Bartolomé, he said he could not feed them. That the memories it would waken would be too much for him to bear. I did tell Musette this. If I had not warned her, I would never have left Stephen and Gregory out here without Anita or myself to guard them.”

All of us now turned to look at Musette. She was not wearing a wig, but had curled her hair into long banana curls so she looked like a porcelain doll, with her red lips, her carefully made up eyes, her pale skin, and the white seventeenth-century dress with its attached cape. Nothing would ever take her beauty from her, but physical beauty isn’t enough to make up for sadism.

“Is this true?” Valentina asked.

“Now, ma poulet, would I do such a thing?”

“Yes,” Valentina said, “yes, you would.”

The two child vampires stared at Musette, stared at her wordlessly, until it was she who looked away, she who blinked big blue eyes. For a moment I saw what I thought I’d never see. Musette was embarrassed.

“Bobby Lee, capture her ass.”

“Ma petite, what are you doing?”

“I know the rules, Jean-Claude, they’ve forfeited their safe conduct in our territory. That means that we are within our rights to put her under house arrest until her little company leaves.”

“But we cannot harm her, she is too important to Belle,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. I glanced at Bobby Lee. “Escort her back to her room and put the cross back on the door.”

He looked at me, then at Jean-Claude. “You mean, just like that, we can hurt them, jail them?”

I nodded.

He sighed. “Wished it worked that way with the shape-shifters.”

“Occasionally, the vampires being so civilized comes in handy.”

Bobby Lee grinned at me, and he and Claudia and about half a dozen others moved towards Musette. Angelito moved in front of her, blocking her from view. Her voice rang clear, though hidden, “Do not fear, Angelito, the wererats will not touch me.”

Bobby Lee and Claudia were facing off with Angelito. He made them both look small. “We can do this easy, or hard.” Bobby Lee said, “Move, and we all go quiet to the rooms. Stay put, and we’ll hurt you, then drag your ass back to the rooms.” There was an eagerness to his voice that said he was hoping for a fight. I think they all were. None of them had liked having to stand by and watch Gregory and Stephen be tormented.

“Move aside, Angelito,” Musette said. “Now.”

Angelito moved, his face showing how reluctant he was to do so. I was surprised that Musette was being so cooperative. She’d struck me as someone who’d have to be carried off kicking and screaming.

Bobby Lee reached out for Musette. She said, “Do not touch me.” He stopped in mid-motion as if his hand had frozen in place.

“Take her, Bobby Lee,” I said.

“I can’t,” he said, and there was something in his voice that I’d never heard before. Fear.

“What do you mean, you can’t?” I asked.

He took his hand back, slowly, and cradled it against his chest, as if it had been hurt. “She told me not to touch her, and I can’t.”

“Claudia,” I said.

The big woman shook her head. “I can’t.”

The first hint I had about how wrong things had gone was the real rat that waddled up to sniff at Musette’s white skirts. It looked up at her with shiny black button eyes.

I looked at Musette, and her blue eyes had bled solid, so that she looked like a blind blond doll. Her face was exultant with triumph.

“Rats are your animal to call,” I said.

“Didn’t Jean-Claude tell you?” and the laughter in her voice said clearly, she knew he had not.

“He forgot to mention it.”

“I did not know,” Jean-Claude said. “Her only animal to call two centuries ago was the bat.” His voice sounded empty, hiding whatever he was feeling.

“She gained the rat as her second animal about fifty years ago,” Asher said.

I gave him a look. “It would have been nice to know that.”

He shrugged. “It never occurred to me that anyone would actually try to put Musette under guard.”

I turned back to the vampire in question. “Why didn’t you use your new power to get rid of the wererat guards earlier?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” she said, and smiled, smiled wide enough to flash fangs. She was so terribly pleased with herself.

“Fine,” I said, “all shape-shifter bodyguards that don’t happen to be rats, get her ass.”

“Kill them,” and I knew she was talking to Bobby Lee. That I hadn’t foreseen. Shit.

But Bobby Lee and Claudia were both shaking their heads, and backing off from her. “You can order us not to harm you, but you can’t make us hurt others. You ain’t got that kind of power, girl.”

The wererats were all backing away, looking confused and worried. More real rats had begun to scamper in from the far cavern. One of the problems with using a place that is naturally created is that you get nature. Nature isn’t always pretty, or friendly.

It was mostly werehyenas that moved forward. Only two of the wereleopards qualified as bodyguards, and those two stayed close to Micah. The rest of our leopards had been brought along as food. Food doesn’t fight, food just bleeds.

I realized something I hadn’t before—there were no werewolves in the cave except for Stephen. Where had the werewolf guards gone?

Musette said something, and it wasn’t in French. In fact it wasn’t a language I could even guess at. The two vampires with their ivory gray skin and golden eyes moved in front of her.

Jean-Claude said, “Call them back, ma petite, I would not lose them over this.”

“There’s only two of them, Jean-Claude.”

“But they are not what they seem.”

I called everybody off and turned to Jean-Claude. “What?”

It was Valentina who came forward and answered my question. “There is a room where the servants of the Sweet Dark wait, asleep. The council members will go into that room from time to time and try to call them to their service.”

I glanced at the two vampires, then back to Valentina. “These two woke,” I said.

“More than these two,” she said, “our mistress has called six of them awake. She believes it is a mark of her growing power.”

Valentina and I looked at each other. “The Mother of All Darkness is waking, and her servants wake before her.” I whispered it, but even whispered, it shivered and filled the room with dancing echoes.

“I believe so,” Valentina said.

“Our mistress is more powerful than any other. The servants of our Sweet Mother wake to Belle Morte’s command. It is a sign of our mistress’s greatness,” Musette declared it as truth, a ringing pride in her voice.

“You’re a fool, Musette, the dark is waking. The fact that they are standing here is proof of that. They’ll obey Belle Morte until their true mistress rises, then God help you all.”

Musette literally stamped her foot at me. “You will not spoil our fun. You cannot touch me, they will not let you.”

I looked at them, and frowned. “They’re not just vampires, are they?”

“What do you mean, ma petite?”

I could feel them, feel a presence that shouldn’t have been there. “They feel like shape-shifters. Vampires can’t be shape-shifters.” I realized even as I said it that that wasn’t entirely true. The Mother of All Darkness was a shape-shifter and a vampire. I’d felt that.

“I thought Mommy Dearest was the first vampire, the one who made you all.”

“Oui, ma petite.”

“Are there any vampires on the council that descend directly from her?”

Jean-Claude thought about that for a moment. “We all descend from her.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Asher answered, “There is no one that can claim direct descent from her line, but she founded the council of vampires. She began our civilization, gave us rules, so that we were no longer solitary beasts, killing each other on sight.”

“So she’s your cultural mother, not your line’s originator.”

“Who can tell for certain, ma petite? She is the beginning of what we are today. She is our Mother in all ways that are important.”

I shook my head. “Not all ways.” I stood out of reach and said, “Someone who speaks whatever they speak translate this for me.”

Valentina stepped up. “They understand French now.”

“Fine. Jean-Claude.”

“I am here, ma petite.”

“Tell them that Musette has forfeited safe conduct, and we need to place her under arrest. She won’t be harmed, but she won’t be allowed to harm anyone else.”

Jean-Claude spoke slow French, so I could understand a lot of it. I had picked up more and more over the years, but rapid speech still gave me problems. “I have told them.”

“Then tell them this, too. If they don’t move out of the way so we can arrest her, then we are within the rules that the Mother of Darkness laid down—to kill them for disobeying the rules.”

Jean-Claude looked doubtful.

“Just repeat it,” I said. I walked away a little to find Bobby Lee. He was sweating and looked unwell.

“I am sorry, Anita. We failed you.”

I shook my head. “Not yet you haven’t.”

He looked puzzled.

“Open your leather jacket, wide.”

He did what I asked.

I took his gun out of its shoulder holster and got a glimpse of a second gun in his belt. Rules said only guards could be armed. I pointed the gun at the ground, and clicked off the safety.

His eyes were very wide. I wasn’t actually sure if he could let me have the gun. But he did, and I threaded my way carefully back through the crowd to the front lines.

The gun was invisible, held in the folds of my full black skirt. “What did they say, Jean-Claude?”

“They don’t believe anyone here can hurt them. They say that they are invincible.”

“How long have they been asleep?”

Jean-Claude asked them. “They don’t know for certain.”

“How do they know they’re invincible?” I asked.

He asked, and they drew swords from under their white coats. Short swords, forged of something darker and heavier than steel. Was it bronze? I wasn’t sure. I just knew it wasn’t steel.

We all stepped back from the drawn blades, whatever they were made of. “They say that no weapon born of man can harm them,” Jean Claude said.

Musette laughed. “They are the finest warriors ever created. You will not touch me with them as my protectors.”

I stepped back, put myself in as balanced a stance as I could get with the high heels, and raised the gun. I aimed for a headshot, and got it. The vampire’s head exploded in a wash of blood and brains. The sound of the shot seemed to echo forever, and I couldn’t hear the yell I saw on the lips of the second warrior as he charged me. His head exploded like the first one had. All the hand-to-hand combat training in the world is useless if your enemy doesn’t let you get close enough to use it.

Musette stood blinking, too shocked to move, I think. She was covered in blood and gore. Her blond hair and pale face were a red mask, out of which her blue eyes blinked. Her white dress was half crimson.

I aimed the gun at her startled face. I thought about it, God knows, I thought about it. But I didn’t need Jean-Claude’s frightened, “Ma petite, please, for all our sakes, do not do this,” to make me hesitate. I couldn’t kill Musette, because of what Belle Morte might do in retaliation. But I let Musette see in my eyes, my face, my body, that I would kill her, that I wanted to kill her, and that, given the right excuse, I might forget Belle’s vengeance for the second it would take me to pull a trigger.

Musette’s eyes filled with glistening tears. She was a fool, but not so big a fool as all that. But I had to be certain, so we didn’t have these misunderstandings again. “What do you see in my face, Musette?” My voice was low, almost a whisper, because I was afraid of what my hand would do if I yelled.

She swallowed and, it was loud to my ringing ears. “I see my death upon your face.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, you do. Never forget this moment, Musette, because if it happens again, it will be your last moment.”

She let out a shaking breath. “I understand.”

“I hope so, Musette, I really, truly, hope so.” I lowered the gun, slowly. “Now, Merle can you oversee Musette and Angelito going to their rooms, right now.”

Merle stepped forward, and a small army of werehyenas moved with him. “My Nimir-Ra speaks, and I obey.” I’d heard him say things like that to Micah before, but never to me, or at least not like he meant it.

Merle stepped over the bodies of the dead vampires to take Musette’s arm. The wereheynas looked pale, but happier. I’d just made all the muscle in the room happy, because things were simple now. We could kill them if they messed up again.

I caught Jean-Claude’s expression. He was not happy. I’d made the soldiers’ job easier, but not the politicians’. No, I think I’d just complicated the hell out of the political side of things.

Merle led Musette, none too gently over the bodies. She stumbled, and only a mass of werehyenas kept Angelito from grabbing her. Musette regained her balance, and the room suddenly smelled like roses.

I thought I’d choke on my own pulse as Musette raised her head and showed eyes the color of dark honey.

46

BELLE MORTE LOOKED at me, out of Musette’s face, and I think I stopped breathing. All I could hear for a moment was the hammering of my own heart in my head. Sound returned with a rush, and Belle Morte’s voice slid out of Musette’s mouth.

“I am vexed with you, Jean-Claude.”

Merle kept trying to drag her across the room. Either he didn’t know the shit had hit the fan, or one vampire was all the same to him. He was about to learn otherwise.

“Release me,” she said in a calm voice.

Merle dropped her arm as if she’d burned him. He backed away from her the way that Bobby Lee had backed away from Musette, with a look of pain, holding his arm as if it hurt.

“The leopard is her animal to call,” Jean-Claude said, and his voice carried into yet another heavy silence. But I didn’t have time to think about silence, because Belle was talking, saying awful things.

“I have been gentle up ’til now.” She turned and looked back at the two dead vampires. “Do you know how long the council has been trying to wake up the Mother’s first children?”

I think we all thought it was a rhetorical question, one we were afraid to answer.

She turned back to face us, and something swam underneath Musette’s face, like a fish pushing against water. “But I awakened them. I, Belle Morte, awakened the Mother’s children.”

“Not all of them,” I said, and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

She gave me a look that was so angry it burned, and so cold, it made me shiver. It was as if all that had ever been of rage and hatred were in that one look. “No, not all of them, and now you have taken two away from me. What ever shall I do to punish you?”

I tried to speak around the pulse in my throat, but Jean-Claude answered, “Musette broke the truce, and would not concede it. We have obeyed the law to the letter.”

“It is true,” Valentina said. The crowd of black leather-glad grown-ups moved so the child vampire could come and stand near Musette/Belle. Valentina kept out of reach, though. I noticed that.

“Speak, little one.”

Valentina told the story of how Musette had withheld information about the child molestation and what had happened because of it. Musette’s body turned to look at Stephen and Gregory. Gregory was holding his brother, rocking him. Stephen wasn’t looking at anyone, or anything. Whatever his staring eyes saw, it was nothing in this room.

Belle turned back to us, and again there was that sense of another face swimming underneath, but this time I saw it like a ghost superimposed over Musette’s face. Ghostly black hair bled over the blond, a face with more cheekbones, more strength to it, showed for a moment, before it sank back into the softer beauty of Musette.

“Musette did break truce first. I concede that.”

Why was it that my heart rate didn’t slow a single beat when she said that?

Her next words came out in a purring contralto, a voice like fur to caress the skin and ease across the mind. “You have acted within the law, and now so shall I. When Musette and the rest come back to me, Asher will come with them.”

“Temporarily,” Jean-Claude said, but his voice held doubt.

“Non, Jean-Claude, he will be mine as of old.”

Jean-Claude took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “According to your own laws, you cannot take someone permanently away from those to whom he, or she, belongs.”

“If he belonged to anyone, that would be true. But he is no one’s pomme de sang, no one’s servant, no one’s lover.”

“That is not true,” Jean-Claude said, “he is our lover.”

“Musette communicated with me, told me that she smelled your lies, your weak effort to keep Asher from her bed.”

Belle was able to smell lies, too, if the lie was something she understood. No vampire could tell truth from falseheard if it was about something they didn’t understand. If a vampire had no loyalty, they couldn’t discern it in others—that sort of thing. I was going to try and give her something she could understand.

“I didn’t think it was a weak effort,” I said.

Jean-Claude gave me a look, and I shook my head at him. He stepped gracefully aside, because he knew I had a plan, but his voice whispered through my head, “Be careful, ma petite.”

Yeah, I’d be careful.

Belle turned her borrowed body to look at me. “So you admit it was an attempt to lie to Musette.”

“No, I said it wasn’t weak. I found the whole thing embarrassing, exciting, wonderful, and terrifying. Being in bed with Asher wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be.”

“You haven’t lied, yet,” she said, and her voice was so rich, it was as if I should have been able to get down on the ground and roll myself up in it like some soft, warm, suffocating carpet. Her voice was enticing like Jean-Claude’s and Asher’s could be, but also frightening.

“We took Asher to our bed, and by European standards we are lovers.”

“By European standards,” she looked confused, and her face pushed out against Musette’s. This time it was like a mask. The sense of something larger, more dangerous pushing against Musette’s face. I knew through Jean-Claude’s memories that Belle wasn’t physically much bigger than Musette, but physical size wasn’t all there was to Belle Morte. “I do not understand what that means, ‘European standards’.”

Jean-Claude answered, “Americans have a most peculiar idea that only intercourse between a man and a woman constitutes true sex. Anything else does not truly count.”

“I taste truth, but I find it most odd.”

“As do I, but it is still true.” He gave that Gallic shrug.

I added, “What Musette kept smelling wasn’t a lie, it was my hang-up that Asher and I hadn’t had true intercourse. Trust me, we were all naked and sweaty in the bed.”

She turned that strange half-face to me. It would have looked more frightening if her face hadn’t been surrounded by Musette’s long blond banana curls. The Shirley Temple look was not meant for Belle. “I believe you, but by your own admission you are not lovers, not truly by your own standards. Thus, Asher is mine.”

“You don’t care about the truth, I forgot that,” I said.

She narrowed those honey-gold eyes at me. “You have forgotten nothing, little one. You do not know me.”

“I have Jean-Claude’s memories, here and there. That’s enough. They should have taught me better than to use truth.”

She walked towards me, and as she did, her body seemed to fold over Musette’s, so that she wasn’t just a face, but a dress of dark gold, a longer arm, a pale hand with copper-colored nails. She moved like a ghost draped over Musette, so that you got glimpses of the other woman underneath. It wasn’t perfect, Belle Morte wasn’t really physically there, but it was close, and it was unnerving.

Jean-Claude had moved so that he touched me from behind by the time Belle came to stand in front of me. I leaned back against him, because she had marked me once, and that was without any physical touch. I leaned against Jean-Claude and fought the urge to draw his arms around me like a shield.

Belle stood so close that the edge of Musette’s full skirt brushed my feet. Belle’s ghostly dress seemed to bleed over my shoes, creep up my ankles. I couldn’t breathe.

Jean-Claude moved us backwards, out of reach of that creeping power. I pulled his arms around me tight. Screw it, I was scared.

“If truth will not work with me, what will, ma petite?” Belle asked.

I found my voice, it was breathy, scared, but there was nothing I could do about it. “I am Jean-Claude’s ‘ma petite,’ no one else’s.”

“But whatever he has is mine, so you are my ma petite.”

I decided to let that argument go, for now. There were other more important ones I needed to win. “You asked if truth doesn’t work with you, then what does?”

“Oui, ma petite, I did ask.”

“Sex or power,” I said, “that’s what works for you. You prefer both together, if you can get it.”

“Are you offering me sex?” She purred at me, and the sound made me shudder and push myself harder against Jean-Claude. I didn’t want to play with Belle, not in any way.

“No,” I said, in almost a whisper.

She reached out towards me, that slender white hand with its dark copper nails, and that afterimage of Musette’s hand underneath, as if Belle’s graceful hand were a strange metaphysical glove.

Jean-Claude moved us back again, a fraction of a fraction of an inch, so that those long-nailed fingers missed my cheek by a breath.

Belle looked at him, her long black hair beginning to move around her body like there was a wind blowing around her. There was no wind, only Belle’s power.

“Are you afraid that one touch and I will take her from you?”

“No,” Jean-Claude said, “but I know more of what your touch can do, Belle Morte, and I am not sure that Anita would care for it.”

He’d used my real name, he almost never did that. Perhaps because Belle was using my nickname, he didn’t want to.

Her anger burned the air in front of us, like a real fire, stealing the oxygen from the lungs, making it impossible to breathe, unless you took that heat into your lungs. Then they would sear, and you would die.

The heat filled her words, so that I half expected them to be burned into the very air. “Did I ask if she would care to be touched?”

“No,” Jean-Claude said, his voice was very still, and I felt him sinking away, even with his arms wrapped around me, he was sinking away, folding into that quietness that he went to when he hid from everything. I had a glimpse of that quiet place, and it was quieter than the place I went when I killed. There wasn’t even static there, only complete silence.

The emptiness filled with the smell of roses, sweet, so sweet, cloying, choking. I gasped, and all I could taste was roses. Jean-Claude caught me, or I would have fallen. The perfume of roses filled my nose, my mouth, my throat. I couldn’t swallow past it, couldn’t breathe anything but perfume. I would have screamed, but I had no air.

I heard Jean-Claude yelling, “Stop this!”

Belle laughed, and even choking to death, the sound rode through my body like a knowledgeable hand.

A hand grabbed mine, and a breath of air clawed its way down my throat, fighting its way through Belle’s power. Again if I’d had enough air, I’d have screamed. Micah’s face hovered over mine. Micah’s hand in mine.

“Non, mon chat, you are mine, as is she.” Belle knelt beside us, reaching out to touch Micah’s face.

Jean-Claude moved us all backwards, so that we collapsed on the floor at her knees, but we were out of reach again, barely. But barely was good right then.

Belle’s eyes burned with honey fire, and the nails of her hand bled copper flames on the air, as she reached for Micah. Jean-Claude tried to help us crawl away, but we’d fallen in a heap of long skirts, long coats. Death by fashion.

Belle touched Micah’s face, trailed those glowing claws down his cheek. The smell of roses closed over my head like sweet poisoned water, and I was drowning again.

Another hand on me, and this touch had nothing warm in it, it didn’t call the ardeur, it didn’t call my beast, it called something colder and more certain of itself. My necromancy came welling up and it burst over my skin, my body, and I stared up into Belle’s burning eyes, and I could breathe. My throat was sore as hell, but I could breathe.

I moved my eyes enough to see Damian holding my other hand. His eyes were wide, and I could feel his fear, but he was there, kneeling beside me, facing the power that was Belle Morte.

Belle drew Micah’s face towards hers. Her skin seemed to be made up of white light, black flame hair, the glittering molten metal of fingertips and eyes. Her lips glowed like a slash of fresh blood.

Micah’s hand convulsed in mine, so strong it hurt, and the pain helped, made my thoughts clearer, harder-edged. He made a small sound in his throat as Belle pressed her mouth to his. I knew he didn’t want to touch her, and I also knew he couldn’t refuse her.

But he was mine. Micah was mine, not hers. Mine. I sat up with Micah on one hand and Damian on the other, the warm and the cold, the live and the dead, the passion and the logic. Jean-Claude’s hands were still on my nearly bare shoulders. He strengthened me, as I strengthened him, but this power was mine, not his. The leopards weren’t his to call. They were mine.

I called that part of me that the leopards touched and realized for the first time that it wasn’t tied to Richard, or even really Jean-Claude. The leopards were mine, and Belle’s.

I sat up with my face so close to hers that the glow of her fire caressed my face, and the pleasure of that light touch sent a wave of shivers over my skin. It wasn’t that I was immune to Belle’s touch. It was that I had my own.

I usually fought my beast, whatever flavor it was, but not tonight. Tonight I welcomed it, embraced it, and maybe that was why it poured through me like a scalding flood of power. If I’d been a lycanthrope in truth, my beast would have burst from my skin in a flood of warm fluids, but I wasn’t a lycanthrope. But the beast rode under my skin, screamed out my mouth, and hit Micah’s body like a train, a huge, liquid muscled train. It tore his mouth from Belle Morte’s, and brought a scream to echo mine. My beast roared through his body, and his beast answered it. His beast rushed up from the depths to meet mine, like two leviathans racing for the surface.

We hit that metaphorical surface together, and our beasts wound in and out of our bodies, rolling like huge cats, luxuriating in the feel of fur and muscle. There was nothing to see with the eyes, but there were things to feel.

Belle brushed her glowing hands just above us, caressing that energy. “Très de bon gout.” She touched Micah’s skin, and that energy leaped to her, bringing a gasp from her throat. Micah turned, and I think would have gone to her again, but I caught his face in my hands. We kissed.

The kiss began as a brush of lips, an exploration of tongues, a nibbling of teeth, a pressing of mouths. Then our beasts rolled through our mouths, like two souls changing places. The rush of energy slammed our bodies together, sliced my nails through Damian’s hand, convulsed Jean-Claude’s hands on my shoulders. I felt both his body and Damian’s bow backwards, a second before the power tore through them, and ripped sounds from both their throats that had more to do with pleasure than pain.

Micah and I rode each other, mouths locked in an endless kiss, as if our beasts had merged into one. Then slowly, the entwined energies began to roll apart and slide into their separate houses of flesh.

I came completely to myself on the floor with Micah collapsed on top of me, Damian lying on the floor with only my hand holding him. Jean-Claude was still sitting upright, but he was swaying softly in place, almost like he was dancing to music I couldn’t hear. I think he was simply fighting not to fall down, but even that he made seem graceful.

Belle was staring down at us with a look close to rapture on her face. “Oh, Jean-Claude, Jean-Claude, what toys you have wrought for yourself.”

Jean-Claude found his voice while I was still fighting to breathe over my pulse, and Micah’s heart was thudding so hard against my chest it felt like it would burst. The pulse in Damian’s palm beat like a second heartbeat against my skin. None of the rest of us had found a voice that could override the pulse of our bodies.

“Not toys, Belle, never toys.”

“They are all toys, Jean-Claude, some are merely harder to use than others. But they are all toys.” She stroked her glowing hand down the back of Micah’s carefully styled hair.

Her energy played along his body, brought a sigh from all of us, but it was faint, almost a knee-jerk reaction, that you couldn’t quite prevent. We lay quiet under her touch.

Belle looked down at us, and it was hard to see through the glowing mask, but I think she frowned. She ran her fingertips down the side of Micah’s face, and there was no reaction. She called to his beast, but his beast was well fed, sleepy, and content.

My voice came, hollow, as if I hadn’t quite filled back up. “The leopards are mine, Belle.”

“The leopard was my first animal to call Anita, and call them I shall.”

I lay on the floor, feeling languorous, content. Micah rolled his face so his cheek rested on the soft pillow of my breasts. We watched her with lazy eyes, the way that only cats can. I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. The rush of power seemed to have taken all my fear along with it. I felt clear-headed and safe.

Belle poured that misty power on us, but though she raised gooseflesh and brought sighs to our lips, there was no more. She could not call Micah as her beast, because he was mine. She could not call my beast, because I was Micah’s. We truly were Nimir-Ra and Nimir-Raj, and together we were enough to keep her out of us.

She turned those gold-flame eyes to someone behind us, and I felt her reach out to one of the leopards. I’d known somehow it would be Nathaniel. If she’d tried it before Micah and I had merged, he would have come to her, but now it was too late. We’d shut that gate and barred it. Belle Morte could not touch our leopards, not tonight.

“This is not possible,” she said, and her voice had lost some of its purring caress.

Jean-Claude answered her doubt. “You can call almost all the big cats, but you cannot call the cats that answer to the Master of Beasts.”

“Padma sits upon the council, you are one of my children. That I cannot take what belongs to another council member is merely truth. That any of my children could keep me from possessing what is theirs is impossible.”

“Perhaps,” Jean-Claude said, and he got to his feet. He offered a hand to both Micah and me. Normally, I don’t let people help me up, but tonight I was wearing a long skirt, high heels, and had just had what amounted to metaphysical sex in public. We took his hands together, and he pulled us to our feet. Damian still had a death grip on my other hand, but he stayed on his knees, eyes still only half-focused, as if the power rush had thrown him more than it had the rest of us. He was the only one of us who wasn’t either a master or an alpha something. I drew him in to sit against my legs, but didn’t try and make him stand; it didn’t look like he was ready to yet.

“By American standards,” Jean-Claude said, “this did not count as sex.”

Belle laughed, and the sound still shivered across the skin, but it was distant. Either we were too numb, or too shielded for her to touch. “The Americans do not count this as sex, that is absurd!”

“Perhaps, but true nonetheless. You and I would consider it sex, would we not?”

“Oh, oui, sex enough for one of my entertainments.”

I almost felt Jean-Claude smile. I didn’t have to see it. “Do you truly believe we have not done this and more with Asher?”

She looked at him, and her anger lashed through the room again like a wind off the lakes of hell. “I will not be turned aside so easily.” She gestured back at the two dead vampires. “You have no idea what your human servant has taken from me. They were not merely vampires.”

“They were lycanthropes,” I said.

She looked at me, and there was more interest than anger in her now. Belle had always been more interested in power than being petty, though if she could be both, well, that would be the best of all worlds.

“How do you know this?”

“I felt their beasts, and I felt the beast from Mommy Dearest earlier today.”

“Mommy Dearest?” She managed to look puzzled underneath all that glittering power.

“The Sweet Dark,” Jean-Claude said.

“I felt her stir in her sleep, Belle. The Mother of All Darkness is waking up, that’s why her children, as you put it, finally came to someone’s call.”

“I called them,” she said.

“You can call all of the great cats, and among other things, they are cats. I’ll bet the Master of Beasts could call them, too, if he tried,” I said.

I thought for a moment she was actually going to stamp her foot—or rather Musette’s—at me. “They came to my call, no one else’s.”

“Doesn’t it worry you that the children of the dark are rising? Doesn’t that scare you?”

“I have worked long and hard to amass enough power to wake the children of the dark.”

I shook my head. “You felt her today, Belle, how can you stand there and not understand that this isn’t your power going to a new level, it’s hers waking up.”

Belle Morte shook her head. “Non, ma petite, you are seeking to deter me from my revenge. I never forget an insult, and I always make sure someone pays the price for it.” She walked up to us, and that glowing edge of power swirled at my full skirts, but it didn’t catch my breath this time. It was power, and it crawled across my skin like lines of insects marching, but it wasn’t seductive, it wasn’t special. We’d all had so much power poured through us that we just didn’t have anything left for more fun and games tonight.

She ran her hand down Micah’s chest, and I felt his body tighten, but it wasn’t the effect she was used to. She touched Jean-Claude’s face, and he let her.

“Marvelous, as always, Belle.”

“No, not as always,” she said. She turned to me, then.

I didn’t want her to touch me, but I knew that I could let her do it now. She wasn’t here in the flesh, not really, and it limited her power. Intellectually I knew that, the cold hard feeling in my stomach wasn’t so certain. I made myself stand still while she put that glowing hand against my face. Her hand didn’t exactly burn where it touched, but it was hot, and the power spread from it, marching down my body like hot water poured from my face down my skin. It made me shiver and want to pull way, but I could tolerate it. I didn’t have to pull away. I didn’t have to run.

She drew her hand back, and there was a lingering sense of power between her hand and my skin. She brushed it against her skirt, Musette’s skirt. I wondered, was Musette still in there? Did she know what was happening? Or did she go away, only to come back when Belle was finished?

She turned last to Damian. He tucked himself in tight against me, like a dog that was afraid of being hurt, but he didn’t run. Belle touched his face. He flinched, not wanting to meet her eyes, but as he knelt at my legs, and nothing worse happened to him than the feel of power over his skin, he looked up, slowly. There was something like wonderment in his eyes, and behind that, triumph.

Belle jerked her hand back as if it had been she who was burned. “Damian is of my line, but not of yours, Jean-Claude. It is not your power that he tastes of.” She looked at me, and there was something on that beautiful, alien face that I couldn’t understand. “Why does he taste of your power, Anita? Not you of his, but he of yours.”

I wasn’t sure truth would help here, but I knew a lie wouldn’t. “Would you believe me if I said I’m not quite sure.”

“Oui, and non. You speak truth, but there is some evasion to it.”

I swallowed and took a deep breath. I really didn’t want Belle to know this part. I really didn’t want it getting back to the council at large.

She looked at me, and her eyes went wide, and some of that glowing power began to seep away, sliding back into Musette’s body, so that it was Musette with honey-brown eyes that met my gaze. “Somehow he is your servant. Our legends speak of this possibility. It is one of the reasons we once slew all necromancers on sight.”

“Glad we’ve moved on from the good ol’ days,” I said.

“We have not, but when we thought you were Jean-Claude’s human servant, then there was no harm, because your power was his.” She shook her head and there was an afterimage of black hair over the blond, a dark ghost over all that bloodstained white. “Now I am not so certain. You taste of Jean-Claude’s power, oui, but Damian tastes only of yours. And the leopards taste only of your power, also. No necromancer has ever had an animal to call.”

She shook her head. “Jean-Claude with his new human servant and her servants, has been able to keep me at bay. If I were here in flesh instead of spirit, this would not save you, I think.”

“Of course, it would not,” Jean-Claude said, “your beauty would overwhelm us.”

“No false flattery, Jean-Claude, you know how much I hate it.”

“I did not know it was false.”

“I am not so certain that my beauty would overwhelm any of you. Somehow this one,” and she motioned at me, “has cut me off from the leopards, and somehow, you have cut me off from the vampires that descend directly from you.”

My pulse sped up a bit at that, because I hadn’t even felt her trying to take over Meng Dei or Faust. They were standing as far from the show as they could, dressed in the bodyguard black leather. Though both were so small compared to the rest that they looked out of place. Meng Die looked scared, Faust didn’t. Which could have meant anything and nothing.

“But not every vampire in this room is a direct descendent of yours, Jean-Claude. Because I am not here in flesh you may keep me from the flock that is yours, but not what was first mine.”

I was afraid I knew what she meant, and hoped I didn’t.

Belle Morte brushed past us, with a flare of power lost like a breeze against our skin. She was walking towards Asher. Because she had made him herself, and he was older than Jean-Claude. Asher owed nothing to Jean-Claude except the vows any vampire makes to his Master of the City, and love, perhaps love. I wasn’t sure love was enough to save him from Belle Morte. I believed in love, but I believed in evil, too. Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more.

47

THE WOLVES CHOSE that moment to come in through the far curtain. Their entrance stopped everything briefly because they doubled our bodyguards. I didn’t need to see Belle’s—or Musette’s—face to know she didn’t like it. It showed in the sudden stiffening of her shoulders, the slight clenching of her fists. I realized suddenly that I was seeing Musette begin to rise up through Belle like a fly caught in melting ice.

It was when I saw Jason in an outfit that was mostly dark blue straps, which covered about as much of his body as Nathaniel’s outfit covered of his, that I realized that there had been no wolves present until now, except Stephen who had ridden with Micah from my house. I’d known that Richard was delayed, but I hadn’t noticed that none of the wolves had been here. Usually, there were always some wolves here for Jean-Claude. Jason walked in smiling in his black over-the-knee boots, but there was something in his eyes, some small warning that I couldn’t decipher. I’d expected to see him wearing makeup like Micah and Nathaniel, but he wasn’t. None of the male wolves were.

Richard came into sight, easy to spot above the sea of black leather that was his pack. I knew that he had butchered his hair, but I hadn’t really grasped how much until I saw him. I’m sure the hairstylist had done his or her best, but there was only so much they could do. They’d had to buzz his hair back to less than an inch of medium brown. It seemed darker this short, missing the gold and red highlights. He also looked remarkably like his older brother Aaron, and his father. The resemblance had always been strong, but now it was like they were clones.

He was wearing a black tux with a shirt of deep, rich blue and a matching bow tie. With the new haircut, and the more conservative clothes, he looked—out of place.

His eyes met mine, and the shock of how handsome he was still sent a thrill through me from head to toes. Without the hair to distract, you couldn’t pretend that the cheekbones weren’t knife-edge perfect, the dimple in his chin didn’t soften the strong masculinity of his face. His shoulders were broad, his waist not slender, but small. Nothing about Richard was slender. He was built more like a football player than a dancer.

Jamil and Shang-Da, his Hati and Skoll, the Ulfric’s personal bodyguards, flanked him. Jamil was wearing black leather straps for a shirt to complement almost ordinary leather pants and short boots. The bright red beads, worked into his cornrow braids, looked like drops of crimson blood against the darkness of his skin and the black of the leather. He met my eyes, and there was again that sense of warning that I’d gotten from Jason. Something was wrong, something beyond what was already happening, but what?

Shang-Da looked uncomfortable out of his usual suit, but black leather suited his tall frame the same way any kind of armor would have. Shang-Da was the tallest Chinese person I’d ever met. He was physically imposing by any standards. He was also a warrior, and protecting his Ulfric was all he did. He pretty much hated me, because so much of the pain I caused Richard was something he couldn’t protect him against. Bodyguards can’t do shit about emotional stress. He avoided my gaze.

Jason strutted towards me, making sure his body swayed seductively. He was by profession a stripper so he was pretty good at the seductive sway. His body language said sex, his eyes held a shadow of something else, and when he got to me, he slid an arm across my shoulders, pressing his body up against mine, but what he whispered in my ear wasn’t sweet nothings, it was a warning.

“Richard has found his backbone, but he’s decided to use it against Jean-Claude first.” He smiled as he said it, his face full of the seductive promise that his walk had held. He ran his hands across the back of my neck, playing his fingertips in the hollow of my collarbone.

I whispered against the shell of his ear. “What does that mean?”

He turned my head towards his, so that my face was hidden from Richard and the pack. It looked like flirting. “Richard’s going to try and take all his wolves away from Jean-Claude.”

I was glad my face was facing only Jason, because I couldn’t hide the shock. I fought to control my face, and Jason laughed at nothing that I’d said. He put a hand on either side of my face, giving me time to regain control of myself.

I whispered against his skin, “You too?”

He was still smiling, but he managed to let me see his eyes, his unhappy eyes. “Even me,” he said, barely moving his lips and still smiling.

Shang-Da was suddenly beside us. He tried to grab Jason’s arm, and Jason moved just out of reach. If you had been watching, you might not have realized what had happened at all.

A low growl trickled out of Shang-Da’s human mouth, a sound that raised the hair on the back of my neck.

Jason growled back, and he was standing close enough that the growl whispered over my skin. It made me shudder, a shudder visible from a distance.

Richard said, “Shang-Da.” One word, just his name, but the big man didn’t try and grab Jason again. He lowered his head and spoke in a voice gone mostly to growl, “A man cannot serve two masters.”

He was trying to be discreet, so he’d lowered his head over me, not Jason. I don’t think he was worried that I’d take a chunk out of his face. I looked up into that face that was almost kissably close, and asked, “Your orders are to remind Jason who his pack leader is?”

His gaze slid from Jason, to me, and the look was equally unfriendly. “My Ulfric’s orders are none of your business.” He whispered it, because he was trying not to clue the bad guys into the division in the ranks. I realized in that moment that no matter how much Shang-Da hated me, he didn’t entirely approve of what Richard was doing, not with enemies in town.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Jean-Claude had gone to Richard, and they were speaking, low and earnest. Jean-Claude tried to get close enough to whisper as we were doing, but Richard moved back. He didn’t want to be that close.

I glanced farther away to see Musette still standing close to Asher. But they were not alone; the wereleopards were ranged around him, not protecting him exactly, but making sure you had to touch them before you touched Asher. Micah met my gaze, gave the tiniest nod. It said, clearly, I’ll take care of it, ’til you’re free. Micah didn’t get distracted. Merle hovered over everything like an angry black leather mountain staring down at that petite figure in white. Musette stood there, looking very much herself, just herself.

Shang-Da was looking at Musette, too. It was almost as if he could smell where the danger lay. We turned back to meet each other’s gaze at the same time. We were physically close enough to kiss, it should have been intimate, but it wasn’t, it was almost frightening. Because we both understood each other, and that had never happened before.

I didn’t argue that I was Bolverk for their clan, thus the Ulfric’s orders were my business. Shang-Da disapproved that I was anything to them. I tried for logic. I leaned in close and whispered, “Whatever Richard is doing, tonight is not the night for it. We’re in trouble here.”

Something flicked through his eyes, and he dropped my gaze, but leaned in a fraction closer, so that his short black hair brushed the top of my curls. “I have spoken with him. He hears no one tonight.” His eyes came up to meet mine, and there was something there I could read now. Pain. “Sylvie has already argued for this to wait until our enemies leave.”

“I don’t see her,” I whispered, again leaning in closer, not thinking about it.

“She is not with us.” He breathed it against my cheek.

I must have reacted, because he added, “She is not dead.”

I moved back just enough to see his eyes, “He fought Sylvie.”

“She fought him.”

I widened eyes. “He won.”

Shang-Da nodded.

“Is she hurt?”

He nodded again.

“Badly?”

“Bad enough,” he said, and for the very first time I saw something that wasn’t approval in his face. Tomorrow he would go back to hating me, but tonight was a dangerous night, and Shang-Da was too much the warrior not to see that, even if Richard couldn’t.

“Jason must come with me,” there was no outright pleading in his voice, Shang-Da did not beg, but there was a softness there, room to compromise.

“For now,” I said.

Jason had worked his way behind me, using me as shield against the bigger man. And being Jason, using the excuse to lean his nearly nude body against the back of my velvet and silk-clad one. He laid a gentle kiss on the back of my neck, and it made me shiver. “I can’t go back to being just another pack member, I can’t.”

I knew what he meant, or thought I did. I answered without trying to make eye contact, as he kissed softly across the bare skin where neck met shoulders. Him playing with my neck was making it hard to concentrate. “Only for tonight.”

“What is it with you, Anita? Does everyone want to fuck you?” It was Richard. When he was really angry he could be more hateful than anyone I’d ever dated. The fact that he said the word fuck told me exactly how nasty he was going to be tonight. God, I didn’t want to do this, shovel emotional shit while the big bad vampires munched on us.

I was close enough to see the look in Shang-Da’s eyes; he didn’t like what his Ulfric had said. I touched his face, which made him jump. I leaned in close enough that from Richard’s point of view it probably looked like a kiss, but I whispered against Shang-Da’s mouth, “Jason’s yours tonight, but this can’t be permanent.”

Shang-Da stayed close, so that he breathed his answer on my lips, “We will discuss it.”

He began to lean back and I caught the back of his head with my hand. “There will be no discussion.”

His face went hard with his usual anger. He moved back forcefully enough that I either had to let him go, or take a handful of hair to keep him close to me. I let him go.

He held his hand out and said, “Your Ulfric wants you to stand with the wolves.” His voice held only one emotion, and that dimly—anger.

Jason slid out from behind me, trailing his fingers across every piece of bare skin he could find, until he left me shuddering. Shang-Da led him away one hand on the smaller man’s arm. Jason kept his gaze on me, like a child being carried away by scary strangers. But he wasn’t really in immediate danger, and I couldn’t say that about everybody in the room. Unfortunately.

“Maybe I should have made you Erato instead of Bolverk.” Erato had been the muse of erotic poetry, among other duties. Now she was the title among most werewolves for the female that helps new little werewolves control their beast during sex. Eros, god of love and lust, was the male title. More first time shape-shifters lost control and killed people during sex than during any other single event. The point of orgasm is to lose control, after all.

I looked across the room at Richard, met his angry brown eyes, and felt nothing. I wasn’t angry. It was too ridiculous that he was fighting like this in front of Musette and her people. It was beyond ridiculous, it was foolish.

“We’ll discuss this when our company goes back home, Richard,” I said, and there was no anger in my voice. I sounded reasonable, ordinary.

Something crossed Richard’s face, something that leaked through his tight shields. Rage. He was so angry. He’d turned that anger inward, and the depression had eaten him, to the point where he cut his hair. He’d pulled himself out of the depression, but he was still angry. If the anger couldn’t go inward, then it had to go outward. Outward seemed to be directed at me. Great, just great.

“If you’re Bolverk, then come and stand with your pack,” his voice vibrated with the rage that he was having trouble containing.

I blinked at him for a second. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“If you are truly Bolverk for our clan, then you need to stand with us.” He met my gaze, and there was no flinching in him now, no softness. I’d waited for him to stop flinching. I’d never dreamed it could mean this.

Jamil walked back across the room with Stephen held in his arms. Gregory was still clinging to Stephen’s hand, so they moved as a unit. When Jamil was back with the wolves, Richard said, “Gregory is not one of us. He cannot stand with us.”

I couldn’t hear what Jamil said, but I think he was trying to persuade Richard that that wasn’t necessary. Richard shook his head, then Jamil made a mistake. He looked back at me, and with his eyes alone asked for help. He’d done it before, many times, most of them had. Tonight, Richard saw it, understood it, and didn’t tolerate it.

He grabbed Gregory’s wrist and tried to jerk him away from Stephen. Stephen screamed and reared up in Jamil’s arms, clinging with both hands to his brother’s arm.

I’d had enough. I didn’t care if Belle heard it all. I moved across the floor toward the pack. “Richard, you’re being cruel.”

He didn’t stop trying to pull them apart. “I thought you wanted me cruel.”

“I wanted you strong, not cruel.” I was almost to them, and not sure what I was going to do when I got there.

“You’re strong and you’re cruel.”

“Actually, I’m strong and pragmatic, not cruel.” I was beside them now, and I knew I didn’t dare touch anyone. If I touched Richard, or the twins, it would lead to more violence. I could feel it.

Stephen was making a high piteous noise like a baby rabbit being eaten alive. He was scrambling with his hands, trying to hold on to Gregory. Gregory was crying and trying to hold on to his brother.

“Pragmatic is saying that you’re making us look weak in front of a council member. Cruel is saying that I’m Bolverk because you don’t have the balls to be.”

He stopped pulling on the twins, and Jamil took that one moment of hesitation to slide away. Of course, that left me facing Richard alone. And it was one of those moments when I realized how physically imposing he was. Richard was one of those big men who don’t seem big, until suddenly, they do, and you go, oh, God, and it’s usually too late.

We stood, glaring at each other. I hadn’t been angry until he’d tried to hurt Stephen and Gregory. But once you get me angry I usually stay there. I enjoy my anger, it’s the only hobby I have.

A dozen cruel remarks danced through my head, and I kept my mouth closed. I was afraid of what would fall out if I opened it. I walked forward, closing the remaining distance between us. I got to see something else in his eyes besides anger—panic. He didn’t want me this close. Great.

I kept moving forward, and Richard actually moved back a step, then he seemed to realize what he’d done. When I took another step towards him, he stood his ground. I walked until the full skirt of my dress brushed his legs; the skirt swirled out and covered the toes of his polished shoes. I was close enough that it would have been more natural to touch each other than to simply stand there, as we did.

I looked up the length of his body and met his eyes with the knowledge in my eyes that I knew what was under that conservative suit, every inch of it.

Richard wasn’t looking at my face when I looked up; he was staring at my décolletage. I took a deep breath, making the mounds of my breasts rise and fall as if a hand were pushing them from underneath.

He looked up from my chest, and met my eyes. The rage in his face was a nearly pure thing. An anger without purpose, without form. It was like one of those huge wildfires, that begins by eating the trees. Then somewhere along the way the fire takes on a life of its own, almost as if it doesn’t need fuel anymore, it doesn’t need anything to exist. It burns and grows and destroys, not because it needs fuel but because that’s what it does, what it is.

I faced Richard’s rage with my own. His was new and fresh, it hadn’t had time to burn its way down to his soul, to hollow out a space that held nothing but the anger. Mine was old, almost as old as I could remember. If Richard wanted to fight, we could fight. If he wanted to fuck, we could fuck. At that moment either one would have been almost equally damaging. To both of us.

His beast rose to his anger like a dog to its owner’s voice. Any strong emotion could bring on the change, and this was about as strong as emotions got for Richard.

The energy of his beast flared like heat off a road on a summer’s day, a visible wave of power. It danced along the bare skin of my body. Once upon a time he’d brought me using nothing but his beast thrusting through my body. But tonight, we’d do other things. I doubted they’d be as fun.

Musette glided close to us in her blood-spattered white dress. Her eyes were blue again. She wove her hands through the energy of Richard’s beast, playing between the two of us, not touching, literally playing with the energy. “Oh, you would be very good to eat, très bon, très très bon.” She laughed, and it was the kind of laugh that would make you look twice in a bar, a laugh made to get attention. The sound didn’t go with the blood drying like a mask on her face.

Richard let the rage fill his eyes and directed it at her. It was a look that I think would have backed up anyone else in the room. Musette laughed again.

Richard turned to face her. His anger really didn’t care who the target was, anyone would do. “This is none of your concern. When we’re done with pack business, then, and only then, we’ll talk to the vampires.”

Musette threw her head back and chortled, there was no other word for it. She laughed until tears leaked down her face, carving runnels in the drying blood. The laughter died slowly, and when she opened her eyes again, they were honey-brown.

Richard’s breath caught in his throat. I was close enough to him to know that he stopped breathing, just for a moment.

The smell of roses was everywhere. “You remember me, wolf, I can feel it in your fear.” That purring contralto shivered down my skin, and I saw Richard shudder, too. “I will play with you later, wolf, but for now,” and she turned and looked at Asher, “for now I will play with him.”

Asher was still pressed to the wall, doing that utter stillness that the old ones can do. He had sunk into the silence of eternity, trying to make this not happen, trying to hide in plain sight. It wasn’t going to work.

As Musette’s body glided towards him, Belle began to spill out of her. The dark gold gown overlaying the white like a ghost. The black hair spreading like phantom flames around her, moved by a wind that trickled through the room, the wind of Belle’s power.

“What’s happening?” Richard whispered, and I don’t even know if he meant to have an answer, but I replied anyway.

“Musette is Belle Morte’s surrogate.”

His eyes were all for Belle’s ghostly form overriding the other body, when he said, “What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means we are in a shit load of trouble.”

He looked at me then. “I am Ulfric, Anita, that doesn’t change just because some high-ranking vampire comes to town.”

“Be Ulfric, Richard, great, knock yourself out, but don’t destroy us all while you do it.”

Some of the anger had leaked away on the tide of fear. It was impossible to be up close and personal with Belle’s power and not fear it.

“I am either Ulfric, or I’m not, Anita. I am either master or slave, I can’t be both.”

I raised eyebrows at him. “Yeah, actually, you can.” I held up a hand. “I don’t have time for this tonight, Richard. Tomorrow if we’re all still alive, then we can discuss it, okay?”

He frowned. “She’s not here in flesh, Anita, it’s only metaphysical games. How bad could it be?”

I realized in that moment that Richard was still living in that other world. The world where people played fair and horrible things never really happened. It must have been a peaceful place to live, the planet that people like Richard called home. I’d always admired the view, but I’d never lived there. The trouble was that Richard didn’t live there either.

The first scream cut through the silence. The wereleopards had all backed away, crouching at Belle Morte’s feet. Only Micah stayed standing. He’d put himself in front of Asher, but he was small like me, and he couldn’t hide Asher completely.

I looked at Richard, and he had a look of such hurt in his eyes. He was never going to wake up and smell the blood. He wasn’t going to truly change.

I turned away from him and started walking towards Asher and Micah. Jean-Claude moved up beside me, offered me his hand, and I took it. No one else moved with us. The wererats couldn’t attack Musette. The wereleopards were doing their best, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Only the wolves could have helped us, and Richard wouldn’t let them.

In that moment I wondered how long it would be before I started hating Richard.

48

I COULDN’T FIGURE out why Asher was screaming. There was no blood, no rending of flesh, but he screamed all the same. Then as we got closer I watched the flesh of his face begin to seep away. It was as if his skin collapsed around the bones of his skull, as if Belle’s touch were draining him dry, not of blood, but of everything.

I risked a glance at Jean-Claude, and he looked stricken, a second before his face showed nothing. I felt him pull away into that emptiness where he hid. “She could drain him to death this way.” His voice was remarkably empty.

“But you’re immune to it, right? She didn’t make you.”

“She is our sourdre de sang, none of us are immune to her touch.”

I stopped and pushed him back. “Then you stay. I don’t need two of you to worry about.”

He didn’t argue, but his gaze went past me to Asher. I wasn’t sure he’d even heard me, and there wasn’t time to check. I was half-running, when Micah pushed Belle back, pushed her back, using his whole body, broke her touch on Asher’s face.

Asher collapsed slowly down the wall, and Belle’s glowing face kissed Micah. The moment their lips touched, I felt the ardeur fill the room like hot water, spilled in stinging drops across my skin. It froze me in mid-step, made me stumble. I stood there, caught between Asher against the wall and Micah lost in that glowing embrace. I knew that I could have drained Micah to death with the ardeur over a matter of days, but part of me knew that Belle could do it faster.

Asher’s hand reached out to me, skeletal thin, like sticks in paper. Micah was trying to push himself back from Musette/Belle’s body, but she rode him, arms at his back, glowing crimson lips like a red fog across his face. I had a moment of feeling Asher dying, fading, for lack of a better word. Jean-Claude went to him, but I knew that Jean-Claude had no life to share. Then the cross taped to my chest blazed to life.

It burned against my flesh as if the black tape held all the heat in. I half-screamed as I ripped the tape away and the cross spilled out into the light, white, hot, like a captive star on a chain.

Micah stumbled back from Belle Morte. Jean-Claude spilled the black velvet coat over himself and Asher. The other vampires hid their faces and hissed at the light. I saw movement from the corner of my eye, a second before Angelito slammed into me. There was no one to stop him now. The cross was a two-edged sword.

He grabbed me in one arm, completely off the ground, the other hand wrapping around the cross. I poked him in the throat with three fingers, stiffened to a spear point. He gagged and dropped me, but he held on to the cross, and as I fell, the chain broke, cutting into my neck as it came away. The moment the cross was his, the glow began to fade.

Musette’s body turned to me, but her eyes were pools of dark gold fire, and it wasn’t a ghostly image superimposed over her body this time, it was as if I were seeing double. My eyes saw Musette with the wrong color of eyes. But inside my head it was Belle. Belle in the flesh, a little taller than Musette, long black hair falling to her knees in waves, the dark gold of her dressing gown showing a triangle of white flesh, her face like something sculpted from a pearl, her lips a perfect red pout. She wrapped white hands around my arms, long dark nails, playing along the velvet of the sleeves. She pressed me against her body and leaned in to lay a kiss with that mouth upon mine.

A small voice in my head screamed, “Don’t let her touch you.” But I couldn’t move, couldn’t get away, wasn’t sure I wanted to get away.

That red, red mouth hovered over mine. Her breath pushed against my lips. The world smelled of roses. Then, suddenly, I could taste Asher’s kiss upon my lips. Tasted it as if I had kissed him but a second before. That one taste opened my eyes, helped me draw back from Belle’s mouth. Helped me want to draw back.

Her eyes stared down at me, pools of golden fire like brown water in sunlight. I realized that I had swooned, and she held me as if she’d dipped me in a dance. Her hand was behind my head, raising me up to meet her kiss.

I felt movement and rolled my eyes back to see Richard. Belle saw him, too, “Interfere, and I will raise the ardeur in you again, wolf. You brought no women with you. Did you think that would save you? It won’t. The ardeur only wants to be fed, wolf, it doesn’t care how.”

Richard hesitated. I could taste his fear in my mouth, but underneath that was still the taste of Asher’s kiss.

Jean-Claude was suddenly beside Belle. “It is me you want.” He spread his arms in a wide dramatic gesture that spread the darkness of his coat, spilled his hair around him. “I am here.”

I don’t know what would have happened, or what she would have said, because the next thing that overwhelmed me was the memory of Asher’s love making. It came on me like it had once with Jason, but this was more, worse, better. It bowed my back, convulsed me in Belle’s arms, surprised a scream from me, made my hands scratch at the air, and at Belle’s face. She dropped me then, and I saw, dimly, as if through a white window, her hands grab Jean-Claude.

Richard caught me before I hit the ground, cradled me in his arms. He looked so worried. His hand touched my face. “Anita, are you hurt?”

I managed to shake my head, but even with Richard this close, his face soft and worried about me, I turned my head to look towards Asher. I couldn’t help myself. Asher’s hair was like golden Christmas tree tinsel, lifeless, hanging around a face that was more skull than flesh. His lips were a thin hard line around teeth that were mostly fangs. Only his eyes were still Asher, pools of pale blue fire, as if a winter sky could burn.

The moment I saw his eyes, I tried to crawl out of Richard’s arms, tried to crawl to Asher.

“Anita, Anita, what’s wrong?” He held me, turned me to look at him.

I found my voice, but all I could say was, “Asher.”

He glanced at the fallen vampire, and the disgust was plain on his face. “I know, Anita, I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t sure what he was apologizing about, and I didn’t care. There was something else I should have been more worried about, something I’d forgotten. But I couldn’t think of anything except Asher’s eyes and that I had to go to him. Had to.

Richard stood up, suddenly, with me still in his arms. I heard scrabbling as if of a thousand tiny claws. Rats, thousands of rats, flowed in a furry, squeaking wave across the floor of the cave.

Asher’s power receded, and I knew it had cost him dear to let me go. Knew in that instant that I was the only one who could feed him enough energy to keep him alive.

Richard made a small sound of dismay and turned so that I could see what had paled him. The two vampires that had had the tops of their heads blown off were slowly rising to their feet. They were healed. Those strange cat-eyed faces were whole. There wasn’t even a scar to mark where the bullets had struck.

“Fuck,” I said.

One of the werehyena’s nerve broke, and he fired into the squirming mass of rats. The next sound was a second gunshot, and he fell with a hole in his back, fell into the mob of rats. They boiled over him, and his body vanished from sight. The sounds, though, nothing masked the sounds. I hadn’t been close enough to the gunshots to be deafened, and for the first time I was sorry about that. The sound of tiny teeth tearing flesh, squeaking voices squabbling over what used to be a man, seemed to drown us all.

One of the wererats was staring at the gun in his hand as if it had suddenly appeared. He turned a white face back towards us. I think he mouthed, “I’m sorry,” before Bobby Lee’s scream, “Guns down, guns fucking down, now. No one fire.” He threw his own gun spinning across the room, and the other wererats followed suit.

Some of the werehyenas lowered their guns, but only one threw his away. Bobby Lee went to his knees and clasped his hands on top of his head. Claudia did it next, then one by one all the wererats followed. I knew why, they were afraid Musette/Belle would use them against us. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be kneeling on the floor when the rats found me.

I finally could think enough to remember that Jean-Claude might be fighting for his life. But he wasn’t. Belle held his beautiful face in her hands, but he was still standing. His own hands cupped hers, pressing her hands against his face. His face was still perfect, untouched. A soft smile played along his lips. It was Belle’s eyes that were wide, her face that was unhappy. He couldn’t eat her as she had Asher, but strangely, she seemed to be having trouble eating him.

I knew that Belle/Musette had called the rats. I didn’t think she’d had a thing to do with the recuperative powers of the two children of the night. They were half crouched, one helping the other to stand, but they weren’t looking at Belle, or anyone else. I had a moment to wonder if they were going to hold a grudge, when the wave of rats jumped on the first werehyena, tiny teeth trying to tear through the black leather. People were screaming, and the werehyenas began to fire into the small rats, blasting their bodies into red ruin. But there were so many of them.

The rats parted around the kneeling wererats like they were big rocks in a stream.

“Can you stand?” Richard asked.

“I think so.”

He lowered me gently to the floor, then he glanced at the werewolves who were still standing in an unhappy group. Apparently Richard’s point to Sylvie had been violent enough that none of them had disobeyed. Well, Jason was struggling in a joint lock that Shang-Da had on his arm, but no one else had tried to help. What the hell had Richard done to Sylvie?

The world suddenly smelled like the musk of wolf fur, the damp richness of leaf mold, the Christmas tree scent of evergreen, as if my furred shoulder had just brushed it with dew still on it, on a calm, still morning. I felt that piece of me that was Richard’s beast pour up through my body and ease across my skin like wind.

Richard looked at me with amber wolf eyes. He’d opened the marks between us, opened them wide. He threw back his head and howled, and a dozen throats answered him, then the werewolves moved forward like a black wave of destruction.

Shang-Da and Jamil stayed at Richard’s back, and they showed claws where fingernails should have been, the half-change of the very alpha. For the rest, I felt them slip their skin, felt the rush of energy like small tugging explosions in my gut.

I could feel now that Jean-Claude had shut his end of our triumvirate down as tight as he could. I could look at him, but for once I couldn’t feel him at all. He’d expected to die, and he hadn’t wanted to take us with him.

I found one of the guns that the wererats had discarded and felt instantly better. The weight of it in my hand was a very good thing.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only human servant that had found a gun. Angelito fired at a werehyena, sending him spinning round, falling into the mass of biting rats. He screamed and writhed, trying to beat them off him.

I shot into the rats close to him, but there were too many. It was like trying to shoot water, you moved it, but didn’t hurt it.

I knew one way to stop the rats. I sighted down the barrel at Musette/ Belle’s head. If I killed her, the rats would go back to whereever they came from.

I let out my breath, stilled myself for a shot that was far too close to Jean-Claude for my comfort. A rat jumped on my hand, dug its teeth into me. The wave of them began to jump on my dress, their claws catching in the heavy fabric. I screamed, and suddenly Micah was there, half-crouched, hissing at the rats. Those on the floor scattered, squealing in terror. The ones already on my body seemed immune to the fear. He helped me pick them off and threw them into the scurrying mass. The rats poured over their injured comrades and ate them, too.

The rats seemed more afraid of the wereleopards than of the wolves, and the wereleopards began to spread out from the wall, hissing, sending the small rodents back, gaining an ever-widening space.

The two vampires that I thought I’d killed had grown claws and fangs that no vampire ever had. They were wading through the werewolves in a spray of blood and white bone.

One great hand was raised at Shang-Da’s back, and without thinking I fired, able to aim because I stood in the circle the leopards had made. The vampire’s head exploded again. I knew now that if we wanted him to stay dead, we needed to take his heart and burn it all. Scattering the ashes over different bodies of running water wouldn’t have hurt either.

Shang-Da had time for the barest of glances my way, then the other vampire launched himself and sent all three of them to the floor for the rats to engulf.

Belle’s voice rose over the noise like a storm, a thunderclap that froze all of us in mid-action. Even the furred sea of rats froze. “Enough!”

She stepped back from Jean-Claude, and he began to laugh. It wasn’t his magical laugh that slithered across the skin and made you think of sex, it was just laughter, pure unadulterated joy.

“We will fight no more,” Belle said, and though her voice was still deep, it had lost its sexy purr. She sounded not angry, but put out, as if she’d gotten badly surprised.

The rats pulled back like a furry ocean draining away. They squeaked and squealed, but they left. Most of the werewolves were covered in tiny crimson bite marks. The remains of the fallen werehyena looked like it had been mauled by something much bigger.

Jean-Claude found his voice, and it was as joyous as his laughter had been. “You cannot feed from me. You cannot take back what you gave me, because I am no longer of your line. I am sourdre de sang of my own line now.”

Belle stared at him, her face that blank emptiness that I knew so well. She was hiding how she really felt. “I know what it means, Jean-Claude.”

“You can no longer treat me as a lesser member of your line, Belle. There are different niceties to be observed between two sourdres de sang.”

She smoothed her hands down her full skirt, and I knew that gesture, it was one of Jean-Claude’s. Nervous, Belle Morte was nervous. “I was within my rights to do as I have done, for I did not know, nor did you.”

“True enough, but now that we do know, you must take all your people and go. Leave our lands tonight, for if you are found in our territory come tomorrow night, your lives will be forfeit.”

“You would not truly kill my Musette?” But her voice held the lightest thread of uncertainty.

“To be able to kill Musette, legally, with no political repercussions.” He made a small tut-tut sound. “That has been the fondest wish of many a Master Vampire, and I will do it, Belle. You can taste the truth of my words.”

She stiffened, just a little. “I will retain control of Musette until we are out of your lands. She has an unfortunate temper at times.”

“It would be a bad thing if she lost her temper here in St. Louis,” Jean-Claude said, and his voice was empty, the joy seeping away.

Cherry appeared at my elbow. “Sorry to interrupt, I’m not an expert on vampires, but I think Asher’s dying.”

49

ASHER LAY AGAINST the far wall. He was a skeleton with dried parchment skin. He lay on a bed of golden Christmas tree tinsel, the glorious remnant of his hair. His clothes had collapsed around his sunken body, like a deflated balloon. His eyes were closed, and only the roundness of his eyes underneath that thin skin was flesh and solid. Everything else seemed to have withered away.

I fell to my knees beside him, because suddenly I couldn’t stand.

“He’s not dead,” Valentina’s child voice came, but she stayed out of reach. She offered comfort, but she wasn’t stupid.

I looked down at what was left of all that beauty and didn’t believe her.

“See with something other than your eyes, ma petite,” Jean-Claude said. He didn’t kneel, but stayed standing, facing Belle Morte, almost as if he didn’t dare turn his back on her.

I did what Jean-Claude told me to do; I looked with power instead of my physical eyes. I could feel a spark inside Asher, some small part of him still burned. He wasn’t dead, but he might as well have been. I looked up at Jean-Claude. “He’s too weak to take blood.”

“And he has no human servant,” Belle Morte said, “no animal to call. He is without,” and she paused, seemed to think upon her next word. Finally, she said, “resources.”

Resources, that was a nice word for it. But whatever word you used, she was right. Asher had nothing to feed on but blood, and if he was too weak to feed on that . . . I couldn’t finish the thought even in my head.

“Belle Morte could save him,” Jean-Claude’s voice was neutral, empty.

I looked up at him, then past him to her. “What do you mean?”

“She made him, and she is a sourdre de sang. She could simply give him back some of the energy that she stole from him.”

“I stole nothing,” Belle said, and her own neutral voice held a hint of anger. “You cannot steal what is yours by right, and Asher is mine, all of him, Jean-Claude, every piece of his skin, every drop of his blood. He lives only through my sufferance, and without that he dies.”

Jean-Claude made a small gesture. “Perhaps stole is not the correct term, but you can restore some of his life energy. You could bring him back enough to be able to feed on blood.”

“I could, but I will not.” Her anger was like a scalding wind, biting along my skin where it touched.

“Why not?” I asked it, because no one else seemed willing to, and I had to know.

“I do not have to explain myself to you, Anita.”

I still had the gun in my hand. Suddenly it was heavy, as if it had reminded me it was there, or maybe the shock of lifting it was enough for me to feel again. I stood up and aimed the gun at Musette’s chest. “If Asher dies, so does Musette.”

“You have not had much luck killing vampires with your little gun,” Belle said, and she sounded confident. Of course it wasn’t her body that I was about to riddle with bullets.

“I think the Mother’s children are special cases. They probably can survive pretty much everything but fire. I don’t think that’s true of Musette.” I had let out the breath in my body, so that I was as still as I could get. My free hand was resting at my lower back, half cradled on my buttocks. It was my favorite position for target shooting.

“Angelito will stop you,” she said simply.

I looked back to find Angelito held on his knees by three werewolves, but hey . . . “If he makes a nuisance of himself he can die, too. He probably won’t survive me killing Musette anyway.”

Belle Morte’s brown eyes widened just a bit. “You would not dare.”

“Sure I would,” and I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes, because I had them on Musette’s body. I was ignoring Belle’s shape over Musette, concentrating on seeing that white dress with its dried blood. The more I concentrated, the more of Musette I could see, like a double image, Musette’s chest in my physical eyes, and Belle’s ghostly overlay in my head. It made me wonder how much of Belle everyone else had been seeing, or if I’d had a better show because of my necromancy. I’d ask someone later. Much later.

“Jean-Claude, you cannot allow this.”

“Ma petite has her moments of rashness, but in this moment she has reminded me that the rules are not the same now. I am within my rights as sourdre de sang to punish one of your people for harming my second in command. It is perfectly within our laws.”

“I did not know that Asher was the second in command to a sourdre de sang when I drank from him.”

My arm was still steady, but it wouldn’t last. You can’t hold a one-armed shooting stance forever. Hell, you can’t hold any shooting stance forever. “You know now,” I said, “and he’s not dead yet, so you’re killing the second in command of another sourdre de sang with foreknowledge.”

“We are within our rights to take Musette’s life in payment for Asher’s,” Jean-Claude said. “You should be more careful, Belle. Sending people you value far away from you makes it so much harder to keep them safe.”

I was fighting for my arm not to tremble. Eventually, I’d lose. “Let me make this easy for you, Belle, help Asher now, or I kill Musette.”

The one thing that was the same in both the vision of my eyes and the vision of my head, was those honey-brown eyes. Those eyes looked at me, and I felt the draw in them. She wanted me to lower my gun, and my arm hurt, so why didn’t I? My arm started to lower, and I caught myself a moment before Jean-Claude touched my shoulder.

I put the arm back where I’d had it. But just lowering and raising it had helped the lactic acid build up. I could hold the stance for much longer now.

“If you wish to play games with Musette’s life, that is up to you,” Jean-Claude said, and his voice danced over my skin, made my body shiver, made my hand convulse, and only practice kept my finger from squeezing the trigger. But I didn’t tell him to stop, because Belle had used her mark on me to cloud my mind. It had been a long time since a vampire had gotten to me so casually.

Jean-Claude’s sex ran over my skin while the fear ran like ice through the rest of me. Belle wasn’t defeated, not even close. Arrogance would get more of us killed. So, no arrogance, just truth. “What you have to ask yourself, Belle,” I said, in a voice that was very quiet because I was concentrating on my breathing, trying to be still, for when I fired, “is, is your love for Musette stronger than your hatred for Asher?”

“You do not hate lesser beings, Anita, you merely punish them.” Her voice sounded so sure of itself.

Jean-Claude said one word, “Liar.”

Those dark honey eyes flicked to him, and there was no love lost in that look. She hated Jean-Claude, too. She hated them both. They had told me why. They were the only two men who had ever left her bed voluntarily, as far as she saw it. They had deserted her, and no one leaves Belle Morte, because no one would want to. Strangely, their leaving had damaged her sense of self. But I didn’t share this knowledge because hurting Belle Morte’s pride wouldn’t help us. To salvage her pride she’d let Asher and Musette die. I was almost sure of it. I swallowed the words, and fought to control my face, but I’d forgotten that she was a sourdre de sang, and she’d marked me once. It wasn’t my face I had to worry about.

Her voice came in my head like a dream, riding on the scent of roses, “My pride is not so fragile a thing, Anita.”

Jean-Claude’s kiss on my cheek chased back the scent of roses, and that purring voice. “Ma petite, ma petite, are you well?”

I nodded. “Prove it,” I said, “heal Asher.”

Jean-Claude didn’t ask to whom I was speaking. He’d heard through me, or he guessed, or he didn’t bother to question, because we were running out of time.

“You will talk him to death,” Valentina said.

Everyone but me looked at the child vampire. I was still fighting to keep a target on Musette’s white-clad chest.

“If you do not give him the kiss of life soon, he will be beyond even your powers, Belle Morte,” Valentina said.

Belle fought to keep her face calm, but the anger leaked through the room. Or maybe I was just more sensitive to it. “Have you changed sides, petite morte?”

“Non, but I do not wish to lose Musette by accident. If you choose Asher’s death, that is one thing. To simply miss the chance to save him, another.”

I wanted badly to turn and look at Valentina, but I kept my gaze on Musette, on Belle. Besides, Valentina’s face would have been like all the old ones when they were hiding themselves, or risking themselves, blank, empty, a lovely mask.

Something passed between them. Something I could not read. Belle took a deep, impatient breath, smoothed her skirts, and began to walk forward. It wasn’t quite the graceful glide that Musette’s body normally had. I wondered if vampires had trouble gliding when they were nervous, because Belle was nervous. I could feel it.

I lowered the gun, as she moved, because if she was going to save Asher, Musette lived. That was the deal. Besides, my shoulder and hand were beginning to ache. If I’d known I was going to have to keep the stance so long, I’d have gone for a two-handed stance.

Belle Morte seemed to collect herself as she moved across the room, so that by the time she reached Asher she was gliding, and Musette’s white dress was completely lost to Belle’s dark gold, at least to my eyes.

She knelt by Asher’s body. I couldn’t think of it as anything else but a body. I was already distancing myself from him. I realized with something like shock that I didn’t believe she’d save him. He felt so dead, so very dead.

Jean-Claude’s hands squeezed my shoulders, and I realized that he was shielding from me, hard. He didn’t want to share his feelings right now, and I didn’t blame him. They were too personal for sharing, too frightening.

Richard was gone, too. I actually had to glance at him to make sure he was still in the room, that’s how tight he was shielding. I wasn’t sure when he went away behind his shields, which seemed strange. I should have noticed. He caught my look, and he couldn’t keep the compassion, or the pain, off his face. I don’t think it was pain for Asher.

Jean-Claude’s hands tensed and the movement brought my attention back to Belle. Her hair fell out around her like a black cloak, so that the gold dress showed only in hints through all that blackness.

I felt Jean-Claude gather himself, like it was a physical effort to gather his will, then he sighed, and he shook himself like a bird settling its feathers. He stepped out from behind me and offered me his arm, very formally. I hesitated for a heartbeat, then slid my arm through his. He was still shielding from me, still hiding his emotions, but I didn’t need to be anything but his friend to know what he was thinking. It hurt his heart to see Asher reduced to this. It hurt me, and I didn’t have centuries of history with the man.

He walked us forward, toward the kneeling vampire and what was left of the person that we both loved. I would never know if my love for Asher was because of Jean-Claude’s feelings for him. It probably was, but I couldn’t separate my feelings from Jean-Claude’s. That should have panicked me, but it didn’t. I was tired of being scared all the time. I was ready to try and be as brave with my heart as I usually was with the rest of me. Besides, I’d been careful with Richard, and in the end we’d broken each other’s hearts. I glanced at him as I walked forward on Jean-Claude’s arm. My heart still tugged at the sight of him. Earlier today I’d been ready for a reconciliation. I was always ready for a reconciliation with Richard, any time he gave an inch. The trouble was, he kept taking back that inch.

He caught me looking at him, and there was something in his eyes, a pain, a loss, as deep as the ocean, as wide as the sea. I loved him. I really loved him. Maybe I always would. I had this horrible urge to run to him, to let him sweep me up in his arms, to chase that hurt from his eyes. But he probably wouldn’t sweep me up in his arms. He’d probably just look at me, uncomprehending. And that would make me hate him. I didn’t want to hate Richard.

I turned away from him. I didn’t want him to see the longing, the loss, or the first stirrings of hate on my face.

I felt Richard beside me, before he touched me. I had a moment of surprise while I gazed up into his face. His face was as close to unreadable as he could get. He didn’t sweep me up into his arms, but he did offer me his arm. I hesitated, as I had with Jean-Claude, then slowly, I slid my arm through his. He pressed his hand over mine, so warm, so solid, pressing me against the solid weight of his muscular forearm.

I lowered my eyes so he wouldn’t see how it affected me. We were all shielding like a son of a bitch, trying to stay safe in our own thoughts.

Richard and Jean-Claude exchanged a look over my head. I don’t know what the look was supposed to mean. It should have seemed silly to be exchanging any looks when all we had to do was open the marks that made us a triumvirate. Then we could have nearly read each other’s minds. But this was the first time in months that Richard was at our side. I think all three of us were being as careful as we knew how to be.

50

BELLE KNELT OVER Asher, her head lowered as if she were kissing him. But she held herself off his body, one hand on the floor, the other against the wall. The kiss looked so intimate, but she went to great pains to not touch him more than she had to. An intimate act ruined.

I should have been able to feel the power she was pushing into him, but I was shielding too tight. I wasn’t good enough at shielding to filter out, and in, what I chose. When I shielded this hard, I shielded everything out. I wanted to feel what she was doing. I wanted to sense whether that faint spark inside Asher was growing.

I opened just a touch, like widening the shutter on a camera, only a little opening, only enough to reach out and touch that spark.

I tasted Asher’s kiss upon my mouth, as if I had drunk a wine that tasted of him. The spark had become a flame, a cold flame that filled his body, and still Belle poured energy into him. Asher screamed through my mind, and that silent scream staggered me, would have knocked me to my knees if Richard and Jean-Claude hadn’t caught me.

“Anita, what’s wrong?” Richard asked.

“Ma petite, are you well?”

There was no time to explain. I pulled free of both of them, and they didn’t fight me. I grabbed Belle by the shoulder and the hair, and it was almost shocking to feel Musette’s careful curls crush under my hand as I jerked her back. I was expecting to feel Belle’s waves under my hand, but Belle wasn’t here, not really. She’d never been here. She was not illusion, but not exactly real either.

I flung her away from Asher, sending her sliding across the floor on the slick white cloth of Musette’s dress. But it was Belle’s voice that thundered through the room, “How dare you lay hands on me.”

“You’re trying to bind him to you again, as of old. He doesn’t want to be bound.”

“He will fade and die without the power that I can breathe into him.” She looked around as if she expected someone to help her to her feet. The only people who would have been willing to help were under guard, and no one else made a move. She finally stood on her own, but with nothing near to grab onto, and an old-fashioned corset on, graceful it was not. Good to know that some fashions even a vampire can’t make work.

Belle turned eyes that glittered with brown fire to me. “Asher will die without me. Look at him, see what is left of him, it is not enough to survive.”

Her power had poured some flesh in under that dry skin, but not much. It was as if I could see the individual muscles and ligaments under the skin, like a physiology diagram, to show where all the attachment points are. But it was not like a person. The hair was still a dry nest of golden tinsel, and the skin like faded parchment stretched over an obscenely thin frame. But the eyes, the eyes looked human, except for that extraordinary ice blue color. Even when he’d been human, his eyes could never have looked anything but extraordinary.

Asher was there in those eyes. He was trapped in that fragile, half-dead shell. He gazed up at me, and I felt the weight of everything he was in his eyes.

“Blood may save his life,” Belle said, “but it will not give him back what he has lost. Only his maker, or the one who has taken his essence, can give it back.” She stood there with her shining darkness coming out of the eyes in Musette’s face. She didn’t add that since she was both Asher’s maker and the one who had stolen his essence, only she could return him to his former glory. Belle Morte had a little too much class to point out the obvious. But it hung unsaid in the air.

“He just needs power,” I said, “it doesn’t have to be yours.”

“If he had a human servant, or an animal to call, but he has nothing,” Belle said, and there was a tone of satisfaction in her voice that she couldn’t, or didn’t try to, hide. “He is alone, and binding himself to me again is the only choice he has, unless you wish him to spend the rest of eternity as he is now.” The note of satisfaction slid into cruelty without blinking an eye.

“You can’t leave him like this,” Richard said, and there was pity on his face, yes, but more, there was horror. “Being tied to Belle Morte isn’t worse than this.”

“If you had ever known her embrace,” Jean-Claude said, “you might not be so quick to decide.”

Richard looked at him, then back at Asher, then at Belle Morte. “I don’t understand.”

“No,” I said, “you don’t.” Then I looked up at him, touched his arm, very lightly. “Think of yourself trapped forever with Raina.”

A look of disgust and personal revulsion skipped across his face, before he could hide it. I still carried a piece of Raina’s munin, her spirit memory, in me. She was a sexual sadist, but she’d also fiercely protected the very people she tortured. The woman had needed some serious therapy. In the end, the only therapy she’d gotten had been silver bullets. I never felt bad about killing Raina. Funny that.

Richard nodded. “I understand that, but . . .” he made a helpless gesture towards Asher, “this is not . . .” He seemed at a loss for words.

I couldn’t blame him. I had no words at the thought of this being Asher’s fate for the next few centuries. It wasn’t bearable. It simply wasn’t. But I couldn’t make Belle give him the energy without strings attached. It was the nature of vampire energy that there was always strings attached. It was designed to bind a vampire to its maker, and through its maker, to the council, to the entire power structure of their world. Everything would fall apart if you didn’t belong to somebody. There are masterless shape-shifters, but no masterless vampires. There are vampires who have lost their masters, but they are compelled to find a new master, to swear new blood oaths, to hunt someone else to rule them. A truly lesser vampire can even die without a master vampire to rule them. They go to sleep at dawn and never wake up again.

I knew all this. Knew all of it, and didn’t care. I could feel Asher’s—not thoughts—but will. He preferred a clean death to this. Or to being Belle’s slave again.

I dropped to my knees beside him. I could give him a clean death. I knew all about death. I started to touch him, my hand hesitated. I didn’t want to touch him. Didn’t want to feel that once-living skin turned to this. Didn’t want my last memory of him to be this. But I hate cowardice, almost worse than anything else, and if Asher could be trapped inside this body, then I could touch him one last time.

I laid my hand against his face, gently, oh, so gently. The skin felt thin as paper, dried, and brittle. I was afraid if I pushed, my fingers would go through his skin like the pages of an ancient book handled too roughly.

I’d forgotten that all vampire powers are stronger with touch. One second I was holding his face as delicately as I could, the next moment I had collapsed across his body, and was writhing with the memory of Asher’s body on mine.

Hands grabbed me back, ripped me away from Asher, and I fought those hands, drove my elbow back into a groin. The hands didn’t let go, but dimly I heard someone yelling my name, “Anita, Anita, Anita,” over and over.

I blinked, and it was like waking, but I knew my eyes hadn’t been closed. Richard’s hands were still on me, but he was standing like something hurt.

I opened my mouth to apologize, but what came out wasn’t an apology. “Why did you stop us?”

“I thought you were going to crush him.”

Staring up into his so sincere face, I knew he meant it. Hadn’t I just moments before been afraid I’d shove a finger through Asher’s brittle skin? But somehow I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Somehow I knew he was a lot more durable than he appeared.

Jean-Claude came to stand beside me, and the look on his face said that he’d figured out what Richard hadn’t. But Richard wasn’t good with the dead. It wasn’t his area of specialty. Jean-Claude touched my face, gently, as if afraid I’d break. “He fed from you. From your memory of him.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“How many vampires can you serve?” Belle asked. Apparently, Jean-Claude hadn’t been the only one to notice.

I realized that she thought Asher had marked me, but that wasn’t exactly it. “He hasn’t marked me, Belle, if that’s what you think.”

“Then how can he feed from your strength?”

“Surprise,” I said, “I don’t think that Jean-Claude is the only vampire who’s gained new power.”

“This is not possible.”

“But it’s true,” I said, and I didn’t try and keep the triumph out of my voice. We didn’t need her now. We didn’t fucking need her now.

Richard was still holding my arms. I looked up at him. “Let me go, Richard.”

He frowned down at me. He either didn’t understand, or didn’t want to.

I repeated myself, more gently. “Let go, Richard, please.”

His eyes flicked to Asher lying against the wall, still looking mostly dead. “The last time we talked about this, you had the same rule I had. No one feeds off of you.”

I searched his face, while he gazed at what was left of Asher’s beauty. I tried to see something in that gaze that I could talk to, explain things to, but I wasn’t sure there was anyone there that would understand.

“If I don’t let him feed, Richard, he’ll be trapped like he is right now. He won’t die. He won’t decay. He’ll just exist, like that.”

He tore his gaze away from Asher and looked at me. “He didn’t take blood.”

“It’s more like an energy feed, like the ardeur.” It suddenly occurred to me that Richard might not know that Asher really, truly was in my bed. I’d pretended in the past with more than one man that he was a boyfriend or lover to fool the bad guys. Richard might believe that it was just a game again. Now wasn’t the time to explain all the gory details. There would be time later to find out if Richard had meant what he said in my mind in the Jeep, that he didn’t care who I had sex with, because we weren’t dating. If he meant it, it would upset me. If he hadn’t meant it, then knowing about Asher would upset him. Either way, it could wait.

He still hadn’t let go of my arms. “Have you let Asher feed on you before?”

I don’t know what I would have answered because he let go of one of my arms. He reached up a slow hand to touch my chin. I knew what he was going to do, and I couldn’t stop it. He turned my head to one side, and exposed the vampire bites on the side of my neck.

“When did you start sharing blood?”

“Last night.”

He lowered his hand, and I turned to meet his eyes. One look was enough. He, like me, thought sex was the lesser evil. The problem with something being a lesser evil is that something else has to be the greater evil.

“Is it just Jean-Claude, or . . .” His gaze flicked to Asher.

“We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Richard, I promise, but right now, I need to help Asher.”

He shook his head. “Are those Jean-Claude’s marks on your neck?”

I sighed and looked down at the floor. I made myself meet his eyes, but damn it, I didn’t have time or energy for this, not right now. “No,” I said.

Again his gaze flicked to Asher. “His?”

“Yes.”

“How can you let them feed off of you?”

“If I hadn’t let Asher feed last night, then tonight he’d be dead, or enthralled to Belle Morte for the rest of eternity. It’s one of the reasons we did it.”

“You knew he’d be able to feed?” He frowned at me.

I shook my head. “No, but Musette had claimed him for Belle, because he didn’t belong to anyone. We made sure he belonged to us.”

“Us?” he actually looked at Micah first.

Micah’s face was as neutral as he could manage.

“Not Micah, Jean-Claude.”

He looked at the vampire, then back to Micah. “How can you let her do this?”

“I’d feed him myself if it would help,” Micah said.

Richard’s eyes widened, and the look on his face was uncomprehending. “I don’t understand that.”

Micah just looked at him for a moment, then he looked at me, and there was something in his eyes that said he understood some of what all this cost me, cost us both, cost us all.

Richard had let go of my arm now. In fact he’d taken a step back from me, as if he didn’t want to be that close. He acted as if I’d done something unclean. If he only knew. Or maybe the sex wouldn’t bother him at all, maybe it was all about the feeding for him. My moral standards just weren’t that finely cut anymore.

I sighed and turned to Jean-Claude. “Since you went along for the ride with Asher’s feeding, he may be able to feed off of you through me.”

Jean-Claude nodded. “Perhaps.”

“If you touch me, while I touch Asher, and drop shields, we can try it. Between the two of us I think we can get him back to a place where one blood feeding should get him back to his normal glorious self.”

“I am willing to try,” he said.

I fought the urge to glance at Richard. “I know you are.” I walked away from them both towards Asher. I wanted to feed Asher back to health, but truthfully, I’d had about enough of all the men in my life for one night.

51

JEAN-CLAUDE AND I knelt by Asher. He had gained enough from that first small taste to manage a smile. The smile was the barest phantom of what he had been, but I was so relieved to see it that it made me smile, too.

I gripped Jean-Claude’s hand in my left hand, and laid my right on Asher’s cheek. The moment I touched him, he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Nothing mattered but to touch him. Nothing mattered but to be with him. Nothing mattered but Asher. It was as if the world had narrowed down to his eyes, his body. The sun revolved around him, I just knew it.

In a dim part of my brain I realized that Asher hadn’t been using vampire powers on me. That whatever I’d felt before this had been real. Because this was unreal. I’d never felt for anyone like this, because it wasn’t love, or even lust, it was obsession. It was the sure knowledge that if I did not touch him I would die. Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true, but it felt true. God help me, it felt true.

I fought to free my left hand, something was holding it so I couldn’t touch Asher with both hands. I needed to touch him with both my hands. I laid my body on top of Asher and caressed my hands down him.

His hands trapped my face between them, and in some part of me I knew they felt like old leather and sticks with things underneath them, but for the first time when dealing with vampire trickery, I didn’t fight it. I let Asher’s power turn what might have been horror into something erotic and beautiful.

I opened myself wide and let Asher roll through me like a stream, long dammed, flowing, flooding, filling up a land that has been too long without water. I did not ride his power, his power engulfed me, rolled me under with a weight of a thousand waves, pressed me to the bottom of the sand and held me at the bottom of the ocean. It wasn’t that I didn’t drown, it was that I didn’t care that I drowned.

I woke, if waking was the term, with his body pressing me to the hard stone floor. I was staring up at a waving cloud of his hair, the lights sparkled through it like a golden veil. I ran my fingers through it, and it was soft, and alive again. The edge of his cheek was full and rough with scars again. I touched those familiar marks, and he turned to face me fully, and the sight of him caught my breath in my throat.

From the curve of his forehead, to the line of his cheek, the fullness of his lips, he was perfect once more. His eyes sat in that face like icy sapphires set among pearls and gold.

I laughed when I saw him, a joyous burst of sound. He cupped my face in his hand, and I turned to lay a kiss against his palm. The weight of his body against mine was one of the best feelings I’d ever had, because it was proof that he was back, that he was well, and that he was whole.

He half-rolled, and half-raised me to a sitting position in his lap, with his back to the wall. He turned with me held in his arms, to look across the room at Belle Morte. I didn’t have to see the look on his face to know that it was not an entirely friendly one.

“Impressive, wouldn’t you say?” Jean-Claude said.

“No, I would not. He can only feed on the energy of those whom he has taken blood from, and rolled their poor minds. You know as well as I do, Jean-Claude, that you can’t allow Asher to roll the mind of every victim. It would be a parade of love-besotted fools following him everywhere.”

I resented the love-besotted fool part, but I let it go. We were winning tonight. Never argue when you’re winning.

“Be that as it may, Belle, Asher is restored to his glorious self. We have no more need of you tonight, so you, and yours, must be gone from our territory before tomorrow night.”

“You would truly slay all of us?” She made it a question.

“Oui.”

“My vengeance would be terrible.”

“Non, Belle, by council law you cannot chastise another sourdre de sang as you would a vampire of your line. Your hatred would be terrible, but your vengeance would have to wait.”

“Not if the head of the council agrees with my vengeance,” she said.

“I’ve touched her, Belle, she doesn’t care about your vengeance. She doesn’t even care about you, or me, or much of anybody,” I said.

“The Mother has been asleep a very long time, Anita, when that sleep ends she may retire from the council.”

I laughed, and it wasn’t joyous now. “Retire! Vampires don’t retire. They die, but they never retire.”

It wasn’t something that showed on her face, it was more a stillness to her shoulders, a movement in an arm. I don’t know what made me see it. Asher’s power, or something else. But I did see it, and I had a wonderful, terrible idea.

“You plan to kill her. You plan to kill the First Darkness and make yourself head of the council.”

Her face was perfectly blank as she said, “Do not be absurd. No one attacks the Gentle Mother.”

“Yeah, I know, and there’s a very good reason for that. She’ll fucking kill you, Belle. She will roll over you and destroy everything you are.”

She fought, but she couldn’t keep the arrogance off her face. I guess if you’ve been alive longer than Christ has been dead, you can’t help but be arrogant.

“If you declare war on anyone now, Belle, as a sourdre de sang in my own right, neither I nor any of my people have to come when you call. You will find no aid here,” Jean-Claude said.

“Aid from you, my two petite catamites? I have found other men to serve your purposes.” She turned with a swish of Musette’s skirts. “Come, my poppets, we will leave and shake the dirt of this provincial town from our shoes.”

“A moment, my mistress.” It was Valentina. She gave a very low curtsy in her stiff white and gold dress. “Bartolomé and I have had our honor besmirched by Musette’s trick.”

“What of it, poppet?”

Valentina stayed down in the low curtsy, as if she could have held the position forever. “We beg your indulgence to remain behind and make amends to the shape-shifters.”

“Non,” Belle said.

Valentina raised her gaze to the woman. “They were abused as I was abused, and we have made it worse. I beg permission to remain behind and make it better.”

“Bartolomé,” Belle said.

Bartolomé came forward and dropped to one knee, head bowed. “Yes, mistress.”

“Is this what you wish?”

“Non, mistress, but honor demands that we remedy this error.” He looked up then, and there was something on his face of the boy he might once have been. “They have grown into men, but the scars laid on the boys that they were are deep. Valentina and I have made them deeper. This I do regret, and you know, above all others, that I do not regret much.”

I expected Belle to tell them, no, to gather her people up and leave, but she didn’t. She said, “Stay until honor is satisfied, then return to me.” She glanced at Jean-Claude. “If you will allow them to remain that is?”

Jean-Claude nodded. “Until honor is satisfied, oui.”

I didn’t agree with this, but something in Belle’s face, something in Jean-Claude’s face, something in the tightness of Asher’s body, let me know that things were happening that I probably didn’t understand.

“If the wolves would be so kind as to escort our guests to their rooms to pack, then to the airport.”

Richard seemed to startle awake, almost as if he, too, had been under some spell. I didn’t think that was it. He was staring at me in Asher’s lap, with Micah leaning against the wall beside us. Nathaniel had crawled towards us, and I raised a hand, let him lay his head and shoulders in my lap.

“We’ll escort them out,” he said, but his voice sounded empty. He opened his mouth as if to say more, then he turned, and his wolves moved with him. They gathered up Belle’s people and began to escort them back towards the front and the main rooms.

Belle glanced back once at Valentina and Bartolomé as they stood in their shining white and gold clothes. That one glance back said worlds. I’d never be certain, but I think that Belle Morte felt guilty not just about Valentina, but about Bartolomé. Valentina I understood because a vampire of Belle’s making had done the unspeakable. But bringing Bartolomé over as a child had been simply good business. I hadn’t thought Belle Morte lost any sleep over good business. But she’d still condemned him to an eternity in a child’s body. A child’s body with a man’s appetite forever. Belle let them stay, though the excuse was weak. Belle let them stay because guilt is a wonderful motivator even among the dead.

52

I WOKE IN the dark with the comforting weight of bodies around me. I knew by the quality of darkness and the faint light from the nearby bathroom that I was in Jean-Claude’s bed. I remembered Jean-Claude giving us the bed, because it was near dawn, and I don’t think that either of us wanted a repeat of yesterday morning. Strangely, what had happened with Asher seemed to have sated my own ardeur. Or maybe I was just too tired. Once I would have assumed it meant I was gaining more control, but I’d stopped trying to second-guess the ardeur. I was wrong too often.

There really wasn’t enough light to see clearly, but the tickle of curls along my cheek let me know it was Micah’s face pressed into the hollow of my neck. His arm lay heavy and warm across my upper stomach, his leg entwined with my thigh. There was another arm across my hips, a second face pressed into my side, a second body curled into a tight ball against me. I didn’t really need to touch the top of Nathaniel’s head to know it was him.

The sliver of light from the bathroom showed a pale slender arm flung carelessly across Micah’s one outstretched leg. The arm was all that was visible out of the covers. I knew the arm, and I knew somewhere under all the covers they’d stolen was Zane, and the rest of Cherry. I didn’t mind sleeping in big warm piles, but I did mind sharing a large bed with such outrageous cover hogs. Cherry wasn’t bad on her own, but put her with Zane, and you either fought for every inch of covers, which was not restful, or you gave up. I’d found that the silk sheets at Jean-Claude’s were especially hard to keep track of in my sleep.

I wasn’t sure what had awakened me, but I knew that the wereleopards had better hearing and better sense of smell than I did. If it hadn’t alerted them, it was probably a dream.

Then I heard it, very, very faint. It was my phone, sounding like it was ringing from the bottom of a deep well. I tried to sit up, and couldn’t. I was pinned by the two men.

There was a groan, and the slender arm across Micah’s leg vanished under the dark bulk of sheet. The next moment there was a slithering sound, a thump, a curse, and the sound of clothes being pawed through. Cherry’s voice was groggy as she said, “Yes.”

Silence, then, “No, this isn’t Anita, just a minute.” Her other hand poked the dark bulk of the sheet at the foot of the bed. Zane’s voice, “What!”

“Phone,” she groaned.

His hand grabbed the phone, and before I could say anything, he said, “Hello.”

Zane was quiet for a second, then, “Just a minute, she’s here, hang on.” A pale more masculine hand appeared out of the welter of sheets and handed the phone vaguely in my direction, but I was still pinned. The phone dangled just out of reach.

I finally had to push Micah’s arm off me, and try and sit up. “Micah, move, I have to reach the phone.”

He made a small inarticulate noise and rolled off me, to give me the long line of his back. Nathaniel took the phone from Zane’s hand, before I could take it.

His voice was the most awake, “Whom may I say is calling?”

I was finally sitting up. “Give me the phone,” I said.

Nathaniel handed me the phone with a, “It’s Zerbrowski.”

I hung my head for a second, sighed, and put the phone to my ear. “Yeah, Zerbrowski, what’s up?”

“How many people you got in bed with you, Blake?”

“None of your business.”

“One of them sounded like a girl. Didn’t know you swung that way.”

I pressed the button on my watch, so I could see the time on the light-up dial. “Zerbrowski, we’ve had about two hours of sleep. If you just called to check up on my sex life, I’m going back to sleep.”

“No, no, sorry. It just,” he laughed softly, “just caught me off guard. I’ll try to keep the teasing to a minimum, but, damn, you don’t usually give me this much ammunition. Can’t blame me for getting distracted.”

“Did I mention the two hours of sleep?”

“You did,” he said, sounding depressingly wide awake. I was betting he’d had coffee.

“I’m counting to three, if you haven’t said something interesting by the time I’m finished, I’m hanging up, and I’m turning off my cell phone.”

“We’ve got a fresh murder scene.”

I scooted up so my back was against the headboard. “I’m listening.” Micah stayed curled on his side, back to me, but Nathaniel cuddled up close so he was still pressed around me. Cherry and Zane were motionless under the pile of sheets. I think they’d gone back to sleep.

“It’s the shape-shifter rapist again.” The humor was leaking away from his voice, and he sounded tired. I wondered how much sleep he’d gotten last night.

I was wide awake now, my pulse fast in my throat. “When?”

“She was found just after dawn. We haven’t been here long.”

“I’ll be there regardless, but is Dolph going to be there?”

“No,” Zerbrowski said, “he’s on leave.” He lowered his voice, “Top brass told him he either takes voluntary leave with pay, or enforced leave without.”

“Okay, where are you?”

It was Chesterfield again. “He’s staying in a pretty small geographic area,” I said.

“Yeah,” Zerbrowski said, and that one word had so much tiredness.

I almost asked how he was holding up, but it’s against the guy code. You’re supposed to pretend you don’t notice anything’s wrong. Pretend, and it will go away. Sometimes, because I am a girl, I’ll break the guy code, but today I let it stand. Zerbrowski had a long day ahead of him, and he was the man in charge. He couldn’t afford to look at his feelings right now. It was more important that he held together than that he understood what he was feeling.

Zerbrowski started to give directions, and I had to tell him to wait until I had a pen and paper. There was no pen and paper anywhere in the room. I was finally reduced to writing directions in lipstick on the bathroom mirror. Zerbrowski was laughing his ass off by the time I found the lipstick and started drawing on the mirror.

He gasped a little, and finally managed to say, “Thanks, Blake, I so needed that.”

“Glad I could brighten your day.” I crawled back on the bed.

I thought about what Jason had said about a werewolf being able to follow the scent trail. I bounced the idea off of Zerbrowski.

He was dead silent for a minute. “There is no way I could get anyone to agree to letting another shape-shifter near this scene.”

“You’re the man in charge,” I said.

“No, Anita, you bring another shifter around, and they’re going to end up being questioned just like Schuyler did. Don’t do it. This whole thing is going to turn into a witch hunt soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they’re starting to bring in all known shape-shifters for questioning.”

“The ACLU is going to be up in arms,” I said.

“Yeah, but not until they’ve held a few people over, and questioned them.”

“It isn’t one of the local lycanthropes, Zerbrowski.”

“I can’t tell the upper brass that our perp doesn’t smell like the local werewolf pack, Anita. They’ll say that of course the local wolves would say that, they don’t want to be blamed for this shit.”

“I believe Jason.”

“Maybe I believe him, too, maybe I don’t, but it doesn’t matter, Anita. It really doesn’t matter. People are fucking terrified. There’s a rush bill in the state senate right now to declare varmint laws legal again in Missouri.”

“Varmint laws, Jesus, Zerbrowski, you don’t mean like some of the Western states still have on the books?”

“Yeah, kill it first, then if a blood test proves it’s a lycanthrope, it’s self-defense, not murder, and there’s no trial.”

“It’ll never get into law,” I said, and I was almost certain when I said it.

“Probably not right now, but Anita, we get a few more women torn up like this, and I don’t know.”

“I’d like to say people aren’t that stupid,” I said.

“But you know better,” he said.

“Yeah.”

He sighed. “There’s something else.” He sounded really unhappy.

I sat up a little straighter against the headboard, forcing Nathaniel to recuddle.

“You sound like you’re about to give me really bad news, Zerbrowski.”

“I just don’t want to have to fight with you and Dolph and the top brass all at the same time.”

“What’s wrong, Zerbrowski? Why am I going to be mad at you?”

“Remember, Anita, Dolph was still in charge until now.”

“Just tell me.” My stomach was strangely tight like I was dreading whatever he’d say.”

“There was a message at the first rape scene.”

“I didn’t see a message.”

“It was by the back door, Dolph never gave you a chance to see it. I didn’t know about it until later.”

“What was the message, Zerbrowski?” A lot of thoughts went through my head. Was it a message for me, about me?

“First message read, ‘We nailed this one, too.’ ”

It took me a few seconds to get it, or think I got it. The first murder, the man nailed to his living room wall. There had been nothing to connect that death with the shape-shifter killings. Except maybe for an odd message.

“You’re thinking of the first man in Wildwood,” I said. “The message could mean anything, Zerbrowski.”

“That’s what we thought until the second rape, the one Dolph wouldn’t let us call you in on.”

“There was another message,” I said, voice soft.

“ ‘Nailed another one,’ ” he said.

“It could still be a coincidence, nailed is a euphemism for sex.”

“Today’s message was, ‘There wasn’t enough left to crucify.’ ”

“The maniac that’s slaughtering these women is not methodical enough, or neat enough, for that first murder.”

“I know,” he said. “But we didn’t release the nails and the fact that our first vic was crucified. Nobody but the killer would know.”

“One of the killers,” I said. “The man’s death was a group effort.” I thought of something. “Is there more than one type of sperm at the scenes?”

“Nope.”

“So what, the rapist wants us to know the crimes are connected, why?”

“Why do any of these crazy buggers want us to know anything? It amuses him, Anita.”

“What background did you dig up on the first vic?”

“He’s ex-military.”

“You don’t get that house and the indoor pool on retired military benefits.”

“He was an importer. Traveled around the world and brought back stuff.”

“Drugs?”

“Not that we can find.”

I had another thought, a record after only two hours sleep. “Name me the countries he frequented.”

“Why?” he asked.

I filled him in on what he hadn’t heard through the grapevine about Heinrick.

“If the dead man frequented the same countries, it might mean something.”

“A clue,” Zerbrowski said. “A real live clue, I don’t think I’d know what to do with one.”

“You’ve got lots of clues, they just aren’t helping.”

“You noticed that, too,” he said.

“If Heinrick knew the dead man, I still don’t know what it means.”

“Me either. Just get here as soon as you can. And don’t bring any shape-shifters with you.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I hope so.” He spoke away from the phone for a second, “I’ll be right there.” Then he spoke directly to me. “Hurry,” he said, and he hung up. I think Dolph had taught all of us not to say good-bye.

53

I’D EXPECTED THE scene to be bad, because the last scene had been bad. But I hadn’t expected this. Either our rapist murderer had moved to the bathroom for his second kill, or we had a whole new killer. I’d smelled the same hamburger smell as I walked through the house. Zerbrowski had given me little plastic booties to put over my Nikes, and handed me the box of gloves. He’d said something about the floor being messy. I’d never thought of Zerbrowski as a master of understatement.

The room was red. Red, as if someone had painted all the walls crimson, but it wasn’t an even job of painting. It wasn’t just red, or crimson, but scarlet, ruby, brick red where it had begun to dry, a color so dark it was almost black, but it sparked red like a dark garnet. I tried to stay cold and intellectual and look at all the shades of red, until I saw a piece of something long and thin and meaty that had been glued to the wall with the blood, like a piece of offal tossed aside by a careless butcher.

The room was suddenly hot, and I had to look away from the walls, but the floor was worse. The floor was tile, and that didn’t absorb liquid. It was covered in blood, blood deep enough that it sat liquid and shining on almost the entire floor. The floor space was small, admittedly, but it was still a lot of blood for one room.

I was hugging the doorframe that led into the room. My feet in the little booties were still on the relatively clean tile of the area where the stool sat, a tiny room, with a vanity area, complete with double sink beyond. The master bedroom was beyond even that, but the bed was carefully made, untouched.

There was a small lip of marble that held the shallow lake of blood inside the final room. A tiny ledge of stone to keep the rest of the rooms clean. I was grateful for that tiny edge.

I looked at the walls again. There was a three-person, deep shower in the far corner. The glass doors were splattered with blood, and it had dried to a nice candy red shell. The shower stall wasn’t covered as completely as the other walls. I wasn’t sure why yet.

Most of the rest of the space in the room was taken up by a bathtub. It wasn’t as large as Jean-Claude’s, but it was almost as large as the one I had at my house. I liked my bathtub, but I knew it would be days before I’d be able to use it again. This scene would ruin that particular pleasure for a while.

The tub was full of pale blood. Blood the color of dark red roses left too long in the sun, faded to a shade of pink that never looked quite pink, but always as if it had meant to be a darker color. Pink bloody water filled the tub almost to the brim, like it was a cup filled up with punch. Bad thought. Bad thought.

Thinking about food or drink of any kind was a bad thing right now, a truly bad thing. I had to look away, stare back into the smaller rooms, catch a glimpse of the bed and the police still milling around the far room. None of them had volunteered to accompany me on the tour. Couldn’t blame them, but I suddenly felt isolated. They were only three small rooms away, but it felt as if it were a thousand miles. As if, if I screamed now, no one would hear me.

I used the farthest doorframe to get to the vanity sink area. I leaned on the cool tile sink and ran cold water over my hand. When it was cold enough I splashed it on my face. There was no hand towel, probably it had been bagged and sent to the lab, where it would be checked for hair and fiber and stuff. I untucked my T-shirt from my jeans and wiped my face dry. I came away with a few dark stains. The remnants of last night’s makeup. I looked into the wide shining mirror, glaring bright in the overhead lights. I had dark smudges of mascara and eyeliner under my eyes. Waterproof really isn’t. It’s more like water tough, but not proof. I used the hem of my T-shirt to dab at the black marks, and got most of it. I also ended up with black stuff on my shirt, but it didn’t seem to matter.

Zerbrowski looked in at me from the doorway. “How’s it going?”

I nodded, because I didn’t trust myself to speak.

He grinned suddenly, and if I’d felt better I would have dreaded his next comment, but today I was too numb. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Because for anything to matter I could not have gone back into that room, and I had to go into that room. So nothing mattered. I was empty, and quiet, and there was nothing.

“Who was the girl this morning? We’ve got a pool going. Some people think its your best bud Ronnie Sims. Personally, I don’t think so; she’s still hot for that professor guy at Wash U. I’m betting on the blond wereleopard that’s always at your house. Which is it?”

I think I just blinked at him.

He frowned then and stepped into the little room. “Anita, are you okay?”

I shook my head. “No, I am not okay.”

His face was all concern, and he came close enough, almost took my arm, then stopped himself. “What’s wrong?”

I stayed leaning on the sink, but pointed backwards with one hand, not looking where I was pointing, not wanting to look.

He glanced back where I was pointing, then his eyes flicked, very quickly, back to me. “What about it?”

I just looked at him.

He shrugged. “Yeah, it’s bad. You’ve seen bad before.”

I lowered my head so I was staring at the golden faucet. “I took a month off, Zerbrowski. Thought I needed a vacation, and I did, but maybe a month wasn’t enough.”

“What are you saying?”

I looked up into the mirror, and my face was almost ghost pale, my eyes standing out like black holes in my face, the remaining eyeliner making my eyes larger, more compelling, more lost than they should have been. What I wanted to say was I don’t know if I want to do this anymore, but what I said out loud, was, “I thought the bedroom scene was bad, but this is worse.”

He nodded.

I started to take a deep breath, but remembered in time about the smell, and took a shallow breath, which wasn’t nearly as soothing to my psyche but better for my stomach. “I’ll be okay.”

He didn’t argue with me, because Zerbrowski treated me by guy rules most of the time. If a guy says he’ll be okay, you just take him at his word, even if you don’t believe it. The only exception is when lives are at stake, then the guy code can be broken, but the man that you broke it with will probably never forgive you.

I straightened up, hands still death-gripping the sink. I blinked into the mirror a couple of times, then went back for the far room. I could do this. I had to do this. I had to be able to see what was there, and think about it logically. It was an awful thing to ask of myself. I’d finally acknowledged that. Acknowledged that seeing things like what lay in the next room were soul-destroying. Acknowledged and moved on.

I was back in the bathroom door. Zerbrowski had come with me, though, standing just behind me. There really wasn’t room to stand in the doorway together, not comfortably.

I looked at the room, at the walls with their coating of blood and gore. “How many people were killed in here?”

“Why?” he asked.

“Don’t be coy, Zerbrowski, I don’t have the patience for it today.”

“Why?” he asked again, and this time there was a note of defensiveness in his voice.

I glanced back at him. “What is your problem?”

He didn’t point at the carnage. In fact for a second, or two, I thought he was going to tell me to mind my own business, but he didn’t. “If Dolph said why, you’d just answer him, not argue with him.”

I sighed. “Dolph’s shoes hard to fill?” I asked.

“No, but I’m damned tired of repeating myself when I know that nobody makes Dolph fucking repeat himself.”

I looked up at him and felt a smile creep across my face. “Well, actually, I make Dolph repeat himself, too.”

He smiled. “Alright, alright, maybe you do, but you are such a fucking pain in the ass, Anita.”

“It’s a talent,” I said.

We stood in the doorway and smiled at each other. Nothing had changed in that small horror chamber. There wasn’t a drop less of blood, or an inch less of gory bits plastered to the walls, but we both felt better.

“Now,” I said, still smiling, “how many people were killed in the bathroom.”

His smile slid into a full grin. “Why do you ask?”

“You bastard,” I said.

He wiggled his eyebrows above the rims of his glasses. “Not what my mom says, though you’re not the first to speculate.”

I half laughed and knew that I’d lost. “Because, Zerbrowski, there are only two full walls in that room, both of them are so thick with blood and heavier bits that it’s like two kills, one at one wall, one at the other.”

“What about the bathtub?” he asked.

“The water’s pale. I’ve never seen anyone bled out in a bathtub, so I don’t know if the water would be this pale, or if it would be darker. But my gut tells me that no one was bled out in the tub. They may have been killed in the tub, but most of the blood is on the floor and walls.”

“You sure about that?”

“No, like I said, I’ve never seen anyone bled out in a bathtub before, but I’m also wondering why the tub is so full, almost to the brim. You can’t fill most tubs that full; they’ve got that little hole that stops it from overflowing. This one is so full that you couldn’t even step into it without sloshing water all over the floor.”

He watched my face while I talked, then his gaze slid away to look into the room beyond, then to the clean section of floor we were standing on.

“I’m right about at least two people being killed, aren’t I?”

He had control of his expression now, and met my gaze. “Maybe.”

I sighed, but it was more frustration now. “Look, I’ve worked with Dolph for years, and I like him. I respect his work methods, but damn it, Zerbrowski; you don’t have to play it as close to the chest as he does. I’ve always hated playing twenty fucking questions. Let’s try something new and different. I ask questions, you answer them.”

He almost smiled. “Maybe.”

I fought an urge to yell. I spoke very calmly, very quietly. “At least two people were killed, slaughtered against the walls.” I forced myself to turn back and look at the two walls in question again. Now that I had another human being to talk to, and he’d made me a little angry, I could think again. The walls weren’t literally painted with blood. There were spots where the tile showed through, but the tile was a medium brown color, so that at first it looked worse than it was, and God knew, it was bad enough.

I turned back to Zerbrowski. “Okay, two kills one against each wall. Or at least they were sliced open, up, whatever, against each wall.” I looked at the tub again. “Are there bits of bodies in the tub?”

“Dolph would make you go fish.”

I stared up at him. “Maybe, probably. But you’re not Dolph, and I’m not in the mood.”

“We left the bits in there special for you, Anita. No joke.” He held up his hands. “You’re our monster expert, and if this isn’t a monster, I don’t know what is.”

He had me there. “It’s a monster, Zerbrowski, but is it a human monster, or something else? That’s the sixty-four-billion-dollar question.”

“I thought it was sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” he said.

“Inflation,” I said. “Do you at least have any long gloves, or something?”

“No long gloves on me,” he said.

“I fucking hate you,” I said.

“Not the first to say it today,” he said, and he seemed tired again.

“I am going to track blood all over hell and back.”

He fished under the sink and retrieved a garbage bag. “Put the booties in here before you step out of the room.”

“What can I possibly learn by fishing around in that mess?”

“Probably not a goddamned thing,” he said.

I shook my head. “Then why should I do it?”

“Because we held the scene for you. We didn’t drag that damn tub, just in case we spoiled some arcane piece of monster shit, that you would have noticed, and we would have thrown away.”

“Arcane,” I said, “what, Katie been reading the big grown-up books to you again?”

He smiled. “The faster you do this, the sooner we can all get the hell out of here.”

“I’m not stalling,” I said, even as I knew I was.

“Yeah, you are, and I don’t blame you.”

I looked into the next room, then back at Zerbrowski. “If I don’t find some really nifty clue, I am so going to kick your ass.”

He grinned. “Only if you can catch me.”

I shook my head, took a shallow breath, and stepped over that last bit of doorway.

54

THE BLOOD CLOSED up around the plastic bootie, not quite to the top of it, not quite rolling over onto my shoe, but close. Even through the plastic, through my shoe, I could feel that the blood was cool. Not cold, but cool. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not. I didn’t think I should have been able to feel the blood through the bootie and my shoe. But it felt like I could. Sometimes my imagination is not an asset at a crime scene.

I slid my foot forward, one hand still on the door frame. I wasn’t sure that the plastic booties would be slippery in this much liquid on a tile floor, but I so didn’t want to find out the hard way. There were two things I didn’t want to do in this room. One, was fall on my ass in the pool of blood, two, was put my hand in the bathtub. I had to do the second, but I would be damned if I did the first.

I eased my feet forward, slowly, cautiously, and kept my fingers on the doorjamb as long as possible. Actually the room wasn’t that large, and it wasn’t that big a reach between the door and the tub. I got a death grip on the edge of the tub with my glove-covered hands, and when I had both my feet planted as steady as I could get them, I looked down at the water.

It was like some kind of red soup. I knew it was mostly water, but the color . . . I kept thinking of the cups you use to dye Easter eggs. It looked like a great big cup for dyeing Easter eggs, and just like sometimes happened if you didn’t get the mix right, it wasn’t exactly red, or pink, but both. I concentrated on the thought of Easter eggs, the smell of vinegar, and better times than this.

The water seemed to swirl, heavier than it was. Probably illusion, but I suddenly had this image of something floating right below the surface. Something that would pop up and try to grab me. I knew it wasn’t true. I knew it was just too many horror movies, but my pulse was in my throat, my heart thudding.

I glanced back at Zerbrowski. “You guys don’t have any rookies to do this?”

“How do you think we got the first piece out?” he asked.

“That would explain the uniform that was throwing his guts up in the bushes as I came through.”

“It’s his first week on the job.”

“You bastard.”

“Maybe, but no one else wanted to put their hand in there. When you’re finished looking, the techies are going to pump the water out and filter it for evidence. But you get to see it first. Tell me this wasn’t a lycanthrope kill, Anita, tell me, and I’ll tell the media. It’ll quiet down the witch hunt.”

“But not the hysteria, Zerbrowski. If this is a second killer, then we’ve got two of the worst psychos I’ve seen in St. Louis. I’d love to prove it’s not a shape-shifter, but if it’s not, then we’ve got other problems.”

He blinked at me. “You’d really be happier if it’s the same shape-shifter?”

“Traditionally two separate killers slaughter more people than just one.”

“You still think more like a cop than a monster expert, Anita.”

“Thanks.” I turned back to the tub, and suddenly I knew I was going to do it. I wasn’t fishing deeper than the gloves. Too fucking unhealthy, but if I could find a piece with the shorter gloves, I was going to do it.

The water was cold, even through the gloves. I reached down, the line of cold, bloody water creeping up my skin, and with my hand less than halfway in, I hit something solid.

I froze for a moment, took a shallow breath and ran my hand down along what I’d touched. It was soft and solid at the same time, meaty flesh. I came to bone, and it was enough to grip, and raise it free of the water. It was what was left of a woman’s arm. The bone showed pinkish white as the water streamed away from it. The end that had attached to the shoulder was crushed. There were man-made tools that would do that kind of damage, but I doubted anyone would have gone to the trouble.

I set the arm aside and went back to where I’d found it. My hand sunk in a little farther this time, and I pulled out a nearly meatless bone. It didn’t look like a piece of person, so I didn’t think of it that way. I just looked at it as if I’d found an animal in the woods and was trying to figure out what had eaten it. Big teeth, lots of crushing strength. Very few real predators had this kind of bone-cracking strength, but most lycanthropes did. I doubted that some hyena had escaped from the zoo to rampage in a suburban bathroom.

I let the bone drift back into the water, slowly, easing it down, because for some reason I really didn’t want it to splash on me.

I turned away from the bathtub, walked carefully to the doorway, stripped off the gloves, threw them in the sack that Zerbrowski held open for me, leaned against the doorjamb, removed the booties, threw them into the garbage sack, stepped out of that awful room, and kept walking until I hit the bedroom.

The air seemed cleaner, more breathable here.

Zerbrowski followed me out, and it was Merlioni who said, “She did it, didn’t she?”

“Yep.”

Merlioni made a sort of crowing sound. “I knew it, I won.”

I looked at him, then at Zerbrowski. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Zerbrowski didn’t even look embarrassed when he said, “We had a bet going on whether you’d actually fish around in the tub.”

I sighed and shook my head. “You are all such unmitigated bastards.”

“Unmitigated, ooh,” said Merlioni, “if you use big words to insult us, Blake, we’ll never figure it out.”

I looked back at Zerbrowski. “It’s a shape-shifter. I don’t know if it’s the same one. The first vic was done in her bed. Was the second?” He nodded. “This was in the bath, and there’s at least two bodies cut up in the bathtub.”

“Why two?” Zerbrowski asked.

“Because the pile is too damn high to be only one woman’s body, especially since he ate parts of it.”

“You say ‘he,’ like you know.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I’m assuming male, because you don’t find many women willing to do this kind of shit. It happens, but it’s rare.”

“We actually got a witness that the woman who owns the house and another girlfriend were seen entering the residence at about 2 A.M.” Zerbrowski had his eyes closed, as if he were quoting. “They appeared drunk, and there was a man with him.”

“You have a witness?” I asked.

“If the man who brought them home is the shape-shifter, and not part of what is in the bathtub, yeah.”

I hadn’t thought about that. “He could be in the tub. By the way, why is the water so deep, why isn’t the overflow valve working?”

“Our rookie says a piece of body has been stuffed into the valve.”

I shivered. “No wonder he freaking threw up.”

“I lost on that one,” Merlioni said.

“Lost on what?” I asked.

“Most of us bet you’d be sick.”

“Who bet I wouldn’t be?”

Zerbrowski cleared his throat. “Me.”

“What did you win?”

“Dinner for two at Tony’s.”

“What did you win for me fishing in the tub?” I asked Merlioni.

“Money,” he said.

I shook my head. “I hate you all.” I started for the door.

“Wait, we got one more bet,” Merlioni said, “who was the chickie on the phone when Zerbrowski woke you?”

I was about to let loose a scathing comment, when a voice from the door stopped me. “Haven’t seen anything this bad since New Mexico?”

I turned to find my favorite FBI agent in the doorway. Special Agent Bradley Bradford smiled and offered me his hand.

55

BRADLEY WAS WITH the Special Research Section; it was a new division set up to handle preternatural crime. We’d last worked together on some very gruesome murders in New Mexico.

I took his firm handshake and gave one of my own. He smiled, and I think we were both actually glad to see each other. But his gaze swept the room until he found Zerbrowski. “Sergeant Zerbrowski, you must be living right.”

Zerbrowski moved towards us. “What do you mean, Agent Bradford?”

He held up a slender manila folder. “There’s a store across the street from the club where the two women went to last night. The store got robbed last year and put in a very nice surveillance system.”

All the joking was gone; Zerbrowski was very serious all of a sudden. “And?”

“They caught a picture of a man matching the neighbor’s description with the two women last night. They walked right past the store window.” He opened the folder. “I took the liberty of getting a still made.”

“And passed it to all of your men,” Merlioni said.

“No, detective, this is the only copy, and I brought it here first.”

Merlioni looked like he would have argued, but Zerbrowski cut him off. “I don’t care who solves this, as long as we get this guy.”

“I feel the same way,” Bradley said.

I didn’t exactly believe Bradley. Last time we’d talked, his little division had been in jeopardy of being disbanded, and their cases given back to the Investigative Support—read Serial Killer—Unit. Bradley was one of the good guys, he really did care more about solving crimes than career advancement, but he also cared about his new unit. He felt strongly that the feds needed one. I agreed with him. So why was he handing over the only copy of the picture? Sharing made sense, simply giving it to us didn’t.

“What do you think, Anita?” he asked me.

I glanced down at the photo. It was black and white, pretty good quality actually. Two women were laughing up at the tall man in between them. The brunette on the left matched some of the pictures downstairs. I hadn’t asked the name of the woman who owned the house. I hadn’t wanted to know. Not knowing had made it easier to go into that bathroom and paw through the remains.

The other woman looked vaguely familiar. “Wasn’t the woman in a group picture downstairs? It looked like it was taken at a party.”

“We’ll check,” Zerbrowski said.

“What about the man?” Bradley asked.

I looked at the man in the picture. The man that might be our killer or might be at the bottom of the pile of bones in the bathtub was tall, broad-shouldered. Straight brown hair was pulled back into a long ponytail that one of the women was tugging on, playing with. The face was high cheekboned, handsome. He wasn’t like Richard handsome, but they reminded me oddly of each other, both tall, both broad-shouldered, both classically handsome. But there was something in this man’s face even through the film that creeped me out.

It was probably knowing that the two women were only hours away from being butchered. It was probably my imagination, but I didn’t like the look on the man’s face when he glanced up and spotted the camera. I realized that that was what the look was, why it looked strange.

“He spotted the camera,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Zerbrowski asked.

“Look at his face, he didn’t like being on film.”

“He probably knew what he was going to do to them,” Merlioni said, “don’t want to be seen with the vics before the murder.”

“Maybe, probably.” I kept looking at his face, and I thought it was familiar.

“Do you recognize him?” Bradley asked.

I stared up at him. His face was empty, guileless, but I didn’t believe the innocent look. “Why would I?”

“Well, he is a shape-shifter, if he’s our man, I thought you might have seen him around.”

Bradley was lying, I could feel it. Even I wasn’t tactless enough to accuse him of it to his face, but I was saved from having to come up with something to say by my cell phone ringing. I’d kept it with me today, hooked on the back of my belt, just in case Musette and company didn’t go quietly out of town. Call me silly, but I just didn’t trust them.

“Hello.”

“Is this Anita Blake?” It was a woman. I didn’t recognize the voice.

“Yeah.”

“This is Detective O’Brien.”

Strangely, with all the vampire politics and the new murder I hadn’t given much thought to the internationally wanted terrorist Leopold Heinrick. “Detective O’Brien, good to hear from you, what’s up?”

“We identified the two pictures you pulled.”

“Really, I’m impressed, the photos weren’t that good.”

“Lieutenant Nicols, you met him once, he picked them out.”

It took me a second to place the name. “The lieutenant that was in charge at Lindel Cemetery.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. He picked out the same two pictures that you did, and since the two of you have only met once . . .”

Before she could finish, I said, “The bodyguards, the freaking bodyguards. Canducci and . . .”

She said, “Balfour.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I can’t believe I didn’t remember them.”

“You saw them once at night, Blake, and from what Nicols says, the widow was putting on quite a show.”

“Yeah, but still. Did you bring them in for questioning?”

“No one knows where they are. They quit their job at the security agency the day after you saw them. They’d only worked there for about two weeks. All the references they gave are leading to dead ends.”

“Shit,” I said. I glanced down at the picture that Bradley was still holding down where I could see it. I suddenly knew why that picture looked vaguely familiar. He was another of Heinrick’s known associates. Or he looked amazingly like one of them. But I just didn’t believe that coincidence would stretch that far.

I looked up at Bradley. He was still patiently holding the picture down where I could see it, lower than either of the other two men needed it. Maybe he was being polite, or maybe not. He met my gaze, and he gave me blank face. Cop face.

“What if I told you that I’m looking at a picture of one of the other known associates of Heinrick, and he’s in town, too?”

Bradley’s face never changed. Zerbrowski’s and Merlioni’s did. They looked surprised. Bradley didn’t.

“How did you get the picture?”

“Long story, but he’s wanted in connection with some murders here in town.”

“Which man?”

“I think he was the only one with longer hair. I don’t think it was back in a ponytail like it is here, but it was definitely shoulder length.”

I heard papers rustling. “I’ve got it.” I heard more papers rustling, then a soft whistle. “Roy Van Anders. He is a very bad man, Blake.”

“How bad?”

“Strangely, we got files just today about Mr. Van Anders. Crime scene photos that would turn your stomach.”

“A lot of blood, not a lot of body left?” I asked.

I could feel Zerbrowski tense beside me.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“I think I’m at a crime scene right now that’s Van Anders’s work.”

“You’re on that lycanthrope murder, right?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s nothing in his record that says he’s anything but human. He’s just a sick son of a bitch, who likes to rape and kill women.”

“Did anybody question how he dismembered the bodies, or where the rest of them went?”

“I haven’t read through everything yet, but no. Most of his crimes were in countries where we’re lucky to have gotten any pictures at all. Very low tech, very little money to do sophisticated crime work.”

“How sophisticated do you have to be to figure out the difference between tools and teeth?”

“A lot of serial killers use teeth, Blake.” She sounded like she felt she had to defend the honor of some far away police.

“I know that, O’Brien, but, oh, hell, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he’s here in our town, right now, and we aren’t low tech, and we do have at least a little money to track down the bad guys.”

“You’re right, Blake. Concentrate on the here and now.”

“Do we have enough to question Heinrick and his pal now?”

“I think we might. We can make a case that Heinrick knows about his pal’s hobbies. That would make him an accessory before the fact, if not more.”

“I’ll be down there as soon as I can get out of here.”

“Blake, this is not your case. You’re one of the potential victims. I think that makes you too close to everything to be objective.”

“Don’t do this, O’Brien, I’ve played fair with you.”

“This isn’t a game, Blake, this is a job. Or do you want credit for everything?”

“I don’t give a fuck about credit. I just want to be there when you question Heinrick.”

“If you get here in time, but we ain’t holding the party up for just you.”

“Fine, O’Brien, fine, you’re the detective in charge.”

“Nice of you to remember that.” She hung up on me.

I said a very heartfelt, “Bitch!”

Zerbrowski and Merlioni had eager expectant faces, but Bradley didn’t. He could do cop face, but he wasn’t an actor. I filled them in, and Zerbrowski was pissed at O’Brien, not for excluding me, but for not even bothering to consider contacting a member of RPIT.

“She’s got them in lockup for what, following you around? We’ve got four murders, maybe more.” He looked at me. “You want a ride in a car with sirens and lights, so that we can fucking get there before she does something to wreck our case?”

I liked the ‘our case,’ and I liked that he asked me along. Dolph probably wouldn’t have, even if he hadn’t been mad at me.

I nodded. “I’d love to go riding in and wave jurisdictional flags in her face.”

He grinned. “Give me ten minutes to give everybody their marching orders, then meet me downstairs. We’ll borrow a marked car. People always get out of the way faster for a marked car.” He was out the door and down the stairs humming to himself.

Merlioni went after him, saying, “Who has to stay here with the tub o’ death cleanup?” I don’t think Merlioni wanted to be included in the cleanup, not even to supervise.

Bradley and I found ourselves alone. It was unheard of for a fed, two feds I guess, to be left alone at a murder scene like this. Most locals hated the feds, and the feds hated them right back.

I looked up at Bradley. “Now that I’ve made all the connections you wanted me to make, tell me why you really came down here.”

He closed the manila envelope and handed it to me. “To solve a crime.”

“Solving these crimes would add to your unit’s clout. Last time we spoke you needed that clout.”

He was looking at me carefully.

“Are you here officially, Bradley?”

“Yes.”

I stared into his bland face. “Are you here officially just as an FBI agent?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“You told me once that I’d come to the attention of some of the less savory branches of our government, the spooks, I think you called them. Is Van Anders a spook?”

“No government in their right mind would want an animal like this in their country.”

“Talk to me, Bradley, talk to me, or the next time we meet I’m not going to trust you like I do right this minute.”

He sighed and suddenly looked tired. He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “These murders were brought to our attention. But I’d seen crimes like this before. In a different country, in a place where the government was more worried about staying in power than protecting helpless women.” There was a look in his eyes, something faraway, and pain-filled.

“You said you got out of that line of work.”

“I did.” He looked very steadily at me, no cop eyes now. “Men like Van Anders were one of the reasons I couldn’t keep doing it. But when certain people found out that Van Anders might actually have been let loose within the confines of the United States, they weren’t happy. I have a one time permission to help things along here.”

“What’s the price tag on this help?”

“Heinrick will be escorted out of the country. They’ll never put a name to the second man he was taken in with. It will all disappear.”

“Heinrick is a suspected terrorist. You think that they’ll just let him walk?”

“He’s wanted in five different countries that we have strong treaties with. Who do we give him to, Anita? Better to just let him go.”

“Don’t you want to know why he was in town? I know I want to know why he was following me.”

“I told you why these kind of people would want you.”

“So I can raise the dead for them. A political leader here, a few zombie bodyguards there,” I tried to make a joke of it, but Bradley wasn’t laughing.

“You know the man you found nailed to his living room wall?”

“Yeah.”

“He knew Heinrick and Van Anders, and he felt that they were too extreme. He left and he hid, but not well enough.”

“If it was an execution, why make it look like some sort of ritual murder?”

“So it wouldn’t look like an execution.”

“Why did they care?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It was a message, Anita. They wanted him dead, and they wanted him dead in such a way that it would be sensational enough to make headlines. They wanted his death out there for all the others like him, like me, that left.”

“You don’t know this for sure, Bradley.”

“Not all of it, but I know that everyone involved wants Van Anders caught, and Heinrick gone.”

“What about the others?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they gone for good, or should I still be worried?”

“Be worried, Anita, I would be.”

“Great.” Something occurred to me. “I know this is all off the record for you. Well, I’ve got one thing off the record to ask you.”

“I can’t promise, but what is it?”

I gave him Leo Harlan’s name, and a general description, because it’s not that hard to change your name. “He says he’s an assassin, and I believe him. He says he’s here on a sort of vacation, and I believe that, too. But St. Louis is suddenly lousy with internationally wanted bad guys, and I’d be curious to know if my client is tied to them somehow.”

“I’ll check around.”

“If he comes up on any of your hit parades, I’ll avoid him, and refuse to raise his ancestor. If he doesn’t, I’ll do the job.”

“Even though he’s an assassin?”

I shrugged. “Who am I to throw stones, Bradley? I try not to judge people more than I have to.”

“Or maybe you’re getting more comfortable with murderers.”

“Yeah, all my friends are either criminals, monsters, or cops.”

That made him smile.

Zerbrowski yelled from downstairs. “Anita, yo, we’re out of here.”

I gave Bradley my cell phone number. He copied it down. I ran for the stairs.

56

O’BRIEN HAD STARTED the interrogation before we got there. People in St. Louis didn’t seem to understand that sirens and lights on a police car meant get the fuck out of the way. It was almost as if the police car with all flags flying made a gawkers’ block around us. The drivers were so busy trying to figure out why we were in such a rush that they forgot to get out of the way.

I had never seen Zerbrowski so angry. Hell, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him angry. Not for real. He’d raised enough of a fuss to drag O’Brien out of the interrogation, but she kept saying, “You can have him when we’re through with him, Sergeant.”

Zerbrowski’s voice had crawled down so low it was almost painful to listen to it. That dragging, careful voice held enough heat to make me nervous. O’Brien didn’t seem impressed.

“Don’t you think, detective, that questioning him about a serial killer that’s already butchered three, maybe four people, takes precedent over questioning him about following a federal marshal?”

“I am questioning him about the serial killer.” A small frown formed between her eyes. “What do you mean three, maybe four?”

“We haven’t finished counting the pieces at the last crime scene. There may be two victims.”

“You can’t tell?” she asked.

He let out his breath in a loud humph of air. “You don’t know anything about these crimes. You don’t know enough to be questioning him without us.” His voice shook with the effort not to start screaming at her.

“Maybe you can sit in, sergeant, but not her.” She jerked a thumb in my direction.

“Actually, detective, technically, you can’t exclude me from the interrogation now that Heinrick is a suspect in preternatural crimes.”

O’Brien looked at me, a blank, unfriendly stare. “I excluded you just fine before, Blake.”

“Ah,” I said, and felt myself smiling, I couldn’t help it. “But that was when Heinrick was a suspected terrorist, and guilty of nothing more than illegal weapons violations, very mundane stuff. And nothing that my federal marshal status puts under my jurisdiction. As you pointed out earlier I’m not a regular federal marshal. My jurisdiction is very narrow. I have no legal status on nonpreternatural crimes, but on preternatural crimes I have jurisdiction all across this country. I don’t have to wait to be invited in.” I know I looked smug when I finished, but I just couldn’t seem to help myself. O’Brien was being pissy, and pissiness should be punished.

O’Brien looked like she’d bitten into something bitter. “This is my case.”

“Actually, O’Brien, it’s everybody’s case now. Mine, because federal law gives me the jurisdiction. Zerbrowski, because it’s a preternatural case, and that means it belongs to the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team. Truthfully, you have no jurisdiction on the murders. They didn’t happen on your turf, and you wouldn’t even have known that Heinrick was involved if we hadn’t shared information so freely with you.”

“We played fair with you,” Zerbrowski said, “play fair with us, and we all win.” His voice was almost normal. He’d lost that frightening bass.

She pointed a finger at me, rather dramatically, I thought. “But it’ll be her name in the paper.”

I shook my head. “Jesus, O’Brien, is that all this is about? You want your name in the headlines?”

“I know that cracking a serial murder could make me a sergeant.”

“If you want your name on this case, fine,” I said, “but let’s worry more about solving the case than who’s going to get credit for it.”

“Easy enough for you to say, Blake. Like you said, you don’t have a career in law enforcement. Getting credit for this won’t help you, but you’ll still get the credit.”

Zerbrowski pushed away from the wall where he’d been leaning. He touched the files on the edge of the table. He opened one just enough to pull out a photo. He half-slid, half-threw the picture across the table at O’Brien.

It was a splash of shape and color. Most of the color was red. I didn’t look too hard at it. I’d seen the real deal, I didn’t need a reminder.

O’Brien glanced down at the picture, then looked again. She frowned, and almost reached out for the photo, then stared harder. She concentrated on the image. I watched her try to make sense of what she was seeing, watched her mind rebel at making sense of it. I saw the moment she saw it, on her face, in the sudden paleness of her skin. She sat down slowly in the chair on her side of the table.

She seemed to have trouble looking away from the picture. “Are they all like this?” she asked in a voice gone thin.

“Yes,” Zerbrowski said. His voice was soft, too, as if he had made his point and wouldn’t rub it in.

She looked up at me, and it looked like a physical effort to pull her gaze away from that photo. “You’ll be the darling of the media again,” but her voice was soft, like it didn’t matter.

“Probably,” I said, “but it’s not because I want to be.”

“You’re just so damned photogenic,” her voice had held a hint of her earlier scorn, then she frowned and glanced down at the photo again. She seemed to hear what she’d just said, and with that awful, hideous photo sitting in front of her, it seemed the wrong thing to say.

“I didn’t mean . . .” She rallied, and put back on her angry face, but it seemed more like a mask to hide behind now.

“Don’t worry, O’Brien,” Zerbrowski said, and he had his teasing voice back. I knew enough to dread what would come out of his mouth next, but she didn’t. “We know what you meant. Anita is just so damned cute.”

She gave a weak smile. “Something like that, yes,” she said. The smile vanished as if it had never existed. She was all business again. O’Brien never seemed to get very far from business. “Seeing that this doesn’t happen to another woman is more important than who gets credit.”

“Glad to hear we all agree,” Zerbrowski said.

O’Brien stood up. She pushed the picture back towards Zerbrowski, doing her best not to look at it this time. “You can question Heinrick, and the other one, though he doesn’t say much.”

“Let’s have a plan before we go in there,” I said.

They both looked at me.

“We know that Van Anders is our guy, but we don’t know for sure that he’s our only guy.”

“You think one of the men we have here helped Van Anders do this?” O’Brien motioned towards the piture that Zerbrowski was tucking away.

“I don’t know.” I glanced at Zerbrowski and wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was. The first message had read “we nailed this one, too.” We. I wanted to make sure that Heinrick wasn’t part of that ‘we’. If he was, then he wasn’t going anywhere, not if I could help it. I really didn’t care who got credit for solving the case. I just wanted it solved. I just wanted to never, ever have to see anything else as bad as that bathroom, that bathtub, and its . . . contents. I use to think I helped the police out of a sense of justice, a desire to protect the innocent, maybe even a hero complex, but, lately, I’m beginning to understand that sometimes I want to solve the case for a much more selfish reason. So I don’t ever have to walk through another crime scene as bad as the one I just saw.

57

HEINRICK WAS SITTING behind the small table, slumped back in the chair, which is actually harder than it looks in a straight-backed chair. His carefully cut blond hair was still neat, but he’d laid his glasses on the table, and his face looked younger without them. His file said he was closer to forty than thirty, but he didn’t look it. He had an innocent face, and I knew that was a lie. Anyone who looks that innocent after thirty is either lying, or touched by the hand of God. Somehow I didn’t think Leopold Heinrick was ever going to be a saint. Which left only one conclusion—he was lying. Lying about what? Now there was the question.

There was a Styrofoam cup with coffee in front of him. It had been sitting long enough that the cream had started to separate from the darker liquid, so that swirls of paleness decorated the top of the coffee.

He looked up when Zerbrowski and I entered. Something flickered through his pale eyes: interest, curiosity, worry? The look was gone before I could decipher it. He picked up his glasses, giving me a blank, innocent face. With his glasses back on, he came closer to looking his age. They broke up the line of his face, so that the frames were what you saw first.

“You want a fresh cup of coffee?” I asked him as I sat down. Zerbrowski leaned against the wall, near the door. We’d start out with me questioning Heinrick to see if I got anywhere. Zerbrowski made it clear that I was up to bat, but no one, including me, wanted me alone with Heinrick. He had been following me, and we still didn’t know why. Agent Bradford had guessed that it was part of some plot to get me to raise the dead for some nefarious purpose. Bradford didn’t know, not for sure. Until we knew for sure, caution was better. Hell, caution was probably always better.

“No,” Heinrick said, “no more coffee.”

I had a fresh cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of file folders in the other. I placed the coffee on the table and made a show of arranging the pile of folders neatly beside it. His gaze flicked to the folders, then settled serenely back on me.

“Had too much coffee?” I asked.

“No.” His face was attentive, blank, with a touch of wariness. Something had him worried. Was it the files? Too large a stack. We’d intended it to be too large. There were files at the bottom that had nothing to do with Leopold Heinrick, Van Anders, or the nameless man that was sitting in another room just down the hall. It was impossible to have a military record with no name attached, but somehow the dark-haired American had managed it. His file was so full of blacked-out spaces that it was almost illegible. The fact that no one would give our John Doe a name, but they would acknowledge he was once a member of the armed forces was disturbing. It made me wonder what my goverment was up to.

“Would you like something else to drink?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“We may be in here a while.”

“Talking is thirsty work,” Zerbrowski said from the back.

Heinrick’s eyes flicked to him, then back to me. “Silence is not thirsty work.” His lips quirked, and it was almost a smile.

“If sometime during this interview you want to tell us exactly why you were following me, I’d love to hear it, but that’s really secondary to why we’re here.”

He looked puzzled then. “When you first stopped us that seemed to be very important to you.”

“It was, and I’d still like to know, but the priorities have changed.”

He frowned at me. “You are playing games, Ms. Blake. I am tired of games.”

There was no fear in him. He seemed tired, wary, and not happy, but he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t afraid of the police, or me, or going to jail. There was none of that anxiety that most people have in a police interrogation. It was odd. Bradley had said that our goverment was going to just let Heinrick go. Did he suspect that—know that? If so, how? How did he know? Why wasn’t he the least bit afraid of spending time in the St. Louis jail system?

I opened the first file. It held grainy copies of old crimes. Women Van Anders had slaughtered in foreign countries, far from here.

I laid the photos out in front of him, in a neat row of black and white carange. In some of the photos the quailtiy was so bad that if you hadn’t known you were looking at human remains, you’d have never guessed. Van Anders had reduced his victims to Rorschach tests.

Heinrick looked bored now, almost disgusted. “Your Detective O’Brien has already shown me these. Already marched out her lies.”

“What lies would those be?” I asked. I sipped my coffee, and it wasn’t bad. It was fresh, at least. As I sipped, I watched his face.

He folded his arms across his chest. “That there are fresh murders here in your city like these old ones.”

“What makes you think she’s lying?”

He started to say something, then closed his mouth tight, his lips a thin angry line. He just glared at me, pale eyes bright with anger.

I opened the second folder and began laying out colored photos just above the old black and whites. I laid them out in a line of bright death, and watched all the color drain away from Heinrick’s skin. He looked almost gray by the time I sat back down. I’d had to stand to reach the ends of the table, to lay out the photos.

“This woman was killed three days ago.” I got another file out of the stack. I opened it, and fanned the photos on top of it, but didn’t put them with the stack. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I’d be able to match the photos back to the right crime. They were supposed to be marked on the back, but I hadn’t marked them personally, so I didn’t want to risk it. Once you get into court the lawyers get damned picky about evidence and stuff.

I pointed to the file pictures. “This woman was killed two days ago.”

Zerbrowski stepped forward and handed me a plastic baggie with a handful of polaroids in it. I tossed the baggie across the table so that it slid by him, and he caught it automatically before it hit the floor. His eyes were very big when he saw the top print.

“Those women died last night. We think there were two victims, but truthfully we haven’t finished putting together the pieces, so we’re not a hundred percent certain. It could be more, or it could be just one woman, but that’s an awful lot of blood for only one woman, don’t you think?”

He laid the baggie of polaroids carefully on the table, so that they didn’t touch any of the other photos. He stared at all the pictures, his face gone death white, his eyes huge. His voice squeezed out like it was an effort to breathe, let alone talk. “What do you wish to know?”

“We want to stop this from happening again,” I said.

He was staring down at the pictures, as if he couldn’t look away. “He promised he would not do it here. He swore that he could control himself.”

“Who?” I asked, softly. Yeah, the goverment had given him a name, but that was the same goverment that wouldn’t give our John Doe one.

“Van Anders,” he whispered the name. He looked up, and there was surprise underneath the shock. “The other detective said you knew it was Van Anders.”

Great. Nothing like giving your suspect more information than he’s giving you.

I shrugged. “Without eyewitnesses it’s hard to be certain.”

Something like hope sparked in his eyes and he started regaining some of his color. “You think this might be someone else? Not Van Anders?”

I riffled through the files again, and Heinrick flinched. I found the thin folder with the picture of Van Anders and the two women. I flashed him the picture. “Van Anders with the victims from last night’s slaughter.”

He winced at the last word, and the color that had been seeping back into his face drained away again. His lips looked bloodless. For a second I thought he might faint. I’d never had a suspect faint on me before.

His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Then it is him.” He laid his forehead on the table.

“Do you need some water, something stronger?” I asked. Though truthfully, black coffee was as strong as I could give him. There were rules about giving liquor to suspects.

He raised his head, slowly, but he looked awful. “I told them that he was crazy. I told them not to include him.”

“Told who?” I asked.

He sat up a little straighter. “I agreed to come here against my better judgment. I knew the team was assembled too quickly. When you rush such a task, it ends badly.”

“What task?” I asked.

“To recruit you for a mission.”

“What mission?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. Some of our people got you on tape raising a man in a local cemetery. He did not look alive enough for what my employers wished. He looked like a zombie, and that is not good enough.”

“Good enough for what?” I asked.

“To fool people in the country that their leader is still alive.”

“What country?” I asked.

He shook his head, and a ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “I will not be here long, Ms. Blake. Those that employ me will see to it. They will either work to free me soon, with no charges, or they will have me killed.”

“You seem calm about that,” I said.

“I believe I will go free.”

“But you’re not sure,” I said.

“Few things in life are certain.”

“I know one thing that’s certain,” I said.

He just looked at me. I think he’d said more than he’d planned to say. So he was going to try not to say anything.

“Van Anders will kill someone else tonight.”

His eyes were bleak when he said, “I had worked with him years ago, before I knew what he was. I should not have believed him that he was in control of his rage. I should have known.”

“Are your employers just going to leave Van Anders here to butcher more women?”

He looked at me then. Again, I couldn’t quite read his expression. Determination, guilt, something.

“I know where Van Anders is staying. I will give you that address. I know that my employers would wish him dead now. He has become a liability.”

We got the address from him. I didn’t hurry out after it, because unlike the movies, I knew I wouldn’t be allowed in at the capture. Mobile Reserve, St. Louis’s answer to SWAT, would be the ones running the show. When you have people that can go in with body armor and fully automatic weapons, the rest of us are just outclassed.

I opened one last file and showed him the man they’d crucified against the wall. “Why did you need Van Anders to do this? Not his kind of kill.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

He was going to deny it, fine. Even if we could have pinned it on him, I doubt we could have kept him long enough for a trial. “We know you and your team did this. We even know why.” If Bradley was telling the truth, I did know.

“You know nothing.” He sounded very sure of that.

“You were ordered to kill him because he ran. Ran away from people like you, and people like Van Anders.”

He looked at me then, and he was worried. He was wondering how much I knew. Not much. But maybe it was enough. “Whose idea was it to crucify him?”

“Van Anders’s.” He looked like he’d swallowed something sour. Then he gave a small smile. “It won’t matter, Ms. Blake, I’ll never see trial.”

“Maybe not, but I always like to know where the blame goes.”

He nodded, then said, “Van Anders was so angry when we shot him first. He said what good is a crucifixion if the person isn’t struggling.” He looked at me with haunted eyes. “I should have known then what he meant to do.”

“Whose idea were the runes?” I asked.

He shook his head. “You’ve gotten the last startled confession you shall get from me.”

“There’s still one thing I don’t understand.” Actually, there were lots of things I didn’t understand, but it’s never good to appear confused in front of the bad guys.

“I will not incriminate myself, Ms. Blake.”

“If you knew what Van Anders was capable of, then why bring him along? Why make him part of the team, at all?”

“He is a werewolf, as you have learned from what he does to his victims. There were those who believed you were a shape-shifter, as well. We wanted someone that could manage you without risk of infection, if you fought us.”

“You were planning on kidnapping me?”

“As a last resort,” he said.

“But because Balfour and Canducci didn’t like my zombie, the plan is off?”

“Those names will do for them, but yes. We had reports that you could raise zombies that thought they were still alive and could pass as human. My employers were very disappointed when they saw the tape.”

I owed Marianne and her coven a thank-you note. If they hadn’t gotten all witchier-than-thou on me, I’d have raised a fine, alive-looking zombie, and I might even now be kidnapped, and at the mercy of Van Anders. Maybe I should send Marianne flowers, a card just didn’t seem to be enough.

I tried some more questions, but Leopold Heinrick had given out all the information he was going to give. He finally asked for a lawyer, and the interview was over.

I stepped out into the main area, and it was in chaos. People yelling, running. I caught the phrase, “officers down.” I grabbed Detective Webster of the blond hair and bad coffee. “What’s happened?”

O’Brien answered for him. “The Mobile Reserve Squad that went out to pick up Van Anders—he cut them up. At least one dead, maybe more.”

“Shit,” I said.

She had her jacket on and was digging her purse out of a drawer.

“Where’s Zerbrowski?”

“He’s gone already.”

“Can I catch a ride?”

She looked at me. “Where to? I’m going to the hospital.”

“I think I need to be at the crime scene.”

“I’ll take you,” Webster said.

O’Brien gave him a look.

“I’ll be at the hospital later. I promise.”

O’Brien shook her head and ran for the door. Everyone was leaving. Some would go to the hospital. Some would go to the crime scene and see if they could help there. Some would go sit with the families of the downed officers. But everyone would go. If you really wanted to commit a crime in any city, wait until there’s an officer-down call, everyone drops everything.

I’d go to the scene of the crime. I’d try to help figure out what went wrong. Because something had gone very wrong if Van Anders had taken out an entire squad from the Mobile Reserve. They’re trained to handle terrorists, hostage situations, drugs, gangs, biochemical hazards; pick your nastiness, and Mobile Reserve can handle it. Yes, something had gone terribly wrong. The question was, what?

58

I’D SEEN ENOUGH of Van Anders’s handy work to be prepared for the worst. What I saw in the hallway wasn’t even close to his worst. Compared to the other crime scenes, it was almost clean. There was a uniformed officer standing next to the window at the end of the hallway. The window was almost completely free of glass, as if something large had been thrown through it. I turned away from the thought of one of the city’s finest plunging to his death. Other than the window, there wasn’t much else.

A sprinkling of blood on the pale brown carpet in the hallway. Two blood smears on the wall looked almost artifical, overly dramatic on the off-white walls. That was all. Van Anders hadn’t had time to enjoy himself. One officer was dead, maybe two, but he’d just had time to kill them. He hadn’t had time to cut them up. I wondered if that made him angry? Did he feel cheated?

There was a trickle of police in the hallway, but the sound of voices from the open door of the apartment was as murmurous as the sea. A sorrowful, angry, urgent, confused sea.

The apartment was pristine, untouched. There had been no fight inside. All the trouble had started and ended in the hallway.

Detective Webster had come up with me. He was still in the doorway, because there wasn’t room to walk into the room. Every homicide has more cops than you think it needs, but I’d never seen a crowd like this. It was nearly wall-to-wall people like at a party, except that every face was grim, or shocked, or angry. No one was having a good time.

Zerbrowski had called my cell phone in the car on the way there. Everybody was wanting answers, answers about the monsters, answers that he couldn’t give, because he didn’t fucking know. His quote, not mine.

I debated on whether to yell for Zerbrowski or call him back on his cell phone. I don’t usually mind being short, but this time I couldn’t see through the crowd, and I sure as hell couldn’t see over it.

I glanced at Webster. He was damn near six feet. “Can you spot Sergeant Zerbrowski?”

Webster suddenly looked even taller. I realized that he’d been slumping, artfully, the way some tall people do, especially if they got tall early and didn’t like it. Standing with his shoulders back, and trying to gaze across the crowd, he was at least six one, maybe an inch more. I’m usually a pretty good judge of height.

“He’s on the far side of the room.” He suddenly seemed to shrink, shoulders rounding, almost like his spine compressed before my eyes.

I shook my head, and said, “Can you get his attention?”

He got a mischievous grin on his face, a look that Zerbrowski and Jason had made me dread. “I could put you on my shoulders, then he’d spot you.”

I gave him a look that wilted the grin into a smile. He shrugged. “Sorry.” But it was the kind of sorry I’m used to, the one Jason always gives when he’s not sorry at all.

Either Zerbrowski is more psychic than I thought, or he was trying to get away from the man who was dogging him. It was one of the Mobile Reserve officers in full combat black, body armor still in place, but he’d lost his helmet, his mask, and his eyes were wild. The whites kept flashing like a horse’s when it’s about to bolt.

Zerbrowski saw me, and the look of relief on his face was so pure, so happy, that it almost scared me. “Officer Elsworthy, this is Anita Blake, Marshal Anita Blake. She’s our preternatural expert.”

Elsworthy frowned, blinking a little too rapidly. It was as if it took longer than it should have for the words to filter through and have meaning. I’d seen enough shock to know the symptoms. Why wasn’t he at the hospital with the rest of his squad?

Zerbrowski mouthed, “Sorry,” to me.

Elsworthy blinked at me, his brown eyes didn’t even look like they were focusing, as if what he was seeing was somewhere inside his head. Shit. A moment ago he’d been yelling at Zerbrowski, now he was staring at things that we couldn’t see. Probably reliving the disaster. He was pale, and there was a light dew of sweat on his face. I was betting he would be clammy to the touch.

I put my face close to Zerbrowski, and spoke low, “Why isn’t he at the hospital with the others?”

“He wouldn’t go. Said he wanted to ask RPIT how the hell a werewolf can grow claws when it’s still in human form.”

I must have reacted to the question, because Zerbrowski suddenly gave me a look through the rims of his glasses. “I told him it wasn’t possible for a shifter to gain claws while still in full human form. Was I wrong?”

I nodded. “A shifter has to be really powerful to be able to do it. I’ve only known a handful that could do partial change while they pretty much looked human.”

Zerbrowski lowered his voice even more, “It might have been good to know that before they busted in on Van Anders.”

“I thought a minimum of one person from each squad went down to Quantico for the big preternatural class and lecture.”

“They did.”

I gave him a disgusted look. “I don’t go around assuming that I know more about the monsters than the freaking FBI.”

“Maybe you should,” Zerbrowski said softly.

The way he said it took the heat out of my words. I couldn’t really get angry with Elsworthy standing there blinking like an innocent come to slaughter.

“Is it hot in here?” Elsworthy asked.

Actually, it was, too many people in too small a space. “Detective Webster, take Elsworthy out into the hall for a breath of air, would you?”

Webster did what I asked, and Elsworthy went without a single complaint. It was as if he’d used up all his anger before I got there, and now all that was left was the shock and the horror of it all.

Zerbrowski and I stayed in our little corner. “What went wrong?” I asked.

“I’ve been yelled at by Elsworthy, but even better, Captain Parker. He’s waiting at the hospital for me to get my ass down there and explain to him how the hell Van Anders was able to do what he did.”

“What exactly did he do?”

Zerbrowski dug his ever-present notebook out of his jacket pocket. The notebook looked like it’d been rolled in the dirt, then stepped on. He ruffled through it until he got to the pages he wanted. “Van Anders cooperated completely when they came in. He seemed surprised and didn’t know why anyone would want to arrest him. He was handcuffed, patted down, and the two tactical officers, Bates and Meyer, led him out into the hallway, while the rest of the squad reformed and made sure the rest of the apartment was clear.” He glanced up at me. “Standard procedure.”

“So when did it stop being standard?”

“Then it gets a little confused. Meyer never came back on the radio, at all. Bates started yelling, officer down, and something about, he’s got claws. Elsworthy and another officer got out the door in time to see Van Anders clear enough that they both swear he had claws but was in full human form.” Zerbrowski gave me a look. “Truthfully, I was ready to think Elsworthy, and . . .” He turned a page of his notebook, “Tucker, were seeing things.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s possible.” I shook my head again and fought the urge to rub my temples. I had a headache starting. “The lycanthropes that I’ve seen do this, the claws just whip out. It’s like having five switchblades suddenly appear. There wouldn’t have been anything for the officer, Bates, was it? to see.”

“Meyer, Bates is still alive.”

I nodded. Names were important. It was important to remember who was dead and who was alive. “Van Anders stabbed Meyer. When the claws shot out of his fingertips, he used them like knives.”

“Apparently Kevlar doesn’t stop lycanthrope claws,” Zerbrowski said.

“Kevlar isn’t made to stop a stabbing attack,” I said, “the claws acted like blades.”

He nodded. “Van Anders used the officer as a shield, held him on his claws like a . . . puppet, is what Elsworthy finally said.”

“He should have gone to the hospital with the others,” I said.

“He looked fine when I got here, Anita, honest. I don’t blame them for not forcing him to go.”

“Well, he doesn’t look fine now.”

“We can give him a ride to the hospital when we go.”

I looked at him. “Why do I think that we are going to the hospital for more than just a show of moral support?”

“You’re just perceptive as hell tonight.”

“Zerbrowski,” I said.

“I told Captain Parker that I’d be right along once Marshal Blake showed up.”

“You bastard.”

“He’s asking questions about the monsters that I don’t have the answers to. Maybe Dolph would, but there is no way I want him to be here. We managed to quiet down the worst of what happened in the interrogation with your furry friend, but if Dolph loses it in a public setting . . .” He just shook his head.

I agreed with him. “Fine, I’ll go with you to the hopsital and see if I can answer the captain’s questions.”

“Ah, but first ya gotta see this.” He was actually smiling, and it wasn’t a place for smiles.

“See what?” I asked suspiciously.

He turned without a word and led the way down the hallway towards the empty window. Webster had taken Elsworthy in the opposite direction so that they stood as far from the window as the hallway allowed. Good for Webster.

When we were close enough, my eyes started looking at something besides the window. There were two neat bullet holes in the wall near the window at the end of the hallway. Mobile Reserve’s weapons can go fully automatic at the flick of a switch, but they’re trained to do it one bullet at a time. With two officers down, and a monster on the loose, they’d remembered their training.

Zerbrowski motioned the uniform back, so we had some privacy. There was almost no glass on the carpet, because it had all gone outside.

“Did Van Anders throw someone through the window?”

“He threw himself,” Zerbrowski said.

I stared at him. “We’re twenty stories up, even a werewolf isn’t going to walk away from that kind of fall. It may not kill him, but he’ll be hurting.”

“He didn’t go down, he went up.” He motioned me closer to the window.

I didn’t like the window. It had a very low sill, almost low enough to step through. That gives a better view, but without glass in the metal frame, there was nothing but empty air between me and a very big fall.

“Careful of the glass, and don’t look down. But trust me, Anita, it’s worth leaning out just a little, and looking up. Look at the right side of the window.”

I placed a hand against the wall and found a place in the metal that was glass free so I could get a grip. The air was beating against me, like eager hands ready to snatch me away. I’m not afraid of heights, but the idea of falling from them, well, that I’m afraid of. I fought the almost irresistible urge to look down, because I knew if I looked down I might not be able to look out the window at all.

I leaned out, very carefully, and at first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. There were holes in the side of the building, all the way up, as far as my eyes could follow. Small holes at regular intervals.

I eased myself back in, carefully, watching for glass as much as a fall. I frowned at Zerbrowski. “I saw the holes, but what are they?”

“Van Anders did a Spiderman on them. The sniper and observer were set up on the opposite side of the building. There was nothing they could do.”

I felt my eyes go wide. “You mean the holes are where he shoved his hands into the building, and climbed up?”

Zerbrowski nodded, and he was smiling. “Captain Parker was screaming that he didn’t know werewolves could do that either.”

I glanced back at the window. “Captain Parker isn’t the only one that didn’t know. I mean they have the strength, but they get cut and scraped and break bones even. They may heal quickly, but it hurts them.” I looked up at the ceiling as if I could still see the upward march of holes. “Being shot would have hurt like hell.”

Zerbrowski nodded. “Will he need to see an emergency room, a doctor, something?”

I shook my head. “I doubt it. If he’s strong enough to do a partial change, then I’ll have to assume that his healing abilities are on the high end. If they are, he’ll be healed within a couple hours, maybe less. If he changes form, when he’s human again, he’ll be good as new.”

“They’ve put the word out to all the emergency and urgent care places, just in case.”

I nodded. “Can’t hurt, I guess, but I don’t think you’re going to catch him that way.”

“How are we going to catch him, Anita? How do you catch something like this?”

I looked at him. “Did you ask the upper brass what they thought of using werewolves to track him?”

“They vetoed it.”

“I think you might find them in a more receptive mood now.”

“You think your friends will be nice on a leash for me?”

“I was really thinking I’d been holding the leash.” My phone rang, and the sound made me jump. I flipped it open, and it was a voice I didn’t recognize. I don’t talk to the chief of police all that often.

I did a lot of yes, sir, and no, sir. Then the phone was buzzing, and I was left with Zerbrowski staring at me. “Were you talking to who I think you were talking to?”

“They’ve issued a court order of execution for Van Anders.”

Zerbrowski’s eyes were wide. “You are not going after him alone.”

I shook my head. “I hadn’t planned on it.”

He looked like he didn’t believe me. I actually had to give him my word I wouldn’t try to pop Van Anders without backup. I’d have backup. The police chief had told me over the phone that they’d go along with the werewolf tracking idea. I’d have backup—if I could persuade Richard to give them to me.

I asked for some plastic evidence bags and raided Van Anders’s dirty clothes drawer. I used gloves, not to keep my scent off them, but because I didn’t want to touch anything that had touched Van Anders’s body. I sealed the clothes in the bag, and hoped it would be enough to help the werewolves track him. We’d come back and start around the foot of this building. Van Anders might have climbed up, but he had to come down somewhere.

Zerbrowski drove me, Officer Elsworthy, and himself off to the hospital, so Captain Parker could yell at us both. Bates had died on the operating table.

Zerbrowski had to take the tongue lashing, because a sergeant doesn’t outrank a captain. I took it, because I smelled the fear on Parker. I didn’t blame him for being afraid. I think we were all afraid, every single person in the hallway. Every person in the apartment. Every policeman, and woman, in town should have been afraid. Because when something like this happens it’s still the police that have to clean up the mess. Well, the police, and your friendly neighborhood executioner. We were all afraid, and we should have been.

59

I MET RICHARD at his house. We sat at the kitchen table where we’d sat so many weekend mornings. He drank tea. I sipped coffee. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I didn’t know what to say.

He caught me off guard by starting. “If you’d stuck to my morals, Asher would be dead right now, or worse, trapped in Europe with that monstrous bitch.”

I was pretty sure that “monstrous bitch” was Belle Morte. “That’s true,” I said, and I tried to keep my voice neutral. I wanted to get down to business and ask Richard to loan me some werewolves, but it didn’t usually work well to approach Richard head on. It didn’t take much to offend him. I needed his cooperation, not another fight.

“I don’t understand how you could let them feed off of you, Anita.” He finally looked up and his perfectly brown eyes were filled with a pain and confusion, so raw, that it hurt me to look at them.

“It’s hard for me to cast stones anymore, Richard.”

“The ardeur,” he said.

I nodded.

“I can’t let you feed off of me either.”

“I understand that,” I said.

He searched my face. “Then why are you here?”

Had he really thought this was going to be some tearful reunion, some plea on my part to get him back in my bed? Part of me was pissed, part of me was sad, none of me had time for it.

“The werewolf that’s been raping and killing women here got away from the police today.”

“I haven’t seen anything on the news.”

“We’re trying to keep it quiet.”

“You’re here for business,” his voice was soft.

“I’m here to keep other women from dying.”

He got up from the table, and I was afraid for a moment that he’d leave, but he took the tea cozy off the teapot and refreshed his mug. “It’s not one of my wolves, Anita.”

“I know that.”

He turned, and there was the first hint of anger. “Then what do you want from me?”

I sighed. “Richard, I love you, I may always love you, but I don’t have time for this fight, not right now.”

“Why not now?” he asked, and he was angry.

I opened the file folder and took out the first photo. I held it up so he could see it. He frowned, narrowing his eyes, then finally his mind made sense of it, and total disgust filled his face. He turned away.

“Why are you showing me that?”

“He’s killed three women here and over a half dozen in other countries. Those are only the ones we know about. He’s out there right now picking a new victim.”

“I can’t do anything about that.”

“But I can, if you’ll give me some werewolves to help track him.”

He looked at me then, then away, because I still had the photo showing. “Track him, you mean like a dog?”

“No, most dogs won’t track a shape-shifter, they’re too scared of them.”

“We’re not animals, Anita.”

“No, you’re not, but in animal form you have the nose of one, but you still have the brain of a person. You can track and think.”

“Me, you expect me to do this?”

I shook my head, and laid the photo down on the pile. I stood and spread the pile out across his table. “No, but Jason would, and Jamil would if you asked him to. I’d say Sylvie, but she’s not well enough to do much of anything.”

“She challenged me, and she lost,” Richard said. His eyes kept flicking to the photos on the table. “Get those off of my table.”

“He’s out there right now, about to turn another woman into so much meat.”

“Fine, fine, take Jason, take Jamil, take whoever the hell you want.”

“Thank you.” I started gathering the photos up.

“You didn’t have to do it this way, Anita.”

“What way?” I asked, shutting the file over the gruesome photos.

“Harsh. You could have just asked me.”

“Would you have said yes?”

“I don’t know, but those photos are going to haunt me.”

“I saw the real deal, Richard, your nightmares can’t be worse than mine.”

He moved in one of those blurs of speed and grabbed my arm. “Part of me thinks they’re horrifying, just like I’m supposed to, but part of me likes the pictures.” His fingers dug into my arm, bruising. “Part of me just sees fresh meat.” He let a growl trickle out from between his even white teeth.

“I’m sorry you hate what you are, Richard.”

He let go of me so fast, I almost fell. “Take the wolves you need, and get out.”

“If I could wave a magic wand over you and make you human, purely human, I’d do it, Richard.”

He looked at me; his eyes had bled to wolf amber. “I believe you, but there isn’t a magic wand. I am what I am, and nothing will ever change that.”

“I’m sorry, Richard.”

“I’ve decided to live, Anita.”

I looked at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“I’ve been trying to die. I’m not going to die anymore. I’m going to live, whatever that means.”

“I’m glad, but I wish you sounded happier about the choice.”

“Go, Anita, you’ve got a murderer to catch.”

I did, and time was not on our side. But I still hated leaving him like this. “I’ll do what I can to help you, Richard, you know that.”

“Like you help all your friends.”

I shook my head, gathered up the folder, and went for the door. “When you want to talk, and not to fight, give me a call, Richard.”

“And when you want to talk, and not catch murderers, you give me a call.”

We left it at that. But I didn’t have time to hold his hand, even if he would have let me. Van Anders was out there, and there were so many people he could hurt. What was a little emotional desolation between friends compared to getting Van Anders off the streets?

60

JASON AND JAMIL stayed in human form, while Norman and Patricia stayed in wolf form. I’d seen Norman in human form before, but I couldn’t put a face on Patricia. She was just a big shaggy wolf, pale, almost white. We had to put the two pony-sized wolves on leashes. Today of all days I did not want the police seeing a giant wolf running loose on the streets. I was thinking they’d be in a shoot-first-ask-questions-later sort of mood.

I’d unzipped the two bags that I’d collected from Van Anders’s rented apartment. The wolves sniffed it, growled, and on the end of leashes, they tracked him from the sidewalk around his apartment building, and all through the city, and finally to a mall.

The police had been watching the airports, the bus stations, the highways. Van Anders was sitting in the freaking food court of Eastfield mall. He’d piled his hair up under a billed cap and added a cheap pair of sunglasses. As disguises went it was okay. Besides, I couldn’t complain, much. I was wearing a billed cap with my hair up under it, and sunglasses. I hate it when the bad guys copy. I was also wearing a baggy T-shirt, and baggy jeans with my Nikes. Short as I was, I looked like a thousand teenagers wandering any mall in America.

I’d deputized Jamil and Jason. They stayed out of sight, but warned me that he’d smell them sooner or later. I’d already flashed my badge at mall security. I’d made the decision that we wouldn’t call the police, and we wouldn’t try to evacuate. I had a court order of execution. I didn’t have to give him a warning. I didn’t have to do anything but kill him.

It was mid-afternoon, so the food court wasn’t too busy. That was good. There was a group of teenagers at the table nearest Van Anders. Why weren’t they in school? At the table next-closest to him was a mother with a baby in a stroller and two toddlers. Two toddlers, neither of them in baby seats, but running free, while she tried to help the baby eat soft-serve yogurt.

Van Anders was still more than fifteen feet from the rampaging toddlers. The teenagers were frightfully close, but I couldn’t figure out how to get them to move. I was working up my nerve to wind my way through the daytime moms and kids, when the teenagers got up, left their trash on the table, and walked away.

Van Anders was as isolated as I was going to get him here in the mall. I wasn’t willing to let him escape again. He was too dangerous. I made the decision in that moment that I would endanger all these nice people. That the mother with her yogurt-smeared baby, and the two screaming toddlers were going to have to take their chances. I was fairly certain I could control the situation well enough to keep them out of it, but I wasn’t completely certain. All I knew for sure was that I was going to take him, now. I wasn’t going to wait.

I had my gun at my side, safety off, round-chambered long before I got to the table with the mother and her children. I had my federal marshal badge hanging out over the pocket of the large T-shirt, just in case some brave civilian decided to try and save Van Anders.

I had the gun up and pointed as I passed the woman’s table. I think it was her soft gasp that made him turn. He saw the badge, and he smiled, taking another bite of his sandwich. He talked with his mouth full. “Are you going to warn me not to move, tell me to freeze?” He sounded Dutch.

“No,” I said, and I shot him.

The bullet spun him out of his chair, and I fired again before he’d hit the ground. The first one had been rushed; not lethal, but the second one was a solid body shot.

I fired into his body twice more before I got close enough to watch his mouth open and shut. Blood blossomed from his lips, and turned his blue shirt purple.

I circled wide, so I could get a clear head shot. He lay on his back and bled, and managed to cough blood, and clear his throat enough to say, “Police have to give warning. Can’t just shoot.”

I let out all the breath in my body, and sighted on his forehead just above the eyes. “I’m not the police, Van Anders, I’m the executioner.”

His eyes widened, and he said, “No.”

I pulled the trigger and watched most of his face explode into an unrecognizable mess. His eyes had been bluer than in the photos.

61

BRADLEY CALLED ME at home that night. Strangely, after blowing a man’s brains out in front of a lot of suburban moms and kids I just wasn’t in the mood to go into work. I was already tucked into bed with my favorite toy penguin, Sigmund, and Micah curled beside me. Usually Micah’s warmth was more comforting than a truckload of stuffed toys, but tonight I needed that choking grip on my favorite toy. Micah’s arms were wonderful, but Sigmund never told me I was being silly, or bloodthirsty. Neither had Micah, but I kept waiting for it.

“You made national news, and the Post-Dispatch is running a front-page picture of you executing Van Anders,” Bradley said.

“Yeah, turns out I was across from a camera store. Lucky me.” Even to me, I sounded tired, or something more. What’s more than tired? Dead?

“You going to be alright?” he asked.

I pulled Micah’s arms closer around me, snuggled my head against his bare chest. I was still cold. How could I be cold under all these blankets? “I’ve got a few friends staying with me, they’ll keep me from getting too morose.”

“He needed killing, Anita.”

“I know that.”

“Then what’s that tone in your voice?”

“You haven’t gotten to the part of the article where the three-year-old boy is having screaming fits about me killing him, like he saw me do to the bad man in the mall, have you?”

“If he’d gotten away . . .”

“Just stop, Bradley, just stop. I made the decision before I moved on him that the witnesses’ psyches weren’t as important as their physical safety. I don’t regret that decision. Much.”

“Okay, I’ll just talk business then. We think Leo Harlan is best known as Harlan Knox. He’s worked with some of the same people that employed Heinrick and Van Anders.”

“Why am I not surprised?” I said.

“We tried the number he gave you. The answering service says he’s canceled his contract with them, except for one message.”

I waited for it.

“You’re not going to ask?”

“Just tell me, Bradley.”

“Okay, Here goes. ‘Ms. Blake, sorry we didn’t get to raise my ancestor. In case you were wondering, he is real. But under the circumstances, I thought discretion the better part of valor. And the assignment has been canceled, for the time being.’ Do you understand what he means about the assignment being canceled?”

“I think so, I think he means the deal was called off. It got too messy. Thanks for checking, Bradley.”

“Don’t thank me, Anita, if I hadn’t tried to get you onto our payroll as a federal agent, you might never have come to the attention of whoever hired Heinrick.”

“You can’t keep blaming yourself for that, Bradley. It’s like spilled milk, clean up the mess, and move on.”

“The same goes for Van Anders.”

“I always give better advice than I take, Bradley, you should know that by now.”

He laughed, then said, “Watch your back, okay?”

“I will, you, too.”

“Bye, Anita, take care.”

I was in the middle of saying, “you, too,” when he hung up on me. What was it about working for law enforcement that gave you such bad phone manners?

Nathaniel came into the bedroom with the copy of Charlotte’s Web. “It was in the kitchen, and it’s got a second bookmark. I think Zane, or somebody has started reading it.”

I cuddled tighter in against Micah’s body, and he held me, his arms warm and fierce as if he could squeeze the bad feelings out of me. “Let them get their own copy,” I said.

Nathaniel smiled. Micah kissed the top of my head. “Who’s reading tonight?” Nathaniel asked.

“I will,” Micah said, “unless Anita wants to.”

I buried my face in the crook of his arm. “No, being read to sounds just about right tonight.”

Nathaniel handed him the book and climbed into bed. I wasn’t sure if it was the warmth of both of them under the covers, or the sound of Micah’s deep voice as he read, but slowly, I began to be warm again. I hadn’t read Charlotte’s Web in years. I was overdue. Overdue for so many things that didn’t involve guns or killing people.

62

DOLPH IS STILL on leave, but I’m working on arranging a get-together between him, his wife, and their son and daughter-in-law. I don’t know if there’s anything to talk about, but Lucille, Mrs. Dolph, wants me to try. I’ll try.

Richard seems to have some peace. Not enough peace for us to date. But hey, I’m just thrilled that he’s no longer suicidally depressed. At this point, I want him healthy and happy more than I want him with me.

Asher, Jean-Claude, and I have an understanding. I guess, you could say we’re dating. You wouldn’t think that dating two men simultaneously would be a first with me, but two men on the exact same date at the exact same time—that’s new.

Stephen and Gregory’s father is still in town. Valentina and Bartolomé asked Jean-Claude’s permission to kill him. Jean-Claude said okay, as long as Stephen and Gregory agree. Stephen’s therapist thinks it would be healthier if the boys handled it themselves. Gregory’s comment had been, “Oh, we get to kill him ourselves.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Stephen said.

The two of them are still arguing about how to handle their childhood nightmare come to town. I’m with Valentina and Bartolomé on this one. Kill his ass. But I won’t take the choice away from Stephen and Gregory, not if their therapist says it’ll do more damage. God knows they’ve had enough damage in their lives already.

But because they haven’t been able to satisfy their debt of honor, the two child vampires are staying in St. Louis. Besides the debt of honor thing, I think Valentina doesn’t want to be anywhere near Belle Morte when she goes up against the Mother of All Darkness. Me either.

There are nights when I dream about the living dark. As long as I sleep with a cross on I’m okay, but if I forget, she haunts me. I’d get a cross tattoo if I wasn’t afraid it’d burst into flames.

The Mobile Reserve has me on their list of civilian experts. They’ll call if they need me. Captain Parker was wicked pissed that the feds’ latest update on the preternatural wasn’t so updated. The FBI just doesn’t have enough friends that are monsters. If they did they’d know more.

Larry is back in town all duly trained to be a federal marshal and vampire hunter. The wedding is set for October. Tammy is threatening to have me in the wedding. Some friends they are.

We’re still reading Charlotte’s Web. “The Crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song. ‘Summer is over and gone,’ they sang. ‘Over and gone, over and gone . . .’ ” Some people think that’s a sad chapter, but it’s always been one of my favorites. Summer is over and gone, but autumn is here, and next month is October with the bluest skies of the year. For the first time in years, no, scratch that, for the first time ever, I had someone to hold my hand and go walking out under those blue skies. Richard and I had always planned to do it, but he had his job, and I had mine, and we never made the time. But now I have Micah. And I’m learning that you have to make time for what’s important. You have to fight to carve little pieces of happiness out of your life, or the everyday emergencies will eat up everything.

When we finish Charlotte’s Web Nathaniel wants to read Treasure Island. Sounds good to me.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Incubus Dreams

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2004 by Laurell K. Hamilton

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://us.penguingroup.com

ISBN: 1-101-14668-0

A BERKLEY BOOK®

Berkley Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

Electronic edition: November, 2004

To J,
companion, best friend, lover,
stick and carrot, true partner, husband.
Words fail.

Contents

Acknowledgments

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Acknowledgments

To Darla, who is always instrumental in making sure the deadlines get met and the business, all of it, gets attention. Karen, for taking me around to the strip clubs and teaching me never, ever, to sit near the stage. To Sherry, as always, for doing so much to keep everything clean, neat, and as tidy as we’ll let her. I do realize that we are the stumbling block. Bear, also for going around to the strip clubs with us, and just being a large and wonderful presence. Robin, for answering my questions and, as always, for being a wise voice. To Marshal Michael Moriaty, for sending me all the nifty stuff on the federal marshal program, and answering some of my questions. All mistakes are mine and mine alone. To Sergeant Robert Cooney of St. Louis’s Mobile Reserve, for answering questions, for the tour and letting us see all the wonderful toys. His input was invaluable to this book. All mistakes are mine and mine alone. The more I learn about our own Mobile Reserve and all the tactical units across the country, the more impressed I am and the more I despair of ever getting it just right on paper. My writing group, the Alternate Historians: Tom Drennen, Rhett MacPherson, Deborah Millitello, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn, and Mark Sumner. Fine writers, good friends, and champions of esoteric trivia. To Mary, my mother-in-law, who did grandma day camp with Trinity so that Jon and I could get this rewrite done. If Jon hadn’t sat with me and made me do it, you might never have seen this book. To Trinity, who gets more amazing every year, and who I hope someday understands what the heck I was doing all those days and nights up in that room at the top of the house.

1

IT WAS AN October wedding. The bride was a witch who solved preternatural crimes. The groom raised the dead and slew vampires for a living. It sounded like a Halloween joke, but it wasn’t.

The groom’s side wore traditional black tuxedos with orange bow ties and white shirts. The bride’s side wore orange formals. You don’t see Halloween orange prom dresses all that often. I’d been terrified that I was going have to shell out three hundred dollars for one of the monstrosities. But since I was on the groom’s side I got to wear a tux. Larry Kirkland, groom, coworker, and friend, had stuck to his guns. He refused to make me wear a dress, unless I wanted to wear one. Hmm, let me see. Three hundred dollars, or more, for a very orange formal that I’d burn before I’d wear again, or less than a hundred dollars to rent a tux that I could return. Wait, let me think.

I got the tux. I did have to buy a pair of black tie-up shoes. The tux shop didn’t have any size seven in women’s. Oh, well. Even with the seventy-dollar shoes that I would probably never wear again, I still counted myself very lucky.

As I watched the four bridesmaids in their poofy orange dresses walk down the isle of the packed church, their hair done up on their heads in ringlets, and more makeup than I’d ever seen any of them wear, I was feeling very, very lucky. They had little round bouquets of orange and white flowers with black lace and orange and black ribbons trailing down from the flowers. I just had to stand up at the front of the church with my one hand holding the wrist of the other arm. The wedding coordinator had seemed to believe that all the groomsmen would pick their noses, or something equally embarrassing, if they didn’t keep their hands busy. So she’d informed them that they were to stand with their hands clasped on opposite wrists. No hands in pockets, no crossed arms, no hands clasped in front of their groins. I’d arrived late to the rehearsal—big surprise—and the wedding coordinator had seemed to believe that I would be a civilizing influence on the men, just because I happened to be a girl. It didn’t take her long to figure out that I was as uncouth as the men. Frankly, I thought we all behaved ourselves really well. She just didn’t seem very comfortable around men, or around me. Maybe it was the gun I was wearing.

But none of the groomsmen, myself included, had done anything for her to complain about. This was Larry’s day, and none of us wanted to screw it up. Oh, and Tammy’s day.

The bride entered the church on her father’s arm. Her mother was already in the front pew dressed in a pale melon orange that actually looked good on her. She was beaming and crying, and seemed to be both miserable and deliriously happy all at the same time. Mrs. Reynolds was the reason for the big church wedding. Both Larry and Tammy would have been happy with something smaller, but Tammy didn’t seem to be able to say no to her mother, and Larry was just trying to get along with his future in-law.

Detective Tammy Reynolds was a vision in white, complete with a veil that covered her face like a misty dream. She, too, was wearing more makeup than I’d ever seen her in, but the drama of it suited the beaded neckline, and full, bell-like skirt. The dress looked like it could have walked down the isle on its own, or at least stood on its own. They’d done something with her hair so that it was smooth and completely back from her face, so that you could see just how striking she was. I’d never really noticed that Detective Tammy was beautiful.

I was standing at the end of the groomsmen, me and Larry’s three brothers, so I had to crane a little to see his face. It was worth the look. He was pale enough that his freckles stood out on his skin like ink spots. His blue eyes were wide. They’d done something to his short red curls so they lay almost smooth. He looked good, if he didn’t faint. He gazed at Tammy as if he’d been hit with a hammer right between the eyes. Of course, if they’d done two hours’ worth of makeup on Larry, he might have been a vision, too. But men don’t have to worry about it. The double standard is alive and well. The woman is supposed to be beautiful on her wedding day, the groom is just supposed to stand there and not embarrass himself, or her.

I leaned back in line and tried not to embarrass anyone. I’d tied my hair back while it was still wet so that it lay flat and smooth to my head. I wasn’t cutting my hair so it was the best I could do to look like a boy. There were other parts of my anatomy that didn’t help the boy look either. I am curvy, and even in a tux built for a man, I was still curvy. No one complained, but the wedding coordinator had rolled her eyes when she saw me. What she said out loud was, “You need more makeup.”

“None of the other groomsmen are wearing makeup,” I said.

“Don’t you want to look pretty?”

Since I’d thought I already looked pretty good, there was only one reply, “Not particularly.”

That had been the last conversation the wedding lady and I had had. She positively avoided me after that. I think she’d been mean on purpose, because I wasn’t helping her keep the other groomsmen in line. She seemed to believe that just because we both had ovaries instead of balls that we should have joined forces. Besides, why should I worry about being pretty? It was Tammy and Larry’s day, not mine. If, and that was a very big if, I ever got married, then I’d worry about it. Until then, screw it. Besides, I was already wearing more makeup than I normally did. Which for me meant any. My stepmother, Judith, keeps telling me that when I hit thirty I’ll feel differently about all this girl stuff. I’ve only got three years to go until the big 3-0; so far panic has not set in.

Tammy’s father placed her hand in Larry’s. Tammy was three inches taller than Larry, in heels, she was more. I was standing close enough to the groom to see the look that Tammy’s father gave Larry. It was not a friendly look. Tammy was three months, almost four months pregnant, and it was Larry’s fault. Or rather it was Tammy and Larry’s fault, but I don’t think that’s how her father viewed it. No, Mr. Nathan Reynolds definitely seemed to blame Larry, as if Tammy had been snatched virgin from her bed and brought back deflowered, and pregnant.

Mr. Reynolds raised Tammy’s blusher on her veil to reveal all that carefully made-up beauty. He kissed her solemnly on the cheek, threw one last dark look at Larry, and turned smiling and pleasant to join his wife in the front pew. The fact that he’d gone from a look that dark, to pleasant and smiling when he knew the church would see his face, bothered me. I didn’t like that Larry’s new father-in-law was capable of lying that well. Made me wonder what he did for a living. But I was naturally suspicious, comes from working too closely with the police for too long. Cynicism is so contagious.

We all turned toward the altar, and the familiar ceremony began. I’d been to dozens of weddings over the years, almost all Christian, almost all standard denominations, so the words were strangely familiar. Funny, how you don’t think you’ve memorized something until you hear it, and realize you have. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony.”

It wasn’t a Catholic or Episcopalian wedding, so we didn’t have to kneel, or do much of anything. We wouldn’t even be getting communion during the ceremony. I have to admit my mind began to wander a bit. I’ve never been a big fan of weddings. I understand they’re necessary, but I was never one of those girls who fantasized about what my wedding would be like someday. I don’t remember ever thinking about it until I got engaged in college, and when that fell through, I went back to not thinking about it. I’d been engaged very briefly to Richard Zeeman, junior high science teacher, and local Ulfric, Wolf-King, but he’d dumped me because I was more at home with the monsters than he was. Now, I’d pretty much settled into the idea that I would never marry. Never have those words spoken over me and my honeybun. A tiny part of me that I’d never admit to out loud was sad about that. Not the wedding part, I think I would hate my own wedding just as much as anyone else’s, but not having one single person to call my own. I’d been raised middle-class, middle America, small town, and that meant the fact that I was currently dating a minimum of three men, maybe four, depending on how you looked at it, still made me squirm with something painfully close to embarassment. I was working on not being uncomfortable about it, but there were issues that needed to be worked out. For instance, who do you bring as your date to a wedding? The wedding was in a church complete with holy items, so two of the men were out. Vampires didn’t do well around holy items. Watching Jean-Claude and Asher burst into flames as they came through the door would probably have put a damper on the festivities. That left me with one official boyfriend, Micah Callahan, and one friend, who happened to be a boy, Nathaniel Graison.

They’d come to the part where the rings were exchanged, which meant the maid of honor and the best man had something to do. The woman got to hold Tammy’s huge spill of white flowers, and the man got to hand over the jewelry. It all seemed so terribly sexist. Just once I’d like to see the men have to hold flowers and the women fork over the jewelry. I’d been told once by a friend that I was too liberated for my own good. Maybe. All I knew was that if I ever did get engaged again I’d decided either both of us got an engagement ring, or neither of us did. Of course, again, that not getting married part meant that the engagement was probably off the board, too. Oh, well.

At last, they were man and wife. We all turned and the reverend presented them to the church as Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Kirkland, though I knew for a fact that Tammy was keeping her maiden name, so really it should have been Mr. Lawrence Kirkland and Ms. Tammy Reynolds.

We all fell into two lines. I got to offer my arm to Detective Jessica Arnet. She took the arm, and with her in heels, I was about five inches shorter than she was. She smiled at me. I’d noticed she was pretty about a month ago, because she was flirting with Nathaniel, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized she could be beautiful. Her dark hair was pulled completely back from her face, so that the delicate triangle of her cheeks and chin was all you saw. The makeup had widened her eyes, added color to her cheeks, and carved pouting lips out of her thin ones. I realized that the orange that made most of the bridesmaids look wan, brought out rich highlights in her skin and hair, made her eyes shine. So few people look good in orange, it’s one of the reasons they use it in so many prisons, like an extra punishment. But Detective Arnet looked wonderful in it. It almost made me wish I’d let the wedding lady talk me into the extra makeup. Almost.

I must have stared, because she frowned, and only then did I start forward, and take our place in line. We filed out like good little wedding party members. We’d already endured the photographer for group shots. He’d be hunting the bride and groom for those candid moments: cutting the cake, throwing the bouquet, removing the garter. Once we got through the receiving line, I could fade into the background and no one would care.

We all stood in a line as we’d been drilled. Bride and groom at the front of the line, because, let’s face it, that’s who everyone is really here to see. The rest of us strung out behind them along the wall, waiting to shake hands with mostly strangers. Tammy’s family were locals, but I’d never met any of them. Larry’s family were all out-of-towners. I knew the policemen that had been invited; other than that, it was all nod and smile, nod and smile, shake a hand, or two, nod and smile.

I must have been concentrating very hard on the people I was meeting, because it surprised me when Micah Callahan, my official date, was suddenly in front of me. He was exactly my height. Short for man or woman. His rich, brown hair was nearly as curly as mine, and today his hair fell around his shoulders loose. He’d done that for me. He didn’t like his hair loose, and I understood why. He was already delicate looking for a man, and with all that hair framing him, his face was almost as delicate a triangle as Detective Arnet’s. His lower lip was fuller than his upper lip, which gave him a perpetual pout, and being wider than most women’s mouths didn’t really help. But the body under his black tailored suit, that definitely helped make it clear he was a man. Wide shoulders, slender waist and hips, a swimmer’s body, though that wasn’t his sport. From the neck down you’d never mistake him for a girl. It was just the face, and the hair.

He’d left his shirt open at the neck so that it framed the hollow in his throat. I could see myself reflected darkly in his sunglasses. It was actually a little dim in the hallway, so why the sunglasses? His eyes were kitty-cat eyes, leopard, to be exact. They were yellow and green all at the same time. What color predominated between the two depended on what color he wore, his mood, the lighting. Today, because of the shirt, they’d be very green, but with a hint of yellow, like dappled light in the forest.

He was a wereleopard, Nimir-Raj of the local pard. By rights he should have been able to pass for human. But if you spend too much time in animal form sometimes you don’t come all the way back. He didn’t want to squeak the mundanes, so he’d worn the glasses today.

His hand was very warm in mine, and that one small touch was enough, enough to bring some of the careful shielding down. The shielding that had kept me from sensing him all through the ceremony like a second heartbeat. He was Nimir-Raj to my Nimir-Ra. Leopard King and Queen. Though my idea of the arrangement was closer to queen and consort, partners, but I reserved presidential veto. I’m a control freak, what can I say?

I was the first human Nimir-Ra in the wereleopards’ long history. Though since I raise the dead for a living and am a legal vampire executioner, there are people who’ll argue the human part. They’re just jealous.

I started to pull him in against me for a hug, but he gave a small shake of his head. He was right. He was right. If just holding his hand sped my pulse like candy on my tongue, then a hug would be bad. Through a series of metaphysical accidents, I held something close to the beast that lived in Micah. That beast and Micah’s beast knew each other, knew each other in the way of old lovers. That part of us that was not human knew each other better than our human halves. I still knew almost nothing about him, really. Even though we lived together. On a metaphysical level we were bound tighter than any ceremony or piece of paper could make us; in real everyday life, I was wondering what to do with him. He was the perfect partner. My other half, the missing piece. He complemented me in almost every way. And when he was standing this close, it all seemed so right. Give me a little distance and I would begin to wonder when the other shoe would drop and he would stop being wonderful. I’d never had a man in my life yet that didn’t spoil it somehow. Why should Micah be different?

He didn’t so much kiss me as lay the feel of his breath against my cheek. He breathed, “Until later.” That one light touch made me shiver so violently that he had to steady me with a touch on my arm.

He smiled at me, that knowing smile that a man gives when he understands just how much his touch affects a woman. I didn’t like that smile. It made me feel like he took his time with me for granted. The moment I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true. It wasn’t even fair. So why had I thought it at all? Because I am a master at screwing up my own love life. If something works too well, I’ve got to poke at it, prod it, until it breaks, or bites me. I was trying not to do that anymore, but old habits, especially bad ones, die hard.

Micah moved off down the line, and Detective Arnet gave me a questioning look out of her heavily painted but lovely eyes. She opened her mouth as if to ask if I were alright, but the next person in line distracted her. Nathaniel was distracting, no doubt about that.

Jessica Arnet was a few inches taller than Nathaniel’s 5' 6", so she had to look down to meet that lavender gaze. No exaggeration on the color. His eyes weren’t blue, but truly a pale purple, lavender, spring lilacs. He wore a banded-collar shirt that was almost the same color as his eyes, so the lavender was even more vibrant; drowningly beautiful, those eyes.

He offered his hand, but she hugged him. Hugged him, because I think for the first time she was in a public situation where no one would think it was strange. So she hugged him, because she could.

There was a fraction of a moment’s hesitation, then he hugged her back, but he turned his head so he could look at me. His eyes said clearly, Help me.

She hadn’t done that much yet, just a hug where a handshake would have done, but the look in Nathaniel’s eyes was much more serious than what she’d done. As if it bothered him more than it should have. Since in his day job he’s a stripper, you’d think he’d be used to women pawing him. Of course, maybe that was the point. He wasn’t at work.

She stayed molded to his body, and he stayed holding, with only that mute look in his eyes to say he was unhappy. His body seemed happy and relaxed in the hug. He never showed Jessica Arnet his confused eyes.

The hug had gone on longer than was polite, and I finally realized what part of the problem was. Nathaniel was the least dominant person I’d ever met. He wanted out of the hug, but he could not be the first one to pull back. Jessica had to let him go, and she was probably waiting for him to move away, and getting all the wrong signals from the fact that he wasn’t moving away. Shit. How do I end up with men in my life who have such interesting problems? Lucky, I guess.

I held out my hand toward him, and the relief on his face was clear enough that anyone down the hall would have seen it, and understood it. He kept his face turned so Jessica never saw that look. It would have hurt her feelings, and Nathaniel didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Which meant that he didn’t see her shining face, all aglow with what she thought was mutual attraction. Truthfully, I’d thought Nathaniel liked her, at least a little, but his face said otherwise. To me, anyway.

Nathaniel came to my hand like a scared child who’s just been saved from the neighborhood bully. I drew him into a hug, and he clung to me, pressing our bodies tighter than I would have liked in public, but I couldn’t blame him, not really. He wanted the comfort of physical contact, and I think he’d figured out that Jessica Arnet had gotten the wrong idea.

I held him as close as I could, as close as I’d wanted to hold Micah. With Micah, it might have led to embarrassing things, but not with Nathaniel. With Nathaniel I could control myself. I wasn’t in love with him. I caressed the long braid of his auburn hair that fell nearly to his ankles. I played with the braid, as if it were other more intimate things, hoping that Jessica would take the hint. I should have known that a little extra hugging wouldn’t have done the job.

I drew back from the hug first, and he kept his gaze on my face. I could study his face and understand what she saw there, so handsome, so amazingly beautiful. His shoulders had broadened in the last few months, from weight lifting, or just the fact that he was twenty and still filling out. He was luscious to look at, and I was almost certain he would be nearly as luscious in bed. But though he was living with me, cleaning my house, buying my groceries, running my errands, I still hadn’t had intercourse with him. I was really trying to avoid that, since I didn’t plan on keeping him. Someday Nathaniel would need to find a new place to live, a new life, because I wouldn’t always need him the way I did now.

I was human, but just as I was the first human Nimir-Ra the leopards had ever had, I was also the first human servant of a master vampire to aquire certain . . . abilities. With those abilities came some downsides. One of those downsides was needing to feed the ardeur every twelve hours or so. Ardeur is French for flame, roughly translates to being consumed, being consumed by love. But it isn’t exactly love.

I stared up into Nathaniel’s wide lilac eyes, cradled his face between my hands. I did the only thing I could think of that might keep Jessica Arnet from embarrassing them both at the reception to follow. I kissed him. I kissed him, because he needed me to do it. I kissed him because it was strangely the right thing to do. I kissed him because he was my pomme de sang, my apple of blood. I kissed him because he was my food, and I hated the fact that anyone was my food. I fed off Micah, too, but he was my partner, my boyfriend, and he was dominant enough to say no if he wanted to. Nathaniel wanted me to take him, wanted to belong to me, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Months from now the ardeur would be under control and I wouldn’t need a pomme de sang. What would Nathaniel do when I didn’t need him anymore?

I drew back from the kiss and watched Nathaniel’s face shine at me the way Jessica Arnet’s face had shone at him. I wasn’t in love with Nathaniel, but staring up into that happy, handsome face, I was afraid that I couldn’t say the same for him. I was using him. Not for sex, but for food. He was food, just food, but even as I thought it, I knew it was partly a lie. You don’t fall in love with your steak, because it can’t hold you, can’t press warm lips in the bend of your neck, and whisper, “Thank you,” as it glides down the hallway in the charcoal gray slacks that fit its ass like a second skin and spill roomy over the thighs that you happen to know are even lovelier out of the pants than in. When I turned to the next smiling person in line, I caught Detective Jessica Arnet giving me a look. It wasn’t an entirely friendly look. Great, just great.

2

THE HALLOWEEN THEME continued into the reception hall. Orange and black crepe paper streamers dangled everywhere; cardboard skeltons, rubber bats, and paper ghosts floated overhead. There was a fake spiderweb against one wall big enough to hang someone from. The table centerpieces were realistic looking jack-o-lanterns with flickering electric grins. The fake skeletons were long enough to be a hazard to anyone much taller than I was. Which meant most guests were having the tops of their hair brushed by little cardboard skeleton toes. Unfortunately, Tammy was 5' 8" without heels, with heels she got her veil tangled with the decorations. The bridesmaids finally got Tammy’s veil unhooked from the skeletal toes, but it ruined the entrance for the bride and groom. If Tammy had wanted the decorations safe for the tall people, she shouldn’t have left it to Larry and his brothers. There wasn’t a one of them over 5' 6". Don’t blame me. Groomsman or not, I hadn’t helped decorate the hall. It was not my fault.

There were other things that I was going to get blamed for, but they weren’t my fault either. Well, mostly not my fault.

I’d escorted Jessica Arnet into the room. She hadn’t smiled at me as I led her into the room. She’d looked way too serious. When Tammy’s veil was safely secure once more, Jessica had gone to the table where Micah and Nathaniel were sitting. She’d leaned into Nathaniel, and when I say leaned, I mean it. Like leaned on him, so that the line of her body touched his shoulder and arm. It was bold and discreet at the same time. If I hadn’t been watching for it, I might not have realized what she was doing. She spoke quietly to him. He finally shook his head, and she turned and wove her way through the small tables full of guests. She took the last empty seat at the long table where the wedding party was trapped. The last empty chair was beside me. We got to sit down in the order we’d entered. Goody.

In the middle of the toasts, after Larry’s brother had made the groom blush, but before the parents had had their turns, Jessica leaned over close enough that her perfume was sweet and a little too much.

She whispered, “Does Nathaniel really live with you?”

I’d been afraid the question would be hard. This one was easy. “Yes,” I said.

“I asked if he was your boyfriend, and he said that he slept in your bed. I thought that was an odd way to answer.” She turned her head so I was suddenly way too close to her face, those wide-searching hazel eyes. I was struck again by how lovely she was, and felt stupid for not noticing sooner. But I didn’t notice girls, I noticed boys. So sue me, I was heterosexual. It wasn’t her beauty that struck me, but the demand, the intelligence, in her eyes. She searched my face, and I realized that no matter how pretty she was, she was still a cop, and she was trying to smell the lie here. Because she had smelled one.

She hadn’t asked me a question, so I didn’t answer. I rarely got in trouble by keeping my mouth shut.

She gave a small frown. “Is he your boyfriend? If he is, then I’ll leave it alone. But you could have told me sooner, so I wouldn’t have made a fool of myself.”

I wanted to say, You didn’t make a fool of yourself, but I didn’t. I was too busy trying to think of an answer that would be honest and not get Nathaniel and me in more trouble. I settled for the evasion he’d used. “Yes, he sleeps in my bed.”

She gave a small shake to her head, a stubborn look coming over her face. “That isn’t what I asked, Anita. You’re lying. You’re both lying. I can smell it.” She frowned. “Just tell me the truth. If you have a prior claim, say so, now.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I have a prior claim, apparently.”

The frown deepened, putting lines between the pretty eyes. “Apparently? What does that mean? Either he’s your boyfriend, or he’s not.”

“Maybe boyfriend isn’t the right word,” I said, and tried to think of an explanation that didn’t include the words pomme de sang. The police didn’t really know how deeply involved with the monsters I was. They suspected, but they didn’t know. Knowing is different from suspicion. Knowing will hold up in court; suspicion won’t even get you a search warrant.

“Then what is the right word?” she whispered, but it held an edge of hiss, as if she were fighting not to yell. “Are you lovers?”

What was I supposed to say? If I said, yes, Nathaniel would be free of Jessica’s unwanted attentions, but it would also mean that everyone on the St. Louis police force would know that Nathaniel was my lover. It wasn’t my reputation I was worried about, that was pretty much trashed. A girl can’t be coffin-bait for the Master of the City and be a good girl. Most people feel that if a woman will do a vampire, she’ll do anything. Not true, but there you go. No, not my reputation at stake, but Nathaniel’s. If it got out that he was my lover, then no other woman would make a play for him. If he didn’t want to date Jessica, fine, but he needed to date someone. Someone besides me. If I wasn’t going to keep Nathaniel forever, like almost death-do-you-part ever, then he needed a bigger social circle. He needed a real girlfriend.

So I hesitated, weighing a dozen words, and not finding a single one that would help the situation. My cell phone went off, as I fumbled for it, to stop the soft, incessant ringing, I was too relieved to be irritated. It could have been a wrong number at that moment, and I still would have felt I owed them flowers.

It wasn’t a wrong number. It was Lieutenant Rudolph Storr, head of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team. He had opted to be on duty during the wedding so that other people could attend. He’d asked Tammy if she was inviting any nonhumans, and when she’d said she didn’t like that term, but if he meant lycanthropes, the answer was yes, Dolph had suddenly decided he’d be on duty and not come to the wedding. He was having a personal problem with the monsters. His son was about to marry a vampire, and that vampire was trying to persuade Dolph’s son to join her in eternal life. To say that Dolph was not taking it well was an understatement. He’d trashed an interrogation room, manhandled me, and damn near gotten himself brought up on charges. I’d arranged a dinner with Dolph, his wife, Lucille, their son, Darrin, and future daughter-in-law. I’d persuaded Darrin to put off the decision to join the undead. The wedding was still on, but it was a start. His son still being among the living had helped Dolph deal with his crisis of faith. Deal with it enough that he was talking to me again. Deal with it enough that he called me in on a case again.

His voice was brisk, almost normal, “Anita?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, cupping the phone with my hand. It wasn’t like every cop in the place, which was most of the guests, wasn’t wondering who I was talking to, and why.

“Got a body for you to look at.”

“Now?” I made it a question.

“The ceremony is over, right? I didn’t call in the middle of it.”

“It’s over. I’m at the reception.”

“Then I need you here.”

“Where’s here?” I asked.

He told me.

“I know the strip club area across the river, but I’m not familiar with the club name.”

“You won’t be able to miss it,” he said, “it’ll be the only club with it’s own police escort.”

It took me a second to realize that he had made a joke. Dolph didn’t make jokes at murder scenes, ever. I opened my mouth to remark on it, but the phone was dead in my hand. Dolph never had been much for good-byes.

Detective Arnet leaned in, and asked, “Was that Lieutenant Storr?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, “murder scene, gotta run.”

She opened her mouth, as if she was going to say something else, but I was already moving up the table. I was going to give my apologies to Larry and Tammy, then go look at a body. I was sorry to miss the rest of the reception and all, but I had a murder scene to go to. Not only would I get away from Arnet’s questions, but I wouldn’t have to dance with Micah, or Nathaniel, or anybody. The night was looking up. I felt a little guilty, but I was glad somebody was dead.

3

STARING DOWN AT the dead woman, it was impossible to be glad. Guilty, maybe, but not glad. Guilty that even for a second I’d found the idea of someone’s death an escape from an uncomfortable social situation. I wasn’t a child. Surely, to God, I could have handled Jessica Arnet and her questions without hiding behind a murder. The fact that I was more comfortable here staring down at a corpse than at the head table at a wedding said something about me and my life. I wasn’t sure exactly what it said, or meant. Something I probably didn’t want to look at too closely, though. But, wait, we had a body to look at, a crime to solve, all the sticky personal stuff could wait. Had to wait. Yeah, sure.

The body was a pale glimpse of flesh between two Dumpsters in the parking lot. There was something almost ghostlike about that shining bit of flesh, like, if I blinked, it would vanish into the October night. Maybe it was the time of year, or the wedding scene I’d just left, but there was something unnerving about the way she’d been left. They’d stuffed the body behind the Dumpsters to hide it, then the black wool coat she wore had been opened around her almost naked body, so that you caught that gleam of pale flesh in the bright halogen lights of the parking lot. Why hide her, then do something to draw such attention to her? It made no sense. Of course, it may have made perfect sense to the people who killed her. Maybe.

I stood there, tugging my leather jacket around me. It wasn’t that cold. Cold enough for the jacket, but not enough to put the lining in it. I had my hands plunged into the pockets, the zipper all the way up, my shoulders hunched. But leather couldn’t help against the cold I was fighting. I stared at that pallid glimpse of death, and felt nothing. Nothing. Not pity. Not sickness. Nothing. Somehow that bothered me more than the woman being dead.

I made myself move forward. Made myself go see what there was to see and leave my worries about my moral decay for another time. Business, first.

I had to come to the far end of the right-hand Dumpster to see the spill of her yellow hair, like a bright exclamation point on the black pavement. Staring down at her, I could see how tiny she was. My size, or smaller. She lay on her back, the coat spread under her, still securely on her arms. But the cloth had been spread wide, folded under on the side nearest the parked cars, so that she could be seen by a customer walking out to his car. Her hair, too, had been pulled back, combed out. If she’d been taller, that, too, would have been visible from the parking lot—just a peek of bright yellow around the Dumpster. I looked down the line of her body and found the reason that someone had thought she was taller—clear plastic stilettos, at least five inches high. Lying down she lost the height. Her head had been pressed to the right, exposing bite marks on her long neck. Vampire bite marks.

On the mound of her small breast was another pair of bite marks, with two thin lines of blood trickling from them. There was no blood at the neck wound. I was going to have to move the Dumpsters to get back there. I was also going to have to move the body around to look for more bite marks, more signs of violence. There’d been a time when the police only called me in after all the other experts had finished with a scene, but that was a while ago. I had to make sure I didn’t fuck up the scene. Which meant I needed to find the man in charge.

Lt. Rudolph Storr wasn’t hard to spot. He’s 6' 8" and built like pro wrestlers used to be built before they all started looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dolph was in shape, but he didn’t go for the weight lifting. He didn’t have time. Too many crimes to solve. His black hair was cut so short it left his ears exposed and somehow stranded on the sides of his head. Which always meant he’d gotten a haircut, recently. He always had it cut shorter than he liked it, so it would be longer between haircuts. His tan trench coat was perfectly pressed. His shoes shined in the parking lot lights. He didn’t care what he looked like, as long as he was neat and tidy. Dolph was all about the neat and tidy. I think it was one of the reasons that murder pissed him off, it was always so messy.

I nodded at the uniformed policeman whose only job seemed to be watching the body and making sure it didn’t get messed with by anyone that wasn’t allowed to touch it. He nodded back and went back to staring at the corpse. Something about how wide his eyes were made me wonder if this was his first vampire kill. Was he worried that the victim would rise and try to munch on him? I could have calmed his fears, because I knew this one would never rise. She’d been drained to death by a group of vamps. That won’t make you one of them. In fact, the act is guaranteed to give the vamps their fun and not to make the vic one of them. I’d seen this once before. I hoped like hell it wasn’t another master vampire gone rogue. The last one had purposely left vics where we could find them, in an attempt to get the new laws that gave vampires legal rights repealed. Mr. Oliver had believed that vampires were monsters, and if they were given legal rights, they’d spread too fast, eventually turning the entire human race into vampires. Then who would everybody feed off of? Yeah, it would take hundreds of years for vampirism to spread to that degree, but the really old vampires take the long view. They can afford to, they’ve got the time.

I knew it wasn’t Mr. Oliver again, because I’d killed him. I’d crushed his heart, and no matter how many times Dracula might rise in old movies, Oliver was well and truly dead. I could guarantee it. Which meant we had a new group of nuts on our hands, and they could have an entirely new motive for killing. Hell, maybe it was personal. Vampires were legal citizens now, which meant they could have grudges just like humans.

But somehow it didn’t feel personal. Don’t ask me to explain it, but it didn’t.

Dolph saw me coming toward him. He didn’t smile, or say hi, because one, it was Dolph, and two, he wasn’t completely happy with me. He wasn’t happy with the monsters lately, which rubbed off on me because I was way too intimate with the monsters.

Still, convincing his son not to become a vampire had earned me brownie points. The fact that Dolph had just gotten off of a leave without pay, with an informal warning that if he didn’t shape up, he’d be suspended, had also mellowed him out. Frankly, I’d take whatever I could get. Dolph and I were friends, or I’d thought we were. We were both a little unsure where we stood right now.

“I need to move the Dumpsters to look at the body. I also need to move the body around to look for more bite marks, or whatever. Can I do that without screwing the crime scene up?”

He looked at me, and there was something in his face that said, clearly, he was not happy to have me here. He started to say something, glanced around at the other detectives, the uniforms, the crime-scene techs, and beyond that to the waiting ambulance, shook his head, and motioned me off to one side. I could feel people’s gazes follow us as we moved away. All of the detectives there knew that Dolph had dragged me up a flight of stairs at a crime scene. When I said manhandled, I wasn’t exaggerating. God knows what the stories said now, probably that he’d hit me, which he hadn’t, but what he’d done had been bad enough. Bad enough I could have pressed charges and won.

He leaned over and spoke low. “I don’t like you being here.”

“You called me,” I said. God, I did not want to fight with him tonight.

He nodded. “I called, but I need to know that you don’t have a conflict of interest here.”

I frowned up at him. “What do you mean? What conflict of interest?”

“If it’s a vamp kill, then it was someone that belongs to your boyfriend.”

“It’s nice that you said if it’s a vamp kill, but if you mean Jean-Claude, then it might not be his people at all.”

“Oh, that’s right, you got two vampire boyfriends now.” His voice was ugly.

“You want to fight each other, or fight crime? Your choice,” I said.

He made a visible effort to control himself. Hands in fists at his sides, eyes closed, deep breaths. He’d been forced to go through anger management training. I watched him use his newfound skills. Then he opened his eyes—cold cop eyes—and said, “You’re defending the vamps already.”

“I’m not saying it’s not a vamp kill. All I said was that it might not be Jean-Claude’s people. That’s all.”

“But you’re defending your boyfriend and his people already. You haven’t even looked at the vic completely, and already you say it can’t be your lover boy.”

I felt my eyes grow cold and said, “I’m not saying it couldn’t have been Jean-Claude’s vampires. I’m saying it’s unlikely. Thanks to the Church of Eternal Life, St. Louis has a lot of bloodsuckers that don’t owe allegiance to the Master of the City.”

“The church’s members are more straitlaced than right-wing Christians,” he said.

I shrugged. “They do come off as sanctimonious, I’ll grant you that. Most true believers do, but that’s not why I say it was them, or strangers, instead of the vampires I know best.”

“Why, then?” he asked.

My only excuse for telling the absolute truth is that I was pissed and tired of Dolph being mad at me. “Because if any of Jean-Claude’s people did this, they’re dead. Either he’ll turn them in to the law himself, or have me do it, or they’ll just be killed.”

“You’re admitting that your boyfriend is a murderer?”

I took in a deep breath and let it out slow. “You know, Dolph, this is getting old. Yeah, I’m fucking a vampire or two, get over it.”

He looked away. “I don’t know how.”

“Then learn,” I said. “But stop letting your personal shit rain all over the crime scene. We’ve wasted time arguing, when I could have been looking at the body. I want these people caught.”

“People, plural?” he asked.

“I’ve only seen two bite marks, but they both have a slightly different pattern to them. The one on the chest is smaller, less space between the fangs. So, yeah, at least two, but I’m betting more.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they bled her out. There’s almost no blood anywhere. Two vamps couldn’t drain an adult human being without leaving a mess. They’d need more mouths to hold that much blood.”

“Maybe she was killed somewhere else.”

I frowned at him. “It’s October, she’s outside wearing five-inch plastic stilettos, an inexpensive wool coat, and not much else.” I motioned at the building behind us. “We’re in the parking lot of a strip club. Hmm, let me see, five-inch plastic stilettos, naked woman . . . could this be a clue that she worked here, stepped out for a smoke, or something?”

Dolph reached into his pocket and got out his ever-present notebook. “She’s been identified as one Charlene Morresey, twenty-two, works as a stripper—worked, as a stripper. Yes, she did smoke, but she told one of the other girls she was going outside for a breath of fresh air.”

“We know she probably didn’t know the vamps.”

“How so?”

“She came out to get some air, not to visit.”

He nodded and made a note. “There’s no sign of a struggle, yet. It’s like she came out here for air and just walked over there with them. She wouldn’t do that for strangers.”

“If she was under mind control, she would.”

“So one of our vamps is an old one.” Dolph was still making notes.

“Not necessarily old, but powerful, and that usually means old.” I thought about it. “Someone with good mind control powers—that I’m sure of—age,” I shrugged, “I don’t know, yet.”

He was still writing in his notebook.

“Now, can I move the Dumpster and move the body around, or do you still need the techies to get back in there and do their thing first?”

“I had them wait for you,” he said without looking up from his writing.

I looked at him, tried to learn something from his face, but he was all concentration and business. It was a step up that he’d had the techs wait for me. And that he’d called me at all. Before his time off, he’d tried to get me barred from crime scenes. It was a step up, so why was I still wondering if Dolph was capable of letting his personal life go long enough to solve this case? Because, once you’ve seen someone you trusted lose it completely, you never truly trust them again, not completely.

4

THERE WAS A matching set of bite marks on the other side of her neck. They were so close to the same size as the ones on the left-hand side, that I wondered if the same vamp had bitten twice. I didn’t have my ruler with me. Hell, I didn’t have most of my equipment with me. I’d been planning on a wedding tonight, not a crime scene.

I asked if anyone had something to measure bite radius. One of the techs offered to measure for me. Fine with me. She had a pair of calipers—I’d never used a pair of them before.

Measurements do not lie. It wasn’t the same vamp. Nor was it the same vamp at each of her inner thighs or her wrists. Counting the bite mark on her chest, that made seven. Seven vampires. Enough to drain an adult human being dry and leave very little blood behind.

There was no obvious evidence of sexual assault, according to a CSU technician. Glad to hear it. I did not bother explaining that the bite alone can be orgasmic both for the vic and the killer. Not always, but often, especially if the vampire is good at fogging the mind. A vampire with enough juice can make someone enjoy being killed. Scary, but true.

After I’d seen every inch of the dead woman, when I knew that her pale flesh might dance through my dreams in their plastic shoes, Dolph wanted to talk.

“Talk to me,” he said.

I knew what he wanted. “Seven vamps. One has to be good enough at mind control to have made the vic enjoy what was happening, or at least not mind it. Someone would have heard her screams otherwise.”

“Have you walked into the club?” he asked.

“No.”

“Music is loud, lots of people inside,” he said.

“So they might not have heard her, even if she did scream?”

He nodded.

I sighed. “There’s no sign of a struggle. They’ll look at her nails, but there won’t be any sign of a fight. The vic didn’t even know what was happening, or at least not until it was way too late.”

“You’re sure of that?”

I thought for a second or two. “No, I’m not sure. It’s my best educated guess, but maybe she’s one of those people that doesn’t fight back. Maybe once seven vampires surrounded her, she just gave up. I don’t know. What kind of person was Charlene Morresey? Was she a fighter?”

“Don’t know yet,” Dolph said.

“If she was a fighter, then vampire mind tricks were used. If she wasn’t, if she was real docile, then maybe not. Maybe we’re looking for a bunch of young vamps.” I shook my head. “But I’d say not. I’d say at least one, maybe more, were old, and good at doing at this.”

“They hid the body,” he said.

I finished the thought for him, “And then exposed it, so that someone would find it.”

He nodded. “That’s been bothering me, too. If they had just closed her coat over her body, not messed with the hair, no one would have found her tonight.”

“They’d have missed her in the club,” I said, “or was she done for the night?”

“She wasn’t done, and, yeah, they would have missed her.”

I glanced back at the body. “But would they have found her?”

“Maybe,” he said, “but not this quick.”

“Yeah, she’s still fresh, cool to the touch, but not long gone.”

He checked his notes. “Less than two hours since she was on stage.”

I looked around us, at the bright halogen lights. There was no good place to hide in this parking lot, except behind the Dumpsters. “Did they do her behind the Dumpsters?”

“Or a car,” he said.

“Or van,” I said.

“The serial killer’s best friend,” Dolph said.

I looked at him, trying to read behind those cop eyes. “Serial killer, what are you talking about? This is the first kill, to my knowledge.”

He nodded. “Yeah.” He started to turn away.

I caught his sleeve, lightly. I had to be careful how I touched him lately. He took so many things as aggression. “Cops do not use the phrase serial killer unless they have to. One, you don’t want it to be true. Two, the reporters will get hold of it and report it like it’s truth.”

He looked down at me, and I let go of his sleeve. “There aren’t any reporters here, Anita. It’s just another dead stripper in Sauget.”

“Then why say it?”

“Maybe I’m psychic.”

“Dolph,” I said.

He almost smiled. “I got a bad feeling, that’s all. This is either their first kill, or the first kill we’ve found. It was awful damn neat for a first kill.”

“Someone meant for us to find her, Dolph, and find her tonight.”

“Yeah, but who? Was it the killer, or killers? Or was it someone else?”

“Like who?” I asked.

“Another customer that couldn’t afford to let his wife know where’d he been.”

“So he opens her coat, draws out her hair, tries to make her more visible?”

Dolph gave one small nod, down.

“I don’t buy it. A normal person couldn’t touch a dead body, not enough to open the coat, mess with the hair. Besides, that flash of pale flesh was done by someone who knew that it would be as visible as it is. A normal person might drag her out from behind the Dumpster, maybe, but they wouldn’t mess with her, not like that.”

“You keep saying, ‘normal,’ Anita; don’t you know yet, there is no normal. There’s just victims and predators.” He looked away when he said the last, as if he didn’t want me to see whatever was in his face.

I let him look away, let him keep that moment to himself. Because, Dolph and I were trying to rebuild a friendship, and sometimes you need your friends to pry, and sometimes you need them to leave you the fuck alone.

5

I DIDN’T WANT to go back to the reception. First, I wasn’t in the mood to be merry. Second, I still didn’t know how to answer Arnet’s questions. Third, Micah had made me promise I’d dance with him. I hated to dance. I didn’t think I was good at it. In the privacy of our home, Micah, and Nathaniel, and hell, Jason, had told me I was wrong. That I actually danced very well. I did not believe them. I think it was a throwback to a rather horrible junior high school dance experience. Of course, it was junior high, is there any experience except horribe for those few years? In Hell, if you’re really bad, you must be fourteen forever, and be trapped in school, and never get to go home.

So I walked into the reception, hoping I could say I was tired, and we could leave, but I knew better. Micah had dragged a promise out of me that I’d dance with him, and he’d gotten me to promise a dance for Nathaniel, as well. Damn it. I don’t promise things often, because once I do, I keep my word. Double damn it.

The crowd had thinned out a lot. Murder scenes take so much time out of your night. But I knew that the boys would be there, because I had the car. Nathaniel was at the table where I’d left them, but it was Jason with him, not Micah. Jason and Nathaniel were leaning so close together that their heads nearly touched. Jason’s short blond hair seemed very yellow against Nathaniel’s dark auburn. Jason wore a blue dress shirt that I knew was only a shade or two bluer than his eyes. His suit was black, and I knew without seeing him standing that it was tailored to his body, and probably Italian in cut. Jean-Claude had paid for the suit, and he was fond of Italian-cut designer suits for his employees. When he wasn’t dressing them like they were extras in a high-class porno movie, anyway. For a mainstream wedding, the suit worked. Jason also worked at Guilty Pleasures as a stripper, and Jean-Claude did own the club, but it wasn’t that type of employment that let Jason rate designer clothes tailored to his body. Jason was Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang. Jean-Claude did not think I treated Nathaniel with enough respect for his position as my pomme de sang. I had let Micah and Nathaniel go shopping with Jason for dress clothes, and I footed the bill for my two boys. It had been outrageous, but I couldn’t let Jean-Claude be nicer to his kept man than I was to mine. Could I?

Technically, Micah wasn’t a kept man, but the salary he drew from the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Lycanthrope and Human Communities didn’t cover designer suits. I made enough money to pay for designer suits, so I did.

I had time to wonder what Jason and Nathaniel were up to, talking so close together, like conspirators. Then I felt, more than saw, Micah. He was across the room talking to a group of men, most of them cops. He shook his head, laughed, and started across the room, toward me. I didn’t get much chance to see Micah from a distance. We were always so close to one another, physically. Now I was able to watch him walk toward me, able to admire how the suit clung to his body, how it flattered the broad shoulders, the slender waist, the tightness of his hips, the swell of his thighs. The suit fit him like a roomy glove. Watching him move toward me, I realized the suit was suddenly worth every penny.

The music stopped before he reached me, some song I didn’t recognize. I had a moment of hope that we could just sit down and find out what the other two men were finding so fascinating. But it was a vain hope, because another song came on. A slow song. I still didn’t want to dance, but as Micah got close enough to touch, I had to admit that an excuse to touch him in public was not a bad thing.

He smiled, and even with the sunglasses in place, I knew what his eyes would look like with that smile. “Ready?”

I sighed, and held out my arms. “As I’m ever going to be.”

“Let’s shed the leather jacket first.”

I unzipped it, but said, “Let’s keep it, I’m a little cold.”

His hands slid around my waist. “Is it getting colder outside?”

I shook my head. “Not that kind of cold.”

“Oh,” he said, and he pulled back his hands, which had been sliding up my back underneath the leather jacket. He went back to my waist and slid his hands underneath the tux jacket, so that only the thin cloth of the dress shirt separated my skin from his.

I shuddered under that touch.

He leaned his mouth in close to my ear, before he’d finished the long, slow slide of his hands that would have pressed our bodies together. “I’ll warm you up.” His arms pressed me into the curve and swell of his body, but not so tight as to make me uncomfortable in public. Close, but not like we were glued together. But even this close, I could feel the swell of him under the cloth of his pants. The barest brush of touch, which let me know that there was more than one reason he didn’t hold me as tight as he could. He was being polite. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether this politeness was really Micah’s idea, or if he’d picked up my discomfort. He was always very, very careful around me. In fact, he mirrored back so exactly what I wanted, what I needed, that it made me wonder if I knew him at all, or if all I saw was what he wanted me to see.

“You’re frowning, what’s wrong?” He was close enough that just turning his head in against my face allowed him to whisper.

What was I supposed to say? That I suspected him of lying to me, not about anything in particuliar, but about nearly everything. He was too perfect. Too perfectly what I needed him to be. That had to be an act, right? Nobody was perfectly what you needed them to be, everybody disappointed you in some way, right?

He whispered against my ear, “You’re frowning harder. What’s wrong?”

I didn’t know what to say. Why was I left so often this night with a dozen things to say and nothing I wanted to share out loud? I decided for partial truth, better than a lie, I guess. “I’m wondering when you’re going to spoil everything.”

He drew away enough to see my face clearly. He let his puzzlement show. “What have I done now?”

I shook my head. “That’s the problem, you haven’t done anything, nothing wrong anyway.”

I looked at him and wanted to see his eyes. I finally reached up and moved his dark glasses just enough to glimpse his chartreuse eyes. But, of course, that was a mistake, because I found myself gazing into those eyes, marveling at how green they looked tonight. I shook my head again. “Damn it.”

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing, and that’s what’s wrong.” Even to me it made no sense, but it was still true. Still how I felt.

He gave me that smile that was part puzzlement, part irony, part self-deprecation, and part something else. Nothing about that smile was happy. He’d come with that smile, and I still didn’t understand it, but I knew that he used it less and less, and usually only when I was being silly. Even I knew I was being silly, but I couldn’t seem to help it. He was too perfect, so I had to poke at it. Our relationship worked too well, so I had to see if I could break it. Not really break it, but see how far it would bend. I had to test it, because what good was something that couldn’t be tested? Oh, hell, that wasn’t it. The truth was that if I let myself I could be happy with Micah, and it was beginning to get on my nerves.

I leaned my forehead against his chest. “I’m sorry, Micah, I’m just tired and feeling grumpy.”

He walked me a little to one side, off the dance floor, not that we’d been dancing. “What is wrong?”

I tried to think what was wrong. I was taking something out on him, but what? Then, part of it hit me. “It didn’t bother me to see the dead woman. I felt nothing.”

“You have to divorce yourself from your emotions, or you can’t do your job.”

I nodded. “Yeah, but once I had to work at it. Now I don’t.”

He frowned down at me, his eyes still peeking over his partially lowered glasses. “And that bothers you, why?”

“Only sociopaths and crazy people can look at the violently dead and feel absolutely nothing, Micah.”

He hugged me to him, suddenly, fiercely, but was careful to keep part of his body away. It was the kind of hug you’d give a friend in need. Maybe a little tighter, a little more intimate, but not much. He always seemed to know just what I needed, just when I needed it. If we weren’t in love, then how did he do that? Hell, I’d been in love with people that didn’t even come close to meeting this many of my needs.

“You are not a sociopath, Anita. You have given up pieces of yourself so you can do your job. You told me once, it’s the price you pay.”

I wrapped my arms around him, held him tight, rested my forehead in the bend of his neck, rubbed my face against the incredible smoothness of his skin. “I’m trying not to lose more pieces of myself, but it’s like I can’t stop. I felt nothing tonight, except guilt that I felt nothing. How crazy is that?”

He kept hugging me. “It’s only crazy if you think it’s crazy, Anita.”

That made me draw back enough to see his face. “What’s that mean?”

He touched my face, gently. “It means that if your life works, and you work in it, then it’s okay, whatever is happening is okay.”

I frowned, then laughed, then frowned again. “I’m not sure a therapist would agree with that.”

“All I know is that since I met you, I’ve felt safer, happier, and better than I have in years.”

“You said safer; funny, I’d think that would be how Nathaniel would order it, safer, then happy.”

“I may be your Nimir-Raj and a dominant, but, Anita, I spent years at the mercy of Chimera. He was crazy and a sociopath. I’ve seen the real thing, Anita, and you are neither of those things.” He smiled when he said it and gave a little duck of his head, almost like an old gesture that he’d nearly outgrown. It showed his profile for a moment, and because I was in the mood to pick, I asked something I’d been debating on for weeks.

I traced the bridge of his nose. “When I first met you, your nose looked like it had been badly broken. I assumed that meant it had happened when you were human, but your nose is getting straighter, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” and his voice was soft when he said it. There was no smile now, not even the confusing one. His face had closed down. I’d begun to realize that this was how he looked when he was sad. I’d met Chimera, hell, I’d killed him. He’d been one of the most insane beings I’d ever met. This from a list that included self-deluded would-be gods and millenia-old master vampires, not to mention wereanimals that were both sexual sadists and sexual predators, in the truest sense of the word. So, that I would put Chimera near the top of my crazy-bad-guy list said just how awful he had been. I could not imagine being at his mercy for any length of time. I hadn’t enjoyed a few hours. Micah and his pard had been with Chimera for years. I’d avoided this topic, because it was so obviously painful for all of them, but especially for Micah. But tonight, for so many reasons, I needed to know. I needed, almost, to cause him some pain. Ugly, but true.

Sometimes you fight what you are, and sometimes you give in to it. And some nights you just don’t want to fight yourself anymore, so you pick someone else to fight.

6

WE ENDED UP standing at the far side of the parking lot, where trees grew in a tall, thin line. Fast-growing maples, with their yellow leaves, dancing in the October wind. My hair was so tight in its French braid that the wind could do little with it, but Micah’s hair streamed around his face, like a thick, dark cloud. He’d taken off his glasses, and the streetlights made his eyes very yellow, even with the green shirt on, as if they reflected the light differently than they should have, or would have, if they’d been human eyes.

The wind was cool and held that crisp autumn scent. What I wanted to do was take his hand and walk out into the night until we found some woods. I wanted to go walking out into the darkness and let the wind take us where it wanted us to go. My bad mood seemed to have faded on the cool night wind, or maybe it was the sight of him, his face nearly lost in a cloud of his own hair. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to fight anymore.

“You’re right, my nose is healing.” His voice held that hint of bitter laughter to it. That tone that matched that confusing smile.

I touched his arm. “If this is hard, you don’t have to.”

He shook his head and put a hand up at his hair, impatient, angry, as if he was mad at the hair for getting in his face. I thought he was probably angry at me, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t really want to know if the answer was yes.

“No, you asked, I’ll answer.”

I took back my hand and let him talk, let him open the bag that I’d wanted opened, so badly, only minutes ago. Now, I’d have let it go to wipe that look off his face.

“Do you know why my hair’s long?”

It was such an odd question, that I answered it. “No, I guess I thought you liked it that way.”

He shook his head, one hand caught in the hair near his face, so he could keep the wind from chasing it across his face. “When Chimera took over a group of shapeshifters, he used torture, or the threat of torture, to control us. If the head of the group could withstand the torture, then he’d torment weaker members. Use their harm as a way to control the alphas in the group.”

He was quiet for so long that I had to say something. “I know he was a sadistic bastard. I remember what he did to Gina and Violet, to keep you and Merle under control.”

“You only know part of it,” he said, and his eyes had a distant look, so far away. He was remembering, and it wasn’t pretty.

I hadn’t meant to bring this on. I hadn’t. “Micah, I didn’t mean . . .”

“No, you wanted to know. You can know.” He took in a breath so deep it made him shudder. “One of his favorite torments was gang rape. Those of us who wouldn’t participate, he made us grow our hair long. Said, if we wanted to act like women, we should look like women.”

I thought about that for a second. “You and Merle are the only men in your pard that have long hair.”

He nodded. “I think Caleb enjoyed it, and Noah, well,” he shrugged. “We all did things that we didn’t like, just to stay alive. To stay whole.”

I couldn’t think much less of Caleb, but it made me think less of Noah. I didn’t know what to say out loud. But Micah didn’t need me to talk anymore. The story was started, and he would tell it now, whether I wanted to hear it or not. It was my own damn fault, so I listened and gave him the only thing I could at this point—my attention. Not horror, not pity, just my attention. Horror was redundant, and pity—no one likes pity.

“You talked to Chimera, to more than one of his faces. You know how conflicted he was.”

I nodded, then said, “Yes.”

“Part of him was the ultimate male bully, and that part raped women. Part of him was gay, and the two parts hated each other.”

Chimera had given the idea of split personality a whole new meaning, because each personality had had a different physical form. Until I’d met him, seen it for myself, I’d have said it was impossible.

“I remember that part of him wanted me to be his mate, and part of him didn’t seem much interested in girls.”

Micah nodded. “Exactly.”

I was almost afraid of where this was going, but I’d started it. If he could tell the story, I could hear it, all of it.

“He didn’t just rape women,” Micah said, “but strangely, he would only rape a man if he were already gay. It was as if he only wanted the sex the person enjoyed to be used against them.” He shrugged, but it turned into a shiver. “I didn’t understand it. I was just grateful to not be on his list of victims.” He shivered again.

“Do you want my jacket?” I asked.

He gave a small smile. “I don’t think it’s that kind of cold.”

I reached out to touch him, and he stepped back, out of reach. “No, Anita, let me finish. If you touch me, I’ll get distracted.”

I wanted to say, let me touch you, let me distract you, but I didn’t. I did what he asked. No one to blame but myself. If I’d kept my mouth shut, we’d be inside dancing, instead . . . when was I going to learn to leave well enough alone? Probably never.

“But somewhere in all that mess Chimera called his mind, he was angry at me. I wouldn’t help him torture, wouldn’t help him rape. But I wouldn’t sleep with him voluntarily either, though he asked. I think he liked me, wanted me, and because his own twisted rules kept him away from me, he found other ways to amuse himself at my expense.”

He touched his face, as if searching it with his fingertips, almost as if he were surprised at what he found. As if it wasn’t the face he was expecting to find. “I can’t even remember what it was that Gina wouldn’t do. I think he wanted her to seduce an alpha of another pack that he wanted to own. She refused, and instead of taking it out on her, he took it out on me. He beat me bad enough that he broke my nose, but I healed, fast.”

“All lycanthropes heal fast,” I said.

“I seem to heal faster than most, not as fast as Chimera did, but close. He thought it had something to do with how easily we could both go from one form to another. He was probably right.”

“Makes sense,” I said. My voice was utterly calm, as if we were talking about the weather. The trick to hearing awful memories is not to be horrified. The only one allowed to have emotion is the one doing the telling. This listener has to be cool.

“The next time I refused to help him rape someone, he broke my nose again. I healed again. Then he made it a game. Every time I refused an order, he beat me worse, always in the face. One day, he finally said, ‘I’m going to ruin that pretty face. If I can’t have it, and you won’t use it on anybody else, then I’ll just ruin it.’ But I kept healing.”

He let go of his hair, and the wind whipped it around his face, but he ignored it now. He hugged himself, held himself tight. I wanted to go to him, wanted to hold him, but he’d said no. I had to respect that, had to, but damn, damn.

“He didn’t beat me the next time, he took a knife to me. He cut my face up, took the nose, ate it.” He gave a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Jesus, it hurt, and it bled. God, it bled.”

I touched his arm, tentatively, gently. He didn’t tell me to go away. I eased my arms around him and found that he was trembling, a fine tremor that went from the top of his head down his entire body. I held him in my arms and wished I knew what to say.

He whispered against my hair. “When it grew back, but not all the way back, he beat me again. New flesh is more tender than old, and when it broke enough times, it stayed broken. It didn’t heal perfectly, and once he’d messed me up, he seemed satisified. Now that Chimera isn’t here to mess me up, my nose is healing. It’s getting straighter, every time I come back from leopard form.” He leaned in against me, slowly, as if he had to fight to let the tension go. He stayed like that, relaxing by inches, while I held him and rubbed his back in useless circles.

Normal people would have told him lies, like it’s alright, I’m here, but he deserved better than lies. “He’s dead, Micah. He’s dead, and he can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

He gave another sound, half swallowed laugh, half sob. “No, he can’t, because you killed him. You killed him, Anita. I couldn’t kill him. I couldn’t protect my people. I couldn’t protect them.” He began to collapse to his knees, and if I hadn’t caught him, he’d have fallen. But I did catch him, and I lowered us both to the edge of grass near the trees. I sat on the grass and held him, rocked him, while he cried, not for himself, but for all the people he couldn’t save.

I held him until the crying quieted, then stopped, and I held him some more in the windswept silence. I held him and let the October wind wash us both clean. Clean of sadness, clean of that horrible urge I had to tear things down. I made myself a promise sitting there in the grass, with the feel of him wrapped around my body. I promised not to poke at things anymore. I promised not to break things if they were working. I promised not to stir up shit, if it didn’t have to be stirred. I said a little prayer to help me keep those promises. Because, God knew, that the chances of me keeping any of those promises without divine intervention were slim to none.

7

BY THE TIME Nathaniel and Jason came looking for us Micah was back to normal. Normal for Micah meant that if I hadn’t seen him break down, even I wouldn’t have guessed. In fact, he was so back to normal that it made me wonder how many other breakdowns I’d missed. Or had I caused this one? Was he able to maintain absolute control as long as no one made him look at it? Of course, even if that were true, that didn’t sound very healthy. Oh, hell, maybe we all needed therapy. If I took the entire pard in, maybe we could get a group discount.

Nathaniel sat on the other side of me, putting me in the middle. He sat so that the line of his body touched mine as much as possible. There was a time when I’d have made him give me breathing space, but I understood the shapeshifter’s need for physical contact now. Besides, making Nathaniel move over an inch when he slept mostly naked in my bed nearly every night would have been silly. Jason just stood and looked down at all of us. He looked unnaturally solemn, at least for him, then suddenly he broke into a grin. Now he looked like himself.

“It’s after midnight, we thought you’d be outside feeding the ardeur.” His grin was way too wicked to match the mildish words.

“I’m able to go longer between feedings,” I said, “sometimes fourteen, or even sixteen hours.”

“Oh, pooh,” he said, and stamped his foot, pouting. It was a wonderful imitation of a childish snit, except for the devilish twinkle in his eye. “I was hoping to take another one for the team.”

I frowned at him, but couldn’t make it go all the way up to my eyes. Jason amused me, I don’t know why, but he always had. “I don’t think we’ll be needing your services tonight, thanks for offering though.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I am never going to get to have sex with you again, am I?”

“Don’t take this wrong, Jason, but I hope not. The sex was amazing, but what put you in my bed was an emergency. If I can’t control the ardeur better than that, then I’m not safe to be out in public alone.”

“It was my fault,” Nathaniel said, voice soft.

I turned my head and was close enough to the side of his face to have kissed his cheek. I wanted to make him move, to give me more room, but I fought the urge off. I was just being grumpy. “It was my fault if it was anyone’s, Nathaniel.”

Micah’s so-calm voice came from my other shoulder. “It was Belle Morte’s fault, the wicked, sexy vampire of the west. If she hadn’t been messing with Anita, trying to use the ardeur to control her, then it wouldn’t have risen hours ahead of schedule.” Belle Morte, Beautiful Death, was the creator of Jean-Claude’s bloodline. I’d never met her in physical person, but I’d met her metaphysically, and that had been bad enough. Micah laid a hand across my shoulders, but managed to put his hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder, too. Comforting us both. “You haven’t collapsed since Anita’s been able to stretch the feedings out more.”

Nathaniel sighed so heavily that I felt the movement against my body. “I haven’t gotten stronger, she has.” He sounded so sad, so disappointed in himself.

I leaned in against his shoulder, enough that Micah was able to literally hug us both at the same time. “I’m your Nimir-Ra, I’m supposed to be stronger, right?”

He gave me a faint smile.

I laid my head on his shoulder, curving my face into the bend of his neck, and getting that whiff of vanilla. He’d always smelled like vanilla to me. I’d thought once it was shampoo, or soap, but it wasn’t. It was his scent for me. I hadn’t had the courage yet to ask Micah if Nathaniel’s skin smelled like vanilla to him, too. Because I wasn’t sure what it would mean if I was the only one who found Nathaniel’s scent so very sweet.

“You want to ask Anita something,” Jason said.

Nathaniel tensed against me, then in a small voice, he asked, “Do I still get my dance?”

It was my turn to tense. I couldn’t control it, it was involuntary. Nathaniel got very still beside me, because he’d felt it, too. I didn’t want to dance, that was true, but I also had a very clear memory of thinking, just minutes ago with Micah, that I’d rather have been dancing. I’d messed up once tonight, I didn’t want to do it twice. “Sure, dancing sounds great.”

That made Micah and Nathaniel pull back enough to look at me. Jason was just staring down at me. “What did you say?” Nathaniel said.

“I said, dancing sounds great.” Their astonishment almost made it worthwhile.

“Where is Anita, and what have you done with her?” Jason asked, face mock serious.

I didn’t try to explain. I couldn’t figure out a slick way of saying to Micah, I’d rather have danced, and it’s my fault we missed it, without spilling his secrets in front of Nathaniel and Jason. So I just stood, and offered my hand to Nathaniel.

After a second of staring at it, and me, he took it, almost tentatively, as if he were afraid I’d take it back. I think he’d come ready for an argument about the dancing, and not getting one had thrown him.

I smiled at the surprise on his face. “Let’s go inside.”

He gave me one of his rare full-out smiles, the one that made his entire face light up. For that one smile, I’d have given him a lot more than just a dance.

8

OF COURSE, MY good intentions lasted about as long as it took to be escorted onto the dance floor. Then suddenly I was expected to dance. In front of people. In front of people that were mostly cops. Cops that I worked with on a regular basis. No one is as merciless if you give them ammunition, no pun intended, as a bunch of policemen. If I danced badly, I’d be teased. If I danced well, I’d be teased worse. If they realized I was dancing well with a stripper, the teasing would be endless. If they realized I was dancing badly with a stripper, the jokes would be, well, bad. Either way you cut it, I was so screwed.

I felt fourteen again, and awkward as hell. But it was almost impossible to be awkward with Nathaniel as your partner. Maybe it was his day job, but he knew how to bring out the best in someone on the dance floor. All I had to do was let go of my inhibitions and follow his body. Easy, maybe, but not for me. I like the few inhibitions I have left, thank you, and I’m going to cling to them as long as I can.

What I was clinging to now was Nathaniel. Not much scares me, not really, but airplane rides, and dancing in public are on that short list. My heart was in my throat, and I kept fighting the urge to stare at my feet. The men had spent an afternoon proving that I could dance, at home, with only people who were my friends watching. But suddenly, in public in front of a less than friendly audience, all my lessons seemed to have fled. I was reduced to clinging to Nathaniel’s hand and shoulder, turning in those useless circles that have nothing to do with the song, and everything to do with fear, and the inability to dance.

“Anita,” Nathaniel said.

I kept staring at my feet, and trying to not see that we were being watched from around the room.

“Anita, look at me, please.”

I raised my face, and whatever he saw in my eyes made him smile, and filled his own eyes with a sort of soft wonderment. “You really are afraid.” He said it like he hadn’t believed it before.

“Would I ever admit to being afraid, if I wasn’t?”

He smiled. “Good point.” His voice was soft. “Just look at my face, my eyes, no one else matters but the person you’re dancing with. Just don’t look at anyone else.”

“You sound like you’ve given this advice before.”

He shrugged. “A lot of women are uncomfortable on stage, at first.”

I gave him raised eyebrows.

“I used to do an act in formal wear, and I’d pick someone from the audience to dance with. Very formal, very Fred Astaire.”

Somehow, Fred Astaire was not a name that came to mind when I thought of Guilty Pleasures. I said as much.

His smile was less gentle and more his own. “If you ever came down to the club to watch one of us work instead of just giving us a ride, you’d know what we did.”

I gave him a look.

“You’re dancing,” he said.

Of course, once he pointed out that I’d been dancing, I stopped. It was like walking on water, if you thought about it, you couldn’t do it.

Nathaniel pulled gently on my hand and pushed gently on my shoulder and got us going again. I finally settled for staring at his chest, watching his body movements as if he’d been a bad guy and it was a fight. Watch the central body for the first telltale movements.

“At home you moved to the rhythm of the song, not just where I moved you.”

“That was at home,” I said, staring at his chest and letting him move me around the floor. It was damn passive for me, but I couldn’t lead, because I couldn’t dance. To lead you have to know what you’re doing.

The song stopped. I’d made it through one song in public. Yeah! I looked up and met Nathaniel’s gaze. I expected him to look pleased, or happy, or a lot of things, but that wasn’t what was on his face. In fact, I couldn’t read the expression on his face. It was serious again, but other than that . . . we stood there, staring at each other, while I tried to figure out what was happening, and I think he tried to work up to saying something. But what? What had him all serious-faced?

I had time to ask, “What, what’s wrong?” then the next song came on. It was fast, with a beat, and I was so out of there. I let go of Nathaniel, stepped back, and had turned, and actually gotten a step away, before he grabbed my hand. Grabbed my hand and pulled me in against him so hard and so fast that I stumbled. If I hadn’t caught myself with one arm around his body, I’d have fallen. I was suddenly acutely aware of the firmness of his back against my arm, the curve of his side cupped in the hollow of my hand. I was holding him so close to the front of my body that it seemed every inch of us from chest to groin pressed against one another. His face was painfully close to mine. His mouth so close it seemed a shame not to lay a kiss upon those lips.

His eyes were half-startled, as if I’d grabbed him, and I had, but I hadn’t meant to. Then he swayed to one side and took me with him. And just like that we were dancing, but it was different from any dancing I’d ever done. I didn’t follow his movements with my eyes, I followed them with my body. He moved, and I moved with him, not because I was supposed to, but for the same reason a tree bends in the wind, because it must.

I moved because he moved. I moved because I finally understood what they’d all been talking about; rhythm, beat, but it wasn’t the beat of the music I was hearing, it was the rhythm of Nathaniel’s body, pressed so close that all I could feel was him. His body, his hands, his face. His mouth was temptingly close, but I did not close that distance. I gave myself over to his body, the warm strength in his hands, but I did not take the kiss he offered. For he was offering himself in the way that Nathaniel had, no demand, just the open-ended offer of his flesh for the taking. I ignored that kiss the way I’d ignored so many others.

He leaned into me, and I had a moment, just a moment, before his lips touched mine, to say, no, stop. But I didn’t say it. I wanted that kiss. That much I could admit to myself.

His lips brushed mine, gentle, then the kiss became part of the swaying of our bodies, so that as our bodies rocked, so the kiss moved with us. He kissed me as his body moved, and I turned my face up to him and gave myself to the movement of his mouth as I’d given myself to the movement of his body. The brush of lips became a full-blown kiss, and it was his tongue that pierced my lips, that filled my mouth, his mouth that filled mine. But it was my hand that left his back and traced his face, cupped his cheek, pressed my body deeper against his, so that I felt him stretched tight and firm under his clothes. The feel of him pressed so tight against my clothes and my body brought a small sound from my mouth, and the knowledge that the ardeur had risen early. Hours early. A distant part of me thought, Fuck, the rest of me agreed, but not in the way I meant it.

I drew back from his mouth, tried to breathe, tried to think. His hand came up to cup the back of my head, to press my mouth back to his, so that I drowned in his kiss. Drowned in the pulse and beat of his body. Drowned on the rhythms and tide of his desire. The ardeur allowed, sometimes, a glimpse into another heart, or at least their libido. I’d learned to control that part, but tonight it was as if my fragile control had been ripped away, and I stood pressed into the curves and firmness of Nathaniel’s body with nothing to protect me from him. Always before he’d been safe. He’d never pushed an advantage, never gone over a line that I drew, not by word or deed; now suddenly, he was ignoring all my signals, all my silent walls. No, not ignoring them, smashing through them. Smashing them down with his hands on my body, his mouth on mine, his body pushing against mine. I could not fight the ardeur and Nathaniel, not at the same time.

I saw what he wanted. I felt it. Felt his frustration. Months of being good. Of behaving himself, of not pushing his advantage. I felt all those months of good behavior shatter around us and leave us stripped and suffocating in a desire that seemed to fill the world. Until that moment I hadn’t understood how very good he’d been. I hadn’t understood what I’d been turning down. I hadn’t understood what he was offering. I hadn’t understood . . . anything.

I pulled back from him, put a hand on his chest to keep him from closing that distance again.

“Please, Anita, please, please,” his voice was low and urgent, but it was as if he couldn’t bring himself to put it into words. But the ardeur didn’t need words. I suddenly felt his body again, even though we stood feet apart. He was so hard and firm and aching. Aching, because I’d denied him release. Denied him release for months. I’d never had full-blown sex with Nathaniel, because I could feed without it. It had never occurred to me what that might mean for him. But now I could feel his body, heavy, aching with a passion that had been building for months. When last I’d touched Nathaniel’s needs this completely, he’d simply wanted to belong to me. That was still there but there was a demand in him, a near screaming need. A need that I’d neglected. Hell, a need that I’d pretended didn’t exist. Now, suddenly, Nathaniel wasn’t letting me ignore that need anymore.

I had a moment of clear thinking, because I felt guilty. Guilty that I’d left him wanting for so long, while I had my own needs met. I’d thought that having real sex with him would be using him; now suddenly that one glimpse into his heart let me understand that what I’d done to him had used him more surely than intercourse. I’d used Nathaniel like he was some kind of sex toy, something to bring me pleasure and be cleaned up and put back in a drawer. I was suddenly ashamed, ashamed that I’d treated him like an object, when that wasn’t how he wanted to be treated.

The guilt hit me like a cold shower, the proverbial slap in the face, and I used it to pack the ardeur away, for another hour or two, at least.

It was as if Nathaniel felt the heat spill away from me. He gave me those wide lavender eyes, huge, and glittering, glittering with unshed tears. He let his hands drop from my arms, and since I’d already dropped my hands away, we stood on the dance floor with distance between us. A distance that neither of us tried to close.

The first shining tear trailed down his cheek.

I reached out to him, and said, “Nathaniel.”

He shook his head and backed away a step, another, then he turned and ran. Jason and Micah tried to catch him as he rushed past them, but he avoided their hands with a graceful gesture of his upper body that left them with nothing but air. He ran out the door, and they both turned to follow. But it wasn’t either of them who had to chase him down. It was me. I was the one who owed him an apology. The trouble was, I wasn’t exactly clear on what I would be aplogizing for. For using him, or for not using him enough.

9

THE FIRST PERSON I saw when I hit the parking lot wasn’t any of the men, it was Ronnie. Veronica Simms, private detective, one time my best friend, was standing off to one side from the door. She was hugging herself so hard, it looked painful. She’s 5' 8", a lot of leg, and she’d added high heels and a short red dress to show off the legs. She’d once told me if she had my chest she’d never wear another high neck shirt in her life. She’d been kidding, but when she dressed up, she showed off all that nice long stretch of leg. Her blond hair was cut at shoulder length, but she’d curled the edges under tonight so the hair bobbed above the spaghetti straps on her nearly bare shoulders. It was bobbing at lot, because she was talking low and angry to someone I couldn’t see clearly.

I took another step into the parking lot, and the shadows cleared, and I saw Louis Fane. Louie taught biology at Washington University. He had his doctorate and was a wererat. The university knew about the doctorate but not about what he did on the full moons. He was an inch or two shorter than Ronnie, built compact, but strong. His shoulders filled out the suit he was wearing nicely. He’d cut his dark hair short and neat since last I’d seen him. His dark eyes were almost black, and his clean-cut face was as angry as I’d ever seen it.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying, only the tone, and the tone was pissed. I realized I’d been staring, and it was none of my business. Even if Ronnie and I had still been working out together three times a week, which we weren’t, it still wouldn’t have been any of my business. Ronnie had had problems with me dating a vampire, Jean-Claude in particuliar, but her main objection seemed to be the vampire part. At a time when I’d needed girl advice and a little sympathy, she’d offered only her own outrage, and anger.

We’d started seeing each other less and less over the last few months, until it had gotten to the point where we hadn’t talked in a couple of months. I’d known she and Louie were still dating, because he and I had mutual friends. I wondered what the fight was about, but it wasn’t my fight. My fight was waiting out there in the parking lot, leaning against the side of my Jeep. All three of them were leaning against the Jeep. It was like a lineup, or an ambush.

I hesitated in the middle of the asphalt, debating on whether to go back and offer to referee Ronnie and Louie’s fight. It wasn’t kindness that made me want to go back; it was cowardice. I’d have much rather gotten dragged into someone else’s fight than face what was waiting for me. Other people’s emotional pain, no matter how painful, is so much less painful than your own.

But Ronnie wouldn’t thank me for interfering, and it really wasn’t my business. Maybe I’d call her tomorrow and see if she’d talk, see if there was still enough friendship left to save. I missed her.

I stood there in the darkened parking lot, caught between the fight behind me and the fight waiting for me. Strangely, I didn’t want to fight with anyone. I was suddenly tired, so terribly tired, and it had nothing to do with the late hour, or a long day.

I walked to the waiting men, and no one smiled at me, but then I didn’t smile at them either. I guess it wasn’t a smiling kind of conversation.

“Nathaniel says you didn’t want to dance with him,” Micah said.

“Not true,” I said. “I danced, twice. What I didn’t want to do was play kissy-face in front of the cops.”

Micah looked at Nathaniel. Nathaniel looked at the ground. “You kissed me earlier in front of Detective Arnet. Why was this different?”

“I kissed you to give Jessica the clue to stop hitting on you, because you wanted me to save you from her.”

He raised his eyes, and they were like two pretty wounds, so pain-filled. “So, you only kissed me to save me, not because you wanted to?”

Oh, hell. Out loud I tried again, though the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that I was going to lose this argument. Lately, around Nathaniel, I always felt like I was doing something wrong, or at least not right. “That isn’t what I meant,” I said.

“It’s what you said.” This from Micah.

“Don’t you start,” I said, and I heard the anger in my voice before I could stop it. The anger had been there already, I just hadn’t been aware of it. I was angry a lot, especially when I wasn’t comfortable. I liked anger better than embarrassment. Marianne, who was helping me learn to control the ever growing list of psychic powers, said that I used anger to shield myself from any unwanted emotion. She was right, I accepted that she was right, but she and I hadn’t come up with an alternative solution, yet. What’s a girl to do if she can’t get angry, and she can’t run away from the problem? Hell if I know. Marianne had encouraged me to be honest, emotionally honest with myself and those closest to me. Emotional honesty. It sounds so harmless, so wholesome; it’s neither.

“I don’t want to fight,” I said. There, that was honest.

“None of us do,” Micah said.

Just hearing him be so calm helped the anger ease away. “Nathaniel pushed it on the dance floor, and the ardeur rose early.”

“I felt it,” Micah said.

“Me, too,” Jason said.

“But you don’t feel it now, do you?” Nathaniel said. His eyes were almost accusing, and his voice held it’s own thin edge of anger. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever heard him that close to being angry.

“Anita is getting better control over the ardeur,” Micah said.

Nathaniel shook his head, hugging himself tight. It reminded me of the way that Ronnie had been holding herself. “If it had been you, she would have just come out into the parking lot and fed.”

“Not willingly,” I said.

“Yes, you would,” he said, and his eyes held the anger his voice had held. I’d never seen those lavender eyes angry before. Not like this. It was strangely unnerving.

“I would not have sex in the parking lot of Larry and Tammy’s wedding reception, if I had a choice.”

That angry gaze searched my face as if trying to find something. “Why not feed here?”

“Because it’s tacky. And because if Zerbrowski ever got wind of it, I would never, ever, live it down.”

Jason patted his arm. “See, it isn’t you she turned down, it’s that she doesn’t want to fool around at Larry’s wedding. Just not her style.”

Nathaniel glanced at Jason, then back at me. Some strange tension that I didn’t quite understand seemed to flow away from him. The anger began to fade from his eyes. “I guess you’re right.”

“Well, if we don’t want to be fooling around in the parking lot, then we need to get going,” Micah said. “The ardeur doesn’t like being denied. When it does come back tonight, it won’t be gentle.”

I sighed. He was right. That bit of metaphysical bravado on the dance floor would have all sorts of consequences later tonight. When the ardeur rose again, I would be forced to feed. There would be no stuffing it back into its box. It was almost as if, being able to stop the ardeur in its tracks, to completely turn it off once it had filled me, pissed the ardeur off. I knew it was a psychic gift and that psychic gifts don’t have feelings and don’t carry grudges, but sometimes, it felt like this one did.

“I’m sorry, Anita, I wasn’t thinking.” Nathaniel looked so discouraged that I had to hug him, a quick hug, more sisterly than anything else, and he responded to my body language and didn’t try and hold me close. He let me hug him, and step away. Nathaniel was usually almost painfully attuned to my body language. It was one of the things that had allowed him to share my bed for months without violating those last few taboos.

“Let’s go home,” I said.

“That’s my cue to part company,” Jason said.

“You’re welcome to bunk over if you want,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, since I’m not needed to referee the fight, or for sage advice, I’ll go home, too. Besides, I couldn’t stand listening to the three of you get all hot and heavy and not be invited to play.” He laughed and added, “Don’t get mad, but having once been included, it’s harder to be excluded.”

I fought the blush that burned up my face, which always seemed to make the blush darker and harder.

Jason and I had had sex once. Before I realized it was possible to love someone to death with the ardeur, Nathaniel had collapsed at work and been off the feeding schedule for a few days. Micah hadn’t been in the house, and the ardeur had risen early. Hours early. It had been interference from Belle Morte, the orignator of Jean-Claude’s bloodline, and the first, to my knowledge, possessor of the ardeur. It only ran through her line of vamps, nowhere else. The fact that I carried it had raised very interesting metaphysical questions. Belle had wanted to understand what I was, and she had also thought it would raise some hell. Belle was a good business-y vampire, but when she could take care of business and make trouble, all the better. So it hadn’t been my fault, but my choices had been limited to taking Nathaniel and possibly killing him, or letting Jason take one for the team. He’d been happy to do it. Very happy. And strangely our friendship had survived it, but every once in a while I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened, and that made me uncomfortable.

“I love the fact that I can make you blush, now,” he said.

“I don’t.”

He laughed, but there was something in his eyes that was more serious than laughter. “I need to tell you something, in private, before you go running off, though.”

I didn’t like how suddenly serious he was. I’d learned in the last few months that Jason used his teasing and laughter as a shield to hide a rather insightful intelligence that was sometimes so perceptive it was painful. I didn’t like his request for privacy either. What couldn’t he say in front of Micah and Nathaniel? And why?

Out loud I said, “Okay.” I started off to the far side of the parking lot away from the Jeep, and farther away from Ronnie and Louie, who even a glance showed were still having a quiet screaming match.

When the shade of the trees that edged the church parking lot lay cool above us, I stopped and turned to Jason. “What’s up?”

“The thing on the dance floor was sort of my fault.”

“In what way, your fault?”

He actually looked embarrassed, which you didn’t see much from Jason. “He wanted to know how I got to have sex with you, real sex, the very first time I helped feed the ardeur.”

“Technically, it was the second,” I said.

He frowned at me. “Yeah, but that was when the ardeur was brand new and we didn’t have intercourse, and there were three other men in the bed.”

I turned away so the dark would help hide the blush, though truthfully he could probably smell it hot on my skin. “Sorry I brought it up, you were saying?”

“He’s been in your bed for what, four months?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“And he’s not had intercourse yet, hell, he’s not had orgasm, not real orgasm with like release and everything.”

I couldn’t blush harder or my head would explode. “I’m listening.”

“Anita, you can’t keep pretending that Nathaniel isn’t real.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Maybe not, but I had no idea that you weren’t at least doing him orally or by hand, or watching him do himself. Something, anything.”

I just shook my head and looked at the ground. I couldn’t think of anything good to say. If I hadn’t just had my metaphysical peek inside Nathaniel’s head, I would probably have gotten angry, or rude. But I’d seen too far into Nathaniel’s pain, and I couldn’t pretend anymore. Couldn’t ignore it.

“I thought that by not doing the final stuff that it would make it easier for him when the ardeur gets under control and I don’t need a pomme de sang anymore.”

“Is that still your idea, to just dump him when you have enough control that you don’t need to feed?”

“What am I supposed to do with him? Keep him like a pet, or a really big child?”

“He’s not a child, and he’s not a pet,” Jason said, and the first hint of anger was in his voice.

“I know that, and that’s the problem, Jason. If the ardeur hadn’t come up I’d have been Nathaniel’s Nimir-Ra, and his friend, and that would have been it. Now, suddenly he’s in this category that I don’t even have a name for.”

“He’s your pomme de sang like I’m Jean-Claude’s.”

“You and Jean-Claude aren’t fucking, and nobody gets upset about that.”

“No, because he lets me date. I have lovers if I want them.”

“I’ve been encouraging Nathaniel to date. I want him to have girlfriends.”

“And your not-so-subtly encouraging him to look at other women made him turn to me for advice.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He doesn’t want to date other people. He wants to be with you, and Micah, and the vampires. He doesn’t want another woman in his life.”

“I am not the woman in his life.”

“Yes, you are, you just don’t want to be.”

I leaned against one of the narrow tree trunks. “Oh, Jason, what am I going to do?”

“Finish what you started with Nathaniel, be his lover.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want that.”

“The hell you don’t. I watch the way you react around him.”

“Lust isn’t enough, Jason. I don’t love him.”

“I’d argue that, too.”

“I don’t love him the way I need to.”

“Need to, for what, Anita? Need to for your conscience? Your sense of morality? Just give him some of what he needs, Anita. Don’t break yourself doing it, but bend a little. That’s all I’m asking.”

“You said the thing on the dance floor was sort of your fault. You never explained that.”

“I told Nathaniel you don’t like passive men. You like a little dominance, a little pushiness. Not much, but enough so that you aren’t the one that says, Yes, we’ll have sex. You need someone to take a little of the responsibility off your shoulders.”

I stared at him, studied that young face. “Is that all it is for me, Jason? I just need someone else to help me spread the guilt around so I can fuck?”

He winced. “That isn’t what I said.”

“Close enough.”

“Get mad, if you want, but that isn’t what I said, or what I meant. Get mad at me, but don’t take it out on Nathaniel, okay?”

“I was raised that if you had sex it was a commitment. I still believe that.”

“You don’t feel committed to me.” He said it as if it were just a fact, nothing personal.

“No, we’re friends, and I was sort of a friend in need. But you’re a grown-up, and you understood what it was. I’m not sure Nathaniel is enough of a grown-up to understand that. Hell, he can’t even say no to women who are almost strangers.”

“He turned down at least three dance offers while we were talking, and I know for a fact that he turned down the beautiful Jessica Arnet for a date.”

“He did, really?”

Jason nodded. “Yep.”

“I didn’t think he’d be able to say no.”

“He’s been practicing.”

“Practicing?”

“He tells you no sometimes, doesn’t he?”

I thought about it. “Sometimes he won’t repeat conversations to me, or tell me things. He says I’ll get mad at him, and so I should ask the other person.”

“You wanted, no, demanded, that Nathaniel be more responsible for himself. You made him get his driver’s license. You’ve forced him to be less dependent, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But you didn’t think what it would mean, did you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted him to be independent, to think for himself, to decide what he wanted out of life, right?”

“Yeah, in fact, I said almost exactly that to him. I wanted him to decide what he wanted to do with his life. I mean he’s only twenty for God’s sake.”

“And what he’s decided he wants to do is be with you,” Jason said, and his voice was softer, gentle.

“That is not a life decision. I meant like a career choice, maybe go back to college.”

“He’s got a job, Anita, and he makes better money as a stripper than most college graduates do.”

“You can’t strip forever,” I said.

“And most marriages don’t last forever either.”

My eyes must have gotten too wide, because he hurried with his next words, “What I mean is that you treat everything like it’s a forever question. Like you can’t change your mind later. I don’t mean to imply that Nathaniel wants you to make an honest man of him. That never came up, honest.”

“Well, that’s a relief, at least.”

“You’ll need a pomme de sang for years, Anita. Years.”

“Jean-Claude said maybe in a few months I’d be able to feed from a distance, and not need the up close and personal stuff.”

“You’ve made progress on going longer between feedings, Anita. But you haven’t made much progress on truly controlling the ardeur.”

“I controlled it on the dance floor,” I said.

He sighed. “You shut it down on the dance floor. That’s not control, not really. It’s like you have a gun, and you can lock it in the gun safe, but that doesn’t teach you how to shoot it.”

“A gun analogy? You’ve been thinking on this for awhile, haven’t you?”

“Ever since Nathaniel told me that you hadn’t been allowing him release during the feedings.”

“Allow? He didn’t ask, and how was I supposed to know he wasn’t even doing himself in private? I mean, I didn’t tell him not to.”

“You can play with yourself, and it feels good, but it doesn’t meet the real need.”

I pushed my back tight into the tree, as if the solid wood could catch me, because I felt like I was falling. Falling into a chasm so deep that I’d never get out. “I don’t know if I can do Nathaniel and still look at myself in the mirror in the morning.”

“Why does doing Nathaniel bother you that much?”

“Because he confuses my radar. I have friends, I have boyfriends, I have people who are dependent on me, people I take care of. I do not fuck the people I take care of. It would be like taking advantage of your position.”

“And Nathaniel falls into the taking care of category?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You think by having sex that you’re taking advantage?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not how Nathaniel sees it.”

“I know that, Jason, now.” I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the roughness of the bark. “Damn it, I want the ardeur under control so I don’t have to keep making these kinds of decisions.”

“And if I could wave a magic wand over you and you instantly could control the ardeur, what then? What would you do with Nathaniel?”

“I’d help him find a place of his own.”

“He does most of the housework around your place. He buys your groceries. He and Micah do most of the cooking. Nathaniel taking care of the domestic stuff is what allows Micah and you both to work all those hours. Without Nathaniel, how would you organize it?”

“I don’t want to keep Nathaniel just to make my life easier. That’s like evil.”

Jason let out a big sigh. “Are you really this slow, or just driving me crazy on purpose?”

“What?” I said.

He shook his head. “Anita, what I’m trying to say is that Nathaniel doesn’t feel used. He feels useful. He doesn’t need a girlfriend, because he thinks he already has one. He doesn’t want to date, because he’s already living with someone. He doesn’t need to look for a place of his own, because he already has one. Micah knows that, Nathaniel knows that, the only person who doesn’t know that seems to be you.”

“Jason . . .”

He stopped me with a raised hand. “Anita, you have two men who live with you. They both love you. They both want you. They both support your career. Between the two of them, they’re like your wife. There are people in this world who would kill to have what you have. And you’d just throw it away.”

I just looked at him, because I didn’t know what to say.

“The only thing that keeps this little domestic arrangement from being perfect for all concerned is that Nathaniel is not getting his needs met.” He stepped in close to me, but the look on his face was so serious that it never occurred to me that kissing was coming, because it wasn’t. “You’ve set up the dynamics so that you wear the pants in this trio, and that’s fine, it works for Micah and Nathaniel. But here’s the hard part about wearing the pants, Anita, it means you get to make the tough decisions. Your life is working better than it’s worked since I met you. You’ve been happier, longer, than I’ve ever seen you. Micah, I don’t know that well, but Nathaniel has never been this happy in all the years I’ve known him. Everything is working, Anita. Everybody is making it work. Everybody but . . .”

“Me,” I said.

“You,” he said.

“You know, Jason, I can’t say you’re wrong about any of it, but I hate you right this second.”

“Hate me, if you want to, but I’m tired of watching people have everything their heart desires and throw it away.”

“This isn’t what my heart desired,” I said.

“Maybe not, but it’s what you needed. You needed a wife in that old 1950s sort of way.”

“Doesn’t everybody,” I said.

He grinned at me. “No, some people would like to be the wife, but I just can’t find a woman who’s man enough to keep me in the style to which I have not yet become accustomed.”

It made me smile. Damn it. “You are the only one who can say shit like this to me, and not have me pissed at them for days, or longer. How do you get away with it?”

He planted a quick kiss on my my lips, more brotherly than anything. “I don’t know how I get away with it, but if I could bottle it, Jean-Claude would pay a fortune for it.”

“Maybe not just Jean-Claude.”

“Maybe not.” He stepped back smiling, but his eyes had that serious look again. “Please, Anita, go home, and don’t freak. Just go home, and be happy. Be happy, and let everyone around you be happy. Is that so hard?”

When Jason said it like that, it didn’t seem hard. In fact, it seemed to make a lot of sense, but inside, it felt hard. Inside it felt like the hardest thing in the world. To just let go, and not pick everything to death. To just let go and enjoy what you had. To just let go and not make everybody around you miserable with your own internal dialogue. To just let go and be happy. So simple. So difficult. So terrifying.

10

A CAR SQUEALED out of the parking lot, as Jason walked me back to the Jeep. I only had a moment to see it, before it blasted out into the street, but I recognized the car. Apparently Ronnie was driving them home, but the fight wasn’t over. Not my problem. God knew I had enough relationship problems without sticking my nose into someone else’s. Of course, sometimes no matter how hard you try to stay out of something, you can’t.

“Can I grab a ride home?” It was Louie Fane, Dr. Louis Fane, though his doctorate wasn’t in the biology of humans, but in the biology of bats. His doctoral thesis had been on the adaption of the Little Brown Bat to human habitation. Actually his work with bats, a different species, had put him in a cave with a wererat that attacked him. It’s how he got to be furry once a month.

“Sure,” Jason and I said in unison.

Louie smiled. “I just need one ride, but thanks.” His eyes, which were truly black, not just darkest brown like mine, didn’t match the smile. The eyes were still angry.

“His place is on the way to the Circus,” Jason said.

I nodded. “Okay.” I looked at Louie and wanted to ask what the fight had been about, and didn’t want to ask what the fight had been about. I settled for, “Are you okay?”

He shook his head. “Ronnie will probably call you tomorrow and tell you anyway. I guess you might as well know, or maybe you can talk some sense into her.”

I gave a half-shrug. “I don’t know. Ronnie can be pretty stubborn.”

Jason laughed. “You calling someone else stubborn, that’s rich.”

I frowned at him. “You sure you don’t want to ride home with us, instead of Mr. Comedy here?”

He shook his head. “I’m on Jason’s way home.” He still hadn’t told us what the fight was about. Was I supposed to remind him, or let it go?

“Do you want some privacy here?” Jason asked.

Louie sighed. “Yes, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll say good night to Micah and Nathaniel, and I’ll be waiting by my car.” He waved at me and walked away.

For the second, no, the third time that night I was standing out in the cool shadows of the trees getting a heart-to-heart talk with another man. This one wasn’t even my boyfriend or occasional food.

“What’s wrong, Louie?”

“I asked Ronnie to marry me tonight.”

I’d been prepared for a lot of things, but that hadn’t even ocurred to me. Marriage? I just gaped at him. When I could close my mouth and pretend to be intelligent, I said, “And why the fight, then?”

“She said, no.” He didn’t look at me as he said it. He stared off into the dark, his hands plunged into the pockets of his dress slacks, ruining the line of his jacket, but giving him something to do with his hands.

“She said, no,” I repeated it, as if I hadn’t heard it right.

He glanced at me then. “You sound surprised.”

“Well, last I knew you guys were getting along really well.” Actually, the last time Ronnie had confided in me it had been a conversation that had set us both giggling, because it had been mostly about sex. We’d both overshared, which women do more than men, and the sex had been as good between her and Louie as it had been between me and Micah. Which was pretty damned good. Ronnie had had this mistaken idea that dating Micah meant I’d dumped Jean-Claude. When she found out it didn’t mean that, she’d not taken it well. She just couldn’t seem to cope with me dating the undead. Picky, picky. I could joke, but her last stand on Jean-Claude had been adamant enough that we hadn’t talked much since.

“It’s all wonderful, Anita. That’s what is so . . .” he seemed to search for a word, and settled for, “frustrating!”

“So, you guys are getting along great?” I made it a question.

“I thought so, maybe I was wrong?” He paced two steps away from me, then back. “No, damn it, I wasn’t wrong. It’s been the best two years of my life. Nothing starts my day off better than waking up beside her. I want to start every day like that. Is that so wrong?”

“No, Louie, that’s not wrong.”

“Then why did we just have the biggest fight we’ve ever had?” His dark face was demanding, as if I had the answer and just wouldn’t give it to him.

“I’ll call Ronnie tomorrow, if she doesn’t call me first. I’ll talk to her.”

“She says she doesn’t want to marry anyone. She says, if she married anyone, it would be me, but she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to.” The pain in his voice was so raw, it hurt to hear it.

“I am so sorry.” I started to touch his arm, thought better of it, and said, “Maybe you could just live together?”

“I offered that. I offered to just live together until she was ready for more.” He was staring off into the darkness, again, as if he didn’t want me to see what was in his eyes.

“She said no to that, too?” I asked.

“She doesn’t want to give up her independence. Her independence is one of the things I love most about her.”

“I know that,” I said, and my voice was soft, because it was all I had to offer.

He looked at me. “You know that, then can you tell her?”

“I’ll do everything I can to reassure her that you’re not trying to clip her wings.”

“Is that it? Is she just afraid I’ll take away her freedom?”

“I don’t know, Louie. Truthfully, if you’d asked me beforehand, I’d have said, she’d say, yes.”

“Really,” he said, and he was studying my face now. Studying it as if the secrets to the universe were somehow hidden in my eyes. I preferred him staring out into the dark for his answers instead of in my face. I wasn’t sure what the darkness had to offer him, but I knew I didn’t have any answers.

“Yeah, Louie, really. Last I knew she was the happiest I’ve ever seen her.”

“So I wasn’t just fooling myself?” he asked, and he was still giving me those raw, demanding eyes.

“No, Louie, you weren’t fooling yourself.”

“Then why?” he asked. “Why?”

I shrugged, and had to say something, because he was still staring at me. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.” It sounded so inadequate, sorry. But it was all I had to offer tonight.

He nodded, a little too rapidly, as he turned away, and stared out into the dark again. I knew he wasn’t really seeing the yard that bordered the church. I knew he was just staring to be staring, and not to have to meet anyone’s eyes for a while, but it was sort of unnerving. Unnerving to think that whatever he was feeling was so strong that he had to hide his eyes, so I wouldn’t see. It reminded me of the way Dolph had turned away at the murder scene. And, in a way, they were both hiding the same thing—pain.

He turned away from the dark and gave me his eyes again. They were raw, and I had to fight to not turn away myself. My rule was always if someone could feel the emotion, the least I could do was not turn away.

“It looks like your sweetheart is coming this way.”

I glanced back to find Micah walking slowly toward us. Normally, he wouldn’t have interrupted, but we were on a deadline tonight. Time and the ardeur wait for no man. I would have explained that Micah wasn’t being rude, that we had to go, but I wasn’t sure Louie knew about the ardeur, and I hated to explain it to people who didn’t know. It always sounded so . . . odd.

“How long have you and Micah been living together?” he asked.

“About four months.”

“Ronnie and you haven’t been hanging out much since he moved in with you, have you?”

I thought about it, then said, “I guess not. She didn’t like that I’m still dating Jean-Claude.”

Louie watched Micah walking toward us. His face looked thoughtful. “Maybe that wasn’t it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe it was having someone live with you. Maybe that’s what she couldn’t handle.”

“She said it was me dating a vamp.”

“Ronnie said a lot of things,” he said, voice softer, less angry, more puzzled. He shook himself like a dog coming out of water, and managed to give me a smile. It left his eyes sad, but it was a start. “Maybe she just couldn’t stand to see you committing yourself to somebody, not that much.”

I shrugged, because I didn’t think that was it, but I couldn’t blame him for thinking it. “I don’t know.”

He gave me that smile again, his eyes like dark hopeless pools. “You go home, Anita, and enjoy it.” I caught a glitter of tears before he turned away and looked out into the dark again.

I didn’t know what to do. Was I supposed to hug him? If it had been a girlfriend, I probably would have. But it wasn’t, he wasn’t, and I didn’t need any more complications tonight. I did the guy thing, and patted him awkwardly on the back. Whether I would have worked up to a full-blown hug, I don’t know, because Micah was beside us.

“Sorry to interrupt, but it’s been nearly an hour since we hit the parking lot.” It was his subtle way of reminding me that sometimes an hour was all we got from the time I squashed the ardeur down to the time it resurfaced.

I took the hint. With Micah beside me, I felt more secure. If the ardeur had risen, he’d have been there to see that nothing disastrous happened. I slid my arm through Louie’s arm and bumped my head against his shoulder. “Come on, Louie, we’ll walk you to Jason’s car.”

He nodded, as if he didn’t trust his voice, and was careful not to look at either of us as we walked him toward the lights of the parking lot. Micah pretended that nothing was wrong. I pretended that there were no tears to see. I kept my hold on his arm all the way to where Jason waited standing beside his car.

Jason opened the passenger side door for Louie, giving me a questioning look over Louie’s shoulder.

I started to shake my head, but Louie hugged me. Hugged me suddenly, and fiercely, so tight it took my breath away. I thought he’d say something, but he didn’t. He just held on, and I wrapped my arms around his back, held him, because I couldn’t not hold him. About the time I thought I was going to have to think of something to say, he stepped back. He’d been crying while he held me, but I hadn’t felt a single sob, nothing, but the fierceness in his arms, his hands, and silent tears.

He blinked and gave Micah an odd smile, that was almost a sob. “How did you talk her into moving in with you?”

“I moved in with her,” he said, voice very quiet, very even, a careful voice, reserved for frightened children, and overly emotional adults. I’d heard that voice often enough aimed at me. “And she asked me.”

“Lucky,” Louie said, and that one word sounded like it meant anything but, lucky.

“I know,” Micah said, and he put an arm around my shoulders and moved me just a little back from Louie, so there was room for him to get through the open car door.

Louie nodded again, too rapidly, and too many times. “Lucky.” He slid into the car, and Jason shut the door behind him.

Jason leaned into me. “What just happened?”

It wasn’t my secret to tell, but it felt like dirty pool sending Jason to drive Louie home without warning him. “It’s his secret to tell, not mine. I’m sorry. But let’s just say he’s had a rough night.”

Louie knocked on the window. The sound made both Jason and me jump. Micah had either seen it coming, or had better nerves than we did. Jason moved back enough so the door could open. “Don’t bother to whisper this close to the car. I can hear you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be, it’s not like he didn’t see the fight. Tell him, so I don’t have to.” And Louie closed the door again. He leaned his head back against the seat, and more of those completely silent tears began to escape him.

We all looked away, as if it were somehow shameful to watch. I think we’d have been less embarrassed if he’d been undressed. “What is up?” Jason said.

“He proposed to Ronnie, and she said no.”

Jason’s mouth dropped open just like mine had. “You are joking me.”

I shook my head. “Wish I was.”

“But they are like one of the happiest couples I know.”

I shrugged. “I don’t explain the news, I just report it.”

“Shit,” Jason said. He glanced back at his car, and at Louie. “I’ll get him home.”

“Thanks.”

Jason gave me a shadow of his usual grin. “Well, can’t send him home with you. Wouldn’t that complicate the hell out of things?”

“What?” I asked.

Micah kissed me on the side of the face. “The ardeur rising with Louie in the car. Speaking of which . . .”

“You guys go,” Jason said, “we’ll be okay.”

I kissed him on the cheek, quick and sisterly. “You’re a braver man than I am, Gunga Din.”

He laughed. “That’s not the original quote, is it?”

“Not exactly, but it’s still true.”

He looked suddenly serious again. Very unJasonlike. “I don’t know if I’m brave or not, but I’ll get him tucked in.”

“We have to go,” Micah said. He started leading me toward our Jeep.

I kept looking back as Jason went around the car and got in. Louie sat motionless, head back. From a distance, you couldn’t tell he was crying.

Micah pulled me in against his body, hugging me loosely to his side. I leaned in against the solidness of him and slid my arm around his waist, so that we finished the walk touching from chest to thigh. I was glad he was with me. Glad we were driving home together. Glad that home meant both of us.

Nathaniel was leaning against the side of the Jeep watching us walk toward him. He was leaning with his hands behind him so that his weight trapped his hands behind him, pinned between his hips and the Jeep. It wasn’t just intercourse that Nathaniel hadn’t been getting with me. Nathaniel had other “needs” that I was, if possible, even less comfortable with. It made him feel peaceful to be tied up. Peaceful to be abused. Peaceful. I’d asked him why he enjoyed it once, and he’d told me that it made him feel peaceful. It made him feel safe.

How could being tied up make you feel safe? How could letting someone hurt you, even a little, make you feel good? I didn’t get it. I just didn’t get it. Maybe if I’d understood it better, I’d have been less afraid to go that last mile with him. What if we had intercourse and it wasn’t enough? What if he just kept pushing, pushing me to do things that I found . . . frightening? He was supposed to be the submissive, and I was his dominant. Didn’t that mean that I was in charge? Didn’t that mean he did what I said? No. I’d had to learn enough to understand Nathaniel and some of the other wereleopards, because he wasn’t the only one with interesting hobbies. The submissive had a safe word, and once they said that word, all the play stopped. So in the end, the dominant had an illusion of power, but really the submissive got to say how far things went, and when they stopped. I’d thought I could control Nathaniel because he was so submissive, but it was tonight that I realized the truth. I wasn’t in control anymore. I didn’t know what was going to happen with Nathaniel, or me, or Micah. The thought terrified me, so I thought about it, really thought about it. What if I found Nathaniel a new place to live? What if I found him a new place to be? A new life?

I rolled it over in my mind as we walked across the pavement. I thought about sending him home with someone else, letting him weep on someone else’s shoulder. But more than that, I thought about getting under the covers with only Micah on one side, and no one on the other side. Nathaniel had his side of the bed now. I hadn’t realized it until that second, hadn’t let myself realize it. The three of us enjoyed reading Treasure Island to each other. For Micah and me it was a revisiting of childhood favorites, for the most part, but for Nathaniel most of the books were new to him. He’d never had anyone read to him before bedtime. Never had anyone share their books with him. What kind of childhood is it without books, stories to share? I knew that he’d had an older brother, who died, and a father who died, and a mother who died. That they’d died, I knew, but not how, or when, except that he’d been young when it happened. He didn’t like talking about it, and I didn’t like seeing the look in his eyes when he did, so I didn’t push. I didn’t have a right to push if I wasn’t his girlfriend. I didn’t have a right to push if I wasn’t his lover. I was only his Nimir-Ra, and he didn’t owe me his life story.

I thought about not having Nathaniel in the bed, not for feeding, but not having him there to hear the rest of the story. To hear what happened when Jim realizes what a soft-hearted villain Long John Silver really is. The thought of him not being there at that moment when we come to the end of the adventure was painful, a wrenching kind of pain, as if my stomach and my heart both hurt at the same time.

He opened the door and held it for me, because this close to the ardeur, it wasn’t always good that I was driving. He held the door and was as neutral as he could be, as I moved past him. I didn’t know what to do, so I let him be neutral, and I was neutral, too. But as I buckled my seat belt in place and he closed the door, I realized that I would miss him. Not miss him because my life ran smoother with him than without him, but I would simply miss him. Miss the vanilla scent of him on my pillow; the warmth of his body on his side of the bed; the spill of his hair like some tangled, living blanket. If I could have stopped my list there, I’d have sent Nathaniel to his room for the night; he did still have a room where all his stuff stayed, all his stuff but him. But I couldn’t stop the list there, not and be honest.

He’d cried when Charlotte died, in Charlotte’s Web. I wouldn’t have missed seeing him cry over a dead spider for anything. It had been Nathaniel’s idea that we could have a movie marathon of old monster flicks. You have not lived until you’ve sat through The Wolf Man (1941), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), and The Werewolf (1956) with a bunch of shapeshifters. They had heckled the screen and thrown popcorn, and howled, sometimes literally, at the movie version of what they knew all too well. The wereleopards had all complained, that at least werewolves had some movies, that once you’d named, Cat People, the leopards didn’t have any movies. Most of the werewolves had known about the 1980 version, but almost no one had known about the original in 1950. We had another movie night planned where we were going to watch both versions. I was sure we’d spend the night complaining, cheerfully, at how far off both films were, and get eerily silent when they hit close to home. Alright, they’d be eerily silent, and I’d watch them watching the screen.

I was looking forward to it. I tried picturing the night without Nathaniel. No Nathaniel coming and going out of the kitchen with popcorn and soda, making people use coasters. No Nathaniel sitting on the floor, next to my legs, half the night spent with his head on my knee, and the other half playing his hand up and down my calf. It wasn’t sexual, he just felt better touching me. The entire pard, and pack, felt better touching each other. It was possible to be up close and personal without it being sexual. It really was, just not usually for me.

Which brought me back to the problem at hand. Funny how the thinking led back to it. Tonight when the ardeur finally surfaced, what was I going to do? I could exile Nathaniel to his room, legitimately, because I’d need to feed tomorrow, too. I could save him like for dessert. But we’d both know that that wasn’t it. I wasn’t saving him, I was saving myself. Saving myself from what, I wasn’t sure, but it was definitely about saving me, and had nothing to do with saving Nathaniel.

He didn’t want to be saved. No, that wasn’t true. Nathaniel already thought he had been saved. I’d saved him. I’d been treating him like a prince who needed to find his princess, but that was all wrong. Nathaniel was the princess, and he had been rescued, by me. As far as Nathaniel was concerned, I was the prince in shining armor, I just needed to come across, and then we could all live happily ever after.

Trouble was, I was no one’s prince, and no one’s princess. I was just me, and I was all out of armor, shiny or otherwise. I just wasn’t the fairy-tale type. And I didn’t believe in happily ever after. The question was, did I believe in happily for now? If I could have answered that question, then all the worry would have been ended, but I couldn’t answer it. So as Micah drove us toward home in the October dark, I still didn’t know what I’d do when the ardeur finally rose for the night. I didn’t even know what the right thing to do was anymore. Wasn’t right supposed to help people and wrong supposed to hurt people? Didn’t you make the right choice because it was the right thing to do? I always felt squeamish about praying to God about sex, in any context, but I prayed as we drove, because I was out of options. I asked for guidance. I asked for a clue as to what was the best for everyone. I didn’t get an answer, and I hadn’t expected one. I have a lot psychic gifts, but talking directly to God is not one of them, thank goodness. Read the Old Testament if you don’t think it’s a scary idea. But worse than no answer, I didn’t feel that peace that I usually get when I pray.

My cell phone rang. It made me jump, and my pulse was so thick in my throat that I couldn’t answer right away. A woman’s voice said, “Anita, Anita are you there?”

It was Marianne. She lived in Tennessee and was the vargamor for the Oak Tree Clan. It was a very old-fashioned title and job, basically she was the witch that helped them deal with their metaphysical problems. Most packs didn’t have one anymore, too old-fashioned. Maybe the New Age stuff would bring it back into vogue.

She was also helping me cope with my abilities. She was the only psychic I knew, and trusted. She knew the shapeshifters almost as well as I did, in some ways better, in some ways not. But she was the closest thing I had to a mentor of late, and I needed one.

“Marianne, it’s great to hear your voice. What’s up?” My voice sounded breathy even to me.

“I just got this overwhelming urge to call you. What’s wrong?”

See, she’s psychic. I wanted to explain everything, but Nathaniel was behind me in the car. What was I supposed to do, make him put his fingers in his ears and hum while I talked? “It’s a little awkward right now.”

“Should I guess?”

“If you want.”

She was quiet for a few moments, and she wasn’t guessing. She was using either her own gifted intuition, or she was drawing a card, a tarot card that is. “I’m looking at the Knight of Cups here, that’s usually Nathaniel’s card.” I’d been skeptical, to say the least, when Marianne first got out a deck of cards to do a “reading,” but they were eerily accurate, at least in her hands. When she’d first started, Nathaniel’s card had been the Page of Cups, a child’s card, or a least a very young person, but of late he’d been promoted. Knight of Cups.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Silence, and I knew she was laying a spread. She’d actually tried to get me to use the cards, to see if I had any abilities for divination, but they were just pretty pictures to me. My gifts lay elsewhere.

“King of Wands, Micah is with you, too.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.” I could picture her with her long gray hair tied back in a no-nonsense ponytail, probably in one of her loose, flowing gowns, sitting cross-legged on the bed, which is where she’d have been this late. She was slender and strong, and her body didn’t match her hair, or the fact that she was closer to sixty than fifty.

“The devil, temptation. You haven’t fed the ardeur yet, have you?”

It used to creep me out that she could do this, but I’d gotten used to it. It was just something Marianne could do. She didn’t hold it against me that I raised zombies, and I didn’t hold it against her that she could tell what was happening hundreds of miles away. In fact, sometimes, like now, it came in handy.

“Not yet.”

“The Priestess, you have a question for me.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not doing something silly like trying to choose between Micah and Nathaniel, are you?”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You can’t blame me, Anita, you do tend to complicate your life.”

I sighed. “Fine, true, but sort of, and not exactly.”

“Fine, be cryptic.”

“Not in the way you might mean,” I said finally.

“So not dumping one for the other,” she said.

“No.”

“Well, that’s good.” She was quiet for longer this time. “I’ll stop guessing. I’ve laid a reading.” She preferred to do a reading without knowing anything about the problem. Marianne felt that if you talked to much you influenced the person doing the reading.

“I put you in the center, Queen of Swords. The past is the five of pentagrams, being left out in the cold, not getting your needs met. Diety is the six of cups, which can be someone from your past coming back into your life, someone you felt a strong connection with. Future is the Knight of Cups, Nathaniel’s card. The mundane is the four of pentacles, the Miser, holding on to things that no longer help your life run smoothly. Now we’ll do the connecting cards.” She was quiet for a second or two, while she thought, or prayed, or whatever she did to make the cards talk to her. I understood everything but the six of cups so far. “Connecting the mundane to the past is the Lover’s card. Something happened in your love life that made you be afraid of being hurt, or giving up something, or someone. Connecting the past to diety is the King of Wands, usually Micah’s card, but it could be energy, a male prescence in your life. Connecting diety to the future is the two of swords; you have a choice to make, and you think it’s difficult, but if you take off the blindfold, you can see, and you have what you need to do it. Connecting the future to the mundane is the Knight of Wands, another man in your life. You do draw a lot of male energy to you.”

“Not on purpose,” I said.

“Hush, I’m not finished.”

“Overlaying the Miser is the six of swords, help unseen, or help from a spiritual source. Overlaying the Lovers is the four of rods, the marriage card. Overlaying the out in the cold is the ten of pentacles, happy properous home. Hmm. The King of Rods and the six of cups stand on their own, but the two of swords has crossed with the Queen of Wands. Nathaniel’s card is crossed with the ten of cups, a happy home, true love. The Knight of Wands is crossed by the Devil, temptation.”

“Okay, I get most of it, but who is the Knight of Wands, and why is he covered by temptation? And who is the Queen of Wands?”

“I think the Queen of Wands is you.”

“I’m always the Queen of Swords.”

“Maybe that’s changing. Maybe you’re coming into your power, into yourself.”

“I’m already myself,” I said.

“Have it your way.”

“I’m trying to.”

“I’d say the Lovers and the four of rods are your old fiancé in college that dumped you. That experience led you to be the Miser with your emotions. You need to let that go. Your home was the five of pentacles, cold, but now it’s a happy prosperous home. You’re going to be offered up some difficult choices soon; that has something to do with someone from your past. I think Micah’s card is the message that he’s helped you heal some of those old wounds, because he bridges the past with diety.”

“He’s a gift from diety?”

“Don’t be cheeky. When the universe, or God, or Goddess, or whatever you choose to say, gives you someone in your life that comes in and makes so much right, so quickly, be grateful. Be grateful instead of picking at it.” Marianne knew me too well.

“And the Knight of Wands?”

“Someone new, or someone old, but you’ll be seeing them in a new light. It will be a temptation, but the wands represent power, so it could be a temptation to use power or gain power, rather than anything relationshipwise.”

“I don’t need more temptation in my life, Marianne.”

“Did you start a case tonight?”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I felt compelled to draw another card. It’s the eight of swords, a woman bound and blindfolded, surrounded by swords. A woman died tonight.”

I try to avoid calling Marianne in the middle of a murder case, for a lot of reasons, this was one of them. It creeped me out, and gave her nightmares.

“Five of rods, there will be a lot of conflict on this one, and more to die. But the Justice card says the guilty will be punished, and it will work out, but not without loss. The eight of pentacles? That’s odd. Someone will be involved that was once your teacher. Someone older. Do you know who that would be?”

I thought about it being Dolph, but that didn’t sound right. “I don’t know, maybe.”

“They haven’t come into the situation, yet, but they will. They will help you.”

“How sure are you that there will be more killings?”

“Aren’t you sure of it?” she asked, and she had that tone in her voice that said she was listening to voices I couldn’t hear.

“Yeah, I got that feeling.”

“Trust your feelings, Anita.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

“You must be almost home by now.”

I didn’t ask how she knew we were turning into the driveway. She wouldn’t really have been able to tell me. Psychic stuff wasn’t big on A, B, C logic. It was more like A to G, leaps of logic, with no road map as to how we got to G.

“Yeah, we’re home.”

Micah blew me a kiss and got out of the Jeep. I heard Nathaniel get out of the back. They both closed the doors and left me in the suddenly dark car, alone with the phone.

Marianne spoke into the sudden silence. “Oh, one more thing, the message I just got was, ‘You know what you need to do. Why are you asking me?’ That’s not my message to you, you know I never mind you asking my advice. I actually kind of like it. Who else have you been asking advice from?”

I opened my mouth, and closed it. “I prayed.”

“What I’m getting is that you usually only pray when you’re out of other options that you like. It might be nice if you prayed as something other than a last resort.” She said it so matter-of-factly. Nothing big, you prayed, God can’t talk to you, so he left a message on your machine. Great.

I licked my suddenly dry lips, and said, “It doesn’t bother you that you just took a message from God for me?”

“Well, it wasn’t from him directly. He just sent it.” Again, utterly matter-of-fact, no big deal.

“Marianne.”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes you creep me out.”

She laughed. “You raise the dead and slay the undead, and I frighten you.”

Put that way, it sounded silly, but it was still true. “Let’s just say that I’m glad you have your have psychic powers, and I have mine. I feel guilty enough without knowing the future.”

“Don’t feel guilty, Anita, follow your heart. No, it was the Queen of Rods, not of Cups. So follow your power, let it take you where you need to go. Trust yourself, and trust those around you.”

“You know I don’t trust anybody.”

“You trust me.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Stop poking at it, Anita. Your heart is not a wound to be poked at to see if the scab is ready to come off. You can be healed of that very old pain, if you’ll just let it happen.”

“So everybody keeps telling me.”

“If all your friends are saying one thing, and your heart is saying the same thing, and only your fear is arguing, then stop fighting.”

“I’m not good at giving up.”

“No, I’d say that is the thing you are worst at. Giving up something that no longer serves a purpose, or protects you, or helps you, isn’t giving up at all, it’s growing up.”

I sighed. “I hate it when you make this much sense.”

“You hate it, and you count on it.”

“Yeah.”

“Go inside, Anita, go inside, and make your choice. I’ve said all I have to say, now it’s up to you.”

“And I hate that most of all,” I said.

“What?” she asked.

“That you don’t try and influence me, not really, you just report, tell me my choices, and let me go.”

“I offer guidance, nothing more.”

“I know.”

“I’m hanging up now, and you’re going inside. Because you can’t sleep out in the car.” The phone went dead before I could whine at her anymore. Marianne was right, like usual. I hated that she just gave me information and helped me think, but wouldn’t tell me what to do. Of course, if she’d tried to boss me around, I wouldn’t have tolerated it. I made my own choices, and when someone pushed me, it just made me more determined to ignore them, so Marianne never pushed. Here’s your information, here are your choices, now go be a grown-up and make them.

I got out of the Jeep and hoped I was grown-up enough for this particuliar choice.

11

THE LIVING ROOM was dark as I entered the house. The only light was from the kitchen. One or both of them had walked through the pitch-dark living room and only hit a light switch when they went to the kitchen to check messages on the machine, which was on the kitchen counter. Leopards’ eyes are better in the dark than a human’s, and Micah’s eyes were permently stuck in kitty-cat mode. He often walked through the entire house with no lights, just drifting from room to room, avoiding every obstacle, gliding through the dark with the same confidence I used in bright light.

There was enough light from the kitchen, so I, too, left the living room dark. The white couch seemed to give off its own glow, though I knew that was illusion, made up of the reflective quality of the white, white cloth. I was pretty sure the men had both gone to change for the night. Most lycanthropes, whatever the flavor, preferred fewer clothes, and Micah didn’t like dressing up. I walked into the empty kitchen not because I needed to, but because I wasn’t ready to go to the bedroom. I still didn’t know what I was going to do.

The kitchen held a large dining room table now. The breakfast nook on its little raised platform with its bay window looking out over the woods still held a smaller four-seater table. Four had been more chairs than I needed when I moved into this house. Now, because we usually had at least some of the other wereleopards bunking over due to emergency, or, often, just the need to be close to more of their group, their pard, we needed a six-seater table. Actually we needed a bigger one than that, but it was all my kitchen would hold.

There was a vase in the middle of the table. Jean-Claude had sent me a dozen white roses a week after we started dating. Once we had sex, he’d added one red rose, so it was actually thirteen. One red rose like a spot of blood in a sea of white roses and white baby’s breath. It certainly made a statement.

I smelled the roses, and the red one had the strongest scent. Hard to find white roses that smelled good. All I had to do was call Jean-Claude. He was fast enough to fly here before dawn. I’d fed off of him before, I could do it again. Of course, that would simply be putting off the decision. No, it would be hiding. I hated cowardice almost more than anything else, and calling on my vampire lover in this instance was cowardice.

The phone rang. I jumped back so hard that the roses rocked in their vase. You’d think I was nervous, or guilty of something. I got the phone on the second ring. The voice on the other end was cultured, a professor’s voice, but it wasn’t a professor. Teddy was over six feet, and a serious weight lifter. That he also had a very fine mind and was articulate had surprised me the first time I’d met him. He looks like dumb muscle and talks like a philosopher. He was also a werewolf. Richard had allowed the wolves that wanted to help to join the coalition. “Anita, this is Teddy.”

“Hey, Teddy, what’s up?”

“I am fine, but Gil is not. He will be, but right this moment we are in the emergency room of Saint Anthony’s.”

Gil was the only werefox in town. So he depended a great deal on the “Furry Coalition,” as the local shapeshifters and even the local police had started calling it. The coalition had orginally been designed to promote better understanding and cooperation among the various animal groups, but we’d branched out to dealing with the human world, to try and promote better understanding with them, too. One great big love fest.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Car accident. A man ran a red light. We’ve got other victims in the emergency room that are still ranting at the man. If Gil had been human, he’d have been killed.”

“Okay, so he called the answering service and got your cell phone number, and . . .”

“A policeman at the accident site noticed that Gil was healing much faster than he should have been.”

“Okay, why do I think this is going somewhere bad?”

“Gil was unconscious, so someone called the number in his wallet marked in case of emergencies. He has no family, so it was the answering service number. By the time I got to the hospital, Gil was handcuffed to a bed rail.”

“Why?”

“The policeman, who is still by his side, says he’s afraid Gil will be dangerous when he wakes up.”

“Shit. That is illegal,” I said.

“Technically, yes, but the officer can, at his discretion, prevent harm from coming to the citizenry.”

“That’s not what the cop said.”

“Actually, he said, ‘until I know what the fuck he is, I’m just playing it safe.’ ”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “That sounds more like it. So you’re there to make sure he doesn’t put Gil in a safe house.” Safe houses were really prisons for lycanthropes. They’d been designed originally for new lycanthropes, so you had someplace safe to go during your first few full moons. It was a good idea, since the first few moons could turn into a killing spree, unless you had other shapeshifters to watch over you. The newly furry spent a few full moons with no memory of what they’d done, and very little human in them while they were in animal form. The safe houses were a good idea in theory, but in practice, once you went in, they never let you out. You never had enough control to pass their tests and get out. You were dangerous and would always be dangerous. The ACLU had begun the legal battles on grounds of illegal imprisonment without due process, but so far they were still bad places to be sent.

“The hospital seems worried that Gil is dangerous and have mentioned that.”

“Do you need a lawyer down there?”

“I have taken the liberty of calling the law firm that the coalition has on retainer.”

“I’m surprised it’s gone this bad, this soon. Usually, you need an attack to get them handcuffing people and talking safe house. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

He hesitated.

“Teddy?” I said his name the way my father used to say mine when he suspected I was doing something I shouldn’t have been.

“The emergency room staff are wearing full hazardous material gear.”

“You’re joking,” I said.

“I wish I were.”

“Is everyone just panicking?”

“I believe so.”

“Is Gil still unconscious?”

“In and out.”

“Well, stay with him, wait for the lawyer. I can’t come down tonight, Teddy. I’m sorry.”

“That is not why I called.”

I had one of those uh-oh moments. “Okay, then why did you call?”

“There is another emergency that needs someone right now.”

“Shit, what?”

“One of the pack called. He is at a bar. He has had far too much to drink, and he is fairly new.”

“Are you saying he’s going to lose control in the bar?”

“I fear so.”

“Shit.”

“You keep saying that,” he said.

“I know, I know, profanity doesn’t solve anything.” Teddy had started commenting on how much cussing I did. Him and my stepmother.

“I can’t come down, Teddy.”

“Someone must. The lawyer is not here, and you know there is that little law on the books that they can sign an unconscious shapeshifter into a safe house if they deem him a danger. I do not understand why everyone is panicking this badly, but if I leave Gil alone, I think we will be trying to get him out of a place that has no bail.”

“I know, I know.” I was really happy that Richard had allowed the wolves to join the coalition. They were the largest shifter population in town, so the wolves came in handy to help man the phones and the emergencies. The downside was that Richard felt that if the pack were going to help, then the pack could take advantage of the emergency service. It sounded fair, but since there were nearly six hundred werewolves in the area, it had quadrupled our emergencies. The wolves gave us enough person power to meet the demands. It was a blessing and a problem all in one.

“Did the wolf call his brother?” Brother was slang for the older more experienced werewolf that all the new wolves got. They carried their number for emergencies.

“He says he did and got no answer. He sounded very fragile, Anita. I fear that if he changes in the bar, they’ll call the police . . .”

“And they’ll shoot him,” I finished it for him.

“Yes.”

I sighed into the phone.

“I take it you can’t make this one, either,” Teddy said.

“I can’t, but Micah can.”

Micah came into the kitchen about that time. He looked a question at me. He’d already changed out of the suit, and knowing him, hung it up. He was wearing a pair of sweat pants and nothing else. Just the sight of him shirtless and padding barefoot across the floor made my heart go pit-a-pat. He’d tied his hair back in a loose ponytail, but I could forgive that, when I could see the fine muscle of his chest and stomach. His arms and shoulders looked like some weight lifting had gone into them, but truthfully, most of it was natural. Not all, but most. He was just shaped nicely.

“Anita, are you still there?” I realized that Teddy had been saying something and I hadn’t heard him.

“Sorry, Teddy, can you repeat that?”

“Do you want me to give you the address of the bar, or wait to talk to Micah?”

“Micah is right here.” I handed him the phone, and he took it with raised eyebrows.

I explained as briefly as I could.

Micah put his hand over the phone. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

I shook my head. “Almost sure it’s not, but I can’t take the run. Not with the ardeur about to surface sometime in the next minute or the next two hours. I’m stuck here until it’s fed.”

“I know, but maybe Nathaniel could go?”

“What? Go down to a bar in maybe a bad section of town and arm wrestle a werewolf so new he can’t drink safely?” I shook my head. “Nathaniel has many fine skills, but this isn’t one of them.”

“You’re not really good at it either,” he said, with a smile to soften the harsh truth.

I smiled back, because he was sooo right. “No, I could have done the hosptial run and kept Gil out of a safe house, but I couldn’t talk down the werewolf. I could shoot him, but not talk him down. Not if I don’t know him.”

Micah got on the phone long enough to take the address and name of the bar down, then hung up. He looked at me, face careful, neutral with an edge of concern. “I’m okay with you and Nathaniel being here alone for the ardeur. The question is, are you okay with it?”

I shrugged.

He shook his head. “No, Anita, I need an answer before I leave.”

I sighed. “You need to get there before the wolf loses it. Go, we’ll be alright.”

He looked like he didn’t believe me.

“Go,” I said.

“It’s not just you I’m worried about, Anita.”

“I will do my best for Nathaniel, Micah.”

He frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means what it says.”

He didn’t look happy with the answer.

“If you wait around for me to say, Oh, yes, it’s fine that I’m going to feed the ardeur and fuck Nathaniel, the wolf in question will have shapeshifted, been shot by the cops, and maybe taken some civilians with him before you even leave the house.”

“You’re both important to me, Anita. Our pard is important to me. What happens here tonight could change . . . everything.”

I swallowed hard, because I suddenly didn’t want to meet his eyes.

He touched my chin, raised my face up to meet his gaze. “Anita.”

“I’ll be good,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll do my best, and that is the best I can offer. I won’t really know what I’m going to do until the ardeur rises. Sorry, but that’s the truth. To say anything else would be a lie.”

He took a deep breath that made his chest rise and fall nicely. “I guess I’ll have to settle for that.”

“What exactly do you want me to say?” I asked.

He leaned in and laid a gentle kiss against my lips. We rarely kissed so chaste, but this close to the ardeur, he was being careful. “I want you to say you’ll take care of this.”

“Define take care of it?”

He sighed again, shook his head, and stepped back. “I’ve got to get dressed.”

“Are you taking your car or the Jeep?”

“I’ll take my car. You might get a call from the police for another body, and your gear is all in the back of the Jeep.” He smiled at me, almost sadly, and left to go get dressed. He made a soft exclamation as he went around the corner. He spoke in low voices with another man. The cadence was wrong for Nathaniel.

Damian glided around the corner. “You must be very distracted not to have sensed me sooner.” He was right, I was good at sensing the undead. No vamp should have been able to get this close without me knowing, especially not Damian.

Damian was my vampire servant, as I was Jean-Claude’s human servant. The ardeur was Jean-Claude and Belle Morte’s fault, something about their line had contaminated me. But Damian as my servant, that was my fault. I was a necromancer, and apparently mixing necromancy with being a human servant had some unforseen side effects. One of them was standing across the kitchen staring at me with eyes the color of green grass. Humans didn’t have eyes like that, but apparently Damian had, because becoming a vamp doesn’t change your orignial physical description. It may pale you out, lengthen some of the teeth, but your hair and eye and skin color remain the same. The only thing that was probably more vibrant was his hair. Red hair that hadn’t seen the sun for hundreds of years, so that it was almost the color of fresh blood, a bright, fresh scarlet. All vamps are pale, but Damian started life with that milk and honey complexion that some redheads have, so he was even paler than the norm. Or maybe it was the quality of his paleness, like his skin had been formed of white marble, and some demon or god had breathed life into that paleness. Oh, wait, I was that demon.

Technically, my power, my necromancy made Damian’s heart beat. He was over a thousand years old, and he would never be a master vampire. If you aren’t a master, then you need a master to give you enough power to rise from the grave, not just the first night, but every night. Sometimes people rise by accident with no master near, and that is how you get revenants. Walking corpses little better than zombies, but they take blood instead of meat, and they don’t rot. Little problems like that is why there are vampire laws about how you attack humans and how you don’t. Break the laws, and the vamps will kill you for it. And that’s in countries where vampires are still illegal. In the United States where they have rights, the vamps are more civilized, if the police find out about the crime. If they can keep it secret they take care of their own. Even if it means killing their own.

Damian must have come straight from work, because though he, like most of the vamps fresh over from Europe, almost never wore jeans and tennis shoes, he also didn’t like dressing up as much as Jean-Claude insisted on.

He was wearing a coat I’d seen before. It was a deep pine green, a frock coat like something out of the 1700s, but it was new, designed to gape open to expose the pale gleam of his chest and stomach. Embroidery nearly covered the sleeves and lapels of the coat, putting a little glitter of color near all that white skin. The pants were black satin, poofy, like there was way more cloth there than was needed for Damian’s slender legs. He wore a wide green sash for a belt and a pair of black leather boots that folded over just above the knee, so that the outfit was very pirate-y.

“How was work?” I asked.

“Danse Macabre is the hottest dance club in St. Louis.” He kept walking toward me, gliding rather. There was something about the way he looked at me that I didn’t care for.

“It’s the only place where people can go and dance with vampires. Of course it’s hot.” I looked at him, concentrated, and I knew he had fed tonight, on some willing woman. Willing blood feeding was considered the same as willing sex. Just be of age, and you could feed the undead and have bite marks to show your friends. I’d ordered Damian to only feed from willing victims, and because of our bond together, he could not disobey me. Necromancers of legend could boss around all types of undead, and they had to do your bidding. The only undead I could boss around were zombies and Damian, and frankly, I found even that unsettling. I didn’t like to have that kind of control over anyone.

Of course, there was one kind of control that Damian had over me. I wanted to touch him. When he entered a room, I had an almost overwhelming urge to touch his skin. It was part of what it meant to be master and servant. This attraction to your servants, this need to touch and tend to them was one of the reasons that most servants were treasured possessions. I think it also kept even the craziest, most evil of vamps from killing their servants out of hand. For often a vamp didn’t survive the death of his servant, the bond was that close.

He walked around the table, fingers trailing on the backs of the chairs. “And I am one of the vampires that they have been pressing their bodies up against all night.”

“Hannah is still managing the club, right?”

“Oh, yes, I am merely a cold body to send into the crowd.” He was around the table now, to the island that separated the working area of the kitchen from the rest of the room. “I am merely color, like a statue, or a drape.”

“That’s not fair. I’ve seen you work the crowd, Damian. You enjoy the flirting.”

He nodded, as he came around the end of the island. Nothing separated us now but the fact that I was still leaning against the far cabinets and he had stopped at the end of the island. The urge to close that distance, to wrap my hands around his body, was almost overwhelming. It made my hands ache with the need, and I ended with them pressed behind me, pinned by my body the way Nathaniel had leaned against the Jeep earlier.

“I enjoy the flirting very much.” He traced pale fingers along the edge of the island, slowly, tenderly, as if he were touching something else. “But we are not allowed to have sex while we work, though some of them beg for it.” The emerald of his eyes spread and swallowed his pupils, so that he looked at me with eyes like green fire. His power danced along my skin, caught my breath in my throat.

My voice started out a little shaky, but I gained firmness as I talked, until the last was said in an almost normal voice. “You’ve got my permission to date, or fuck, or whatever. You can have lovers, Damian.”

“And where would I take them?” He leaned against the island, arms crossing over that expanse of pale chest.

“What do you mean?”

“I have a coffin in your basement. It is adequate but hardly romantic.”

He could have said a lot of things that I’d expected, but that wasn’t one of them. “I’m sorry, Damian, it never ocurred to me. You need a room, don’t you?”

He gave a small smile. “A room to use for my lovers, yes.”

Then I realized something. “You mean like bring strangers here. People you’ve just picked up, and have them like sleep over, be at the breakfast table in the morning?”

“Yes,” he said, and I understood the look on his face now; it was a challenge. He knew I wouldn’t like the thought of strangers coming into the house, much less facing a strange woman that he’d simply brought home to fuck, first thing in the morning.

I had a tiny spurt of anger, and that helped me think. Helped push back that need to touch him that had nothing to do with the ardeur, and everything to do with power. “I know you had a room at the Circus. Maybe we could arrange something with Jean-Claude, so you could take lovers back there.”

“My home is here, with you. You are my master now.”

I cringed a little at the master part. “I know that, Damian.”

“Do you?” He pushed away from the island and came to stand just in front of me. This close the power shivered between us. It made him close his eyes, and when he opened them, they were still drowning emerald pools. “If you are my master, then touch me.”

My pulse was jumping in my throat like a trapped thing. I didn’t want to touch him, because I wanted to touch him so badly. In a way, this was part of the attraction between Jean-Claude and me, as well. What I’d taken for lust and new love was also partly vampire trickery. A trick to bind the servant to the master, and the master to the servant, so that both served the other willingly, joyfully. It had bothered me when I first realized that part of what I felt for Jean-Claude was somehow tainted with vampire mind games, though it wasn’t on purpose from Jean-Claude’s point of view. He couldn’t help how it worked on me any more than I could help how it worked on Damian.

He was standing so close I had to crane my neck backward to see his face clearly. “I want to touch you, Damian, but you’re acting awfully funny tonight.”

“Funny,” he said. He moved in so close that the edges of his coat, the poofy satin of his pants brushed the thick cloth of my tuxedo pants. “Funny, I don’t feel funny, Anita.” He leaned his face close to mine, and whispered his next words, “I feel half-crazed. All those women touching me, rubbing themselves against me, pressing their warm,” he leaned in so that his hair brushed my cheek, “soft,” his breath felt hot against my skin, “wet,” his lips touched my cheek, and I shuddered, “bodies, against me.”

My breath shook on its way out, and my pulse was suddenly loud in my ears. It was hard to concentrate on anything but the feel of his lips against my cheek, though all his lips were doing was resting lightly against my skin. I swallowed hard enough that it hurt, and said, “You could have gone with any one of them.”

He laid his cheek against mine, but it meant he had to bend over more, which moved his body farther from mine. Compromise. “And could I trust that their windows were proof against sunlight?” He stood up and put a hand on either side of the cabinet behind me, so that I was trapped between his arms. “Could I trust that they would not harm me, once the sun rose and I lay helpless?”

I tried to think of something to say, something helpful, something that would help me to think about something other than how much I wanted to touch him. When in doubt be bitchy. “I’m getting a crick in my neck with you standing this close.” My voice was only a little breathy when I said it. Good.

Damian put his hands around my waist, and just the solid feel of his hands around me stopped whatever else I meant to say. It stopped him for a moment, too. Made him bend his head down, eyes closed, as if he were trying to concentrate, or clear his mind. Then he lifted me, suddenly, and sat me on the edge of the counter. It caught me off guard, and he had put his hips between my knees before I could react. We weren’t pressed together, except for his hands on my waist, but we were one step away from it.

“There,” he said, voice hoarse, “now you can see me better.”

He was right, but it hadn’t been what I meant him to do. I wanted breathing space, and instead my hands were free, and he was a hard thought away. My hands came to rest on his arms, and even through the heavy material of his coat I could feel the solidness of him. It was as if my hands had a mind of their own. I traced up the line of his arms, found his shoulders, and ended with my hands on the broadness of those shoulders, with his hair tickling along the back of my hands. There was something about my hands on his shoulders, or the silk of his hair on my skin that made me bend toward him. I wanted a kiss. Simple as that. It seemed wrong to be this near and not touch him.

He bowed his head toward mine. His eyes were like deep green pools, deep enough to drown in. He whispered, “You have but to tell me stop, and I will stop.”

I didn’t say stop. I slid my hands to the smooth pale line of his neck, and the moment I touched his bare skin with mine, I was calmer. I could think again. That was his gift to me, as my servant. He helped me be calmer, more in control. When I was touching him, it was almost impossible for me to lose my temper. He lowered my blood pressure, helped me think.

I cupped his face between my hands, because I wanted to touch him, but what I gained from his centuries of controlling his own emotions, was that when he put his lips against mine, I was not lost. Not overwhelmed unless I wanted to be overwhelmed. It wasn’t that I felt nothing, because it wasn’t possible to be enfolded in Damian’s arms, pressed against his chest, have his lips caressing mine, and be unmoved. You’d have had to be made of stone not to melt into that embrace, just a little. But, as I’d gained calmness from him, he had begun to gain back the passion that he’d lost over the centuries. A passion not just for sex, but any strong emotion, because the master that made him tolerated no strong emotion, save fear. She’d beat everything else out of him over more centuries than most vampires ever survived.

He drew back enough to see my face. “You’re calm. Why are you calm? I feel crazed, and you give me peaceful eyes!” He grabbed my upper arms, and dug his fingers in until it hurt, and I still felt calm. “It is cruel fate that makes you calmer and calmer the more we touch, and drives me more and more wild.” He gave me a small shake, his face raw with emotion. “I am being punished, and I have done nothing wrong.”

“It’s not punishment, Damian,” and even my voice was low and calm.

“Jean-Claude says that if you wished, you could gain calm only when you needed it. That you could touch me and enjoy touching me, but not be trapped behind this mask.” His fingers were digging in so hard, I was bruising.

“You’re hurting me, Damian.” My voice was still calm, but there was an edge of heat to it, an edge of anger.

“At least you feel something when I touch you.”

“Let go of my arms, Damian.” And just like that, he released me, let me go as if my arms had grown hot to the touch, because he could not disobey a direct order from me. Whatever that order might be.

“Take a step back, Damian, give me some room.” I was angry now, even with the rest of his body touching me. When he did what I told him and was no longer touching me at all, the anger filled me up and spilled over my skin like heat. God, it felt good. I was used to being angry. I liked it. Not the most positive thing to say, but still true.

I started to rub my arms where he’d squeezed, then stopped. I didn’t like letting anyone know how much they’d hurt me.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, and he was holding his own arms. I thought for a moment he was feeling my pain, then realized he was hugging himself to keep from touching me.

“No, you just want to fuck me.”

“That’s not fair,” he said.

He was right, it wasn’t fair, but I didn’t care. Without him touching me, I could be as unfair as I wanted to be. I wrapped my anger around myself. I fed it with every petty impulse I’d fought for days. I should have remembered that one control is much like another. That if you throw away one kind of control, it makes other kinds harder to hold on to.

I unleashed my anger like you’d unleash a rabid dog. It roared through me, and I remembered a time when my rage had been the only warmth I allowed in my life. When my anger had been my solace and my shield. “Get out, Damian, just go to bed.”

“Don’t do this, Anita, please.” He held his hand out to me, would have touched me, but I moved back, just out of reach.

“Go, now.”

And with that he couldn’t help himself. I’d given him a direct order. He had to obey.

He walked out, tears glittering in his green eyes. He passed Nathaniel in the doorway. Nathaniel gave me neutral eyes, a careful face. “Micah had to go.”

I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. I hadn’t let myself get this angry in so long. It had felt good for a few moments, but I was already beginning to regret how I’d treated Damian. He hadn’t asked to be my servant. The fact that I’d done it accidentally didn’t make it any more right. He was an adult person, and I’d just ordered him to bed like he was a naughty child. He deserved better than that. Anyone did.

The anger pulled back, and even my skin felt cooler. The term hot with anger was very real. I was ashamed of what I’d just done. I understood why, in part. I so did not need another man tied to me by metaphysics that demanded a piece of my bed, or at least my body. I didn’t need that. I especially didn’t need a man who might not even be capable of feeding the ardeur. Because even in the middle of the worst of the ardeur, Damian’s touch could cool that fire. With him holding my hand, the ardeur could not rise, or at least it could be put away for hours. So why didn’t I paste Damian to my body? Because of how much more he wanted from me than I was comfortable with giving. I could not use him to help me fight the ardeur if I wasn’t willing to give in to that skin hunger we both felt for each other.

Nathaniel padded into the room, wearing nothing but a pair of silky jogging shorts. They were his version of jammies. He’d taken his braid out, so that his thick hair spilled around him like some kind of cape. “Are you alright?”

I started to say, I owe Damian an apology, but I didn’t say it, because in that one breath, the ardeur rose. No, not rose, engulfed, drowned, suffocated. I suddenly couldn’t breathe past the pulse in my throat. My skin felt thick and heavy with it. I don’t know what showed in my eyes, but whatever it was, it stopped Nathaniel where he stood, froze him like a rabbit in the grass that knows the fox is near.

The ardeur spilled outward, like invisible water, hot, wet, and suffocating. I knew when the power hit Nathaniel, because he shivered. Goose bumps broke on his body, as his very skin reacted to the power.

I’d shoved the ardeur down once tonight, and that had a price. I’d refused the touch of my servant, and that had a price. I’d embraced my anger, and let it spill out onto someone I cared about. That had a price, too. I didn’t want Nathaniel to be the one who paid that price.

12

I DIDN’T REMEMBER crossing the room, but I must have, because I was standing in front of him. His eyes were wide, so wide, his lips half-parted. I was close enough to see the pulse in his throat beating against the skin of his neck like a trapped thing. I leaned in toward him, leaned just my face until I could smell the warm vanilla scent of his neck. Close enough to taste his pulse on my tongue like candy. And I knew this candy would be red and soft and hot. I had to close my eyes so that I didn’t lean my mouth down to that point, didn’t lick over his skin, didn’t bite down and free that quivering piece of him. I had to close my eyes so I wouldn’t keep staring at that pulsing, jumping . . . My own pulse was too fast, as if I would choke on it. I’d thought that feeding the ardeur on Nathaniel was the worst I could do, but the thoughts in my head weren’t about sex. They were about food. Thanks to my ties with Jean-Claude and Richard, I had darker things inside me than the ardeur. Dangerous things. Deadly things.

I stayed perfectly still, trying to master my own pulse, my own heartbeat. But even with my eyes closed, I could still smell Nathaniel’s skin. Sweet and warm and . . . close.

I felt his breath on my face, before I opened my eyes.

He had moved in so close that his face filled my vision. My voice came soft, half-strangled with the needs I was fighting. “Nathaniel . . .”

“Please.” He whispered it as he leaned in, whispered it again as his mouth hovered above mine, he sighed. “Please,” against my lips. His breath felt hot against my mouth, as if it would burn when we kissed.

His lips this close to mine had done one thing. I wasn’t thinking about ripping his throat out anymore. I understood then that we could feed on sex, or we could feed on meat and blood. I knew that one hunger could be turned into another, but until that moment, where I could almost taste his lips on mine, I hadn’t realized that there would come a point where something must be fed. I did not feed Jean-Claude’s blood lust, though there was a shadow of it in me. I did not feed Richard’s beast, with its hunger for meat, but that lived in me, too. I held so many hungers in me, and fed none of them, except the ardeur. That I could feed. That I did feed. But it was in that heartbeat, as Nathaniel kissed me, that I understood why I hadn’t been able to control the ardeur better. All the hungers channeled into that one hunger. Jean-Claude’s fascination with the blood that ran just under the skin. Richard’s desire for fresh, bloody meat. I had pretended I didn’t carry their hungers inside me, not really. But I did. The ardeur had risen to give me a way to feed, a way that didn’t tear people’s throats out, a way that didn’t fill my mouth with fresh blood.

Nathaniel kissed me. He kissed me, and I let him, because if I drew back from it, fought it, there were other ways to feed, other ways that would leave him bleeding and dying on the floor. His lips were like heat against my skin, but part of me wanted something hotter. Part of me knew that blood would be like a scalding wave in my mouth.

I had a sudden image so strong that it made me stumble back from him. Made me push away from that warm, firm flesh.

I felt my teeth sinking into flesh, through hair that was rough and choking on my tongue. But I could feel the pulse underneath that skin, feel it like a frantic thing, the pulse running from me, like the deer had run through the forest. The deer was caught, but that sweet, beating thing lay just out of reach. I bit harder, shearing through the skin with teeth that were made for tearing. Blood gushed into my mouth, hot, scalding, because the deer’s blood ran hotter than mine. Their warmth helped lead me to them. Helped me hunt them. The heat of their blood called me to them, made their scent run rich on every leaf they passed, every blade of grass that brushed them, carried that warmth away, betrayed them to me. My teeth closed around the throat, tore the front of it free. Blood sprayed out, over me and the leaves, a sound like rain. I swallowed the blood first, scalding from the chase, and then the meat that still held the last flickering of pulse, a last beat of life. The meat moved in my mouth as it went down, as if it were struggling, even now, to live.

I came back to the kitchen, on my knees, screaming.

Nathaniel reached out toward me, and I slapped at his hands, because I didn’t trust myself to touch him. I could still taste the meat, the blood, feel it going down Richard’s throat. It wasn’t horror that made me slap at Nathaniel. It was that I had liked it. Gloried in the feel of blood raining down on me. The struggles of the animal had excited me, made the kill all the sweeter. Always when I touched Richard, there had been hesitation, regret, revulsion about what he was, but there had been no hesitation in that shared vision. He had been the wolf, and he had brought the deer down, taken its life, and there had been no regret. His beast had fed, and for this one moment, the man in him had not cared.

I shut down every shield I had between him and me, and it was only then that I felt him look up, felt him raise his bloody muzzle, and look as if he could see me watching him. He licked his bloody lips, and the only thought I had from him was good. It was good, and there was more, and he would feed.

I couldn’t seem to cut myself off from him. Couldn’t shut it down. I did not want to feel him sink teeth into the deer again. I did not want to be in his head for the next bite. I reached out to Jean-Claude. Reached out for help, and found . . . blood.

His mouth was locked on a throat, fangs buried into that flesh. I smelled that flesh, knew that scent, knew it was Jason, his pomme de sang, that he held clasped in his arms, clasped tighter than you hold a lover, because a lover does not struggle, a lover does not feel their death in your kiss.

The blood was so sweet, sweeter than the deer’s had been. Sweeter, cleaner, better. And part of that better was the feel of his arms locked around us, holding us as tight as we held him. Part of what made this more was the embrace. The feel of Jason’s heart beating inside his chest, beating against the front of our bodies, so that we could feel the franticness of it, as the heart began to realize something was wrong, and the more frightened it got, the more blood it pumped, the more of that sweet warmth poured down our throats.

All I could taste was blood. All I could smell was blood. It spilled down my throat, and I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning. Drowning in Jason’s blood. The world had run red, and I was lost. A pulse, a pulse in that red darkness. A pulse, a heartbeat, that found me, that brought me out.

Two things came to me at once. I was lying on cool tile, and that someone had me by the wrist. Their hand on my wrist. I opened my eyes, and found Nathaniel kneeling beside me. His hand on my wrist. The pulse in the palm of his hand beat against the pulse in my wrist. It was as if I could feel the blood running up his arm, smell it, almost taste it.

I rolled closer to him, curled my body around his legs, laid my head upon his thigh. He smelled so warm. I kissed the edge of his thigh, and he opened his legs for me, let my face slip between them, so that the next kiss was against the smooth warmth of his inner thigh. I licked along that warm, warm skin. He shuddered, and his pulse sped against mine. The pulse in the palm of his hand pushing against the pulse in my wrist, as if his heartbeat wanted inside me. But it wasn’t his heartbeat that he wanted inside me.

A roll of my eyes, and I could see him swollen and tight against the front of his shorts. I licked up the line of his thigh, licked closer and closer to that thin line of satin that stretched over the front of his body.

I tasted his pulse against my lips, but it wasn’t an echo from his hand. My mouth was over the pulse in his inner thigh. He let go of my wrist, as if now we didn’t need it, we had another pulse, another, sweeter place to explore. I could smell the blood just under his skin, like some exotic perfume. I pressed my mouth over that quivering heat, kissed the blood just under his skin. Licked the jumping thud of his pulse, just a quick flick of my tongue. It tasted like his skin, sweet and clean, but it also tasted of blood, sweet copper pennies on my tongue.

I bit him, lightly, and he cried out above me. I slid hands over his thigh, held it tight, so that the next bite was harder, deeper. His meat filled my mouth for a second, and I could taste the pulse under his skin. Knew that if I bit down, that blood would pour into my mouth, that his heart would spill itself down my throat as if it wanted to die.

I stayed with my teeth around his pulse, fought with myself not to bite down, not to bring that hot, red, rush. I could not let go, and it was taking everything I had not to finish it. I reached down those metaphysical cords that bound me to Jean-Claude and Richard. I had a confusing image of meat and viscera, and other bodies crowding close. The pack was feeding. I shoved that image away, because it wanted me to bite down. Richard’s muzzle was buried deep into the warmth of the body, buried in the sweet things inside. I had to run from those feelings, before I fed on Nathaniel the way they were feeding on the deer.

I found Jason lying pale on Jean-Claude’s bed, bleeding on the sheets. Jean-Claude’s blood thirst was quenched but there were other hungers. He looked up at me, as if he could see me. His eyes were drowning blue, and I felt it, the ardeur had risen in him. Risen in a wave of heat that left him staring down at Jason’s still form with thoughts that had nothing to do with blood.

He spoke, his voice echoing through me, “I must shut you out, ma petite, something is wrong tonight. You will force me to do things I do not wish to do. Feed the ardeur, ma petite, choose its flame, before another hunger comes and carries you away.” With that, he was gone. Gone as if a door had slammed shut between us. I had a moment to realize that he’d slammed a door between not just himself and me, but between Richard and me, as well. So that I was suddenly cut adrift.

I was alone with the feel of Nathaniel’s pulse in my mouth. His flesh was so warm, so warm, and his pulse beat like something alive inside his skin. I wanted to free that struggling, quivering thing. I wanted to break it free of its cage. To free Nathaniel of this cage of flesh. To set him free.

I fought not to bite down, because some part of me knew that if I once tasted blood that I would feed. I would feed, and Nathaniel might not survive it.

A hand grabbed mine, grabbed mine and held on. I knew who it was before I raised my face from Nathaniel’s thigh. Damian knelt beside us. His touch helped me get to my knees, helped me think, at least a little. But the ardeur didn’t go away. It pulled back like the ocean drawing back from the shore, but it didn’t leave, and I knew it would come back. Another wave was building, and when it crashed over us, we needed a plan.

“Something’s wrong,” I said, and my voice shook. I held on to Damian’s hand like it was the last solid thing in the world.

“I felt the ardeur rise, and I thought, great, just great, left out again. Then it changed.”

“It felt wonderful,” Nathaniel’s voice came distant and dreamy, as if all he’d been having was good foreplay.

“Didn’t you feel it change?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Weren’t you afraid?”

“No,” he said, “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I’m glad one of us was so sure.”

He raised up onto his knees, from where he’d half swooned. “Trust yourself. Trust what you feel. It changed when you tried to fight it. Stop fighting it.” He leaned in toward me. “Let me be your food.”

I shook my head, and clung to Damian’s hand, but it was as if I could feel the tide rushing back toward the shore. Feel the wave building, building, and when it came, it would sweep us away. I didn’t want to be swept away.

“If Jean-Claude told you to feed the ardeur, then feed it,” Damian said. “What I felt from you just now was closer to blood lust.” His face was very serious, sorrowful even. “You don’t want to know what blood lust can make you do, Anita. You don’t want that.”

“Why is it different tonight?” It was a child asking someone to explain why the monster under the bed has grown a new and scarier head.

“I don’t know, but I do know that for the first time when you touch me, I feel it. A dim echo, but I feel it. Always before, Anita, when you touched me, it went away.” He made a movement with his fingers like putting out a candle, “snuffed out. Tonight . . .” He leaned over my hand, and I knew he was going to lay his lips across my knuckles. One of the gifts of the ardeur is that it lets you look inside someone’s heart. It lets you see what they truly feel. When his lips touched my skin, I felt what Damian was feeling. Satisfaction. Eagerness. Worry, but that was fast fading under the feel of his lips on my skin. He wanted. He wanted me. He wanted to feed the hunger of his skin. The hunger of his body not so much for orgasm but for that need to be held close and tight, that need we all have to press our nakedness against someone else’s. I felt his loneliness, and his need, even if it was only for one night, not to be lonely, not to be exiled down in the dark, alone. I saw how he felt about his coffin down in the basement. It was not his room. It was not his in any way. It was just the place he went to die every dawn. The place where he went to die, alone, knowing that he would rise as he had died, alone. I saw the endless stream of women that he had fed on, like pages in a book, a blonde, a brunette, the one with a tattoo on her neck, dark skin, pale skin, the one with blue hair, an endless stream of necks and wrists, and their eager eyes, and grasping hands, and nearly every night, it was in public view, as part of the floor show at Danse Macabre. So that even his feedings were not private. Even that was not special. It was eating so you wouldn’t die, with no meaning to it.

In the center of his being was a great emptiness.

I was supposed to be his master. I was supposed to take care of him, and I hadn’t known. I hadn’t asked, and I’d been so busy trying not to be tied to another man through some weird metaphysical shit, that I hadn’t noticed that Damian’s life sucked.

“I’m sorry, Damian, I . . .” I don’t know what I would have said, because his fingers touched my lips, and I couldn’t think. His fingers held heat and weight that they’d never had before.

His eyes widened, surprised, I think, as surprised as I was at the sensation. Or did my lips give heat to his skin, too? Did my lips suddenly feel swollen and eager as his fingertips did to me, as if both mouth and fingers were suddenly more?

I moved my lips against his touch, barely a movement, just enough to press my mouth against the ripeness of his fingers; barely enough to call it a kiss, but it wasn’t his skin I tasted, or not the skin I was touching. It was as if I laid my mouth against the most intimate parts of him. There was the hard, solid press of his fingers, but the taste, the smell of him, was the perfume of lower things, as if I were a dog on the scent of where I wanted to be.

He drew his breath in with a shaking gasp, and when I rolled my eyes up to see his face, the look in his eyes was one of drowning, as if I already touched what I could taste. His eyes filled with emerald fire, and just like that there was a line of desire carved from my mouth down his fingers, his hand, his arm, his chest, his hips, to the center of his body. I could feel him thick and rich and full of blood. Could taste the warmth of him as if my mouth were nestled against his groin. I could taste him, feel him, and when I slipped my mouth over the tips of his fingers, slid something so much smaller, harder into my mouth; his green eyes rolled back into his head, ginger lashes fluttering downward. His breath sighed out in one word, “Master.”

I knew he was right, in that one moment, I knew, because I remembered being on the other side of such a kiss. Jean-Claude could push desire through me as if his kiss were a finger drawn across my body, down my very nerves so that he touched things that no hand or finger could ever caress. For the first time I felt the other side of such a touch; felt what Jean-Claude had felt for years. He’d tasted my most intimate parts, long before he’d ever been allowed to touch them, or even see them. I felt what he’d felt, and it was wondrous.

Nathaniel touched my hand. I think I’d actually forgotten about him, forgotten about anything but the sensation of Damian’s flesh against mine. Then Nathaniel touched me, and I could feel his body through the palm of my hand as if a line ran from the pulse in my palm down his body in a long line of heat and desire and . . . power.

I felt that power flare outward from my mouth and hand to their bodies. It was my power, the power Jean-Claude had woken in me by his marks, but it was also my power, my necromancy that burned like some cold fire through Damian’s body, but when it hit Nathaniel’s body, the power changed, shifted, became something warm and alive. In the blink of an eye, the power flared through me, through all of us, but it wasn’t sex that I felt anymore, it was pain. I was trapped between ice and fire; a cold so intense that it burned, and the fire burned because that was what it was. It was as if half the blood in my body had turned to ice, so that nothing flowed, and I was dying; and the other half of my body held blood that was molten like melted gold, and my skin could not hold it. I was melting, dying. I screamed, and the men screamed with me. It was the sound of Nathaniel and Damian, their screams, not my own, that dragged some part of me above the pain.

That one blinded, aching part knew that if I let this consume me, we would all die, and that was not acceptable. I had to find a way to ride this, to control this, or we would be destroyed. But how do you control something that you don’t understand? How do you ride something you can’t see, or even touch? I realized in that moment that I touched nothing. That somewhere in the pain I’d let go of both of them. My skin was empty of their touch, but the link between us was still there. One of us, or all of us, had tried to save ourselves by letting go, but this was not a magic so easily defeated. I knelt alone on the floor, touching no one and nothing, but I could feel them. Feel their hearts in their chests as if I could have reached out my hand and carved those warm, beating organs from their bodies; as if their flesh was water to me. The image was so strong, so real, that it made me open my eyes, helped me ride down the pain.

Nathaniel was half crouched, his hand reaching out to me, as if I’d been the one who pulled away. His eyes were closed, his face screwed tight with pain. Damian knelt, pale face empty; if I hadn’t been able to feel his pain, I wouldn’t have known that his blood was turning to ice.

Nathaniel’s hand touched mine, like a child groping in the dark, but the moment his fingers brushed me, the burning began to fade. I gripped his hand, and it didn’t hurt anymore. It was still hot, but it was the beating pulse of life, as if the heat of a summer’s day filled us.

The other half of my body was still so cold it burned. I took Damian’s hand, and the moment we touched that, too, ceased to hurt. The magic, for lack of a better term, flowed through me; the chill of the grave and the heat of the living, and I knelt in the middle like something caught between life and death. I was a necromancer; I was caught between life and death, always.

I remembered death. The smell of my mother’s perfume, Hypnotique, the taste of her lipstick as she kissed me good-bye, the sweet powdery scent of her skin. I remembered the feel of smooth wood under small hands, my mother’s coffin, the clove scent of carnations from the grave blanket. There was a bloodstain on the car seat and an oval of cracks in the windshield. I laid a tiny hand on that dried blood and remembered the nightmares afterward, where the blood was always wet, and the car was dark, and I could hear my mother screaming. The blood had been dry by the time I saw it. She had died without me ever saying good-bye, and I had not heard her screams. She’d died almost instantly, and probably hadn’t screamed at all.

I remembered the feel of the couch, rough and nobbly, and it smelled musty, because after Mommy went away nothing got cleaned. In that moment I knew it wasn’t my memory. My father’s German mother had moved in and kept everything spotless. But I was still small and hugging the side of that musty couch, in a room I’d never known, where the only light was the flickering of the television screen. There was a man, a huge dark shadow of a man, and he was beating a boy, beating him with the buckle end of a belt. He kept saying, “Scream for me, you little bastard. Scream for me.”

Blood spurted from the boy’s back, and I screamed. I screamed for him, because Nicholas would never scream. I screamed for him, and the beating stopped.

I remembered the feel of Nicholas spooning the back of my body, stroking my hair. “If anything happens to me. Promise me, you’ll run away.”

“Nicholas . . .”

“Promise me, Nathaniel, promise me.”

“I promise, Nicky.”

Sleep, and the only safety I ever knew, because if Nicholas watched over me, the man couldn’t hurt me. Nicholas wouldn’t let him.

The images broke then, shattering like a mirror that had been hit; glimpses. The man looming up and up; the first blow, falling to the carpet, blood on the carpet, my blood. Nicholas in the doorway with a baseball bat. The bat hitting the man. The man silhouetted against the light from that damned television, the bat in his hands. Blood spraying the screen. Nicholas screaming, “Run, Nathaniel, run!” Running. Running through the yards. A dog on a chain, barking, snarling. Running. Running. Falling down beside a stream, coughing blood. Darkness.

I remembered battle. Swords and shields, and chaos. And try as I might, chaos was all I could see. A man’s throat exploding in a bright gush of blood; the feel of my blade hacking so deep that it numbed my arm; the force of running headlong into someone else’s shield with my own; being forced back down narrow stone steps; and over all that was a fierce joy, an utter contentment; battle was what we lived for, everything else was just biding time. Familiar faces swam into view, blue eyes, green, blond and red-haired, all like me. The feel of a ship under me, and a gray sea, running white with the wind. A dark castle on a lonely shore. There had been fighting there, I knew that, but that was not the memory I got. What I saw was a narrow stone stairway, that wound up and up into a dark tower. Torchlight flickered on those stairs, and there was a shadow. We ran from that shadow, because terror rode before it. The gate crashed down, trapped against it, we turned and made our stand. The crushing fear, until you could not breathe. Many dropped their weapons and simply went mad, at the touch of it.

The shadow stepped out into the starlight, and it was a woman. A woman with skin white as bone, lips red as blood, and hair like golden spiderwebs. Terrible she was, and beautiful, though it was a beauty that would make men weep, rather than smile.

But she smiled, that first curve of those red, red lips, that first glimpse of teeth that no mortal mouth would hold. Confusion, then the feel of small white hands like white steel, and her eyes, her eyes like gray flames, as if ashes could burn. The images jumped, and Damian was lying in a bed, with that terrible beauty riding him. His body was filling up, about to spill over and into her; riding the edge of pleasure, when she changed it, with a flex of her will, as a flex of her thighs could give pleasure; a thought and he was drowning in fear. A fear so great and so awful that it shriveled him, tore him back from pleasure, threw him close to madness. Then it would pull back like the ocean pulling away from the shore, and she would begin again. Over and over, over and over; pleasure, terror, pleasure and terror, until he begged her to kill him. When he begged she would let him finish, let him ride pleasure to its conclusion, but only if he begged.

A voice broke thorugh the memories, shattered it. “Anita, Anita!”

I blinked, and I was still kneeling between Nathaniel and Damian. It was Damian that had called my name. “No more,” he said.

Nathaniel was crying and shaking his head. “Please, Anita, no more.”

“Why are you blaming me for the tour down bad memory lane?”

“Because you’re the master,” Damian said.

“So it’s my fault we’re reliving the worst events of our lives?” I searched his face, while I kept a tight grip on his hand. It wasn’t erotic anymore, it was more like their hands were safety lines.

“You are the master,” Damian repeated.

“Maybe it’s over, whatever it was, maybe it’s finished.” He gave me a look that was so like one of Jean-Claude’s that it was unnerving. “What’s with the look?” I asked.

“I can still feel it,” Nathaniel said, and his voice was hushed, thick with fear.

“If you would stop arguing and start paying attention to what’s happening, you’d feel it, too,” Damian said, and he wasn’t talking to Nathaniel.

I shut my mouth, it was the best I could do for not arguing, but even silence was enough. Into that brief silence I felt power like something large had pushed against a door in my head. A door that would not hold for long.

“How did you break us free of it this much?”

“I’m not a master, but I am over a thousand years old. I’ve learned some skills over the years, just to stay sane.”

“Alright, Mr. Smartie-Vampire, what’s happening to us?”

He squeezed my hand, and something in his eyes said plainly that he didn’t want to say it out loud. I realized that I couldn’t feel his emotions.

“You’re shielding us all, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “But it won’t hold.”

“What is it? What’s happening to us? Why are we sharing memories?”

“It’s a mark.”

I frowned at him. “What?” Marks were metaphysical connections. I shared them with both Jean-Claude and Richard.

“I don’t know what number, but it’s a mark. It’s not the first, maybe not even the second. Maybe the third? I’ve never had a human servant, or an animal to call. I’ve never been part of a triumverate. You have, so you tell me.”

“Us,” Nathaniel said, in that breathy, scared voice.

I looked into those wide lavender eyes. He was waiting for me to make this better. The problem was, I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how it had begun, so how could I end it? I turned away from the utter trust in his face, because I couldn’t think looking into his eyes. I tried to think back to the third mark. There had been a sharing of memories, but it had been benign. Glimpses of Jean-Claude feeding on perfumed wrists, sex with women wearing way too many undergarments; Richard running in wolf form in the forest, the rich world of scent that he had in that form. They had all been sensual, but safe memories. It had never occurred to me to ask either of them what memories they’d gotten from me. I probably didn’t want to know.

“Third mark, I think. Though with Jean-Claude in charge it was just flashes of memory; mostly sensual, nothing too serious. Why are we trapped in therapy hell?”

“What did you think of just before the memories began?” Damian asked.

“Death,” I said, “I was thinking about death, I don’t know why.”

“Then think of something else, quickly.” His voice held a hint of panic, and I could feel why. I could feel that door in my head beginning to bow outward as if it were melting. I knew that when it went, we better have a plan.

“I didn’t try to mark anybody,” I said.

“Do you know how to stop it?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Then think of something else, something better.”

“Think happy thoughts,” Nathaniel said.

I gave him a look. “Who do I look like—Peter Pan?”

“What?” Damian asked.

“Yes, I mean no, but think,” Nathaniel said. “Think happy thoughts. Think like you need to fly. I survived what happened after . . . after Nicholas died. But I do not want to live through it twice. Please, Anita, think happy thoughts.”

“Why don’t one of you think happy thoughts?” I asked.

“Because you’re the master, not us,” Damian said, “your mind, your attitudes, your desires, are what will rule how this goes, not ours. But for God’s sake, stop thinking about the worst things that ever happened to you, because I don’t want to see the worst that I remember. Nathaniel’s right, think happy thoughts.”

“Happy thoughts,” Nathaniel said, and he wrapped both his hands around one of mine. “Please, Anita, happy thoughts.”

“I am fresh out of pixie dust,” I said.

“Pixie dust?” Damian said, but he shook his head. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Just think of something pleasant, happy, anything, anything at all.”

I tried to think happy. I thought about my dog Jenny, who had died when I was fourteen, and crawled out of the grave a week after she died. Crawled out of the grave and into bed with me. I remembered the weight of her, the smell of fresh turned earth, and ripe flesh.

“No!” Damian screamed. He jerked me to face him, his eyes wild. “No, I will not see what comes next in my story. I will not!” He grabbed my upper arms and turned me to face him, shaking me. Nathaniel wrapped himself around my waist, huddling around my body. Damian said, “Don’t you have any good memories?”

It was like one of those games where they tell you not to think of something or to think of something. I was supposed to think of good things, and for the life of me, everything ended badly. My mother had been wonderful, but she’d died. I’d loved my dog, but she’d died. I’d loved Richard, but he’d dumped me. I thought I’d loved someone once in college, but he’d dumped me. I thought about the feel of Micah’s body, but I was waiting for him to dump me, too. Nathaniel hugged me tighter, his face buried against my back. “Please, Anita, please, happy thoughts, fly for me, Anita, please, God, fly for me.”

I touched his arm, his hand, and thought of the vanilla scent of his hair. Thought of his face alive and listening as Micah read to us. I still thought Micah would go from Prince Charming to the Big Bad Wolf (no anthropomorphic bias intended), but Nathaniel would never dump me. There were moments when the thought of having Nathaniel with me forever panicked the hell out of me, but I forced that worry down. Pushed it away. I concentrated on the feel of him, and as if he felt my thoughts, he began to relax against me. He came to his knees behind me, his arms still around my waist, spooning our bodies together. He leaned his face over my shoulder, and I caught the sweet scent of his skin. I had my happy thought. I wouldn’t fly because Nathaniel had asked me to, I would fly because of Nathaniel.

I laid a kiss against his cheek, and he wound himself around the back of my body, rubbing his cheek against the side of my face, my neck.

Damian still held my arms in his hands, but loosely now. He stared down at both of us. “I take it you found a happy thought?”

I breathed in that clean vanilla scent and gazed up at Damian. “Yes.” My voice was already thick with the scent of skin and the sensation of Nathaniel’s body against mine. I thought, It’s like he’s a living comfort object, like a teddy bear or a penguin, but even as I thought that, I knew it was only partial truth. My stuffed toy penguin, Sigmund, had never kissed my neck, and never would. It was one of Sigmund’s charms. He didn’t make many demands on me.

That door in my mind was melting, like a block of ice left in the sun. Panic fluttered in my chest, and I knew that panic would be a bad emotion to take behind that melting door. I pulled Damian down to us and whispered, “Kiss me.”

His lips touched mine, and the door vanished. But we didn’t get memories this time, we got the ardeur. For the first time, I embraced it, called it pet names, and did the metaphysical equivalent of saying, come and get me. Come and get us.

13

I’D NEVER EMBRACED the ardeur before. I’d been overwhelmed by it, conquered by it, given in to it, but never lowered my flag and surrended to it, not without at least a fight. Jean-Claude had told me that if I could only stop fighting it wouldn’t be so terrible. That once a little control was gained, you needed to “make friends” with the power. I’d given him a look, and he’d dropped the subject, but, he was right, and he was wrong. For him I think it would have been a seduction, but it was me, and the fact that I could still think while it was happening was a problem more than a blessing.

I was okay with my tuxedo jacket going bye-bye. I was okay with Damian’s green coat sliding to the floor, even if it did leave his upper body pale and naked, with the fine muscles gliding under skin the color of fresh, white sheets. Nathaniel was the problem, or rather my confusion about him. I ran my hands up the unbelievable warmth of his skin, but the look in his lavender eyes was too much. I did not love Nathaniel, not the way I needed to, but the look in his eyes left no doubt how he felt about me. This was wrong. I could not take this from him, if he were in love with me, and I was not in love with him. I could not do it.

I pulled my hands away, shaking my head. Damian was molded against my back, but the moment I pulled away from Nathaniel, his eager hands slowed. “Shit,” he whispered, and leaned his face against the top of my head.

Nathaniel’s eyes went from shining with love, to something darker, older. He put his hands on either side of my face, cradling me. “Don’t pull away,” he said.

“I have to.”

“If it’s not sex, it will be blood, Anita, can’t you feel it?” Damian asked.

I could feel something. It was as if this time it was I who put up the shields. But there was still something large and frightening on the other side. Something that I had put in process, but not on purpose, something that was hungry. It didn’t care what it fed on, but it would, eventually, feed on something.

Damian’s hands were still on my shoulders, but he’d leaned his body back enough so we no longer touched anywhere else. “Anita, please . . .”

I turned in Nathaniel’s hands, so that I could glimpse Damian’s face. “It’s wrong, Damian.”

“The sex, or who the sex is with?” he asked.

I took a breath to answer him, but Nathaniel’s hands closed round my face. He turned me back to look at him, and I was suddenly almost painfully aware of the strength in his hands. A strength that could have crushed my face rather than cradled it. He was so submissive that he rarely reminded me of how very strong he was, how dangerous he could have been, if he’d been a different person.

I started to say, Let go of me, Nathaniel, but only got as far as, “Let go,” before he kissed me. The feel of his lips on mine stopped my words, froze my mind. I couldn’t think, couldn’t think about anything but the velvet feel of his mouth on mine. Then something seemed to break inside of him, some barrier, and his tongue thrust into my mouth as deep and far as it could go. The sensation of him thrusting that much of himself that deeply into me tore my shields away, and since no one else was fighting, the ardeur roared back to life. It roared back to life on the edge of Nathaniel’s lips, his hands, his need.

There was a confusion of ripping cloth, buttons snapping and raining down on us. Hands, hands everywhere, and the sound of clothing ripping. My body jerked with the force of my clothes being ripped away, and my hands were ripping at their clothes. It was as if every inch of my skin craved every inch of their skin. I needed to feel their nakedness glide over mine. My skin felt like a starved thing, as if I hadn’t touched anyone in ages.

I knew whose skin hunger I was channeling. It wasn’t just sex that Damian had missed. There are needs of the body that can be mistaken for sex, or lead to sex, but it isn’t sex that they are about.

There was one leg left of my pants, pooled around my ankle. My vest flapped open, and the shirt was in shreds. It was Damian’s hand from behind that grabbed a handful of my panties and pulled, ripping them off my body, leaving me nude from the waist down. I might have turned around to see how much clothing he still had on, but Nathaniel was in front of me. His shorts had been shredded. By me, I think. He knelt on the floor in front of me, naked. I almost never let Nathaniel be nude around me. It had been one of the reasons I’d been able to resist taking those last steps with him. Just keep your clothes on and nothing too bad will happen.

Now, he knelt in front of me, and all I could do was gaze up the line of his body. His face with those amazing eyes, that mouth, the line of his neck spilling into the wide, hard flesh of his shoulders, the chest that showed the weight lifting he’d been doing, the curve of his ribs under muscle leading my gaze to the flat plains of his stomach, the slight dimple of flesh that was his belly button, the rich swell of his hips, and finally the ripeness of him. I’d seen him totally nude and excited only once before. I didn’t remember him being this wide, not quite this long; of course he hadn’t been pressed this tight to his own stomach, as if the very ripeness of his flesh was almost too much to contain. He seemed thick and heavy with need, as if the lightest touch might make him spill that ripeness out and over me.

I started to reach for him, but Damian chose that moment to brush the head of his own ripeness against the back of my body. The movement made me writhe and lower the front of my body, raising myself upward to him like an offering, like something in heat. The thought helped me swim back up into control, at least a little. I’d never even seen Damian nude, and now he was about to plunge that nudeness into my body. It seemed wrong. I should see him first, shouldn’t I? There was no logic to the argument. No logic left to anything, but it made me turn my head, made me look at him.

The blood red of his hair spilled over his shoulders so that it framed the unbelievable whiteness of his body. He was narrower of shoulder, of chest, and his waist seemed to go on forever, smooth and creamy, like something you should lick down, until you found the center of his belly button, and just under that, the length of him. He rode out from his body, so it was harder to judge length. He seemed carved of ivory and pearl, and where the blood ran close to the surface he blushed pink like the shine inside a seashell, delicate and shining. I realized in that moment that he had been paler in life than any vampire I’d ever seen nude, and his body was almost ghostlike in its coloring, as if somehow he wouldn’t be real.

Nathaniel’s face brushed mine, brought my attention back to him. He had knelt down so low that his face, like mine, was almost touching the floor. He pressed his cheek against mine and whispered, “Please, please, please,” over and over, and between each please he kissed me, a light touch of lips; please, kiss, please, kiss. With his kisses and his voice warm against my face, he brought us both up to our knees again. I’d been so aware of his face, his mouth, his eyes, that I hadn’t thought what kneeling this close would do until his nude body pressed against the front of mine. Until the thick, solid length of him pressed between us, pinned against my stomach by the push of our bodies. He was so warm, so unbelievably warm, so warm, almost hot, and the push of him against my body was so solid, as if he were fighting not to push himself through the front of me. To make a new opening, anything, anything, just to be in the warm depths of my body. It took me a second to understand it was Nathaniel’s need I was feeling. That he did want that badly, but it was my wanting, too. My wanting and denying that want, that helped make this moment what it was. Over all that, was Damian at my back, his body one huge piece of need. Nathaniel and I were being drowned in Damian’s skin-hunger. So lonely, so terribly lonely. And under that was Damian’s fear. Fear that this would not happen, that he would be exiled back to his coffin, with all this undone. His loneliness was like a theme underneath his lust, and I had a glimpse of a room high in the castle. A room that overlooked the sea. Silver bars upon the windows, heavy with runes, and the sound of the surf always through the windows, so that even if he turned away, he could still hear it. She’d given him one of the best rooms in the castle as his prison, because she had a way of knowing what things meant to you. A way of knowing what would hurt the most. It was her gift.

Someone kissed me, hard and fast, forcing my mouth open, pushing his tongue so far in I almost choked, but it brought me back, brought us all back from that lonely room and the sound of the sea on the rocks below.

Nathaniel drew back enough to say in a harsh whisper, “Happy thoughts, Anita, happy thoughts.” Then his mouth was on mine, tongue, lips, even teeth light against my own lips, so that it was more eating than kissing, but it brought a whimper from my throat, a small helpless sound of pleasure.

My hands were on his body, following the flow of his shoulders, his back, and the smooth silken curve of his ass. The back of his body filled my hands, and the front of him was like heat wrapped in flesh, as if we’d burst into flame.

Damian’s hands were on the back of my bra; somehow it had survived that first rush. He snapped it open, and the front of it fell against Nathaniel’s chest. Hands spilled over my breasts; one from behind, and one from the man pressed against the front of my body. Damian’s touch was delicate, stroking. Nathaniel wrapped his hand around my breast and dug his nails into my flesh. It was Nathaniel’s hand that bowed my back, tore my mouth away from his, and forced a scream from my mouth.

Damian hesitated, pulled back from that scream, as though he had to feel that it was pleasure and not pain. He didn’t like to hear women scream. And just like that we were back in his memory. There was a room underneath the castle, torches, darkness, and women, any woman that she thought was prettier than she. No one was allowed hair more yellow than hers, eyes more blue, or breasts larger. These were all sins, and sins were punished. A rush of images; piles of yellow hair, wide blue eyes like cornflowers, and the spear that put them out, a chest as pale and fair as any he’d seen, and the sword . . .

Nathaniel screamed, “Noooo!” He reached past me and grabbed a handful of red hair. He jerked Damian so hard against me, that just feeling the hard length of him made me writhe between them. “Happy thoughts, Damian, happy thoughts.”

“I don’t have any happy thoughts,” and on the heels of that statement were other dark rooms, and the smell of burning flesh.

I was the one who screamed this time, “God, Damian, no more. Keep your nightmares to yourself.” The memory that had gone with that smell, had dampened the ardeur. I could think again, even pressed between both their bodies.

“Tell him to fuck you,” Nathaniel said.

I stared at him. “What?”

“Order him to do it; then he won’t be conflicted.”

It seemed almost ridiculous to be huffy, kneeling pretty much nude between two nude men, but it was still how I felt. “Maybe I’m conflicted.”

“Almost always,” he said, and smiled to soften the words.

Damian’s voice came, low and heavy with something like sorrow. “She doesn’t want to do this. She wants me to help her stop the ardeur, not to feed it. That’s what she really wants, I can feel it, and that’s what I have to do.”

“Anita, please, tell him.”

But Damian was right. He was the only port in a storm of sexual temptation. I valued his ability to make me not feel the ardeur. I valued that more than anything his body could do for me. And because I truly was his master, and that was my true wish, he had to help me do it. The coolness of the grave rose between us, and it wasn’t frightening this time. It was soothing, comforting.

“Anita, no,” Nathaniel said, “no.” He put his face against my shoulder. The movement put his body farther away from mine, and that helped me think, too.

I turned to look at Damian, though I didn’t need to see his face to feel the overwhelming sadness. The sense of aching loss that seemed to fill him, like some bitter medicine. But the look on his face drove the sorrow home like a blade thrust through my heart. It hurt to see anyone’s eyes full of such pain.

I turned to face him, still held lightly in both their arms. Nathaniel put the top of his head against my naked back, shaking his head. “Anita, can’t you feel how sad he is? Can’t you feel it?”

I looked into Damian’s cat-green eyes, and said, “Yes.”

He turned his face away, as if he’d shown me more than he was comfortable with. I touched his chin and brought his face back to me. “You don’t want me,” and there was a world of loss in those words. A loss that tightened my throat, made my chest hurt. I wanted to deny it, but he could feel what I was feeling. He was right, I didn’t want him, not the way I wanted Nathaniel, let alone the way I wanted Jean-Claude or Micah. What do you say when someone can read your emotions, so that you can’t hide behind polite lies? What do you say when the truth is awful, and you can’t lie?

Nothing. No words would heal this. But I’d learned there were other ways to say you’re sorry. Other ways to say, I’d change it, if I could. Of course, even that was a lie. I wouldn’t lose the cool reserve that Damian could give me, not for anything.

I kissed him, and meant for it to be light, gentle, an apology that words could not make, but Damian thought he’d never get this close to me again. I felt a fierceness rise up through him, a desperation that made him tighten his grip on my arms, made him thrust his tongue into my mouth, and kiss me hard and eager, and angry.

I tasted blood and assumed he’d nicked me with his fangs. I swallowed the sweetish taste of the blood without thinking. Then I could smell the ocean, smell it like salt on my tongue. We drew back enough to look into each other’s faces, and I saw the trickle of blood trailing over his lower lip. Nathaniel had time to say, “I smell seawater.” Then the power flooded up and up and smashed us against each other. It ground us against the floor like a wave cracking a boat against the rocks. We screamed, and writhed, and I could not control it. If I’d been a true master, then I could have ridden it, helped us all, but I’d never meant to mark anyone. Never meant to be anyone’s master. The fourth mark was crushing us, and I didn’t know what to do. The inside of my head exploded in white star bursts and gray miasma. Darkness ate at the inside of my head. If I’d been sure we’d wake up again, I’d have welcomed passing out, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know. But it didn’t matter; darkness filled up the inside of my head, and we all fell into it. No more screaming, no more pain, no more panic, no more anything.

14

I WOKE TO early morning sunlight. It left me blinking, and only after I could see through the warm dazzle of it, did I wonder, where am I? and why am I on the floor? Why was I naked on the floor? Without turning my head, I saw the chair legs and the little raised area that was my breakfast nook. Okay, I was in the floor of my own kitchen, naked. Why?

I heard the soft sounds of movement before I felt a hand brush mine. It seemed to take a lot of effort to look to my right, down my body, and see Nathaniel lying on the floor, more nude than I was. I still had the remnants of my tuxedo clinging to my legs. The tuxedo made me remember the wedding. I remembered talking to Micah after we got home. I remembered Micah had had to go out and save one of Richard’s wolves. I remembered the ardeur rising and that something had gone wrong. I remembered that Damian had been there. He must have woken before we did and dragged himself down to his coffin. Trust the undead to recover quickest.

Someone groaned, and it wasn’t Nathaniel, and it wasn’t me.

I suddenly found I could turn my head, a lot quicker than I had before. Adrenaline will do that to you.

Damian lay on the floor, his upper body bathed in golden morning light, as if his white skin had been dipped in honey. Part of my mind registered the beauty of him, lying there in a pool of bloodred hair and golden light, but most of me was terrified. I was on my knees and grabbing for his leg before my body could argue. Nathaniel was beside me, and we jerked Damian out of the sunlight.

He was awake now; awake and screaming. He was out of the direct sunlight, but the kitchen faced east and north, and the room was bright with early morning light. Damian had backed into the cabinets, pressing his body into them as if he thought he could melt into them, and hide in the dark. I tried to take his arm, to get him to his feet, to get him out of the light, but he fought me. His hands were beating at his skin like someone covered in spiders, trying to bat away their darkest fears, when those fears are crawling on their body. But sunlight isn’t spiders, and you can’t brush it off of you.

I grabbed a flailing wrist and held on. I yelled above the screaming, “Nathaniel, help me!”

Nathaniel fought for a grip on the other arm, and we pulled the vampire out of the light and into the curtained dimness of the living room. He didn’t stop screaming. Even when we put him up against the wall, in the cool near-dark, he still shrieked. The moment we let go of his hands, he started beating at his skin again, as if he were putting out invisible fire.

But it shouldn’t have been invisible flame. I’d seen a vampire burn in sunlight, and they flash burned, hot white flames, like magnesium. There was nothing invisible about it. They burned, and if they didn’t get out of the light, they melted, even bone. It takes a hot fire to melt bone, but vamps in sunlight burn good.

Nathaniel was kneeling, trying to comfort Damian, to hold him, to just get him to stop swatting at things we couldn’t see. I stared down at Damian and tried to think past the fear that was choking me. I was choking on Damian’s terror. I couldn’t think past it. I could barely breathe past it. I threw up shields, put metal in my mind against his fear, and tried to think. I looked down at Damian’s white skin, and there was not a blister, not even a red spot. He wasn’t burned. He wasn’t burning. I didn’t know why not. He should have burst into flames the moment the sunlight touched him, but he hadn’t, and if he hadn’t burned with the sunlight drowning him, then he wasn’t going to burn here, in the dark.

I could hear the phone ringing in the other room, but it was dim over the sound of Damian’s screams. For once I let it ring. If it was the police, they’d call back. If it was a friend, they’d call back. If it was another emergency, it could wait. One disaster at a time.

I knelt in front of him and tried to talk over the awful screaming. “Damian, Damian, you’re safe. You’re okay. You’re not burning.” I put my hands on either side of his face and screamed back at him, “Safe, you’re safe!”

His eyes stayed wide, the pupils like pinpoints. He wasn’t hearing anything. It was like shock, but worse. If it had been an old movie, I’d have slapped him, but I wasn’t sure that would help. What do you do with a hysterical vampire? What do you do with a hysterical anybody?

The front door burst open behind us. My eyes were dazzled by the sunlight that spilled over us. Gregory, one of my leopards, stepped out of that blaze of light. I don’t know what I would have said, because Damian let out a sound that was beyond a scream. It was a sound that should never have come from a human throat. He was up and moving like a white and red blur, darting farther into the house, out of the warm blaze of light.

Nathaniel followed him in that faster-than-the-eye-can-see speed that shapeshifters have, and they’d both turned the corner before I got to it. I expected to see the basement door open, but it wasn’t. Movement up the stairs caught my eye, and I saw Nathaniel clear the last step and vanish down the hall. In his panic, Damian had run up, not down, up into the part of the house where the vampires rarely went. Up into the part of the house where the drapes were open and the morning light streamed in. Shit.

15

I WAS NEARLY to the top of the stairs when I heard Gregory behind me. He called up after me, “What’s going on?”

I didn’t know how to answer the question, so I ignored it. The upper hallway was a blaze of light, the big window at the end open to the risen sun. The hallway was empty. I thought, where are they? and I knew. I could feel them, both of them in the smallest room to the left, our guest room. I had made one step toward the doorway when Damian came running out as if all the demons of hell were chasing him. He ran screaming into the room across the hall, which was the bathroom. Unfortunately, it had a window, too. All the rooms up here had windows. If we could get him into a closet, maybe.

He came running out of the bathroom and fell, and scrambled on all fours like an animal toward the next open door. He vanished inside, only his piteous screaming coming back out to tell us he’d found another open window, another wash of sunlight.

“Was that Damian?” Gregory asked.

I nodded.

Nathaniel came to the first door Damian had run out of, blood ran down his shoulder, and he was cradling his arm. He looked at me, and his eyes held all the sorrow in the world. “He’s gone crazy again.”

The last time Damian had gone mad, he’d killed several people, butchered them, not just fed. But that had been because I was his master, and I’d left town. I hadn’t known I was his master then. I hadn’t known that leaving him alone without the touch of my magic, or whatever you want to call it, would make him a revenant, a mindless killing thing.

If it had been my fault before, somehow it was my fault again. I was his master now more than ever; I had to be able to fix this.

“Gregory, close the drapes. Start with the ones at the end of the hall.” His blue eyes were wide, and his face held a dozen questions, but Gregory could follow orders when he wanted to, or you made him. He didn’t argue, just started down toward the end of the hallway.

I went for the room that Damian had gone into, but I never made it, because he came tearing back out of it and nearly ran me down. I grabbed him, but my touch didn’t calm him, and his didn’t calm me, not today. He slammed me into the wall, and if I’d let go of his arm, he’d have run again, but I didn’t let go. I hung on and got slammed into the wall on the other side of the hallway. Shit.

I yelled, “Damian, stop it!” But either he couldn’t hear me, or I’d lost the power to make him obey me. Either way, it wasn’t good. When he tried to slam me into the wall again, I braced my legs and used his own momentum, turning him into the wall, so that his own strength drove him into it so hard, the plaster gave under the impact.

He came off the wall snarling, fangs bared, his face thinning down, his humanity folding away, until what pinned me to the floor wasn’t Damian. The only thing that saved me from having my throat torn out was that little extra bit of speed I’d gained from all the metaphysical shit. It gave me the time to throw one hand across his throat and one hand into his chest. I held him off of me by an arm’s length, my fingers curled around his throat. Normally, I’d have thrown an arm into his throat and not trusted that I could get a hand there in time, but the last two times I tried that manuevuer with a vampire, they’d torn up my arm. So I set my fingers in his throat and my palm against his chest, and tried to hold him off me.

His teeth snapped and snarled at me, like a dog on the end of its chain. Saliva splattered my face, trailed from his mouth as if he were a rabid animal. He struggled mindlessly to reach me, to sink those teeth into my flesh. If he’d been thinking like a person he’d have used his hands, his arms to overwhelm me, but he wasn’t thinking like a person. So he fought my hands, pressing his body against the force of my hands, as if that were all that mattered. He pressed the strength of his madness against the push of my hands, and he began to press my arm inward. I don’t know if he’d been sane whether my new metaphysics would have helped more, but he wasn’t sane, and crazy anything is stronger than sane. It was like trying to bench-press pure muscle, a snarling, breathing force of nature. My arms began to bend, and I knew that if he got close enough, he’d tear me apart. His eyes had bled to green, and there was nothing in them but a mindless ferocity.

I had no weapons on me. I might have been able to tear his throat out. I didn’t know if I was that strong now, or not. But he wasn’t a master vamp, and I didn’t know for certain that he’d heal if I pulled his throat apart. If he’d just been a bad guy, I’d have torn into him and done my best to take him out before he took me out, but Damian wasn’t a bad guy, and whatever was wrong was somehow my fault. I couldn’t kill him, because I wasn’t master enough to handle him.

He pressed himself into me, and I put everything I had into keeping him away from my face and throat. My arms started to shake with the effort, and my elbows were bending. His face filled my vision, and his saliva dripped on my face. I did the only thing I could think of, I yelled for help.

Gregory was there, his hands on Damian’s arm and shoulder, trying to use supernatural strength against supernatural strength. He slowed Damian’s push toward my face, but only slowed it. Damian was like a human on angel dust, stronger even than he’d been, because there was no one home to help him regulate his force. He was all about that force, and his goal in life seemed to be my face.

Nathaniel grabbed Damian’s other shoulder. Blood was still dripping down his arm, but it had slowed. Which meant Damian had found a way to injure him that didn’t include teeth or nails, those wouldn’t have started healing, yet. I think with the two of them pulling and me pushing, we might have made it, but Nathaniel’s bloody arm was next to Damian’s face. He was enraged, but all vampires, even revenants, react to fresh blood.

His neck turned in my hand, and I’d been so intent on pushing him away, that it surprised me. He would have sunk fangs into Nathaniel’s arm, except Gregory was a fraction too quick, and a fraction too slow. He managed to get his arm halfway around Damian’s neck, which put his wrist almost in the vampire’s mouth. Damian did what any animal would do, he bit him.

Gregory screamed and tried to pull away. It worked, and it didn’t. He pulled away from us, but the vampire went with him. They moved so fast, that Nathaniel fell against me, smearing blood down my skin. He was on his feet and moving toward the sounds of fighting farther down the hallway, before I’d gotten to my knees.

Damian had Gregory pinned on the floor, worrying at his arm like a dog with a bone. Even over Gregory’s screams I heard the bone crack. Nathaniel was there, wrapping his arms around Damian’s waist. He lifted him into the air, but the teeth stayed in Gregory’s broken arm, so that Gregory was pulled to his knees by the pain and the fangs locked into his arm.

I was almost to them, when Damian remembered he could fly. He pushed off from the floor and smashed Nathaniel against the ceiling hard enough that plaster dust rained down on them, and when Damian touched ground he rolled out of Nathaniel’s loosened grip. Damian had been a warrior once, and though Nathaniel and Gregory had the strength, they didn’t know how to fight. Strength without training was no match.

I was suddenly the only one standing in the hallway, except for Damian. He came for me in a blur of movement. I got one foot planted and had a heartbeat to see him, think what I’d do, and do it. Years of practice in judo, and my body remembered, before my mind had caught up. I used his own momentum against him, one arm and his hip as the pivot points, and I threw him, as far and as hard as his own motion would let me.

He ended at the top of the stairs, crouched, and turned toward me, before I had time to marvel at how far I’d thrown him. Let’s hear it for not being human anymore.

But a figure rose above him, coming up the stairs. It was Richard Zeeman, local Ulfric, Wolf-King, ex-fiancé, and in the wrong place at the worst time. I had a few seconds to see that his hair had grown out just enough to give some curl to his woefully short locks, that the white T-shirt made his fading tan summer-dark with contrast, that he was still one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. Then the vampire turned, noticed him, and launched himself at Richard. He balanced them both for a second, then the other man’s weight took them both, and Richard fell backward down the stairs, with the vampire riding him. They vanished from sight, and over the sound of their bodies falling down the stairs, I heard a woman start to scream.

16

I WENT TO the stairs, expecting to see them struggling on the steps, but the stairs stretched empty. I ran down the stairs toward the sound of fighting. Richard had taken the fight out into the living room, so he had room to use his long legs and arms.

He kicked Damian in the face hard enough that the vampire staggered backward. I got a profile glimpse of Damian’s face; blood ran from his mouth and the right side of his face. Richard took the extra seconds that the vampire gave him to do a beautiful roundhouse kick to the other side of Damian’s face. This one was hard enough that blood flew in a thin arc. Damian staggered, and I think would have gone down, but he bumped into the wall. He hesitated long enough for Richard to get set up for another kick. Back foot set, front foot, set but loose, body partially turned to give that pivoting strength, the way when you land a fist you turn the fist into the skin for that extra little bit of harm.

Looking at Richard with all his attention on the vampire, his body tensed and ready, hands held in loose fists, even though he was setting up for a kick, I was reminded that here was someone with preternatural strength that did know how to fight. There was blood on his left hand, and I couldn’t tell if it was Damian’s blood or his own.

A small sound jerked my attention to the far side of the living room. A woman I didn’t know was standing near the television set. She was pale, dark-haired, and scared. I didn’t have time to notice more. I was standing too close to the fighting to sightsee.

If Damian had just been a big bad vamp in my house, I’d have gotten my gun and finished him, but he wasn’t a villain. It was Damian, and somehow it was all my fault. I couldn’t get a gun and just shoot him. For one of the few times in my life I was frozen, overwhelmed by my choices, or the lack of them.

Damian had been against the wall for so long—fifteen, thirty seconds—that I thought the fight might be over, that Richard might have actually kicked some sense into him; I was wrong. The vampire came off the wall in a white and red blur. Richard met the charge with a kick to Damian’s chest. It wasn’t a pretty kick, not like the roundhouse, but the sound of its impact was thick and meaty. If he’d been human it would have dropped him, but he wasn’t human, and it didn’t.

He staggered backward, and I could have almost reached out a hand and touched his back. Damian went very still, like the old vamps can, as if he were some beautiful statue. Then I knew, knew that he was about to move and not toward Richard.

I had an extra few seconds to react, when he turned in a whirl of white skin and red hair, turned so fast that the colors blurred so he looked like a whirlwind of snow and blood.

I threw myself to one side, rolling over the back of the couch. I ended up on the other side of it, on the area rug. I had a heartbeat to stand, and Damian was on me.

I braced for it, but it was like trying to brace for a freight train. There was no stopping it, or fighting it. I was just suddenly falling backward with Damian on top of me. I didn’t fight the fall, I used it. When my body met the floor I had one foot in Damian’s stomach and two hands on his arms. A tome nage throw is the only throw in judo where you commit your whole body to it. Most throws have variations you can do at the last minute if they don’t work, but the tome nage either works or it doesn’t. You fail, and your opponent is on top of you in a perfect position to pin you. But I hadn’t chosen the throw, it had been the only move Damian’s attack left me. I had seconds to do it right or have him eat my face. So when I kicked up with my feet, I gave it all I had. I’d forgotten that all I had was more than it used to be.

Damian flew through the air again, but it wasn’t his supernatural powers this time. I rolled over in time to see Damian hit the wall yards away. He hit hard enough to crack the paint and leave a partial imprint of his body on the wall, when he slid to the floor.

I heard someone behind me say, “wow,” and it wasn’t Richard, because he was nearly up beside me, rounding the couch. I didn’t have time to glance behind me to see if it was Nathaniel or Gregory, because two bad things were happening at once.

The first bad thing was that Damian was getting slowly to his feet. Slowly enough that I think I’d hurt him, but he was still getting up, still not unconscious. The second bad thing was the woman had started screaming again, and thanks to me throwing Damian across the room, she was the closest person to him. She’d backed up when he sailed through the air, otherwise she’d have been almost where he landed, but when he turned around, she’d be a yard away. Not good.

Richard made a move toward her, but she was already backing up, and not toward us. She was backing up toward the open front door. There was something about the way she was moving that made both Richard and I say something. Richard had time to say, “Clair, don’t . . .” I had time to say, “Don’t run.” But it was too late. She ran, just as Damian turned to see her. It was like putting a cat into a room full of mice; they’ll chase the running one first.

Richard was moving, but even with his speed there wasn’t time to get ahead of Damian and block the door. All Richard had time for was to rush Damian, to crash into him and take them both to the floor.

He had the vampire down but not pinned. Richard screamed. His shoulders blocked my view, and I had to move around to their heads to see Damian’s mouth buried into Richard’s upper chest.

I knelt to help pry Damian’s mouth from his flesh, but Richard made the preternatural rookie mistake. He grabbed Damian by the hair and pulled him off of him. Vampire bites are like snake bites; if the snake has a good grip, you don’t just yank it off. Yanking it off causes more damage than letting the snake let go on its own, or prying it loose. I guess the exception would be a venomous snake, if you go on the asumption that the longer it bites you the more poison it pumps in, which may or may not be true, but vampires aren’t venomous. It was an impressive show of strength, tearing the vampire’s mouth away from his flesh, but impressive shows of strength have their price. Richard’s shirt ripped away from that entire side of his body, and a great, bloody hole showed in his upper chest, almost to the shoulder. His hand, which had been pushing against Damian’s shoulder, suddenly went limp, and all that kept Damian from sinking teeth into Richard again was Richard’s grip on his long red hair.

I put a hand on Damian’s shoulder and pressed, and unlike every other time I’d tried to hold down a rampaging vampire, this time it worked, at least a little. Let’s hear it for preternatural strength.

A gobbet of flesh fell out of Damian’s mouth as he tried to turn and sink fangs into me. Richard yanked on his hair and kept those straining fangs from me. He tried to use his left arm again, and it moved, but he couldn’t push with it. Something important had gotten torn up. Super strong or not, he was suddenly fighting with only one arm.

Between the two of us we could keep Damian from sitting up completely, but we couldn’t keep him pressed to the floor. He kept straining upward, teeth slashing the air, sounds coming from his throat that were more animal than human. We weren’t losing the fight, but we weren’t winning either. We needed a different plan of attack.

I moved off of his shoulders enough that he raised up more, and Richard’s eyes were wide. “I can’t hold him one-handed, not alone.”

“I’m going to put an arm around his neck to control his head,” I said, “but I need him higher off the ground.”

“A choke hold won’t work on a vampire. They don’t breathe.”

That was half true, but I let it go. We could argue later. “I’m just trying to control his head, that’s it.”

He gave a small nod. He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t argue about it, and that was good enough. I slid in behind Damian, and he was so busy straining after Richard, that he didn’t seem to notice. I knelt behind the vampire, and for the first time was very aware that I was nude. The fight had sort of made it unimportant. What made it important now, was that Richard’s hand was still in Damian’s hair, and his hand had to stay there until I had my arm wrapped around the vampire’s neck. I needed to have one arm wrapped around Damian’s neck and the other arm holding my wrist, and I needed to be squeezing like a son of a bitch, while my face was buried against the back of his head, so he, theoretically, couldn’t reach me. Only Richard’s grip and the vampire’s desire to bite him would keep him from tearing into me during the process. So Richard had to keep his hand there, but now, suddenly, my bare breasts were going to be pressed into the back of his hand and arm. The fact that that bit of knowledge froze me for a second tells you how badly I behaved around Richard, or how screwed up about him I was. A life and death struggle and I was worried about pressing my breasts against his hand. Focus, Anita, focus. Survive first, be embarrassed later.

“Hurry,” Richard said, and there was strain in that one word. Super strong doesn’t mean you don’t get tired.

I took a deep breath, let it out, and moved into both Damian’s body and Richard’s hand. I had to move fast and firm, no hesitations, because Richard’s grip wasn’t perfect control. If Damian noticed me before my arm was under his chin, I wasn’t sure there was anything Richard could do to save me some damage. My hand touched Damian’s blood-slick skin, and I had to follow through. I had to ignore the almost electric reaction I had when my bare breasts brushed the back of Richard’s hand. One small touch and my skin ran with goosebumps. But it was more than just physical attraction. It was as if the world held its breath. Even Damian went still for that frozen moment. I felt Jean-Claude wake. Felt his eyes open, knew he woke in a welter of silk sheets in the sunless dark of the underground in Circus of the Damned. He turned in that nest of silk and darkness and touched Asher’s body, found it still cold, still hours from waking.

Jean-Claude’s voice echoed through my head. “What have you done, ma petite?”

I don’t know what I would have answered, because in that moment the world came back into focus. I could still feel Jean-Claude all those miles away, but I was back to the here and now.

Damian helped me concentrate on the here and now. He twisted in Richard’s desperate grip and lunged at me, mouth wide, fangs straining like a striking snake. I suddenly had my own grip on his hair and helped Richard hold him away from my skin by fractions of an inch. I snugged my right arm under his chin, tight against the front of his neck. And he reacted like the only danger was the arm sliding in from his right, so that he never tried to turn in against mine and Richard’s grip on the other side. There was no human thought to him in that moment. No human. No vampire. I wasn’t even sure animal was the word. I had no word for what Damian had become. In a different century it would have been demon, possessed, damned.

Jean-Claude’s voice in my head again, “He will be damned if you cannot bring him back.”

I had to shake my head, like his voice was an insect buzzing inside my skull. It distracted me. I thought very hard, stop talking. I don’t know if he heard me or figured out on his own that he was distracting me, but he stopped.

I let go of Damian’s hair and used my arms to close around his neck in what would have been a choke hold, if he’d needed to breathe. Vampires do breathe, but they don’t have to. My arm slid into place more easily because of all the blood, but the blood also made it harder to hold him still, harder to maintain my grip. I put my head down, tight against the side of his head, using all my upper body to simply control his head.

Richard let go of Damian’s hair, and the vampire sprang up off the floor. I tightened my grip around his neck, but was along for the ride. I could control his head from moving side to side, but I couldn’t choke him, and I didn’t weigh enough to slow him down.

Damian was on top of Richard, pinning the bigger man to the floor. Richard had his good arm pushing out against Damian’s chest. I got my feet under me on either side of them. It was awkward, because I just wasn’t tall enough to do it comfortably, but I began to fight to pull Damian’s neck backward. I could feel that I could snap his neck. I was almost sure I could, but I could not simply fight him backward. I knew if you decapitated most vamps, they died. I’d never had the strength before to snap a neck this easily, so I’d never tried. If I snapped his spine would he die? Would he be crippled? Would spinal damage cripple a vampire?

Richard’s arm was beginning to shake and collapse at the elbow. I pulled backward, and felt Damian’s windpipe begin to give. I was going to crush his neck before I broke his spine. I looked past us and found Nathaniel bent over Gregory at the foot of the stairs. Gregory wasn’t moving, but one problem at a time. I screamed, “Nathaniel!”

He turned, and there was blood all over the front of his body. I didn’t think most of it was his. His face looked surprised as if he had lost track of our fight, but he came to me. He grabbed Damian’s arm, and it was as if he’d given the vampire another target. Damian lept off of Richard and was suddenly on top of Nathaniel. I was beginning to feel positively useless. If I couldn’t choke him, wasn’t heavy enough to slow him down, wasn’t willing to break his neck, I was useless. I used what weight I had to stagger him, throw him off balance so that Nathaniel had time to get his arms up and a leg into Damian’s stomach. If Nathaniel had known how to fight, he’d have been able to do more, but at the moment just keeping the vampire from biting him was good.

Jean-Claude’s voice, soft, in my head, “You have done something to damage the bond between yourself and Damian. You must reopen it, ma petite.”

“A little busy right now,” I said.

Richard wrapped his one arm around Damian’s waist and helped me pull him off of Nathaniel. The three of us rode him down to the floor. I changed my grip on his neck to a choke hold that wouldn’t have worked at all, if Nathaniel hadn’t been pressing on his shoulder and chest and Richard sitting on the rest of him. My body was curled around his neck, using my own weight as an anchor to make it harder for him to rise and strike. But I’d tried this hold on large human males in judo class before, and it wasn’t effective, not if they had the upper body strength to sit up with me dangling from their neck. I did it now, only to control his head, his mouth, those fangs, and because I had Richard and Nathaniel to help me.

He fought us, but three on one, we had some control. Not much, but some. My voice came breathy, but clear, “What do you mean I’ve damaged the bond between Damian and me?”

“Who are you talking to?” Nathaniel asked, through gritted teeth.

“Jean-Claude,” Richard answered for me.

“Can you hear him, too?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

I wanted to ask, “like now?” but Jean-Claude was answering me. “You have put up shields specifically against Damian, why?”

“He woke up in a flood of sunlight. It seemed to terrify him. He was so afraid. The fear was choking Nathaniel and me.”

“Both you and Nathaniel?” Jean-Claude asked. I could see him lying on the white silk sheets, his black hair spread out like a dark dream across the pillow. One hand idly touching Asher’s bare back, the way you’d drum your fingers on a desk or pet a dog, if you were thinking about other things.

“Yes, both of us.”

“I asked you when I woke, what had you done. Now, I may know.”

For once I was at least up to speed on the metaphysical disasters in my life. I got to say, “We know already.”

“Know what, ma petite?”

Damian gave a particularly violent movement, bucking me up off the floor, slamming me back down only after I felt, rather than saw the other two men, force him back down. I thought it, because I didn’t have breath to speak at the moment, That we’re a triumverate.

“I heard that,” Richard said, and there was a sullen note under his breathless exertion as if he’d thought I’d only thought it to keep it from him, or maybe I was just projecting. I was always willing to believe that Richard was being difficult. As he was always willing to believe I was being bloodthirsty.

Jean-Claude didn’t ask stupid questions or try to discuss metaphysics. If we all knew that somehow I’d managed to forge a second triumverate, then we could move on. “When you shielded from Damian’s fear, you shielded too well. You have cut him off from your power, as you did by leaving once.”

“I’m right here,” I said, trying to turn my face away from the blood that had decided to trickle down Damian’s face and onto mine.

“There physically, but not metaphysically, and your servant needs both.”

“How do I fix this?” I asked.

“Drop your shields,” he said, and even in my head, his voice was matter-of-fact.

It sounded so simple, so obvious. I remembered shielding from Damian’s fear. I had thought of metal, hard, cold, solid, unpenetrable. Not a metal wall, or door, but truly just the essence of metal. It had taken me months of work to understand how to shield not with an imaginary door or wall or building, but just to think, rock, water, metal. Block the things you don’t want to get through, or drown them. Marianne could also shield with air and fire, but I didn’t get that. Air just wasn’t strong enough for shielding, and fire, well, fire’s fire. I used the tools I understood.

How do you unshield? Once I’d had to picture the wall crumbling, or the door opening, but very lately, I’d understood something that Marianne had been saying, but I hadn’t been understanding. I simply stopped thinking about metal. I stopped. It went away. Poof, gone. One second I was safe behind my thought of metal, the next I was drowning in Damian’s rage. No, not rage, rage implies anger, human emotion, and that wasn’t what roared through my head. I’d thought more than once that I was going crazy in a detached sort of sociopathic way, but I’d been wrong. That hadn’t been being crazy—this was.

I forgot about holding Damian down. I forgot about why I’d dropped my shields. I forgot about everything. There were no thoughts. No words. There was just sensation, and impulse. The smell of fresh blood. The taste of our own blood in our mouths, bitter. Hands pushing us to the floor, crushing us. Hunger, hunger like fire in our gut, like something that would eat us alive if we didn’t feed, and feed, and feed. The smell of fresh blood, the warmth in their hands pushing on us, all that was maddening. Pain, my body was just pain. Like a fire that was burning me up from the inside. I screamed, and the sound was loud and not loud enough. It didn’t help. Only one thing would quench that fire, fill me up, stop the pain. Blood. Fresh blood. Warm blood.

My hands touched warm skin, and if it hadn’t been Richard, I’m not sure I would have stopped. But the feel of Richard’s muscled arm under my hands called something of me up through the hunger. I was staring into Richard’s solid brown eyes from inches away, almost as if I’d moved in for a kiss, but it hadn’t been his mouth I’d been aiming at. Even now, the long solid line of his neck beckoned to me. The smell of fresh blood overwhelmed the subtler scent of the blood that pulsed under his skin, but somehow lapping at the bloody wound wasn’t enough. It needed to be fresh. I needed my teeth in flesh. I needed to make my own hole to tear at. Only that would satisfy. Only that would be enough.

I forced my gaze up to Richard’s face. I looked into his wide eyes, made myself look at his face, trace the line of his jaw, the fullness of his lips. I looked on the face of someone I’d loved once, and I had to work harder than I’d worked at almost anything ever, to see him as something other than food.

Damian bucked, and Richard had to pay more attention to the vampire he and Nathaniel were still pinning to the floor than to me. A cool voice flowed through my mind. “I am helping you shield, ma petite. Forgive me, I did not understand what dropping your shield would do to you.”

“He’s a revenant,” I said, and I don’t think I said it out loud.

“Oui.”

“How do I help him?”

“You must rebind him as you did when he came out of the coffin. Let him taste your blood and say the words over him.”

“Are the words really important?” I asked.

I felt him shrug, where he sat on his silk-covered bed. “They are the words that masters of the city have spoken over their followers for thousands of years. I would not want to chance that the words are not part of the magic that will bind master to servant, by leaving them out.”

I nodded. “Did Richard hear this?”

“Non.”

“Tell him.” A moment after I said it, I was still cool and a little distant from what was happening, but I could hear it again, see it. I was sitting on my living room floor, not too far from the door, and Richard and Nathaniel were still trying to keep Damian on the floor. They were mostly succeeding, though it was hard to tell through the blood if there were any new wounds. They were all three covered in blood.

I stared down at myself and realized that the front of my body was covered in it, too. I didn’t remember getting that messy. For a moment I wondered if I’d done something that I didn’t remember, but I pushed the thought away. Time later for too much truth. Survive, keep moving, worry about what you did later. Yeah, that’s the ticket. But after a peek inside Damian’s mind, a ticket to the situational sociopath express didn’t look half bad. I knew now, for dead certain, that there were worse things.

17

DAMIAN BUCKED SO hard that he threw Nathaniel to one side. Richard’s weight alone wasn’t enough. Damian sat up, and Richard rolled off of him to keep the vampire from sinking fangs into him again.

I waved my arms and yelled, “Damian, here, I’m here!” I don’t think it was his name that attracted his attention, I think it was the movement. I’d been in his mind, I knew he was past words.

He rushed toward me, so fast he was a blur of white and red, and his eyes like green streaks. Nathaniel ran for him. I yelled, “No, let him come!”

Richard hesitated still on the floor but with his hand outstretched toward the vampire’s legs. They could have caught him again, but why? It was my blood he needed. I was calm, peaceful, it was like that quiet place I went when I killed. No fear. Nothing. I watched the vampire come at me like a comet streaking across the heavens, something elemental and otherworldly.

To say he smashed into me didn’t come close to the impact of flesh on flesh. I was on the floor breathless, sightless, and only years of training on how to fall kept me from smacking my head against the floor, or breaking a bone. I caught my breath in time to scream. Damian plunged his mouth low in my neck, just above the shoulder. It had been a long time since I’d been vampire bit without head games or sex. It hurt.

A wereleopard appeared over us, standing on crooked, almost-human legs. He was yellow and pale gold and white, with beautiful black rosettes scattered over a body that was more than a foot taller than he was in human form. The color told me it was Gregory, because Nathaniel was black in leopard form. Gregory’s chest was broader, his arms were longer, muscled, and tipped with talons like frightening knives. The face was leopard, but with something strangely different around the muzzle and the neck. He towered over us, snarling and reaching down for the vampire’s pale back. He was going to pull Damian off of me, like Richard had pushed the vampire off of himself.

I wrapped my arms around Damian’s shoulders and back, got one leg free to wrap around his waist. I held him to me and said, “No, Gregory!” If he pulled him off I’d end up hurt as bad as Richard. “You’ll tear me up worse.”

The leopardman hesitated, growling. He said in that thick voice they all had in half-human form, “He’s hurting you.”

Damian snuggled his mouth deeper into my flesh, forced a sound that was not happy out of my mouth. But I said, in a breathy voice, “When I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”

I could tell Gregory was puzzled even through the fur. I wasn’t always good at facial expressions once my friends went furry. But this one even I could read.

“Damian,” I said, my voice was soft. I wanted to see that he was in there before I said the words. His eyes were closed, but he relaxed against me by inches, until he wasn’t so much pinning me to the floor as lying on top of me. It was more my arms and leg that held him pressed to me. “Damian,” I said again.

I felt him come back into himself as if a switch had been thrown. One moment, monster, the next, Damian. Even before he opened his eyes and looked at me, I knew he was in there again. He was back from wherever he’d gone. Relief flooded through me until my arms and leg started to slide off of him. Weak with relief wasn’t just an expression.

He was still sucking at the wound, but it was gentler now. It had stopped hurting. He drew, slowly, from the wound, his mouth crimson with my blood. I was suddenly aware in a way that I hadn’t been before that we were both nude, and he was male, and he had fed. His body was thick and heavy against my thigh, where a moment ago it hadn’t been. Blood pressure is a wonderful thing.

If I had not put a leg over his body to help hold him against me, it wouldn’t have been quite so compromising. If Gregory hadn’t tried to help me, I wouldn’t have . . . oh, hell. I was suddenly afraid in a very different way. Afraid to move, afraid of making things worse, or better. Afraid of how my body pulsed in his arms. It was as if all the blood in our bodies was pulsing in time. It was hard to breathe. I was almost choking on . . . power. Magic. I’d bound him once before and it hadn’t been like this.

His hand slid slowly, tentatively down the side of my body, and it wasn’t so much a caress for sex, as just for touching. He used his whole hand, getting as much of his skin against mine as he could. I felt him marveling at the grace of our bodies so close, so completely without barriers. His skin hunger was there like some new kind of beast. A need so intense and so long denied that it was a kind of madness of its own.

I felt his loneliness like a great echoing thing. It brought tears to the edges of my eyes and made me want to fix it.

I moved my hands along his back, so that I was no longer holding him, but closer to an embrace. “Blood of my blood,” and he moved upward to bring his mouth to mine for the kiss that would seal the words, but that small movement slid his body against the front of mine, so that the swell of him brushed against me, and that brief touch made me writhe underneath him, and it suddenly wasn’t a kiss I wanted to seal this bargain with.

The thought helped me pull back. Helped me realize that what I was thinking was not entirely me. I gazed up into his emerald eyes and knew who was doing the thinking.

Nathaniel knelt beside us. I reached out a hand, and the moment he touched me, I could think a little, and Damian’s pull was a little less. Damian snarled at him, and those green eyes wavered, as if sanity wasn’t permanent in them, not yet.

Jean-Claude was in my head, and I felt a tiny thread of fear from him. “You must finish binding him, ma petite, and you must start from the beginning of the words.”

I wanted to ask, “Why are you afraid?” And I must have thought it very hard, because he answered, “If he goes insane now, ma petite, your lovely throat is very unprotected. Finish it.”

Maybe Richard was hearing the interior conversation, because he came to kneel on the other side of us. Suddenly, it couldn’t have gotten more awkward. “I’m here,” he said, and he said it like it should have made things better, as if he didn’t understand how horribly embarrassing it was to have him kneeling there.

Damian gave him an unfriendly look, and a sound that was more growl than anything trickled from his mouth. I was losing him. “Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh,” and he gazed back down at me, and with each word, sanity filled his eyes, his face, him. He slid his body against mine, and I felt him pushing against me. And again I felt that almost overwhelming need. That certainty that it was not a kiss we needed to seal this with. The need roared over me. I thought for a heartbeat we’d raised the ardeur, but then I could hear it—them. Two needs. I turned my head and found Nathaniel gazing down at me with those lavender eyes. It was there in his eyes, his face, but I could have told you what was there without using my eyes, because I could feel it. Feel him. Them. Both of them, pushing at me, not just physically, but in ways that hands could never hold you down, or bodies pin you to the floor. Their need undid me more easliy than any physical strength or threat. Their need undid me because I cared for them, and if you could feel another’s pain, as if it were your own, wouldn’t you do anything to stop that pain? Wouldn’t you?

My voice was breathy, and it was Nathaniel’s gaze I held when I said, “Breath to breath, my heart to yours.” Damian slid inside me in one long push of his hips. The sensation made me writhe underneath him, made me grip Nathaniel’s hand hard enough to dig nails into his flesh. My hips ground upward to meet Damian’s thrust. It was as involuntary as the next breath I took.

A sound drew my attention away from Nathaniel, and it wasn’t a sound from above me. The sound came from the other side of us. Richard had pushed himself away from us, until his back met the side of the white couch. I don’t know what I expected to see on his face, lust, disgust, anger, jealousy, maybe, but what I saw was fear. A fear so raw and naked, that it hurt to meet his eyes.

Damian grabbed my face, turned me back to look up at him. “It’s me I want you to be thinking about,” he said, and he began to pull himself out of me, slowly. For a second I thought that would be it, but part of me knew better. He’d raised himself up, almost in a push-up, the tip of him barely inside me, and gazing full into my face, his eyes pinning mine as surely as his body pinned the rest of me, he said, “Blood of my blood,” and thrust into me. I cried out underneath him, and Nathaniel echoed that cry, while his hand gripped mine. His lavender eyes were wild when I turned to look at him. Damian touched my face again, but a touch was enough to turn me to face him, to feel his body sliding out of mine, to hear his whisper, “Flesh of my flesh,” before he married our flesh as close, as fast, as he could. I felt Nathaniel convulse hand to hand, and I felt his pulse like a second heartbeat against my palm, but I kept my eyes on Damian’s face, my gaze on his as he drew his body out of me, almost, and, said, “Breath to breath,” and slammed himself inside me. I screamed and Nathaniel’s voice echoed mine. I finally realized that Nathaniel was getting if not the full ride, a shadow of what I was feeling. Damian drew himself out, out, until . . . “My heart to yours,” and he slid himself inside me.

He stayed frozen above me, body as deep inside me as he could get. His breathing was harsh and shallow. A shudder passed down his body from head to toe, and I writhed underneath him from it. Nathaniel moaned, jerking on my hand, as if it were his body being explored. Damian’s voice was shaky, “Oh, don’t do that. If you do that again, I won’t last.” He buried his face against my hair, and another shudder rippled down his body and made me dance underneath him, crying out, and that was it. He was suddenly above me, his upper body arched, and he shoved himself into me, deep, hard, and it was partly his body inside me, partly watching his body above mine, his eyes closed, his head thrown back, his hair like a bloody waterfall around the pale candle of his body, and knowing that he was thrust as deep inside me as he could get that tore a scream from my lips. And Nathaniel’s voice screamed with me, our hands convulsing around each other, our nails biting into each other’s skin. I felt Nathaniel’s body thrust against the carpet, felt him let go, and that orgasm traveled back up my arm and into Damian. It was his turn to scream, and that made him writhe with his body still plunged inside of mine, which made me move underneath him. It was like being caught in an endless loop of pleasure; one body’s release, bringing the other, until we ended in a sweating, bloody pile on the floor.

Damian let out a shaky laugh. And I felt, heard, knew, that underneath the lust was sorrow, and an almost certain knowledge that he might never get to do this again, once my head cleared. For some reason that made me think of something I had forgotten. I turned my head and found that Richard was still there, but it wasn’t fear on his face now, but a sort of wonderment. I realized in that moment that, though Richard wasn’t getting all the sensations that Nathaniel was getting, he could still hear inside my head. So could Jean-Claude, but it was Richard’s thought that came the clearest. “You’ve never fucked either of them.” On the heels of that thought came another, that he’d assumed I was screwing everything in the house, because he’d pretty much been doing the same down at the lupanar.

I was naked in the middle of sex with one man, maybe two, depending on how you counted things, yet, suddenly, I had the moral high ground. Weird.

18

GREGORY CRAWLED TO us on all fours, sniffing just above our bodies. He said in that growling voice, “Me next.”

I had to look up and back over my shoulder to give him the look he deserved, but looking back with him on all fours gave me a sight line down his body, and suddenly I was more embarrassed than I had been. Shapeshifters look sort of like they do in the movies in half-man form, but there is one big difference. They have genitalia, and right at that moment Gregory was very, very happy to be here. I think what bothered me more than the erection was that he’d gotten it from watching me have sex with Damian. For some reason, unfair probably, it bothered me that Gregory had enjoyed the show.

“Back off, Gregory,” I said, and my voice sounded harsh and like I meant it, even while I blushed.

He did his kitty-cat impression of a smile and backed off, literally. He put his head down, and crawled backward, abasing himself. It was a gesture closer to a real wolf than a real leopard, but wereanimals are people at heart, and some gestures just translate better to our human brains. Abasing yourself by going low is one of those gestures.

Damian was looking down at me, and the look was not one that I’d ever seen on a man’s face just after finishing sex. He looked sad, and I remembered the burst of emotion at the end. Sorrow covering the pleasure like evil chocolate ruining your ice cream.

But it was more than the look on his face. I realized that I could feel his sadness. Feel it, not like it was my own, but like it was a coat that clung to my skin. I was still hooked up to him emotionally, well, not just emotionally. I could feel him plunged deep inside me, his weight still pinning my lower body. Touching made any sort of metaphysical intermingling worse. I needed to stop touching him. And not just him.

Nathaniel lay beside us, his fingers still tangled in mine. The side of his body pressed up against me, so that our bodies touched from shoulder to hip. He must have scooted closer when Damian finished. I think I would have remembered if Nathaniel’s body had been touching mine during the act. Wouldn’t I?

His lavender eyes were unfocused, almost sleepy. What came through his skin was contentment. Contentment like a great warm ocean that filled him, floated him, held him, rocked him. Maybe I stared at him too long, or maybe he sensed my own growing unease, because his eyes focused, sharpened, and the look in them wasn’t the least bit sleepy. It was almost an anticipatory look, as if he were already thinking about next time. Since I didn’t think he’d had a first time yet, it helped clear my head. Anger always did.

“Everybody off, out of the pool,” I said.

Damian’s sorrow was almost like rain on my skin. Nathaniel wasn’t sad. He went straight to panic, afraid he’d done something wrong. “It’s alright, Nathaniel, you’re alright. We’re all alright.” I wasn’t sure I actually believed that down to my toes, but the panic subsided, and everybody got off of me. Yeah. Though Damian’s sadness clung to me like I’d walked through some metaphysical cobweb.

While we were getting untangled, Micah came through the splintered door. I’d been found in compromising positions by boyfriends before, but never with less embarrassment. He didn’t ask stupid questions or make me feel like a slut. In fact he concentrated on the most important thing. “Wow,” he said, and the wow seemed to take in the blood scattered here and there on the floor and the walls, the injuries that he could see on most of us, the broken door, all of it, but what he said outloud was, “Is everybody alright?”

I started to get up off the floor, and Damian offered me a hand up. I wouldn’t have taken it normally, but we’d just had sex, and it seemed odd to slap away his hand. The moment my hand touched his, I realized it was more than that. That need to put my skin against his was still there. One moment of good sex didn’t take away centuries of need. Sex was like some kind of fuel like food—you burned it up and needed more.

I got my hand out of his and took a slightly shaky step away from Nathaniel and Damian. A little distance would be helpful, I hoped. “We’ll all live,” I said.

“Good.” He cocked his head to one side and said, “I didn’t know that Damian could walk around this early in the day.”

“He can’t,” I said.

“Do I say the obvious, ‘but he is walking around during the day,’ or do you want me to just stop asking questions?”

I was suddenly tired, and I probably wasn’t the only one. “Have you been to bed at all?”

He shook his head, and as if I’d reminded him, he rubbed his chartreuse eyes, his sunglasses already tucked into the front of his shirt. “When I drove the guy home from the bar, he had a live-in girlfriend and a child. Girlfriend started a fight about his drinking. Anger does not help you fight the change.”

“Did he shift?” I asked.

“No, but it was close, and he’s so new . . .” Micah shook his head again. “I’d feel better if the girlfriend was a little more understanding about how dangerous he could be. She just didn’t seem to understand.”

“She didn’t want to understand,” Richard said.

Micah turned and looked at him. I realized that of all the people in the room, Richard had been the only one that Micah hadn’t really looked at. “Then you’ve met Patrick’s girlfriend.”

Richard started to shake his head, stopped in mid-motion, and winced. “No, but I’ve seen it. The human spouse just doesn’t want to understand that they’re married to a monster.” I think he meant it to sound matter-of-fact, but it didn’t. It sounded bitter.

I’d never made Richard feel like that, that I knew of; no, he’d spent a great deal more time making me feel like a monster. So I let it go. I let it go because I didn’t know what to say, or if there was anything to say. Okay, I had one thing to say. “The coalition is offering a monthly meeting for family members. I thought we’d given flyers out to the werewolves.”

Richard got to his feet, cradling his arm. “This is my Patrick, Patrick Cook?”

Micah said, “Yes.”

“And you’ve been baby-sitting him all night?”

“Yes,” Micah said, again.

Richard looked down at the floor, then back up. He met Micah’s gaze, but his face wasn’t completely happy about it. “Thank you for looking after my wolf.”

“The wolves are part of the coalition, too,” Micah said, “I’d do the same for anyone’s people.”

“All the same, thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

There was one of those awkward silences. I hated to leave everybody alone, but I really needed a shower. The shower would hurt the wound on my throat, but I’d just had sex without a condom, which meant all the mess had gone into me, but it wouldn’t stay there. So needed to clean up. Truthfully, I’d have preferred a condom, but it hadn’t occurred to me until afterward. Tammy had gotten pregnant on the pill. Yeah, she had fallen afoul of the fact that antibiotics don’t mix well with the pill, but still. That one percent chance suddenly seemed like it wasn’t good odds. Damian was a thousand-year-old vampire; chances were he was infertile, but still . . . It was one thing getting pregnant by a boyfriend, but pregnant by someone who wasn’t even that . . . well, that seemed somehow worse. “I’m taking a shower.”

They all looked at me. I guess it was abrupt. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand here like this anymore. So everybody behave themselves. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“I’ll call for a doctor,” Micah said.

I nodded. “Good, good.” I suddenly had to not be there, naked, smelling of fresh sex, with Richard and Micah in the same room. Having Damian and Nathaniel naked didn’t help my comfort level. I was fairly comfortable around nudity in general now, but specific nudity, that was still a problem. For more reasons than I was comfortable with, I needed to leave the room.

“By the way, there’s a woman crying in your car in the driveway,” Micah said.

“My car?” I asked.

“No, Richard’s, or at least I assume it’s Richard’s. I know Gregory’s car, and that’s not the one she’s in.”

Richard cursed under his breath, something he rarely did. “Clair, I forgot about Clair.”

“Who’s Clair?” I asked.

He hesitated, then said, “My girlfriend,” then he was walking to the door holding his arm like it hurt to walk that fast.

His girlfriend, and I’m buck naked the first time she sees me. Great. Well, at least she hadn’t seen me fuck Damian. That helped. Sure, great. Just great. I was shaking my head as I went toward the bathroom.

It was Gregory, in his growling voice, who said, “I guess it’s none of my business, but should Richard really be in front of the house where cars could see him? He is covered in blood.”

I turned and looked at the leopardman and said, “Shit, no.” I started for the door, and Micah stopped me. “I’ll go. I’m the only one that they wouldn’t call the cops on right now.” He squeezed my shoulder and smiled at me.

I realized that I hadn’t kissed him hello, I always kissed him hello. Of course, I was still covered in blood and other bodily fluids, and none of them were his, but he might not understand that that was why I hadn’t wanted to get too close. Some of my confusion must have shown on my face, because his smile widened. He turned me around by the shoulders, gave me a little push toward the bathroom, and slapped me on the ass. “Get cleaned up, I’ll take care of things here.”

“I can’t believe you just did that,” I said.

“Did what?” he said, and he was grinning at me.

I could probably count on one hand the number of times Micah had grinned at me. His eyes were sparkling with laughter as if it were all he could do not to let it out. I was happy to see him having this good a time, really I was. But I wasn’t sure what was funny, and I didn’t have the courage to ask. It was probably something that would be at my expense, or something I’d just done that he found cute. I was not cute. Confused, fucked-up, bruised, but not cute. Nathaniel and Damian knew better, but as I passed Gregory, I had to say, “If you touch my ass, I will rip you a new one.” I said it as I moved past him, not even pausing.

“You’re no fun,” he growled.

I looked back just before I turned out of sight of him. “Oh, I’m a lot of fun, just not for you.”

He snarled at me. “Bitch.”

“Woof, woof,” I said, and finally made it into the bathroom.

19

I TRIED NOT to think in the shower. Thinking bad; hot water good. I turned the shower head to as hard as the water would go and the let the water beat against my body, finding bruises I didn’t know I had. Once I would have been hurt, really hurt, by the beating that Damian had given me. Thanks to Jean-Claude’s vampire marks I was just a little stiff. The bite would take the longest to heal, and even that would be gone in few days, a week at the outside. The healing was great, the rest of it . . . well, let’s just say the jury was still out.

I heard a noise over the pounding water. It took me a minute to realize that someone was knocking at the door. I tried to ignore it. The knocking stopped for a second, and I thought, oh, good, but it started again, louder, as if whoever was knocking thought I hadn’t heard the first time.

I sighed, turned off the water, and called, “What?”

“Damian isn’t doing well,” Nathaniel said through the closed door.

I stood there a second water dripping into my eyes, and said, “What do you mean, Damian’s not doing well?”

“Can’t you feel it?”

I thought about it. I thought about Damian, and suddenly fear was like a crushing weight on my chest. It staggered me for a second, and I was glad there was a safety bar in the shower to grab on to. It was a shadow of what had driven him to run screaming through the house. I wasn’t sure we’d all survive him doing it twice. “I’m coming.”

I squeezed out my hair, wound a towel around it, and was trying to towel off enough for a robe, when the door sprang open. Gregory came first in his fur suit, one clawed hand under Damian’s arm. Richard had the other arm. They half-dragged, half-carried him through the door. They carried him toward me, and his fear rode before him. I’d felt fear before, but not like this. It crushed my chest so that I couldn’t breathe, closed my throat. The fear had weight enough to slam me to the floor, as if something had smashed into me. It wasn’t my pulse I was choking on, it was as if the terror itself were wet silk, and I was trying to swallow it. Slick, wet, suffocating, more real than any fear I’d ever felt. Not real the way an emotion is real, but real the way a rock, a chair, or an animal is real. Fear had become something . . . more.

They dropped Damian into my lap, and it was as if every part of my skin ran with chills, and then every inch of my skin tried to crawl away. Tried to crawl away and leave my body to die. My skin would have saved itself if it hadn’t been trapped against my body. The rest of me would have gone with it, but we were trapped under Damian’s weight. Trapped in his fear, frozen in it. If I could have breathed, I would have screamed, but all I could do was drown. Drown in Damian’s fear.

Someone touched my shoulder, but it was distant. As if no one’s skin were as real to me as Damian’s. Someone shook me, sharp and hard. My breath came in a huge gasp, as if I hadn’t been breathing for a long time, when my breath came out, it was a shriek.

I was staring up into Richard’s startled face. It was his hand on my shoulder. Him kneeling beside us. “Anita, Anita, can you hear me?”

I grabbed Richard’s arm, my other hand clutching Damian to me, as if I were afraid if I let him go he’d be lost. As if the fear were some horrible beast that could literally eat him up, and destroy him.

Richard shook me again. “Anita, say something.”

“God, it’s so . . . awful.”

Damian nodded his head against my stomach. He’d been lying almost limply against me, but now he grabbed me around the waist and hip, his hands holding on as if I were the last solid thing in the world. I felt a burst of emotion from him, and it was gratitude. He was grateful that I could share his fear. Sharing it seemed to make it less, or make it more bearable.

That thought, that sharing fear made it easier to bear, brought a memory. It wasn’t my memory. It was a face that I had never seen before, but one that Damian knew as well as his own. All high angles and strong lines, a scar from his forehead to his cheek, where he’d been cut in the first raid we’d gone on. She-who-made-us said once that the scar saved his life, because without it, his hair was more blond than hers, his eyes more blue. That scar ruined his handsomeness enough for her to leave him whole. For even men who were too fair were not safe from her envy. The only name I heard in my head was Perrin, but I knew that wasn’t right. That hadn’t been his name, anymore than Damian had been mine, ours, his.

I smelled vanilla and felt something thick and warm glide over my skin. I blinked awake, if awake was the right word. Nathaniel was kneeling beside us. He’d undone his braid so that the vanilla scent of his hair had perfumed around me. His hair cascaded around him and spilled over the side of my body, pooling into my lap, covering Damian like a blanket, if a blanket could flow like liquid over a body. Nathaniel had covered us in his hair, but had very carefully avoided touching our skin with his. He was so close to us that not touching took effort, so close it was as if a sigh would have pressed the line of his body against mine. But he stayed that near painful inch away, letting only scent and the furred glide of hair reach us. The only thing he gave me of his skin was the warmth of it, which even from a distance I could feel. Heat trembling against my skin, as if the warmth of him breathed outward and wanted to touch me. Maybe it did.

It had been such a smart way to bring me out of Damian’s memory without risking Nathaniel being dragged into it himself. So smart, but a plan is only as good as everyone in it. Damian moved in my lap, and I had a second to realize what he was going to do. I drew a breath to warn Nathaniel, but didn’t have time to breath out. It was that quick.

Damian grabbed Nathaniel’s arm, and that one touch was enough. It was like drowning in light. As if the world had caught fire and become heat, and heat was golden like the color yellow had spilled out and covered everything. Yellow warmth, golden heat. Our eyes were dazzled by it. We were blind in the light. There was nothing but the light and the touch of her small hands, and Perrin’s hand in mine. His hand so large, firm, an anchor in the nightmare of the light. Her hands caressed, but it wasn’t real. She’d dragged us into the light to drink our fear, not our sex.

She tore his hand away from mine, and her voice, which once I’d thought beautiful, sounded like an evil whine in my head, poisonous, because I could not tell her no. “One to burn, one to keep.”

Perrin turned, framed for a moment in the light. His hair as yellow as the light itself, his eyes like the sky beyond the window. He was tall, his shoulders so wide that he filled most of the window. He’d always been a big man even among big men. Some of the towns we’d raided, people had run screaming, “Giant!” or their word for it.

Perrin stood, covered in the light. Covered in the light, but not burning. The words that had begun this folly came back, “Perhaps the reason they can walk out with you in the sun, Moroven, is not you sharing power with them, but that they have gained power of their own, to sun walk.” A messenger from the council had said the evil words and left it as a poisonous flea in she-who-made-us’s ear. For a heart’s beat we thought the messenger had spoken true. We thought Perrin stood in the light on his own power. For one glorious second, we believed. But the look on his face wasn’t triumphant, it was frightened. That one look was enough. Something was wrong.

The smoke began to curl off his skin, just like in the movies. The part that was still me, still Anita, thought but that’s not right. All the vampires that I’d seen die by sunlight just burst into flames. No smoke, no waiting, just instant inferno, poof. My puzzlement helped drag us back from the edge of terror. It helped us watch smoke rise from Perrin’s skin, kept the horror from choking us. Flames burst along his skin, and for the blink of an eye he was haloed by rich orange and gold flames. His long yellow hair fluttered in the wind of the heat. A moment to think, how pretty, then the flames ate over him and his skin crawled with fire.

Perrin shrieked. Shrieked, for scream did not describe that sound coming from a man’s mouth.

We screamed because we had to. All the horror, the sorrow, the fear had to come out our mouths, or it would have burst out of our skin and shattered our minds. We screamed because it was all that kept us from going mad.

I suddenly smelled forest, that rich green smell of the deep woods—half Christmas tree pine and half fresh-turned earth. I stared at the burning vampire, my lifelong friend, my brother, but I was calm. All I could smell was forest, not the salt of ocean, not anything, then there was something else—wolf. The sweet musk of wolf. Richard.

The thought of him made the scent of forest and fur override everything else. The memory began to fade. Literally, the images became misty, and we began to draw away from that awful room. Perrin’s voice floated down all those years, his scream turned distant by the fading. He began by screaming her name, the name I’d heard used for she-who-made-them, “Moroven, Moroven,” but the screams changed, became another name, “Nemhain!” I had enough left of Damian’s mind in me to understand that Nemhain was her secret name, her true name. Over and over again, Perrin screamed her name, and Damian echoed it, his screams, which were louder now as the memory faded, his screams were her name, “Nemhain!”

We spilled back into the now, into the floor of my bathroom, into Richard’s hand on my arm. I started to look into his face, but Damian came to his knees, as if he would run toward something I couldn’t see. I wrapped my hands around his waist and chest. Nathaniel had a death grip on Damian’s arm. We held him, as if he could still run to Perrin’s fire and destroy himself. He was still screaming, “Nemhain, Nemhain, curse you!” He collapsed so suddenly that I’d have fallen back into the glass doors of the shower if Richard hadn’t caught me with a hand across my back. Nathaniel caught Damian around one shoulder, slowing his fall. Damian was still talking in a voice that was more sob than whisper, “Curse you, Nemhain, curse you.” He curled into a ball in my lap, pushing me hard into the curve of Richard’s arm. Nathaniel stroked Damian’s hair, over and over, the way you’d comfort a child.

He was still muttering her name, and literally cursing her, when the world suddenly drowned in fear. It was as if terror could become air and you had to breathe it in or you would die, but breathing it in was dying, too. It was all death. All fear. It roared through my head, thoughtless, formless, fear so pure that it stopped my heartbeat for a second, a hesitation, as if my heart would simply stop from fear. Dying of fright wasn’t just a saying. There was a breathless moment where I waited for my heart to decide whether it would beat again, or whether silence was better, anything to escape. Anything.

The support of Richard’s arm vanished, and I was left with the cold press of glass behind me, as if he’d closed the door to support me, so he wouldn’t have to touch me anymore.

My breath came out in a rattle, and my heart leaped in my chest, and hurt as if it had bruised itself against my body. My chest hurt, my throat hurt, and still the air was fear made real. Every breath seemed to draw her in deeper. Because it was a her. It was Nemhain, Moroven, Damian’s maker, and Perrin’s. It wasn’t just a superstition that you did not speak her name. Her name had conjured her power, brought us to her attention. I expected a voice to match the terror, but there was silence, a silence so loud that all I could hear was the beating of the blood in my veins. My heart thundering inside my body. Then I heard another heartbeat, faster, more frightened even than mine. How could he live so afraid?

I turned my head slowly, because I couldn’t do anything else. I made myself turn through the fear and look at Nathaniel. His eyes were so wide they flashed white, and he was gulping at the air as if he was having trouble breathing it down. As if he would choke on the fear.

Damian lay like the dead in my lap. His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t breathing. There was no heartbeat to hear. The thought came, She’s taken what she gave him, but on the heels of that thought came another. He’s mine. I make his heart beat. I make the blood move in his veins. He’s mine. Not yours. Not anymore. Mine.

Nathaniel’s fingers dug into my arm, and he was gasping as if some invisible hand were choking off his air. I didn’t think that was really happening, but he was choking on the fear. Choking on her power. I met his terrified gaze and tried to say his name, tried to say anything, but no sound came out. I tried to call power, anything, but I couldn’t think. Fear had stolen my thoughts, my logic, my power. No, no, some small part of me knew that wasn’t true. She was just another vampire. Just another vampire. I was a necromancer. She could not do this to me. Part of me believed that, but most of me was fighting too hard to breathe to think at all.

If I’d had air enough, I’d have screamed. Not my fear, but my frustration. I didn’t know how to fight this. She wasn’t trying to mark any of us as servants, or seduce us, or control us. She simply had sent terror like some invisible wind to kill if it could, or not. She didn’t care. There was no malice here, no strong emotion of any kind, except the fear, and the fear was a sending. She felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I didn’t know how to fight against nothing. I didn’t know what to do. We were dying, and I didn’t know what to do.

20

JEAN-CLAUDE CALLED IN my mind, “Ma petite,” but the fear swelled upward and covered his words. I knew he was talking in my head, but I couldn’t understand what he said. The fear was drowning him out like one radio station overwhelming another. His words were like the ghost sound of a distant station, just under the sound of the terror, but all I could hear, all I could feel, was Moroven’s fear.

Nathaniel collapsed against me, mouth still open, gasping as if the air were too thick to breathe. Me dying was one thing, but it wouldn’t just be me. Nathaniel and Damian lay across my lap, their hair mingling like bright and dark ribbons.

Gregory knelt in front of me; I’d almost forgotten he was there. I usually had trouble reading his face when he was in half-leopard form, but this face, this face I could read. Even under spotted fur and yellow kitty-cat eyes, the hunger showed through. Not lust, hunger. He said in that growling voice, “They smell like food.”

“I know.” Richard’s voice, and it turned me to him. I stretched my hand out toward him. He’d dragged us out of Damian’s memory, maybe he could drag us out of this.

He looked . . . unhappy, angry. I let my hand begin to fall, but he took it, at the last minute, he took my hand in his. Instantly there was the sweet scent of forest and the musk of fur. The fear receded a little, like a wave of the ocean pulling back, but there was another wave just off shore, and you knew it was coming.

I could talk now, and what I said was, “Help me.”

Jean-Claude’s voice swelled inside me, pushed back the fear enough so I could hear his words. “You must raise the ardeur, ma petite, you must. She does not understand a clean lust, free of pain and terror. Use our Richard, and I will be able to join my powers to yours, and we can defeat her.”

I stared up into the face of the man that Jean-Claude had so causually called “ours,” and knew he wasn’t. I could smell that wonderful musk, the calm of pine and leaf mold, but the look on his face was anything but calm. His brown eyes were full of a fine, shimmering anger. Touching his hand like this, I should have felt that anger dance over my skin, but I didn’t. All I could feel was Moroven’s power like a storm hovering over me. The only emotion left in me was terror.

“Ma petite, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” I managed a whisper.

“Then what is wrong?”

I wanted to ask him, What am I supposed to do, wrestle Richard to the floor and ravage him? But all that came out was, “Can’t, I can’t.”

“Can’t what, ma petite?”

“Can’t feed off Richard.” It seemed silly to say that out loud while staring up into that handsome, angry face, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to say it silently in my head. Talking was hard enough.

“Richard has agreed to this, ma petite.”

I shook my head. “Don’t believe it, he’s angry.”

Richard looked even angier, but he said, out loud, “Jean-Claude’s telling the truth, Anita, I agreed to feed the ardeur.” His face was dark and frowning with his rage. He’d agreed, but he didn’t want to do it. Come to think of it, neither did I. I did not want to go down this metaphysical path again. We’d worked so hard to separate ourselves out, and sex with Richard would bind us close again. I didn’t want that, wasn’t sure my heart would survive being broken again. There’s only so much emotional super glue in a person’s soul, after that everything just stays broken.

“I cannot hold Moroven’s fear off forever, ma petite, you must act before my strength fails us all.”

“Easy for you to say,” and it almost sounded like my own voice, not breathy with terror, but nicely sarcastic. Good. “It’s not your lily-white ass on the line.”

“If I could fly to you, I would, but it is broad daylight, and I cannot. You and Richard must do this, for already I am losing against Moroven. I can feel her nightmare coming closer, and when it comes close enough, I will flee and save myself, in hopes that when darkness falls there will be something left to rescue. But if you and Richard do what I fear you will do, then darkness will come too late, too late for Damian, too late for Nathaniel, and if you do not survive the deaths of your servant and your animal, then Richard and I may never see moonrise again. Is it so horrible to feed from our Richard, ma petite, is that a fate worse than death?”

Put that way, no, but . . . damn it. Why did it always come down to sex? Why wasn’t there ever another way to fight?

Jean-Claude answered inside my head, “Because we can only fight with the tools at our command. I am an incubus, ma petite, and seduction is both my curse and my greatest power. If I had another magic to offer you, I would, but it is what I know. It is almost all I know.”

“If the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” I said.

Jean-Claude started to ask something, but he was swept away. Everything was swept away by terror. My heart was in my throat like I’d swallowed a fish. I was choking on my own heart. My skin was cold with the iciness of her power. So afraid, so very afraid.

Richard jerked away from my hand, stepped back from me, and I couldn’t read his face now. It wasn’t anger.

Gregory knelt closer to us and stretched his upper body out, over Nathaniel and Damian, stretched out until his half-leopard face was only inches from mine. He sniffed the air in front of me. “Smells, so good, so yummy. Fear and flesh,” he let out a long sigh that tickled his breath along my skin, “fear and flesh.”

I wasn’t afraid of Gregory, I knew that, but I was afraid, and the fear was formless, but it didn’t want to be. When Gregory drew his lips back from his teeth in what was supposed to be a smile, I gasped. The fear coalesced around that flash of fangs, that hungry gleam in those eyes. I was suddenly not just afraid, I was afraid of Gregory. Afraid of the claws, the teeth. I was afraid in a way that I’d never been of him, or any of my leopards. He licked my face, one quick movement.

I yipped, a small, high-pitched, frightened sound.

Gregory growled next to my skin, “Hmm, do it again.”

Richard grabbed him and pulled him away from me. “Stop playing with her.”

Gregory stayed crouched on the floor, as if he were half-thinking about springing up and turning it all into a fight. But what he said was, “Alright, I won’t play with her.” He turned and put his face next to Nathaniel’s. Gregory snapped his teeth just short of his skin, and Nathaniel screamed. Our fear had found a cause to wrap itself around. There was no logic to it. Anything fearful would have done, we just happened to have a leopardman so conveniently at hand.

Gregory laughed.

Richard jerked him back and dragged him as far away as the bathroom would allow. “I said stop playing with them.”

“You said, stop playing with her. I did.”

“Leave them all alone,” Richard said.

Gregory stood, and in leopardman form he was as tall as Richard. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to play with them, too?”

“Yes, yes, I want to play, but I’m not going to.”

“Why not?” Gregory asked.

“Because you don’t torment your friends, Gregory,” Micah said from the doorway with Richard’s newest girlfriend beside him. She was about my size with dark brunette hair cut just above her shoulders. She was wearing a pale blue skort and a white blouse with little blue flowers all over it. Sandals and carefully painted toenails completed the outfit. She was clinging to Micah’s hand and arm with both her hands. You didn’t usually hang on to someone like that unless they were your boyfriend. I realized there was an emotion I could feel through the fear—jealousy. What the hell was she doing hanging on to Micah?

She shivered in the doorway, and her eyes lost focus, as if she was hearing things no one else could hear. She whispered, “What is that?”

“Fear,” Gregory said.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice, and she pulled away from Micah and walked into the room. She stopped staring down at us, then looked away. She blushed and met Richard’s eyes, and blushed harder.

Gregory came to stand beside her, his furred form towering over her. “You want to play, too, don’t you?”

She looked down at us again, and this time her eyes weren’t human. I’d seen that particular trick a thousand times, but this time I screamed. Screamed like a tourist, and Nathaniel pressed himself against me as if he were trying to push himself out the other side. Damian just lay in my lap, like the fear had already killed him.

“Get Clair out of here,” Richard said, and his voice held that first edge of growl. “She’s too new, if you bring her beast like this, she’ll bleed people.”

I made a small sound in my throat, a helpless sound.

Micah took Clair by the arm and started leading her toward the door. She didn’t fight him, but she made him pull a little, while her animal eyes in that pretty face stared at us. She wasn’t embarrassed anymore, there was nothing human enough left in her to be embarrassed about nudity.

“What’s happening to them?” Micah asked.

“Damian’s first master is trying to kill them,” Richard said.

“How?” I wasn’t sure if he were asking how she’d kill us or how it had happened.

“Scare them to death.”

Micah almost had Clair to the door. “How can you stop it?”

Richard looked at Micah then. “I let Anita feed on me, and Jean-Claude comes riding to the rescue.” The growl had left his voice, and all that remained was tiredness and a sort of world-weariness, as if he’d seen too much, done too much, and didn’t want to do it anymore.

Micah and Richard stared at each other for a moment, then Micah gave a small nod. “Keep everybody alive,” he said, and he pulled Clair through the doorway.

She grabbed the door frame. “They smell so good.”

Micah threw her over his shoulders, and the movement startled her enough that she let go of the door and he carried her out of sight. Her words floated back, “No, I don’t want to go.”

Richard tried to get his jeans unfastened one-handed, and it wasn’t working. “I need some help here Gregory.”

The leopardman looked at him. “Going to fuck while you have the chance?”

Richard growled at him, and I made a small sound. Nathaniel whimpered. I knew in the front of my head that this was stupid. That Richard would not hurt me, not in that way, but the fear had a mind of its own. Nathaniel was a wereleopard, but he was terrified, too. No logic, just fear.

“If I shift, the pants will shred, and I don’t have extra clothes over here anymore,” Richard said.

“I thought your control was better than that, Ulfric,” Gregory growled.

Richard turned some of that anger loose and yelled, “I can taste their fear on my tongue, down my throat, as if I’ve already swallowed them.” He balled his good hand into the torn front of his T-shirt and pulled. He was suddenly standing over me naked from the waist up, with a look in his eyes that would have frightened me even if I’d been myself. It was a wild, fierce look, made up of hatred and lust. Hatred and lust in a man’s eyes is a bad combination.

It seemed to take physical effort for him to turn away from me and look at Gregory again. “Did you feel that?”

Gregory’s only answer was a low growl that made Nathaniel whimper again.

“God help me, she’s afraid to see me nude, and I fucking love it. I love that she’s afraid of me, and I hate myself for loving it. The ardeur will rise, but God alone knows what we’ll do before it does. With this much fear, with her, I don’t trust my control. And whatever happens I want clothes when it’s over, because I’m going to want to get the hell out of here.”

He undid his belt with one hand and squeezed the top button of his pants. The button popped open, and, still gripping the top of the pants, he made a rolling motion with his hand and the buttons snapped open in a long rolling line. The front of his pants spilled open, and he spilled out. Either he wasn’t wearing any underwear, or it couldn’t keep him contained.

I’d seen Richard nude enough times to lose track. The sight of him nude had excited me, made me nervous, afraid in that oh-my-god, where-am-I-going-to-put-it-all sort of way, envious when I’d lost my naked privileges, angry when he was being shitty, or trying to rub my face in the fact that I still found him handsome, but he wasn’t mine anymore. All those emotions, and lust, and love, but never fear. Never that feeling that he was physically so much larger than I was, so much stronger, so much . . . he’d never hurt me physically, and I’d never been afraid of him physically, but I was now. I was afraid the way virgins are supposed to be afraid when white slavers snatch them away. Afraid of being ravished. Afraid of him using that body in mine. Afraid in a way that I’d never been afraid of anyone that I loved.

I put my hands over my eyes like a child. If I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t hurt me. Stupid, silly, but I couldn’t stop the way I felt. Couldn’t change the way I felt. I felt a scream growing in my throat. A scream that was waiting to be touched. I knew I was going to do it, and I couldn’t stop it.

But it was as if he felt that scream waiting to come out, because he didn’t touch me. I felt his face on the other side of my hands like heat, a moment before I felt his breath against the back of my hands. If he’d touched me, the fear would have spilled out my mouth, but he didn’t touch me, not with his body.

His breath was hot against my skin, so hot. I felt Damian being lifted out of my lap. I wasn’t sure how I knew he hadn’t crawled out on his own, but I did.

“Anita, look at me.” His voice was very soft, and very close, each word breathing out against my hands. “Please, Anita, please look at me.”

His voice floated through the fear, eased the tightness in my throat, relaxed the muscles along my shoulders.

“Anita, look at me, please,” he whispered.

I could breathe past my pulse again.

“Please,” he whispered, and he touched fingertips to the back of my hand. The lightest of touches, and my hands lowered an inch, two inches, and I could see his face from between my fingers. His eyes were pure chocolate brown, and at that moment, they were gentle. There was no trace of anger, or lust, nothing but patience and gentleness. This was the part of him I’d fallen in love with once.

He touched my wrists, gently, and lowered my hands away from my face. He smiled and said, “Better?”

I started to nod, then Damian grabbed my leg, and the fear roared back, and the scream ripped out of my throat. It wasn’t just Moroven’s power, it was Damian’s fear of that power, and the fact that I couldn’t shield against it.

21

I SCREAMED, AND Richard’s mouth was suddenly on mine. He kissed me, a gentle press of lips. Fear thrilled through me, all the way to my fingertips, as if terror were an electric current. I shoved him away from me.

I waited for the anger to come rushing through me, to ride over the fear and everything else, but it didn’t come. In fact the fear blossomed into panic. Panic that freezes your body, numbs your mind, makes you forget everything you’ve ever learned about how to make your body a weapon, and all that is left is a small screaming voice inside your head that makes you a victim. If you can’t think and can’t move, then you are a victim. That’s why panic will get you killed.

Richard knelt in front of me, only as far away as my arms had moved him. There was nothing gentle in his face now. He looked eager, anticipatory. He was on one knee, the other leg turned so that he shielded himself from my view. The body language was modest; the look on his face was not.

He leaned in toward me and sniffed, drawing the air in deep, so that his chest rose and fell with it. His eyes closed as if he’d smelled the sweetest of flowers, his head thrown back, just a little. When he opened his eyes, they weren’t brown, they were amber, dark orange wolf amber. There was a moment where seeing those eyes in the tan of his face was breathtaking, then Damian’s fingers dug into my leg. A fresh wave of panic poured through me, tore a scream from my throat, and Damian echoed it. I had a confused image of bodies, hands, being held down, cloth ripping, the weight of a body pinning us to the table and . . .

A hand wrapped around my wrist and jerked me up and away. Damian’s nails ripped through my skin as he tried to hold on. Richard tore me away from Damian’s hands, his horror, his memories, and his fear.

The moment Damian couldn’t touch me, the panic faded, a little. I could breathe again. The fear was still there, pulsing through me, but it was diminished some. It was like the difference between drowning in the ocean and drowning in a fish pond. Better, less frightening, but just as dead.

I looked back at Damian, and he lay on the floor, his hand outstretched, and even from a distance, I reached back for him. I could feel his need.

Richard pulled on my arm, sharp, sudden. It threw me off balance, and he used that momentary stumble to swing me in against his body, my arm behind my back with his hand still on my wrist. I should have been more interested in the pain, but it was the sensation of being suddenly pressed against his naked body that overwhelmed me. It was not just being pressed against a man’s body, even a lovely body, that unnerved me, it was as if my body remembered him. Remembered what it was like to be pressed against this flesh, these arms, and with the skin memory . . . it was as if the emotional scars tore open and spilled my heart out into my skin. You fight so hard, so long, to cut someone out of your heart, but it’s not always your heart that betrays you.

But in among the emotional debris I felt Moroven pull back. We hadn’t needed the ardeur to confuse her, all we’d needed was how Richard and I felt about each other. Just as Moroven didn’t understand pure lust, she didn’t understand love, no matter how broken. I don’t know if the emotion frightened her, or if she simply couldn’t understand it. She wasn’t the only one.

We were touching, and the triumverate was working just fine. We’d both thrown down our shields to help Jean-Claude raise the ardeur and save us, but shields protect you from so many things. What is love? What does it feel like in its rawest form? Lust, need, desire, and that aching want, as if the center of your body was carved out and hollow, and the only thing that can fill it is the person that you’re touching.

I loved Richard. I couldn’t hide how I felt, couldn’t deny it. I was laid bare in his arms in every way. For a moment, I felt him feel the exact same way, then I felt something else . . . shame. He was ashamed, not that he loved me, but that part of him was angry that Moroven had fled. He’d wanted to drink my fear while he fucked me. That was the thought that came, not in words, but in confused images. I felt that to him my terror was almost the same as the terror of the deer he’d chased down and killed. Fear, even a little fear, made everything better—food and sex.

He let me go, stepped away so we wouldn’t be touching. He clanged his shields tight into place and left me standing alone. I was shaking and couldn’t understand why.

Richard’s face got that angry look he used to hide what he was thinking. He grabbed his pants and went for the door. “You’re as horrified by it as I am,” he said, and was gone.

I wanted to say he was wrong, but in a way he was right. I wasn’t horrified by the fact that he liked a little fear with his sex, a little rough play, most of the shapeshifters did. I think it had something to do with them being programmed to chase animals and kill them. If they didn’t get off on the fear, their human sides might come to the forefront and cripple them for the kill. Or maybe, that wasn’t it. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was that Raina and Gabriel had been attracted by latent talent. I don’t know, but I wasn’t horrified with what Richard had wanted. The fact that he thought of taking me while Moroven’s fear rode me hadn’t bothered me. It was mild compared to some of the things that my wereleopards liked. Just because I didn’t participate didn’t mean I was blind.

No, that wasn’t the problem. I dropped to my knees and stayed there. I’d felt that he loved me, still, but I’d also felt that his hatred for everything he was, was stronger and more important than his feelings for me. I’d thought he loathed his beast, but it was more than that. He hated what he liked in the bedroom. We’d been lovers for months off and on, and I’d never known that he was a closet sadist. How tight he must have to hold his own leash for me not to have known.

A hand touched my shoulder, and I jumped. Nathaniel was staring at me with those lavender eyes. “Are you okay?”

My eyes felt hot, and my throat tight. God, I didn’t want to cry. I shook my head, because I didn’t trust what would come out if I opened my mouth. No sobbing, no screaming, no hysterics. I hadn’t realized until moments ago that somewhere in the depths of my soul, I’d held out hope. Hope that Richard and I would work out, somehow. I thought I’d moved on—stupid. I hadn’t moved on, I’d just hidden it away. I couldn’t give myself completely to anyone, because I was still in love with Richard. How fucking stupid was that?

He did love me, but he loved his shame more. He hadn’t run because I could accept his beast. He’d run because living with me, he couldn’t pretend. He couldn’t pretend to be normal. I’d never been much on pretending to be something I wasn’t, and lately, I’d gotten even worse at it. Could you pretend to be someone else and truly be happy? I don’t think so.

Nathaniel put his arms around me, slowly, as if he were afraid I’d stop him, but I didn’t. I needed to be held right then. I needed to be held by someone who wanted me, wanted all of me, the good and the bad, the nice and the scary. Richard had been pressed naked against my body, and even the promise of that hadn’t been enough.

Micah appeared in the doorway. “Dr. Lillian is in the kitchen looking at Richard’s wound.” He looked from Nathaniel to Damian, then to me. “Richard looks shaken, what happened?”

I held out my hand, and he came to me without me having to say a word. I buried my face against his shoulder, and that hot, hot tightness spilled out of my eyes, and my lips. I balled my hands into his shirt and cried.

Nathaniel was at my back rubbing his hands over and over my skin, making soothing noises.

“What happened?” Micah asked again.

It was Damian who answered, and his voice let me know that he was close before his hand patted my shoulder. “Richard hates himself more than he loves anyone else.” It was only in that moment that I realized that Damian and Nathaniel had still been connected to me when Richard and I had had our moment. My first thought was, He would hate knowing that they know his big dark secret. My second thought was, Who the fuck cares?

I clung to Micah, with Nathaniel at my back and Damian patting me awkwardly on the shoulder.

Gregory growled in his leopard voice, “What just happened? I thought you and Richard were going to fuck.”

Micah saved me the trouble of saying anything. “Get out, Gregory, now before you say something even more stupid.”

“I didn’t mean . . .”

“Now!” Micah’s voice held that edge of growl to it. Enough that it sparked his beast awake inside him, and I felt it curl inside his body, like brushing up against a cat in the dark. A cat that you’ve shared a bed with, until the feel of that fur, that small body is like your pillows, or your sheets, just a part of a safe night’s sleep. Comfort, companionship, warmth, and the knowledge that there are claws in the dark in case things go wrong. His beast flared mine, and it felt so warm, so comfortable, as those two invisible bodies rubbed against each other. The feel of his neck against my face, his skin wet with my tears, our beasts resting against each other, his arms around me, and I had one of those moments, where I understood that if I let him close enough, his arms could be home.

Nathaniel kissed me, very lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t be sad, Anita, please don’t be sad.” I turned my head enough to see his face. There were tears on his cheeks. I opened one arm so that I could wrap it around his waist and hug them both. I let myself sink in against them, let them hold me, let myself cling to them both. What is love? Sometimes it’s just letting yourself be who and what you are, and letting the person you’re supposed to love be who and what he is, too. Or maybe, what and who they are.

22

WHEN I FINISHED having hysterics and everyone had rinsed enough blood off them to be presentable, or at least not make my neighbors call the police, I got dressed. Micah had pointed out that we’d probably all be going to bed, so why bother getting dressed, but I needed clothes. Black everything from the skin out, including the shoulder holster, Browning Hi-Power, and hidden under my hair the hilt of a really big knife. It sat in a custom-made sheath along my spine that attached to the shoulder holster, though it could be worn without, but not as comfortably. Micah tried to point out that I probably didn’t need that much weaponary to go into my own kitchen. I looked at him, and he stopped. No one else complained.

Have you ever tried to get dressed with three men watching you? I wanted Micah, and it seemed shitty to kick Nathaniel out, and Damian . . . we were all afraid what might happen if the vampire was separated from me by a room and a door. He and I had had sex, and he’d seen me very naked, and even walked behind me into the bedroom, but I still made him turn and face the wall while I dressed. Maybe the wereanimals were finally affecting my view of nudity. It just seemed, strangely, more intimate to dress in front of someone than to be naked. Or maybe my modesty had just had all the shocks it could handle for one day.

Speaking of which, if I hadn’t thought it was cowardly and childish, I’d have hidden in the bedroom until Richard left, but it was cowardly, and it was childish. Damn it. Besides, Nathaniel promised he’d make coffee. I hated eating before ten o’clock, but coffee before ten was a necessity.

Damian had done one thing that made me feel better, he’d asked for a robe. His request made me realize something. None of the vampires I knew did casual nudity. They’d be naked for a good cause, but wouldn’t just walk around nude like the shapeshifters did. Funny, I’d never thought about it before.

Nathaniel had fetched Damian’s very own robe from the basement and had taken a side trip to put on a pair of jeans himself. He got brownie points for dressing without me having to ask.

Damian’s robe looked like something straight out of Victorian England, and maybe it was. It was a dark, rich blue velvet, and heavy, almost more like a coat than a robe. There were worn places at the elbows, and the cuffs and hem were beginning to fray. But the whole robe screamed expensive. Damian wrapped it around himself like it was his favorite teddy bear. Once he belted it in place it covered him from neck to ankle, only his hands peeking out.

“That’s not a robe, is it?” I asked.

He shook his head, as he pulled his hair free of the collar, so it spilled like a surprised red splash against all that blue. “It’s a dressing gown,” he said.

I nodded as if I understood exactly what that meant, then I offered him my hand. Not because I wanted to touch him, though that was there, but because of the lost look in his eyes and the way his hands kept rubbing the thinning velvet, as if touching it made him feel safer. He took my hand and gave me the first smile I’d seen since she-who-made-him had reared her vicious head. The smile was shaky ’round the edges, but it firmed up when he touched my hand.

I’d been afraid that when I touched him again that it would change. That there’d be lust, or love, or something else I couldn’t deal with, but that wasn’t what came through the touch of his hand. What came through was a sense of safety. Relief that I’d reached out to touch him first. If I touched him first, I couldn’t be that angry.

“I’m not mad,” I said.

His eyes widened just a little. “You know what I’m thinking?”

“Don’t you know what I’m thinking?”

“No.”

“Ask him if he knows what you’re feeling,” Nathaniel said.

“I just asked that.”

“No, you didn’t.”

I thought about it for a second. He was right. “Okay, what am I feeling?”

“Nothing,” Damian said, “you are very carefully feeling nothing.”

I thought about that, too, and just nodded. He was right. I felt numb, at most relieved that Damian’s need for safety overrode other complications, but really, truly, I felt nothing. I felt like one of those shells that washed up on the sand, so pretty, so clean, so white and pink, and so empty. That place inside me where Richard had been meant to fit, to fill, was empty, but not empty like a wound. Empty like that seashell, all slick and wet and waiting. Waiting for someone else to come along and slip inside and make that emptiness into their protection, their shield, their armor, their home.

Even thinking it that clearly, I still felt almost nothing. I realized it was close to that static emptiness where I went when I had to kill, but it wasn’t staticky. It was a peaceful emptiness, like gazing out to a horizon of just water and sky. Peace, quiet, but not empty, just waiting. Waiting for what?

Damian squeezed my hand. I smiled at him but knew it didn’t reach my eyes. I smiled because he smiled at me, more reflex than emotion. Inside was nothing. It was a little like being in shock. Shock is nature’s insulation, the thing that shuts you down so you can heal, or sometimes so you can die without hurting, or being afraid.

Well, I wasn’t going to die. You didn’t die of a broken heart, it just felt like you were going to. I knew from personal experience that if you just kept moving, acting as if you weren’t bleeding inside, you didn’t die, and eventually you stopped wanting to.

Micah came to stand in front of me. Once it had seemed odd to have such serious intelligence out of kitty-cat eyes. Now, they were just Micah’s eyes. He touched my face, and his hand was so warm that I wanted to rub my cheek against it, but I didn’t. I don’t know why, but I didn’t. I just stood there with Micah touching my face and Damian clinging to my hand. I could feel that my face was as empty as I felt inside.

“You don’t have to go in there,” Micah said.

“Yes,” I said, “I do.”

He put his other hand up, so that he framed my face between his warm, warm hands. “No, Anita, you don’t have to.”

Damian was rubbing his fingers across my knuckles the way he did when he was worried that I would be angry with someone. I wasn’t angry, or maybe he was worried about another emotion all together. Damian could help me be calmer, help me control my temper, and be less ruthless, or less quick to kill, but your servant can only give you what they have to share. Damian could not help me fight fear, or loneliness, or sorrow, because he carried too much of it inside himself. Today, the only real comfort he could offer was the touch of a friendly hand. But there are worse things to offer.

I closed my eyes, not to hide from Micah’s serious face, but to bask in the warmth of his hands. I had to close my eyes so I could feel his hands and not be distracted by the color of his eyes. I let myself do what I’d wanted to do since he touched my face. I rubbed my cheek against first one of his hands, then the other. His hands moved with me, so that it was like a dance, his hands against my face, my hair, and me rubbing against him cat-like.

He kissed me somewhere in all that movement, with my face writhing between his hands. His lips were soft and full, and he pressed them against mine, firm but gentle. I opened my eyes to his face so close I couldn’t focus on his eyes.

He drew back enough so we could see each other, but kept my face between his hands. “I would spare you this, if you’d let me.”

I put my hands over both of his, so that we held each other. “You mean make my apologies for me, and Damian and I go hide out in the bedroom?”

Someone had propped the front door back into place. The door hung crooked in the frame, and a little light leaked around the edges, but it wasn’t bad. Damian had grabbed at my shoulder at the first line of light that crawled across the floor. I’d patted his hand, but didn’t know what else to do. Micah informed us that he’d shut the drapes in the kitchen, so it was as dim as he could make it. I’d smiled at him for that. He always seemed to anticipate my wants. Sometimes it bugged me, but not today. Today, I’d take all the help I could get.

Damian would have been the perfect excuse to hang out in a darker part of the house. Unfortunately, almost as much as I didn’t want to see Richard, I didn’t want to be alone with Damian. Men can be sort of funny after you’ve had sex with them, some get downright possessive, others get emotional, and still others just want a chance to do it again. None of that sounded like something I wanted to deal with right that minute. Sure he felt calm against my skin, but that didn’t mean that once we were alone he’d be able to stop himself from being male. After all he was one. I just wasn’t willing to risk it.

“If you have to look at it that way, yes.”

“It’s not that I have to look at it that way, Micah, it’s the way it is. It would be hiding out.”

“She won’t hide,” Nathaniel said, voice soft and full of sorrow that I couldn’t understand, and just the sound in his voice made me glad at that moment that we weren’t touching. Whatever he was feeling didn’t sound fun in the least.

“Isn’t discretion ever the better part of valor with you?” Micah asked, and there was a look in his eyes that was close to pain. But strangely, of all the men in my life, he was one of the few whose mind and emotions I couldn’t read. I could read his face, his eyes, his body, but his mind and internal emotions were his own.

“No,” I said, “never. Well, almost never.” I patted his hands and stepped back just enough so that he had to let me go, or hold on when he knew I didn’t want him to.

He let his hands fall away from me, and the first hint of anger trickled into his eyes. “I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

“I don’t like seeing me hurt either,” I said.

That almost made him smile. “Trying to make jokes, I guess that’s a good sign.”

“Trying, only trying? I thought it was funny.”

“No,” Nathaniel said, “no, it wasn’t.” He squeezed my arm as he walked by. “I’ll get the coffee started.”

“You’re not going to wait for us?” I asked.

He turned back just short of the kitchen doorway. He was smiling. “I know you’ll get in here, eventually, because you couldn’t stand yourself if you chickened out. But, by the time you talk yourself into it, I could already have coffee made.”

I frowned at him, and just a tiny thread of anger came with it.

Damian grabbed for my hand again, and I didn’t fight it.

“Don’t get mad at me,” Nathaniel said, “I’m about to grind fresh coffee beans for you and use the new French press Jean-Claude got you.”

I frowned harder.

“I know how much you hate to admit that you like the French press, but you do like it.”

“It doesn’t make enough coffee at one time,” I said. Even to me it sounded churlish.

“I’ll tell Jean-Claude that you would like a really, really big French press.” He said it completely deadpan, and only the faintest of smiles and the tiniest gleam in his eyes let me know he was going to add something. “Size queen,” then he was through the door, before I could close my mouth and decide whether to yell at him, or laugh.

23

NATHANIEL’S ATTEMPT TO make me laugh accomplished one thing; it made me feel better, though I have to admit the smell of freshly ground coffee helped lure me through the door. I couldn’t let one ex-fiancé stand between me and my coffee, could I? Not and keep my self-respect, so in we went.

Richard was sitting at the kitchen table on the side nearest the door. Dr. Lillian was standing over him finishing the bandaging of his entire right shoulder and arm. She glanced at us as we came through the door, but most of her attention stayed on her patient. The first time I’d met her she’d been gray and furry, but now she was a woman of about fifty, slender, with hair as gray and white as her fur was when she was in rat form. There was always something neat about Dr. Lillian, as if her clothes never got too dirty and she always had medical supplies when she needed them. She never seemed to panic. In the human world, she was head of one of the few local emergency trauma centers that had survived the cutbacks. But she spent more and more time helping the semi-permanently furry. Since Marcus had died, we were really short on doctors.

Which explained why there was a bodyguard leaning on the other side of the doorway watching us move into the room. He was slender, a little shy of six feet, though something about the way he stood made him seem shorter. A tangle of black hair fell into his eyes, and they glittered like black jewels from that fall of hair. His graceful hands caressed the edges of his leather jacket, and I caught glimpses of at least four knife hilts before he let the jacket fall closed. There might have been six hilts, but I was sure of four, and that was plenty.

I’d been told the wererats were here, plural, but I hadn’t thought about it. Hadn’t really heard it. I’d been so busy not seeing Richard, that I hadn’t really looked at the room. I’d strapped on a knife and my gun, but I might as well have been unarmed for all the good they would have done me, if Fredo had meant me harm. I hadn’t seen him. He’d been standing just inside the door, opposite the side I came through, and I hadn’t seen him. Shit.

I managed to keep it off my face. I nodded to Fredo; he nodded back. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t trust my voice. I was thinking, Stupid, stupid. And that kind of stupid could get me killed.

Nathaniel was at the back of the kitchen by the sink, under the window that we’d once had to replace because of shotgun damage. The window was fine now, but I wasn’t. I lived in a world where I had to see the bad guys. Fredo was on our side, but he was definitely a bad guy. Not a bad guy that would kill me, but one that could, and I’d walked into the room right past him. It was a rookie mistake that let me know just how badly I was doing.

I kept walking until I stood beside Nathaniel with our backs to the room. Damian trailed me like a lost puppy that had found a likely handout. I’d let go of his hand when I realized I hadn’t seen Fredo, when I’d felt the movement of Fredo behind me. I wanted my hands free. I knew that Damian needed to touch me, but I needed my hands free. I was feeling claustrophobic. The kitchen’s a good-sized room. When the curtains are open it’s bright and shiny, but with the curtains shut and the overhead lights on, it was dim and shadowy, and I wanted light. I wanted to step out on the deck and watch the trees with the morning light on them. I didn’t want to stand here in the dark and hold the vampire’s hand. I wanted a choice, and I didn’t seem to have any. I was suddenly so angry, and it wasn’t Damian I was mad at.

The far drapes moved, and Clair came back in from the deck, all smiles. “It’s a wonderful view.”

“Thanks,” I said, and went back to watching Nathaniel make coffee. If I just kept not looking anywhere else, maybe I wouldn’t let my anger get the best of me. I wanted to rant at Richard, to scream and accuse. And I so did not want to do that in front of his new girlfriend or my boyfriends. Did I just say boyfriends?

I put my hands on the coolness of the counter, closed my eyes, and just tried not to think again. Not thinking was good. Not feeling was better.

A hand laid itself over mine, and the moment it did, I was calmer. I knew without opening my eyes who it was, because only one man’s touch calmed me. Calmed me because he’d spent centuries perfecting his calmness. I opened my eyes and met Damian’s green gaze. I wanted to hate him. I wanted to be furious at being trapped with him, tied, but I couldn’t be. With him touching my hand, with his eyes so ready to fill with pain, I couldn’t be angry, not with him. Shit.

I couldn’t breathe, not a good solid breath. He took my anger, but he couldn’t take the fear. I jerked away from him. “I need to be angry right now, Damian, it’s all I’ve got.”

A hand touched my arm, and I jerked away from it. Nathaniel’s eyes were cautious rather than hurt. “What’s wrong?”

I moved back from both of them, bumping up against the island hard enough that the dishes rattled in the cabinets.

“Anita.” Micah’s voice. He was at the end of the island looking at me with his serious kitty-cat eyes.

I couldn’t seem to get a deep enough breath. It was as if the room was getting smaller. Nathaniel was in front of me, and either side of the island was blocked by the other two. I felt cornered, trapped in so many ways.

“Boys,” Dr. Lillian said, “I think Anita needs a little air.”

“I can’t leave Damian alone,” I said, but my voice sounded choked.

She came and moved them all away from me, shooing them back. “Come on, a little fresh air and some open spaces, doctor’s orders.” She held out her hand to me, but was careful not to touch me, as if she knew what I was feeling better than I did. She eased me to the drapes and pushed me through them onto the open deck.

The light was dazzling, and I was blind with it for a moment. When I could see again, she was as far away as the wraparound deck would allow her to be and still be on it. She didn’t say anything, just looked out at the view.

I started to say something, then thought, Fuck it, she’s right. I went to the rail and looked out at the trees. The trees were a kaleidoscope of color. The wind stirred all that gold and orange, and a cascade of leaves like an upturned bag of gold showered down around me. The sky was that flawless blue that only happens here in October, as if the sky were closer, fresher, newly minted blue, as if all the clear skies until now had been practice for these few weeks of blue, blue sky. I breathed in the heavy gold of the sun, like pale syrup on the leaves. It smelled like autumn, that crisp, clean, sharp smell, that is made up of dying leaves, chill nights, and the warm breath of the day before night falls. You could taste fall on your tongue like some kind of bread or cake, something thick and nutty and sweet. I took in as much air as I could and let it out slow, as if my body didn’t want to let it go.

I stood there leaning on the railing, drinking in the sunlight, the colors, and the rich scent of autumn woods. I was smiling and calm all on my own by the time Dr. Lillian spoke. She stayed on her end of the deck, as if she wasn’t sure how much room I needed. “Feel better?”

“Yes,” and I smiled at her, though I felt a little embarrassed. “Sorry that I lost it in there.”

“You’ve had some big changes in a very short space of time, Anita.”

“How much do you know?”

“That you’ve somehow tied yourself to Damian and Nathaniel, somewhat the way that Jean-Claude tied you and Richard to him. That you did it by accident. That it’s a miracle no one’s dead.”

I sighed, and the smile was gone. “Yeah, I could have handled it better.”

“No one could handle all that you handle, Anita, better or worse. You keep surprising all of us.”

“Us, who?” I asked.

She smiled. “All of us, the shapeshifters, the vampires, all of us. I can’t really speak for everybody, but I know you are a constant amazement to the wererats. We never know what you’re going to do next.” She leaned against the rail with her arms crossed over her clean white shirt.

“Neither do I, not anymore.”

“That loss of control issue again, isn’t it?”

“You know, I really don’t want to psychoanalyze myself right now.”

“Fine,” she raised her hands as if to show she was unarmed, “but the next time you start getting claustrophobic, and you need some air, get some air, okay?”

“It was that obvious?” I asked.

“If I say yes, you won’t like it, because you hate for anyone to be able to read you. If I say no, I’d be lying, and you hate that, too.”

“I’m just impossible to get along with, aren’t I?”

“Not impossible, but not exactly easy either.” She gave a small laugh to soften it, and said, “Do you feel up to going back inside?”

I took another deep breath and nodded. “Sure.”

She nodded, too. “Good, be careful when you move the drapes. Don’t want to flash too much of this beautiful sun onto Damian.”

I nodded and felt the good air leaving me. Before I stepped back through the sliding glass doors, I was wondering, what was I going to do with him? I couldn’t keep touching him all day. Could I? I was willing to do it up to a point, but all day would drive me mad. Especially if it was not just today, but every day. I suddenly saw an endless stream of days with Damian permanently attached to me. It was claustrophobic.

I half expected him to leech onto me when I came through the door, but he didn’t. I stood there in the sudden dimness of the curtained kitchen, letting my eyes adjust. My eyes automatically turned to where Richard had been, but I forced myself to look for Fredo first. He’d moved closer like a good bodyguard, leaning against the small two-seater table in the breakfast nook. The white roses that Jean-Claude sent every week framed Fredo’s darkness. His fingers were tracing the edges of his jacket again. I’d never seen Fredo use his knives, but something told me that he’d get to his blades faster than I’d get to my gun, not to mention my knife. The back sheath was really an emergency backup, not a main weapon. If I’d wanted a blade as a main weapon, I’d have put on the wrist sheaths.

I eased into the room away from Fredo, not because he meant me harm, but simply on principle. I wasn’t at my best, and he was the only professional bad guy in the room, so I treated him with the caution he deserved. Besides, I had to redeem my earlier stupidity somehow, and the days when I would have picked a fight just to reassure myself I was still tough were long ago and far away. Being a girl, that phase had been shorter anyway. We are much more practical creatures than men, as a general rule.

Richard was still at the table. Clair was beside him now. She had a hand on his good shoulder, her small hand very pale against the darkness of his skin. She was watching me. Her eyes were blue, a dark sort of gray blue, but blue nonetheless.

Micah stood at the side of the island closest to the table. He seemed tense, but it was a flicker of his eyes that helped me find Damian and Nathaniel.

The vampire had wedged himself into the corner between the cabinets and the sink. He was holding his knees tight to his chest, his face resting on them, so that he could hide his eyes. He’d managed to hide almost all of himself in the blue velvet dressing gown and the fall of his own hair. Nathaniel was beside him on the floor. He was touching Damian’s hands, but that was all.

Nathaniel looked up at me, and there was something in his violet eyes, pain, helplessness, something. I wasn’t mad anymore, and I didn’t feel claustrophobic as I crossed the kitchen to them. I knelt on the other side of Damian and looked a question at Nathaniel. “I thought my touch might help him until you got back inside.”

I nodded. It sounded logical.

“He didn’t want me to touch him much.” He wasn’t hurt when he said it, it was just a fact.

I touched Damian’s bowed head. His hand suddenly wrapped around my wrist. The movement had been too fast to see, which didn’t happen often to me with vamps, and shouldn’t have happened with this one. The speed of it, and the strength in his hand made me gasp.

He raised up and gave me the full look of those emerald eyes. I was suddenly struck by the sheer beauty of him. It was almost a physical force. As if beauty were a hammer and I’d taken a hit directly between the eyes.

“My God,” Nathaniel whispered.

It took more effort than was pretty for me to tear my glance away from Damian. Once I saw Nathaniel’s face it was easier, and I could breathe again. “Do you see it, too?” I asked.

He nodded. “It’s like a really good face-lift, not much change, but the changes are just right.”

“What are the two of you talking about?” Damian asked.

His talking made me look at him again, and I was held spellbound. He’d always been handsome, but not like this. “It’s vampire powers, somehow. I thought as my servant he’d be less able to do that, not more.”

“I don’t think it’s mind games, Anita,” Nathaniel said. He reached out to touch Damian’s face.

Damian pulled back. “What? What’s wrong with my face?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I said, “Richard beat the shit out of you, but there’s not a mark left.”

He raised his own hand up and touched his mouth. “It’s healed,” he said.

I nodded, and it was as if I was mesmerized by him. Was it mind tricks, or had more than just the damage healed? I couldn’t tell, and I wasn’t sure whether Nathaniel was a better judge than I was. “Micah, can you look at him?”

Micah came to stand at the end of the island closest to us. The look on his face was enough, before he said, “Wow.”

But was it mind tricks? That’s what I wanted to know. I reached up to touch his face, and he didn’t lean away from me, as he had Nathaniel. I’d seen part of his memory of what had happened to him at the hands of other men, men that she-who-made-him had given him to, so she could feed off his pain and fear. So I understood some of the homophobia, but Nathaniel wasn’t a threat to him, not in that way. In other ways, he was a threat to everyone who saw him. Oh, well.

I touched Damian’s cheek, and it was solid. But it was all solid. Nathaniel was right, it was like a really good face-lift; there wasn’t that much difference. What was it about his face that was different? What had kept Damian’s face from being this heart-stopping before? I’d never made a study of his face, I wasn’t sure I knew him well enough to know what had changed. Maybe my confusion showed on my face, because Nathaniel said, “His mouth, his lips were too thin for his face, now they’re full and . . . they match.”

Now that Nathaniel had said it, I could remember Damian’s mouth, and this wasn’t it. Was it just mind glamour? It had to be, didn’t it? I closed my eyes and touched his mouth, but I’d never run my fingers over his lips. I didn’t remember them. I kept my eyes closed and used my hands to guide me. I kissed him, soft but firm. I’d kissed this mouth less than two hours ago, and it wasn’t the same mouth. The lips were fuller, as if he’d gotten a collagen injection while we weren’t looking. I drew back just enough to see his face clearly. There was a slight up-tilt to his eyes, and they were bigger, not much, but just a little, or was it that his eyebrows had a wider arch to them? Were his lashes thicker, darker? Shit.

“What’s wrong?” Damian asked again, and this time there was a thread of fear in his voice.

“I’ll get a mirror,” Micah said, and turned and went for one.

“This isn’t possible,” I said.

“Is there anything I can do?” Dr. Lillian was at the far end of the island. Damian looked up at her, and she said, “Oh, my.”

“What?” he asked, and his voice was frantic.

I patted his hand. “You’re fine, in fact you’re . . . beautiful.”

The fear spread from his voice to his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

Micah came back in with a hand mirror. He simply held it out toward me. I took it, but Damian shut his eyes tight, as if he were afraid to look. “It’s okay, Damian, I promise, you look wonderful.” But I sort of understood the fear, because even if it was an improvement, how weird would it be for the face you’ve had for a thousand years to suddenly change. I’d have had trouble with changes to the face I’d only had for part of a lifetime.

He was shaking his head over and over again.

“Please, Damian, just look. It’s good, not bad. I promise.”

He opened his eyes a little at a time, but once he saw enough, his eyes went wide, and he took the mirror from me. He moved it around so he could see his eyes, his mouth, and there was some change to his nose that he could see and I couldn’t. Like I said, I hadn’t made a study of his face, but he had.

He touched his face tentatively, as if he expected it to feel different than it looked. He dropped the mirror, and Nathaniel caught it before it hit the floor. “What is happening to me?”

I opened my mouth to say, I don’t know, but Micah said, “I think we need to call Jean-Claude. We know he’s up.”

Good idea, I thought. “Yeah, I think so.”

I actually got up to go for the phone, but Richard was at the end of the island, across from the phone, and I suddenly didn’t want to be that close to the phone. His right arm was taped to his chest, completely immobile, like Lillian had started to mummify him and stopped. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking lower, at Damian.

“Healing and a little facial reconstruction, you are good,” he said, and his tone made it not a compliment.

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know,” and those two words just sounded tired. “Jean-Claude told me once that he couldn’t remember what he and Asher looked like before Belle, but he’d seen others before and after. Belle never chose people who weren’t pretty, but some afterward were more beautiful than before. It wasn’t a common thing even in her bloodline, but it happened often enough to start the legend that it always happened to her blood.”

I looked at him. “And when did you and Jean-Claude find time for all this information sharing?”

“When you deserted us for more than half a year. We had a lot of time to talk, and I had a lot of questions.”

I couldn’t argue with the “deserted us” part, so I ignored it. “I asked him once if his body and face were vampire tricks, and he said no.”

“Vampire tricks aren’t real,” Richard said, “this,” and he motioned at Damian with his good arm, “is.”

“But Damian’s been a vampire for a long time; if this kind of change was going to kick in, then it should have done it by now.”

“I’m not of Belle’s line,” Damian said. He was touching his face with just the tips of his fingers, as if that made it less awful, or something.

“But Anita is,” Richard said. “Through her ties to Jean-Claude, she is a part of Belle’s line.”

“I’m not a vampire,” I said.

“You feed like one,” he said.

Anger was finally rearing its ugly comforting head. If I could get mad, I’d feel better, and Richard’s presence wouldn’t bother me so much. “You’re as tied to Jean-Claude as I am. It’s only luck that’s kept the ardeur from you, Richard. Next time we get an extra special treat, maybe it’ll be your turn.”

“I can’t heal with sex, and it looks like you can.”

“Did you raise the munin when you were with Damian?” Dr. Lillian asked.

I shook my head. “I’d have noticed Raina being around. She’s sort of hard to miss.” I heard a distant echo in my head, Raina’s “ghost” saying, so glad you noticed. I shut that particular metaphysical door tight, locked it, and bound it with silver chains. All metaphorical, or metaphysical, but all real just the same. A part of Raina lived inside me, and nothing I could do seemed able to rid me of her completely. I could control her to a point, but not exorcise her from me. God knows I’d tried.

“If it wasn’t Raina, then one of you was able to heal during the sex,” Dr. Lillian said. She said it like it was just logical. Two plus two is four, that kind of thing.

I was shaking my head long before I realized I was doing it. Shaking my head over and over. “I didn’t do this.”

“Then who did?” Richard asked. His face wore the arrogance of his anger. When he looked like that, he was both more handsome somehow, and less approachable. It was one of the few times I was sure that Richard was aware of just how handsome he was, when he was angry enough to want to strike out and cause someone pain. Why does anger make people pretty? Rage doesn’t. Rage makes you ugly, but a little anger, that just seems to add spice. One of nature’s cruelties, or maybe it’s to keep us from killing each other more often.

“I don’t know, but he didn’t look like this after the sex. He didn’t look like this in the bathroom when Mor . . . she-who-made-him popped up. He didn’t look like this in the hallway,” I took a step closer to Richard, “or the bedroom,” another step, “or the living room.” Another step, and I was as close to him as I could stand and still see his face comfortably. He was almost a foot taller than I was, there were angle issues.

“The closest person connected to Jean-Claude in this room at that moment wasn’t me.”

He looked down that perfect profile at me. “I didn’t go near him.”

“Jean-Claude might know the answer to this,” Micah said. He was behind me, not too close, but close enough that if I’d done something stupid, I wondered if he’d planned on interfering.

“Micah is right,” Dr. Lillian said.

“Yeah, Micah is always right,” Richard said, and his voice held emotions the words didn’t even hint at. It was the first real sign of jealousy I’d seen. Part of me was happy about it, and the moment that tiny glad spark reared it’s ugly head, I knew better. I was ashamed of myself, and I hate that.

“Most of the time he is right,” but my voice wasn’t angry. We needed answers, not temper tantrums. I made a motion with both hands. “If you’ll let me get to the phone.”

He moved, but looked puzzled. For a second, I wondered if he’d been picking a fight on purpose, and if he had been, why? Picking fights was more my thing than Richard’s. Later. I’d worry about it later.

I had my hand on the phone, when it rang, which scared me. “Shit!” I picked up the receiver and must have sounded at least a little angry, because Jean-Claude said, “What has happened now, ma petite?”

I was so relieved to hear his voice, I forgot to be mad. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice.”

“I can hear the relief in your voice, ma petite. Again, I ask, what else has happened?”

“How do you know anything happened?” I asked, and was already willing to be suspicious.

“I felt Damian’s master flee from your and Richard’s emotions. Only the two of you could turn such a simple thing as lust into something so”—he seemed unable to find a word and finally settled for—“disappointing.”

“You’re talking to the wrong third of the triumverate, Jean-Claude. I can put him on, if you want to talk to him.”

“Non, non, tell me what is happening.”

“Can’t you read my mind? Everyone else seems to be able to.”

“Ma petite, do we have time for childishness?”

“No,” I said sullenly, “but Richard tells me that some vamps in Belle’s line turn prettier after a while. Is that true?”

“The change from human to vampire can bring on small changes to the appearance. It is rare even for Belle’s line, but oui, it does happen.”

“So you really weren’t this beautiful once.”

“As I told our inquisitive Richard, I do not know. I know that many acted as if I were this beautiful, but I have no paintings of my old face. I have no way to remember after centuries. I honestly do not know for certain. Belle never made much of any of us that changed, because she enjoyed the false rumors that her touch beautified all. If she fussed about those who did become more lovely, then it would tarnish her legend. You have met her, ma petite, she likes her legend.”

I shivered. I’d met Belle, secondhand, through a metaphysical possession or two. She was scary, and not just because of how powerful she was. She was scary because of her character flaws, a certain blindness to anything she didn’t understand, like love, friendship, commitment as opposed to slavery. She didn’t seem to see much difference between the two.

“Yeah, Belle likes her legend so much, she’s beginning to believe it.”

“As you like, ma petite, but it makes it difficult to find truth in her court.”

“Fine, we’ll never know if you and Asher were this beautiful before.”

“Asher says his hair was not the color of gold before, so that we do know.”

I was getting distracted. “Okay, fine, but the point is, when did the beautification take place?”

“You became a vampire, and when you rose the first night you were changed. Due to the vicious nature of some when they experience their first blood lust, it is not always easy to see beauty, but it happens soon after they are brought into their new lives.”

I didn’t argue the life part, I’d been too confused too long about what was life and what wasn’t. “So after a thousand years, you are what you are, right?”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. I couldn’t even hear him breathing, which didn’t mean anything, he didn’t always have to breathe. “Has something happened to Damian? Something more?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I assume the questions about Belle’s line were not idle then.”

“Not even close to idle,” I said.

“Tell me,” he said, voice soft.

I told him.

He was calm, asking questions, getting details, in his so matter-of-fact voice. Over the phone without his body posture to go by, or his face, and with him shielding like a son of a bitch, I couldn’t tell if he were truly calm, or not.

Finally, he said, “That is most interesting.”

“Don’t go all Mr. Spock on me. What do you mean that’s interesting?”

“I mean that it is interesting, ma petite. Damian is not of Belle’s line, and, thus, it should not have happened. Moreover he is a millennium old, and as you so succinctly put it, he should have been what he was, and there would be no changing it, not at this late date.”

“But it happened,” I said.

“May I speak with Damian?”

“I guess so.” I turned and held the phone out. “Jean-Claude would like to speak to you directly.”

Damian got up slowly, as if he were stiff or the floor wasn’t quite even. The floor was even, it was everything else that had gotten a little less steady. He took the phone and said, “Yes?” And from that moment on, they stopped speaking English. Surprisingly it wasn’t French, it was German. I didn’t know either vampire spoke German. If Jean-Claude changed the language because my French was getting better, then he’d outsmarted himself, because I could speak German. Not like speak it, speak it, but I could understand it when I heard it. Grandma Blake had spoken German to me from the cradle up. I’d taken it in high school as my language, because I was lazy and wanted a leg up.

I couldn’t catch every word. It had just been too long since I’d used my German, and Damian’s accent was different from any I’d ever heard, and I’d grown up around at least two. But I caught enough to know that Jean-Claude was asking him if the changes to his face had happened during sex, or just after, because Damian said something in German about it not happening just after the sex. No, about an hour or so later. I could understand Jean-Claude wanting to save my delicate sensibilities. I did have a tendency to get pissy about sex I didn’t choose myself. Then I caught the word for power, and Belle Morte’s name. Then Damian saying a lot of, nien, or not that I’ve seen, in German. He hadn’t seen me exhibit any of the powers that Jean-Claude was asking about on his end of the phone. I didn’t get it all. One, I was privy to just half the conversation, and two, my grandmother hadn’t used some of these words a lot. She and I hadn’t had a lot of talks about vampires, sex, and metaphysical powers. Funny that.

When the conversation seemed to be winding down, I told Damian that I wanted to talk to Jean-Claude before he hung up. He handed me the phone not long after, and I got to say, “Hi, ich kann Deutsch sprechen.” The silence on the other end of the phone was long. “If you didn’t want me to understand you, should have stuck to French.”

“Damian does not speak French,” he said in a very careful voice.

“Well then you are shit out of luck, aren’t you?”

“Ma petite . . .”

“Don’t ma petite me, just tell me the truth. What other vampire powers can I expect to come on-line?”

“In all honesty, I am not sure.”

“Right.”

“Truly, ma petite, I am not. Even Belle has never transformed a vampire from another line the age of Damian. If you had asked me, I would have said it was impossible.”

That sounded like the truth. “Fine, but what powers were you asking Damian whether I had, or not, and don’t lie; if I order him to tell me everything you said, verbatim, he’ll do it. He’ll have to do it.”

“You might be surprised there, ma petite. With your greater commitment to him as your servant, he may not be as much slave to your will. I do not know that this is true, but I know that the more marks you carried of mine, the less pliable to my will you became.”

That was true. I’d always been sort of creeped out by the fact that Damian had to do everything I told him, just because I said so, but it had moments of usefulness, and now it might be gone. Well, hell.

“Fine, then just tell me yourself.”

“You do not understand, ma petite. That you could gain my abilities is unusual, but this is an ability that I do not possess, have never possessed. What has happened to Damian is something only Belle could have done, and only if he were a new vampire. So is this a new ability all together, one I have never heard of, and if so, then what could that mean for you, ma petite, for us, and all those connected to you? What if you have gained abilities through your necromancy that we cannot begin to guess at?”

I sighed, and was suddenly tired, not scared, just tired. “You know, I am way tired of this metaphysical shit.”

“You also healed wounds with sex, without calling on Raina’s munin, is that so horrible?”

“When I didn’t do it on purpose, maybe. Think about that, Jean-Claude, I didn’t concentrate and do it on purpose. What else might I do accidentally? You don’t even know.”

It was his turn to sigh. “The only other triumverate that included a necromancer as their human servant did not exhibit this level of . . . power.”

“You hesitated, what were you going to say before power?”

“You know me too well, ma petite.”

“Just answer the question.”

“I was going to say, unpredictableness.”

I wasn’t sure that had really been what he’d meant to say, but I let it go. He’d answered the question the only way he was willing to. I knew by now when he’d given me everything he was going to. I’d learned to let it go after that, because anything else was just frustrating, and rarely gained me anything. “Fine, I believe that you don’t know what the hell we’re doing either. Is there anyone that would have a clue about what might be happening to us?”

“I will think upon that, ma petite. There is no one that I know that has ever managed to form two triumverates that intersect as ours seem to. But there may be those who could provide some more general information on triumverates, or necromancy, or . . . in truth, ma petite, I don’t even know where to begin to ask an intelligent question. I cannot go to most master vampires in the world with these questions. They would see it as weakness. I will think upon it and see if there is anyone we can ask.” He sounded perplexed, which I didn’t hear often in his voice.

“Alright, I’ll call Marianne and see if she or her coven have any insights. I might even ask Tammy when she and Larry get back from their honeymoon. She is a witch, and her branch of the church has been dealing with supernatural talents for centuries. Who knows, maybe they have archives?”

“That is a good thought,” he said, “Damian seems most distressed.”

“You could say that.”

“I do not know for certain, but if he were to go to his coffin and you not be near, I think he might sleep as he is meant to during the day.”

“What if he just goes buggers again?”

“Put someone downstairs to watch him. Someone, not you or Nathaniel or Richard, someone that is not part of either triumverate. If your watcher does not see him sleep, then they can yell for you to come and comfort him.”

It wasn’t a bad idea as ideas went, and I had nothing better. Also, I didn’t want to spend the day baby-sitting Damian, or anybody for that matter. “I’ll talk it over with him and see if he wants to try it.”

“If he refuses, then you will, what, hold his hand all day?” There was the tiniest edge of jealousy. I hadn’t expected that.

I spoke before I had time to think, which I’d tried to stop doing. “You’re not mad at Damian about the sex are you? It wasn’t planned.”

“Non, ma petite, not the sex, though I do not lightly share you, no matter how reasonable I seem. No, it is that the three of you seem to have shared all four marks, though until I see you all together in the flesh, I will not be able to check that for certain. But if you share four marks and suddenly Damian is able to walk about in the sunlight, I must ask myself, if I had completed our triumverate, would I now be a daywalker?”

Oh. “I guess I can see that, but you’ve been as reluctant as I am to finish the fourth mark. You said you were no longer certain who would be master and who would be slave because of my necromancy.”

“And I am even less certain of it now, but to walk about in daylight as easily as moonlight might be worth the risk. If you have lost the ability to order Damian about, then that might be a telling thing.”

“I’ll try to order him around later and let you know.”

“Thank you.”

“But there is also that immortality thing, not aging, neither Richard nor I were sure we wanted to give up being mortal.”

“And if you have bound yourself to Damian with the fourth mark, might it already be a moot point, ma petite.”

I stood there in my kitchen and was suddenly scared. “Shit,” I whispered.

“Oui, if you have truly completed all the marks, then your mortality may be a thing of the past. If that were true, then taking the fourth mark with me would lose you nothing.”

“And gain you the ability to walk in the day,” I said, and my voice wasn’t friendly when I said it, because I’d heard the tiniest bit of eagerness when he talked about walking in the daylight. I couldn’t blame him, but Jean-Claude had been working on his power base for too long not to see the advantages of things. I couldn’t blame him, but part of me wanted to. Part of me still wondered if I was more important to him for the power or love. Most of me knew that I would never know for certain, and truthfully, probably neither would Jean-Claude. Love was not the nice, neat, linear thing I’d wanted it to be. It was not just one thing, but many things. I could admit that one of the reasons I loved him was that he was hard to kill. His chances of up and dying on me were smaller than if he’d been human. A large part of me really liked that. I’d seen enough of what death could do, and at too young an age, not to appreciate it.

“Perhaps, or perhaps not, ma petite, this is more art than science, or so it would seem.” His voice held a thread of anger in it.

“What are you pissy about? I’m not the one trying to pick a language you can’t understand so I can hide things from you.”

“And I am not the one, ma petite, that has fucked another vampire, a lesser vampire, one of my own underlings.”

Put that way, it did sound like he had grounds to be pissed. “Am I supposed to apologize?”

“Non, but I do not have to like it. He has come to your body, and now he is free of the tyranny of the dark. One I could forgive, but not both. Both is a bitter thing, ma petite.”

“I am sorry,” I said, “I didn’t plan any of this.”

“Of that I am certain. I am even certain that Damian planned none of it. Only you, ma petite, could keep having such accidental sex.”

Accidental sex. He made it sound like I fell down, and there just happened to be an erection in the way. I kept that observation to myself. See, I am getting smarter. Out loud I said, “Accidental sex. That’s one way of putting it. Am I ever going to inherit a vampire power that doesn’t have sex involved somewhere in it?”

“I would never say for certain with you, ma petite, your necromancy makes you too much the wild card, but it is doubtful. So far you have inherited my powers, or Belle’s, or some version thereof. To my knowledge Belle’s powers revolve around sex, as do mine.”

“Great, can you at least give me a list, so I’ll have some idea what to expect?”

“I could, if you truly desire one.”

I sighed. “No, just tell me in person when we see you tonight.”

“Tonight? I was hoping that you might come earlier.”

“We can’t transport Damian in full daylight, his body might be fine, but I don’t think his sanity would be. Besides, I’ve got to work this afternoon.”

“Always the work, no matter what else is happening around you.”

“Look, Jean-Claude, you’ve never seen what happens around me when I’ve gone too long between zombie raisings. Let’s just say that I don’t want a line of roadkill trailing after me, or worse yet, some ‘accidental’ zombie come shambling into my room.”

“Are you saying that unused, your power raises the dead even if you do not wish to?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d told you that.”

“You have told me of raising the dead by accident when you were a child. I assumed that was merely from lack of training and disipline.”

“No,” I said, “it took me years to admit it, but no. If I don’t raise the dead on purpose, then it happens accidentally, or I start getting followed around by ghosts, or the spirits of the newly dead. I hate that last one, they always want me to take messages to their nearest and dearest, and it’s always stupid messages. I’m fine, I’m happy, don’t worry about me. What kind of message is that to knock on someone’s door with? I’m this complete stranger, but your dead son told me to hunt you down and say he’s fine. Nothing else, nothing urgent, just, I’m fine, don’t worry.” I shook my head. It had been years since I’d thought about that. “I raise zombies, and the dead leave me alone.”

“Do they? Do they really, ma petite?” There was an edge of humor, but it held darker things.

“You aren’t dead, Jean-Claude. I’ve seen dead, and whatever you guys are when you’re up and running, dead isn’t it.”

“There was a time when you did not believe that. I believe you once called me a handsome corpse.”

“Look, I was young, and I didn’t know any better.”

“Are you certain at last, ma petite, that I am not just a ‘cute dead guy’?” Again he was quoting me.

“Yeah, I’m certain.”

He laughed then, that touchable, raise-goosebumps-all-over-your-body sound. “I am glad of that. Do you speak Italian, ma petite?”

“No, why?”

“Nothing,” he said, “I will see you tonight then, ma petite, you and your new friends.”

I started to say they weren’t new friends, but he’d already hung up. I realized as I hung up, I should have lied about speaking Italian, but hell, as good as I’d gotten at lying, my first reaction was still to tell the truth. I guess you can’t undo all your upbringing, no matter how hard you try.

24

WE SENT GREGORY in his kitty-cat fur down to watch Damian. Gregory was about the only one in the house not tied to me metaphysically. Well, okay, Fredo and Dr. Lillian, but Fredo wouldn’t leave her alone, and Dr. Lillian said she wasn’t finished with Richard’s arm. So process of elimination made it Gregory’s job.

He informed me as he glided toward the basement, with his spotted tail swishing behind a very human-looking backside, “I’m supposed to be on stage tonight at Guilty Pleasures. I can’t go on like this. Jean-Claude will need to find a sub.” He gave that kitty-cat grin of bared teeth and vanished around the corner.

“What does he mean, he’s supposed to be on stage?” Clair asked.

“He’s a stripper at Guilty Pleasures,” I said.

She made a little O with her mouth. I wasn’t sure why, unless her world was so protected that just being in the car with a stripper was a big deal. For her sanity’s sake, I hoped her world was bigger than that.

“But, I don’t understand, why can’t he”—she made a waffling motion with her hands—“perform tonight?”

Richard saved me the lecture. “Remember that once in animal form you have to stay that way for six to eight hours.”

“I thought that was just because I was new.”

Richard shook his head, winced as if it hurt, and said, “No, most shapeshifters spend their lives tied to a cycle of six to eight hours in animal form, then two to four hours of being passed out once they shift back to human form.”

“Sit down,” Dr. Lillian said, and her voice indicated she expected to be obeyed.

He eased himself into the same chair he’d vacated. There were lines at his eyes and mouth, those tight pain lines you get sometimes, if something really hurts. How much damage had Damian done to him?

Clair tried to help him into the chair but seemed unsure where to grab him, since he used his good arm on the table to brace himself. She sort of hovered uncertainly by him, as if she wanted to help but wasn’t quite sure how. “But you don’t have to stay in animal form for eight hours, and you don’t pass out when you shift back.”

“He is your Ulfric,” Fredo said, “no one’s king is that weak.” His voice was deeper than his chest was wide.

Clair gave him quick eye flicks, as if he made her nervous. Maybe it was the knives. “Do you pass out when you come back into human form?” she asked in a voice that matched the nervous eyes.

“No,” he said.

“I do,” Nathaniel said. He smiled at her. “Don’t ask the rest of them, they’ll all make you feel bad, because they don’t pass out either.”

“How long have you been . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“A wereleopard,” he finished for her.

She nodded.

“Three years,” he said.

I did quick math in my head. “That means that Gabriel brought you over when you were seventeen.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“That’s illegal,” I said.

“It’s illegal in most states to contaminate anyone willingly with a potential fatal disease, regardless of age,” Richard said.

I shook my head. “I guess I’m starting to treat lycanthropy the way the law treats vampirism. If you’re eighteen you can choose.”

“The law doesn’t treat it the same,” he said.

I knew that, but I’d spent so much time among the shapeshifters, that I just sort of forgot. Careless of me. “I guess I forgot.”

“And you a federal marshal,” he said, but the biting comment lacked snap, because he hunched with pain at the same time.

“How hurt are you?” I asked.

“I’ll answer that,” Dr. Lillian said. She smiled, but her eyes were serious. “If he were human he’d stand a very good chance of losing the use of that arm. Maybe he’d regain 50 percent, maybe less mobility. Your vampire severed muscles and ligaments all through the shoulder and upper chest region.”

“But he’s not human,” I said, “so he’ll heal.” I let the “your vampire” comment go. I liked the doc, and I didn’t want to fight.

“He’ll heal, but it will take days, maybe weeks, if he refuses to shift.”

“I promise that I will shift to wolf form when I get home.”

She looked at him like she didn’t believe him.

“Just because I can shift back to human form almost immediately doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come with a price. I’d rather not be exhausted for the rest of the day. If I shift and stay in animal form for a couple of hours, it will be less of a drain when I go back to human form.” I think he was lecturing more for Clair’s sake than anyone else’s. She really was new. “So I’ll wait until I get home, so Clair won’t have to explain why she’s driving around with a werewolf in the car.” That last sounded a tad bitter.

“He won’t say it, so I will. I’m new enough that if one of my pack switches form, sometimes it brings on my change, too. And I’m not trustworthy when I first turn animal.” She looked down, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

Richard took her hand. “It’s alright, Clair, everyone has problems at first.”

Everyone nodded, some said “yes.” That seemed to cheer her a little. She looked younger than I’d thought at first, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five, maybe a little younger. If she hadn’t been Richard’s new girlfriend, I would have asked. But it seemed like prying and none of my business.

“Even if you shift at home, I’ve never seen you heal this much damage in forty-eight hours,” Dr. Lillian said.

“So?” he said, sounding defensive. Had I missed something?

“If you go to school on Monday with your arm useless and then by Friday it’s usable, don’t you think some of your fellow teachers might wonder about your remarkable recovery?”

“I’ll make up a less traumatic injury, something that could heal that fast.”

She shook her head. “If they find out you’re a werewolf, they won’t let you teach children.”

“I know that,” he said, voice fierce, and the first thread of his power trickled through the air like a line of heat.

Clair’s breath came out in a quiver. She looked dizzy. Micah put a chair under her, and helped Richard ease her into it.

“How long has she been a werewolf?” I asked.

“Three months,” he said.

I looked at him, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Three months, and you took her outside a safe house less than a week before the full moon?”

“Doesn’t your house qualify as a safe house?” he asked.

“You can come here to shift form, but I don’t have a reinforced room.” Most true safe houses had a room with a steel door and reinforced concrete walls. Most people put the rooms down in their basements and just told those who asked it was storage.

“We were supposed to have a picnic today,” Clair said in her small, uncertain voice.

I had to turn around so Richard wouldn’t see my face. You did not take a brand-new shifter out for a picnic, if she was having this kind of trouble.

“She was fine this morning,” he said.

I turned around when I was sure my face would be blank enough.

“She’s responding to your anger, and your beast,” Micah said.

“I know that,” Richard said, a hint of a growl in his voice.

She swayed in her chair.

“Richard,” Dr. Lillian said, “you have better control than this.”

He just nodded.

Lillian sighed. “If there was a way to heal your arm before Monday, your secret would be safe.”

“No,” Richard said.

It took me a moment to get the hint. “If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, not only no, but hell no.”

She put her hands on her hips and actually stamped her foot. “You are both being childish.”

We said no simultaneously.

“Fine, then I’ve done all I can for your arm. I will stay until we are certain that the vampire isn’t going to rise and cause more havoc.”

“His name is Damian,” I said.

She nodded. “Damian, then, but if you won’t let her help you, then I think you and Clair need to go to your house. I would suggest that you take her to the room in your basement, before you shift. She seems very swayed by your power.” She said the last as if she wanted to say something different, but thought better of it.

“I’ll stay until Damian is down for the day.”

“I think you’ve done your part,” Lillian said.

“They needed my help before,” he said.

I couldn’t argue that, but . . “How did you happen to be Johnny-on-the-spot this morning?”

“Gregory couldn’t get anyone here to pick him up. He got worried. On his way over, his car broke down. I was next on the list at the coalition help line.”

I hadn’t actually known Richard was helping staff the emergency calls. “Why didn’t he call AAA?”

“He was more worried about why no one was answering your phone than his car.”

“I didn’t think Gregory cared that much.”

Fredo said, “All your leopards are very serious about your and Micah’s safety.”

I looked at him. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

He grinned, a brief flash of teeth in his dark face. “You don’t like being babied. They know that.” The smile faded. “You are their safe harbor; they value that.”

I don’t know what I would have said to that, but Lillian interrupted and saved me.

“You need to go home, Richard.”

“Micah is here now, and Fredo,” she said, “I think you can leave it to us.”

He started to shake his head again and stopped in mid-motion. “I’ll stay until we’re sure.”

She sighed and shrugged. “You are a very stubborn man. Fine, stay, stay and be in pain.” Then she turned to me. “Is there coffee to spare?”

I had to smile. “I think Nathaniel can fix you up.”

“I’ll just bet he can,” she said, and did a polite leer.

Nathaniel took it in stride, with a laugh.

I don’t know what the look on my face was, but it caused Lillian to say, “I’m over fifty, Anita, not dead.”

“No, it wasn’t that.” I wasn’t sure how to put it into words, but it was more like you didn’t say things like that about someone’s boyfriend, not in front of them, anyway. There was that word boyfriend again in my head, with Nathaniel attached to it.

She was looking at me, sort of narrowly. “By the look on your face, I stepped in something. Is he more than just a member of your pard?”

I said, “yes,” and Richard said, “no.” Which left the two of us looking at each other. “I don’t think you get to answer questions like that for me, Richard.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry, but he’s not your lover, or your boyfriend.”

“No, he’s my pomme de sang.”

Richard shook his head and had to stop again. I don’t think he knew how often he made that motion until today. “I thought, we all thought, he was your live-in, but now I know he’s not.”

“He does live with me,” I said.

Richard started to shake his head, but actually caught himself before he’d begun the movement. “I know that, but he’s not your live-in lover.”

“And that matters, how?”

“Alright, children,” Doc Lillian said, “I made a careless remark. I didn’t understand what a pomme de sang means to its, his . . . owner, master.” She sighed. “I didn’t mean to offend anyone, let’s just leave it at that.”

“You didn’t offend me,” Nathaniel said, and handed her coffee in one of the colored mugs he’d purchased for Furry Coalition meetings. He’d thought it would be nice if we had enough matching mugs to serve our guests. I’d agreed, if I didn’t have to shop for them, so he shopped for them. They were all either a deep, rich blue or a dark, forest green. Nice.

He handed me my baby penguin mug with coffee nearly to the brim, just the color I liked it, pale brown. By the color alone, I knew it would be perfect. “Drink,” he said, “you’ll feel better once you’ve had some coffee.”

“I feel fine,” I said, but I sipped the coffee. Perfect.

He’d also already plugged in the coffeemaker. I was right about the French press not making enough coffee at a time to satisfy this many people. Hell, it barely made enough for my early morning needs. “We’ve got enough for one more cup, who wants it? There’ll be more in a few minutes.” He smiled at the room in general, getting more of the blue and green mugs out of the cabinet.

“He acts like it’s his kitchen,” Richard said.

“He cooks in it more than I do,” I said.

Richard made a visible effort not to shake his head, though he wanted to. “No, I mean . . . Jason is Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang, but he doesn’t move around the Circus of the Damned like he owns it. Nathaniel acts like this is his home.”

Nathaniel had his back to the room, but he was close enough to me that I felt his sudden stillness, as he poured coffee and tried to pretend he couldn’t hear.

“It is his home,” I said.

I was standing close enough to him to hear the slight sigh of his breath, as if he’d held it waiting to hear what I’d say. He was careful not to look at me, but he was smiling as he puttered with the coffee.

“Jason lives with Jean-Claude, but he isn’t . . .” Richard seemed at a loss for words.

Lillian helped him out. “Jean-Claude wouldn’t have minded me remarking how cute Jason was, you minded when I said something about Nathaniel. If they’re both pomme de sangs, then I think Richard and I are both confused about how we’re supposed to act around them. Not boyfriend, not lover, it can get a little confusing.”

Nathaniel was very carefully not looking at me, or anyone, but especailly not me. I don’t know how I knew that he wasn’t just busy getting real cream out of the fridge to pour into an honest-to-God cream pitcher. The little pitcher was blue, and the sugar bowl was green, so the mugs matched everything. I knew his favorite color was purple, and had asked him why blue and green, and not purple? His reply was that blue was my favorite color, and green was Micah’s favorite color. The answer seemed to make sense to him. It didn’t really make sense to me, but I was beginning to learn that things didn’t have to make sense to me if it made the people around me happy, and the new dishes seemed to make Nathaniel very happy.

He set the creamer and pitcher on a little tray, along with little tongs for the sugar cubes. Why sugar cubes? Because Nathaniel seemed to get a kick out of asking how many lumps people wanted. He was like a kid playing house. No, that wasn’t fair. He was like a new bride that had never had a house, or a kitchen of her own, and was really enjoying the hostess stuff. But it was like he didn’t know what real people did in a house, so he was taking it from movies, books, or magazines. I mean nobody serves cream and sugar anymore on a little tray with little tongs, right?

Nathaniel was wearing one of his favorite pairs of blue jeans, so faded that they were turning white in places. They fit his lower body like they were painted on, and it was a nice paint job. His shoulders had broadened since he moved in with me. He was filling out, developing the body he’d have for the rest of his life, if he took care of it. A “late bloomer,” my grandmother would have called him. He’d looked younger than he was for years, a delicate body to match the eyes and hair. It had made him popular with a certain kind of clientele that his old Nimir-Raj had pimped him out to. Muscles moved in his arms, shoulders, and back, as he set the tray on the table and began to pass out mugs of coffee. I watched him asking, “How many lumps?” and “Do you want cream?” He moved gracefully around the table on his bare feet. He’d thrown his hair over one shoulder like a cape, so that it was out of the way. I’d have never been able to keep that much hair out of the way without help. Nathaniel made it look effortless.

I sipped coffee out of my penguin mug, and watched him play Suzy Homemaker. I waited to be irritated, but I wasn’t. In fact, I was somewhere in the middle of amused, proud, and pleased. He was so cute when he did this.

Richard tensed whenever Nathaniel got close to him, as if he’d have moved back if it hadn’t hurt. He didn’t take coffee, because he didn’t drink coffee. Nathaniel offered to fix tea, but Richard said he didn’t want any.

Richard looked at me. “Jason never does this for Jean-Claude.”

“Does what?” I asked.

“Play hostess.”

“Nathaniel isn’t playing,” I said. “He’s the closest thing we’ve got to a hostess. It’s not really my gig.”

Richard looked down at the floor as if looking for inspiration, or counting to ten. Since I hadn’t done anything to piss him off in the last five minutes, I wasn’t sure where all the tension was coming from. He looked at me with those solid brown eyes, and I still missed his hair. The sad remnants of curls were beginning to grace his head, but it wasn’t even close to what he’d had before he got mad at himself and butchered his own hair. “He acts like your wife.”

Nathaniel moved back to the coffeemaker, and since I was still leaning nearly in front of it, that put him beside me. He was very careful not to meet my eyes, almost as if he were afraid where the conversation would go.

“And that seems to bother you, why?”

“You’re not sleeping with him.”

“Yeah, I am, almost every damn night.”

“Fine, you want to split hairs, we can do that. You aren’t fucking him.”

I shook my head. “You always were a sweet-talker when you got pissed.”

“I’m not pissed, I’m trying to understand.”

“Understand what?” I asked.

Micah wasn’t watching Nathaniel or Richard, he was watching me. His chartreuse eyes were very serious, as if he were afraid of what I was going to do. I tried to give him a reassuring smile, that I wasn’t going to blow this, but I’m not really good at reassuring smiles. So his eyes went from serious to a little worried.

“You and Nathaniel and Micah.”

What I wanted to say was, Why do you need to understand it? But I was trying to be nice, or nicer. “What’s to understand, Richard?”

Nathaniel began to pile his hair up into a high, tight ponytail. It was a style women wore more than men, that high, bouncy ponytail that moves when you walk. But his hair was long enough that, to keep it out of the way for cooking, he had to either braid it or do the bouncy ponytail. Once he figured out that I actually thought the bouncy ponytail thing was cute, he’d started doing it more. He washed his hands and went for the fridge.

“How can you watch him like that, when you aren’t fucking him?” Richard asked.

By the time I looked fully at him, I knew my face wasn’t friendly. “If you want to play rough, we can, Richard, but you won’t like it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Fine,” I said, “we’ll play it your way. Why don’t you watch Clair the way I watch Nathaniel, if you’ve fucked her?”

His face darkened. “Don’t talk about Clair like that.”

“Then don’t talk about Nathaniel,” I said.

Nathaniel seemed to be blissfully unaware of us. He got the big marble board out of the cabinet and put it down beside the sink. The marble was only used for one thing—baking of some sort. He moved to the fridge, getting out the dough that he’d made yesterday before we had to get ready for the wedding. Apparently, we were still going to have homemade biscuits, as planned.

“What is he doing?” Richard asked.

“I think he’s making biscuits,” Micah said.

Nathaniel nodded, making the long fall of auburn hair bounce like it was on a string. “Who’s having biscuits, so I’ll know how many to make?” He turned peaceful eyes to the kitchen, as if we weren’t fighting. Of course, I’d seen what his memory of “fighting” entailed, so maybe by his childhood standards this wasn’t a fight.

“I want some,” Fredo said.

“Homemade biscuits?” Doc Lillian asked.

“From scratch,” Nathaniel said with a smile.

“In that case, yes, please.”

Nathaniel looked at Richard and Clair. “Do you want some? I know Gregory will.”

“We’re only staying until we’re sure Damian is safe,” Richard said.

He turned his lavender gaze to Clair. “Do you want a biscuit?”

She looked at Richard, sort of nervously, then nodded. “Yes, please.” She patted his shoulder. “We didn’t get breakfast.”

Richard scowled.

I was willing to let the fight go. Nathaniel was right, without saying a word he was right, it hadn’t been much of a fight. Of course, just as it takes two people to fight, it takes two sides to call a cease-fire.

“Why do you care what I say about him? He’s nothing to you.”

I sipped the last of my coffee, put the mug down carefully on the cabinet, and smiled. I knew without a mirror that it wasn’t a good smile. It was the smile I got when I finally got to do something violent, when people had been making me behave. If I’d had any doubts about the smile, Fredo pushing himself upright, hands loose at his sides, clinched it. He knew it was trouble. The look on Micah’s face said he knew it was trouble, too. Even Clair looked worried. Nathaniel had gone back to smoothing out biscuit dough. No matter what happened, we’d need breakfast, so he was going to make breakfast. In his own way, Nathaniel could be as practical as I was.

Richard scowled up at me, and I knew in that moment that he wanted to fight. And strangely, I didn’t.

“Even if he was only my pomme de sang he wouldn’t be nothing to me, Richard.”

Micah had moved around to stand beside me. I don’t think he was sure what I’d do, but, for once, I was okay. I took his hand, partly to reassure him, and partly because he was close enough to touch.

“If he’s more than just food to you, why . . .” Again he seemed at a loss for words.

“Why aren’t I fucking him?”

Micah moved me in against his body, so that he was spooning me and had his arms around me. Almost as if he thought he’d have to restrain me and give Richard time to get to a door. My temper wasn’t that bad, honest. Well, most of the time. Well, some of the time. Oh, hell, I guess I couldn’t blame him for being nervous.

I leaned in against Micah, let his body hold me like it was a favorite chair. I could feel tension I hadn’t even known I was carrying seep out of my muscles.

“I thought you were screwing them both,” Richard said.

“Such a nice turn of phrase,” I said, and the tension just seeped right back in.

“You won’t let me say sleep. I’m trying to avoid saying fuck.”

“How about sex, or intercourse, those are nice technical terms.”

“Alright,” he said, “I thought you were having intercourse with both of them.”

“Now you know different,” I said.

“Yes,” he said it, and his voice was softer, less angry.

I felt like I was missing something here. “What difference does it make whether I was having sex with one, or both?”

He looked down then, and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Could everybody leave us alone for a few minutes? Please.”

Clair got up a little uncertainly. Dr. Lillian got up, and Fredo moved to follow her. Nathaniel had rolled out the dough enough that he was shaping the individual biscuits. The oven dinged, indicating it was preheated. He looked a question at me.

I wrapped my arms around Micah’s arms, pulling him around me like a coat. “You can’t kick Nathaniel out of his own kitchen, Richard, and I don’t want Micah to go either.”

“It’s not his kitchen,” Richard said, and he was angry again.

“Yes,” I said, “it is.”

Nathaniel turned back to his baking with a small smile on his lips. He’d already greased up the pans, so he began to arrange the thick doughy circles on them, ignoring us again.

Richard stood, and even though he had one arm bandaged up, I was suddenly aware of how tall he was, how broad his shoulders were. He was one of those men that never seemed as big as they are, until they got angry. “No, it isn’t. It isn’t even Micah’s house. It’s yours.”

“They live with me, Richard.”

He shook his head and grimaced, and made a low sound, not a growl, just frustration. “Micah is your Nimir-Raj, you had the same reaction to each other that Marcus and Raina had. Instantaneous melding, but Marcus didn’t move into Raina’s house. They couldn’t help being attracted to each other, but Raina saw other people. They weren’t a couple, not in that way.”

“Raina wouldn’t have known what monogamy was if it bit her on the ass,” I said.

Dr. Lillian and Fredo were making for the door. Lillian grabbed Clair’s arm as she went past, and took her with them. Richard didn’t even seem to notice.

“Don’t you dare talk about monogamy to me,” Richard said.

“You may have gotten a peek inside my head, Richard, but I saw into yours, too. I’m not having sex with everyone you thought, but you’re having sex with almost anyone that will have you.”

“I’m looking for a new lupa,” Richard said.

“Bullshit,” I said.

Micah’s arms were tense against my body. He laid his cheek against the side of my face, but he didn’t say anything. He knew better.

“You always screw around when we aren’t dating,” I said.

“At least I wait until we aren’t dating to do it. You always manage to fuck someone else while we’re still an item.”

I started to move away from Micah, but his arms tightened just enough. He was right. I didn’t trust myself not to get more physical than was wise. Slapping Richard right that moment sounded so good. I stayed where I was, but it wasn’t relaxing anymore.

“I can’t argue that,” I said.

“I don’t mean Jean-Claude,” he said.

“You broke up with me before I was with Micah the first time,” I said.

He shook his head and then screamed, partly pain, and partly anger, I think. “Once I calmed down, I could have forgiven you about Micah. I’d seen it with Raina and Marcus, but you moved him in here. Even that, I would have let go, or tried to, but I thought you were screwing Nathaniel. I thought you were fucking him before you broke up with me.”

“One, you broke up with me.” I needed not to be held when I was this angry. “Let me go, Micah.”

“Anita . . .”

“Let me go, I’ll try not to do anything stupid.”

He sighed, but he let his arms fall to his sides. I walked out just far enough not to be pressed to his body.

“Like I said, you broke up with me, Richard, not the other way around. You broke up with me, because, quote, you didn’t want to love someone who was more comfortable with the monsters than you were, unquote.”

He actually looked embarrassed. “That was really unfair of me, and I’m sorry.”

He’d finally got me in the mood for a good fight, and he was apologizing, what kind of a fight was that? “Sorry about what, that you said it, or that you believe it?”

“I’d really rather this was just the two of us, Anita. Please.”

I shook my head. “You had your chance to be alone with me, and you didn’t want it. These are the hands that held me while I cried over you, they’ve earned the right to stay.”

He nodded. “I guess fair is fair,” he said, “but there are some things that you deserve to hear that they don’t. If you ever let me be alone with you again, I have things you need to hear, but today in front of them, this is all you get. I thought you were cheating on me with Nathaniel before Micah ever came along. Now I know that wasn’t true.”

“What on God’s green earth made you think I was doing Nathaniel that far back?”

“The way you looked at him. The way you reacted to him.” He looked at me, and his expression asked, Why wouldn’t I think that?

“I’m attracted to a lot of men, it doesn’t mean I’m having sex with them.” In my head, I added, just because you never pass up a piece of tail, doesn’t mean I don’t, but I didn’t say it out loud. First, it wasn’t entirely true, and second, the fight was winding down, I didn’t want to wind it back up.

“I know that now, and I’m sorry.” He glanced at Nathaniel, who must have put the biscuits in the oven while we were arguing, because he was starting to get plates down, and the pans of biscuits were nowhere in sight. “You asked me why if I’m having sex with Clair, I don’t look at her the way you look at Nathaniel.”

“I’m sorry, I had no right to say that, especially not in front of her.”

“I started it,” he said, “but the answer is simple. I don’t feel for her what you feel for him.”

I shook my head. “Why is everyone so determined that we’re a couple?”

He smiled, and it was sort of sad, wistful, and bitter all at once. It reminded me of Micah’s smile when he’d first come to me. “Because you’re more of a couple right now without the sex than I have been with anyone that I’ve been sleeping with.”

I didn’t say, including Clair, because it was none of my business, and it would have been mean. I didn’t want to be mean.

“Sex doesn’t make you a couple, Richard, love makes you a couple.” The moment it left my mouth, I would have taken it back. I was just sort of frozen there, afraid to look anywhere but at Richard’s face, because I didn’t know what my own face looked like, I didn’t want to show shock to Nathaniel, but I didn’t know what else to show. I hadn’t meant to say it.

“You always do that,” Richard said.

“What?” I asked in a small voice, that didn’t sound like me at all.

“Fight, rail against it.”

“Against what?”

“Love, Anita, you don’t like being in love. I don’t know why, but you don’t.”

I had no idea what to say to that.

“I’m going to check on Gregory. Either Damian’s asleep, or he ate him.” His words tried to make light of it, but his face and eyes couldn’t pull it off. But he turned and left, vanishing into the dimness of the living room beyond.

The kitchen was suddenly very, very quiet. If Micah was still standing behind me, no noise betrayed it. I knew he was still there, but he must have been holding his breath, waiting for me to say something, do something. The trouble was I didn’t know what to do.

Nathaniel walked past me without a word. He had an armful of plates, green glass, blue glass. He started laying them out on the table in front of the chairs. First a green, then a blue. He went around the table away from me, then laid the last one back at the head of the table within touching distance of me. I’d stayed like some kind of idiot, rooted to the spot, not sure what to say. I couldn’t declare undying love, because it’s not what I felt. It wasn’t.

He moved that small step from the table, and he was suddenly standing right in front of me, close enough that I got a faint whiff of vanilla, and it wasn’t the baking. His face was serious, but his eyes held a hint of a smile. He leaned in and laid a kiss on my cheek, while I stood there like an idiot. I was afraid. Afraid that he’d demand that I tell him I loved him, or something equally ridiculous, or equally impossible. But he didn’t. He just kissed me, then leaned back with a smile. “I’ve had hundreds of people tell me they love me, but they didn’t mean it. They just wanted to use me. You may never say the words out loud, but you mean them.”

The timer buzzed on the oven, and he turned with a smile. “Biscuits are ready.” He used a dish towel for a pot holder and took the biscuits out. They were golden brown, and the smell of them filled the kitchen. He took out the second pan, closed the oven, turned it off, and looked at me. “I know how you feel about me now, because you’d have died before saying it in front of Richard, unless it was true. If you never say it again, I’ll always value that I heard it once.”

He started toward the darkened living room. “I’ll tell everybody that breakfast is ready.” He stopped at the door and turned back, with a grin on his face that I’d never seen before. One accidental confession, and he was suddenly cocky. “But I still want intercourse.” He vanished around the doorframe, trailing a sound of masculine laughter.

Micah came to stand beside me. “Anita, are you alright?” When I didn’t answer, he gripped my upper arms, and said, “Look at me.”

I blinked too fast and too often, but I looked at him. Things were moving too fast for me. I grabbed his arms and said the first thing that occurred to me. “If I faint, Richard will think I did it because of him.”

“You’re not going to faint. You never faint.” He started easing me into a chair as he finished saying it. I let him, because I was feeling fuzzy around the edges. I didn’t want to sit here and have breakfast with these people. I needed some time to think, and the only way to get it was to hide in my bedroom. I couldn’t bear to hide. Damn it, for the first time in my life I wished I was a little less stubborn, a little less brave.

My head was between my knees when everyone trooped back in. I didn’t faint, but I don’t know how, because sitting across from Richard and watching Clair butter his biscuits made me wish I had.

Nathaniel laid out silverware, fetched more coffee, made sure we had at least six kinds of jam, jelly, and preserves. When had there ever been red currant jelly in my refrigerator? I looked at this man bustling about my kitchen, and knew the answer, since Nathaniel had been doing the grocery shopping.

Part of me wanted to run away, but the other small part of me that usually saves me from being a total pain in the ass was wondering if they made those white frilly aprons wide enough to fit over Nathaniel’s shoulders. I mean if he was going to play Suzy Homemaker, didn’t he need an apron, and maybe a string of pearls? The thought made me giggle, and I couldn’t stop it, and I couldn’t share it. I ended up having to excuse myself from the table to let the laughter have its way with me. By the time Micah found me, the laughter had given way to tears again. Nathaniel didn’t come looking for us. I was glad, except for a small part of me that kept expecting him to come through the door. I was ready to be angry if he came, and disappointed if he didn’t. Some days I don’t make sense, not even to me.

25

MICAH TRIED TO lure me out of the bedroom with the promise of breakfast and claiming that I couldn’t hide in there all day. I think it was the hiding comment that got me. I accused him of saying it deliberately, and he said, “Of course, I did. Nathaniel isn’t expecting you to fall on your knees and propose. He’s happy the way things are.”

“No he’s not. He wants sex.”

Micah offered me his hand and looked way too serious. “I don’t understand why you hold that last part back from him.”

I didn’t take his hand. In fact I crossed my arms over my stomach and frowned at him. “ ‘That last part,’ you make it sound like it’s nothing.”

He knelt in front of me. “Anita, I love you, you know that.”

Actually, I didn’t know that. People act like they love you, but how do you ever know it’s real. I didn’t say it out loud, but something about the look I gave him, or my body language must have said it for me, because he moved in close. Close and closer, until he was sitting in my lap with his legs wrapped around my waist. It made me laugh, which was probably why he’d done it.

We ended up with my arms around his waist, and he put his hands on my shoulders. His legs locked behind my back, pressing him up against me, about as close as he could get. “You do realize that from this position, sex won’t work, unless we trade equipment.”

“It’s not always about sex, Anita, sometimes it’s just about being close.”

“Now isn’t that the girl line,” I said.

“Not if you’re the girl, and I’m the boy.”

I felt my face going all serious and unhappy. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“What?” he asked.

“Richard’s right, I don’t know how to be in love. I’m not good at it.”

“You’re great at everything but admitting it,” he said. He wiggled himself in even tighter against me, so that I could feel that he was getting happy to be there.

“You’re trying to distract me.”

“No, I’m trying to keep you from getting angry.”

“Angry about what?” I asked, and my hands were sliding down his back as I said it. It was hard to be this close to him and not have my hands wander.

“Just angry. You get angry whenever you’re uncomfortable, and what happened in the kitchen is going to hit a lot of buttons for you.”

My hands slid past his belt, to touch the top of his jeans. I’d once thought you had to be in love to be able to touch someone like this. It had been a nice thought, I’d liked it, and it had made me feel safe. My hands traveled down the rough fabric of his new jeans, but underneath was the solid swell of his ass. He had a good ass, round and tight, smaller than I liked, but definitely there. I’d told him he needed some ass just to balance out the front of him. Truthfully, Nathaniel had a rounder, fuller ass, more like a woman’s, tight and firm, but round. I liked men with booty. My least favorite thing was a man who had severe white-man’s ass, where the jeans just bagged over the butt. I wanted something to hold on to, something to sink my teeth into. When I said I liked meat on my men I didn’t just mean one thing.

I’d buried my head against his chest, my hands cupping his ass. He rocked himself against me, just a little. Was this love? Was the fact that I could touch every part of him and he could touch every part of me love? Or was it just lust?

I raised my face up enough to touch the skin of his neck, so warm, so sweet. I’d been raised that you only loved one person at a time. If I loved Jean-Claude, I couldn’t love Micah. If I loved Micah, I couldn’t love anyone else. The only person I was really able to say I love you to without hesitating was, strangely, Asher. I was beginning to suspect that was because Jean-Claude loved him, had loved him for centuries, when they weren’t hating each other. In Jean-Claude’s arms channeling feelings back and forth for him and Asher, then I could say love and mean it. But here and now without Jean-Claude to push me, the word stuck in my throat like it would choke me to death.

Sometimes I thought I loved Micah, but that’s not the way a person wants to hear love declared. Sometimes is worse than not.

I put one hand in the middle of his ass, so that one finger could rub back and forth even through the jeans, but my other hand slid up his back, got tangled for a moment in the thick curls of his ponytail, then touched the warmth of his neck. I knew who was inside my head, even as I put a hand in Micah’s hair and pulled his head to one side, so his neck stretched long and clean. Because we were almost the same height, his neck was just in the right position for me to lick along the meat of it. So warm, so incredibly warm. I wrapped my mouth around his neck, felt the pulse of his blood under his skin, and set teeth into that warmth.

Micah cried out, but not in pain. He ground himself against me tighter, giving me more of his neck, like an eager woman would press against a man. I set my teeth into his skin and fought the urge to bite down, to draw blood. Jean-Claude filled my head with images. Images of him and Asher, and Julianna, Asher’s long-dead human servant. There was sex, but there was more laughter, more games of chess, and her doing needlework by the fire. There was more holding than fucking. Images of him and me, and Asher, but also of Micah. Micah’s neck under his fangs, while I watched them both. Jean-Claude coming to find both of us asleep in his big bed, curled on the silk sheets, Micah’s brown curls lying so close to my black curls that he could not tell where one ended and the other began. Jean-Claude let me feel his emotions, as he drew back the sheets and felt the first breath of our warmth. The sensation of him sliding his cold body between us, and how we moved in our sleep, waking slowly to his hands on our bodies. How much he valued that Micah would simply give him blood and not argue, or make less of the gift and the need than it was. Of how much it meant to him, that he could turn from Micah’s willing, still bleeding body, to my body, and pierce me in a different way, while Micah watched, or helped. Seeing it from Jean-Claude’s point of view was uncomfortable and made me want to slide away, but he whispered through my mind, while my mouth tasted Micah’s skin. “If this is not love, ma petite, then I know nothing of it. If this is not love, then no one since time began has ever loved. You ask yourself What is love? Am I in love? when what you should be asking, is What is not love? ma petite. What is it that this man does for you that is not done out of love?”

I wanted to argue, but Jean-Claude was too close in my head, and Micah’s neck was between my teeth. So many hungers could be fed off this flesh, so many needs, so much . . . so much. The sweet tang of blood trailed across my tongue, and it brought me back into myself, helped me pull back before I hurt him. But he collapsed around my body as if we’d finished sex. He shuddered against me and let his breath out with a sigh.

I held him with my arms at his back, or I think he’d have fallen. He’d given himself completely to me. He hadn’t tried to protect himself or worried that I’d eat his throat out, and he should have. But he’d trusted me. Trusted me not to hurt him more than he enjoyed. I’d never bloodied him before, never gone past teeth marks and hickeys. It had felt so good to hold his flesh between my teeth and not to stop, until I tasted that first blood.

He gave a shaky laugh and said in a hoarse voice, “Nathaniel’s going to be jealous.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, “he’s always wanting me to mark him.” The thought that came was, Would it kill me to give Nathaniel some of what he wanted? Not kill me, no. The question was, would it break me, and if so, how much? Jean-Claude’s echo in my head was, “Perhaps it will not break you, ma petite, perhaps it will heal you, and him.”

“Get out of my head,” I said.

“What?” Micah asked.

“Sorry, nothing, just babbling to myself.” Jean-Claude did what I asked, but his laughter trailed inside my head like an echo for the rest of the morning.

26

I WAS IN the kitchen eating biscuits with butter and honey slathered all over them. The biscuits were good, but the show was Gregory. He was still in leopardman form, but he was eating biscuits. Have you ever watched someone eat bread with teeth that are designed for tearing out the throats of gazelles? It was interesting. If he’d just put the whole biscuit in his mouth at once it would have been okay, but he didn’t. He ate the rounds of bread dripping with butter and red currant jelly in pieces, delicately. Except that his jaws weren’t made for delicate, so his fur was spotted with jelly, and he kept licking it off with an impossibly long tongue. It was disturbing, distracting, and vaguely fascinating. Like a combination of Animal Planet and Food Network.

It was good that I had something to amuse me, because Nathaniel was being very unamused. I’d known he might be upset about me marking Micah’s neck, when he’d practically begged for me to do it to him, and I’d refused, but I had no real clue how upset. He’d been banging things around the kitchen. A cabinet door didn’t just close, it slammed. Opening the refrigerator was a chorus of bangs, slaps, and the like . . . I didn’t even know that plastic food containers could make that much noise.

In between slamming things around, he was agreeing with everything Gregory said, but his tone of voice sounded like he was fighting. “We’ve been advertising a leopard for tonight, if they can’t have me, you’re it,” Gregory said, then licked that long pink tongue all the way around his “muzzle.”

“Fine, it’s not like I’ll be doing anything else tonight.” Somehow I thought that last was directed at me.

Micah was giving me the look, the one that said as clearly as if he’d spoken, fix this. Why was it always me that had to fix it? Because I was usually the one who screwed it up in the first place. Oh, that was why.

My teeth marks were imprinted into Micah’s neck. The marks had been smeared with Neosporin, but he hadn’t had to bandage them. Good for him, and for me. I’d stopped before I’d hurt him too badly. It was actually less blood than the one and only time I’d let myself mark Nathaniel. It had been when the ardeur was new and I was still trying to find ways to feed it that didn’t involve intercourse. Silly me.

The last straw was when he took the butter dish off the table, before everybody was finished with it. Gregory grabbed for it, and claws were wrong for grabbing china. The plate fell and broke all over the floor. The butter slid across the floor in a long yellow line, like a really nasty snail trail. I don’t know what I would have said—probably something not helpful—but just then the phone rang.

“Someone else get that,” Nathaniel said from the floor where he was wiping up the mess, “I’m a little busy.”

Micah just kept eating his breakfast, I think because he was upset with me for not saying something to help Nathaniel feel better. Problem was I didn’t know what to say. So I got the phone.

“Anita, it’s Ronnie.”

“Ronnie, hi,” and I was thinking furiously. Oh, yeah, I wasn’t the only one having personal problems. I still couldn’t believe that she’d turned down Louie’s proposal. Out loud I said, “How ya doing?”

“Louie left a message on my phone, so I know you know.” She sounded defensive.

“Okay, you want to talk about it?” I didn’t take offense. It wasn’t me she was mad at.

She blew out a loud breath. “Yes . . . no . . . I don’t know.”

“You can come here, or I’ll meet you somewhere.” I was using that careful voice, like the one Micah used so much on me.

“I’ll bring bagels,” she said.

“You could have homemade biscuits when you get here, instead.” I said.

“Homemade biscuits? You didn’t make them, did you?”

“No, Nathaniel did.”

“Can he cook?”

“Actually, yes.”

I could almost feel her doubt wafting over the phone.

“Honest, he’s really good at the baking stuff.”

“If you say so.”

“Well, we’d starve if they waited for me to cook.”

She laughed then. “That is the God’s honest truth. Okay, I’ll be there soon, save some biscuits for me.”

“Sure thing.”

We hung up.

I stayed by the phone for a second or two, watching Nathaniel’s angry back at the garbage can where he was depositing the broken dish and dead butter. I’d never realized that a ponytail could bob angrily.

Micah looked at me, and the look was eloquent. It said, fix this, fix this, or I’ll be mad at you, too. There are a few downsides to having two men living with you. When they both get pissed at you at the same time is one of them.

Nathaniel stayed by the cabinet, hands on the edge of it, and his entire body radiated his anger. I’d never seen him this angry. It should have made me mad, but it didn’t. He could be angry if he wanted to be, I guess.

I tried to think of something useful to say. He’d gone from being happy as a domestic lark to being as pissed as I’d ever seen him. The only thing that had changed was the mark on Micah’s neck. He’d lived through Micah getting intercourse and orgasm, while he, Nathaniel, got almost nothing. So why was that one over-enthusiastic hickey the breaking point for him? I thought and thought until I could feel a headache beginning just between my eyes. Then I had a good thought—it was almost insightful. I don’t usually get too insightful without talking to smarter and wiser friends. But suddenly there it was, the truth, I think.

I walked over to him and touched his shoulder. He jerked away from me. He’d never done that before. It scared me. I didn’t want him that angry at me, ever. Micah was right, I had to fix this. But how?

“Nathaniel . . .” It was as if saying his name opened the floodgates.

“I can’t live like this. You give me an inch, and then you take it away. Orgasm today, but only because of some metaphysical shit. You’ll find an excuse not to do it again. You always do. He gets intercourse and orgasm, and I get nothing. But you marked me, me. Not him, me!” He was still staring at the cabinet, while he ranted louder and louder. “It was all I had. All I had!” He had to pause to take a breath, and I rushed into that small silence.

“I’m sorry.” I said it fast before he could catch his breath.

“I don’t know why I keep hoping . . .” He hesitated, stopped, then turned to me slowly. “What did you say?”

“I said, I’m sorry.”

His face softened for a second, then hardened, and he narrowed his eyes at me. He looked positively suspicious. “What exactly are you sorry about?”

“I’m sorry you’re upset.”

“Oh.” And he was off again, ranting.

I touched his arm, and he didn’t jerk away this time, but he kept listing all the things I wouldn’t do for him, or with him. It might have been embarrassing if I hadn’t been more worried about stopping the fight than almost anything else. “You have to go to work tonight,” I said.

That stopped him, because I think it made no sense with his train of grievances. “What? Yes, what about it?”

“If you didn’t have to work tonight, I’d take you into the bedroom now and mark you, if that’s what you wanted.”

He pulled away again. “I don’t want you to do it just because I’m mad. I want you to do it because you want to, because you’d enjoy it, too.”

God, he could be so demanding. I actually had to stop and count slowly in my head, because this whole dominant-submission thing hit my buttons badly. I’d done enough research to understand that the world of dom and sub was a lot bigger and more varied than I’d believed. That there were people out there that considered my love of nails and teeth during foreplay and sex to be perverted. That they considered even that bondage. I liked teeth and nails during foreplay and sex, I really did. It wasn’t pretend, and it wasn’t just for Nathaniel’s sake. Once I thought it through to that point, I wasn’t angry with him. I wasn’t mad about what he wanted; I was uncomfortable because I enjoyed it. I knew that now, and I embraced it all the way through my head. Well, I wasn’t quite there yet.

I tried for honesty with him and myself. “I’d love the feel of your neck under my teeth. I’d love to sink my mouth around all the meaty parts of you and bite down until I was afraid I’d hurt you.” I felt heat rush up my face, and I had to close my eyes to finish it. “I loved the feel of you in my mouth. I loved marking you, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. And it still makes me uncomfortable, but it’s not because it’s you, it’s because it just seems so . . . so, I don’t know . . .”

“Perverted,” Gregory suggested.

I opened my eyes to glare at him. “Don’t help me, Gregory, okay?”

“Sorry.”

“Do you mean what you just said?” Nathaniel asked, and his voice was oddly empty, as if he were trying very hard not to be angry or hopeful.

I met his face, and even his eyes were being careful. I hated to see him managing me that hard, as if he were afraid if he appeared too eager I’d run. Problem was, he might have been right. I realized I’d been doing my own version of what Richard was doing. I wasn’t running from as much of myself as he was, but if I hadn’t had the ardeur to push me, I might have been. If I could have pretended as cleanly as Richard could, I would have. That I could at least admit to myself. The ardeur had made that impossible. But this wasn’t about the ardeur. This was about Nathaniel and me, and the happy little domestic arrangement that we had.

I’d waited too long to answer. Nathaniel’s eyes filled with such sorrow, and he turned away. Oh, hell. I grabbed his face between my hands and went up on tiptoes to make up for that three-inch height difference. I’d startled him so that he stumbled back into the cabinets. I plastered myself against the front of his body and kissed him. I kissed him as if I were eating him. I set my teeth into that lovely lower lip and bit down, not enough to mark, but enough to draw a small sound from his throat. I leaned back from the kiss enough to see his eyes wide and unfocused. His hands gripped the cabinet behind him so tight, they were mottled. It was almost as if he was afraid he’d fall.

I was breathing a little hard myself. My voice was shaky when I said, “That wasn’t metaphysical shit. That was just me, just you.”

His eyes closed, and a shudder ran through him from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. He swayed, and if I hadn’t caught him around the waist, I think he’d have fallen. His arms slid around me, and he laid his head on my shoulder. He hadn’t exactly fainted, but he was limp in my arms. I realized, he was totally passive. I knew in that moment I could do anything I wanted to him. The thought didn’t excite me, it scared me. I had enough trouble running my own life, I didn’t want someone else’s. But I kept my doubts to myself. He had enough of his own without me sharing.

“You promise,” he whispered, “promise you’ll mark me tonight.”

He’d said the P word. Shit. “I promise,” I whispered it into the vanilla warmth of his hair.

He drew a deep breath that moved his bare chest up and down along my clothed one. My body reacted to it, whether I wanted it to or not. Nipples hardening from the brush of him.

He drew back enough to see my face, and the look in his eyes was all male, and brought heat in a rush up my face. It sped my pulse in my throat. He was submissive, but underneath all that was something that could have been very dangerous, and it was there in his eyes now, that promise of disaster.

“Come to the club tonight, see my act, please.”

I shook my head. “I work tonight.”

“Please.” The please was more than just a word, it filled his eyes. He wanted me to see him on stage, surrounded by screaming fans. Maybe he wanted to impress on me that even if I didn’t want him, others did. I guess I’d earned having my face rubbed in it.

“What time do you go on?”

He told me.

“I can catch some of it, but probably not all of it.”

He kissed me, hard and strangely chaste, and bounced toward the door. “I’ll need to see if my costume is ready for tonight.” He turned at the door with that eager look still on his face. “What if I turn furry, will you still mark me?”

“I don’t do furry,” I said.

He poked his lip out at me, like a spoiled child.

“You are so damn pushy, you do know that, right?”

He smiled.

“I don’t do furry.”

“But if I’m not furry, you’ll do it?” Something about the way he asked it made me suspcious, but I nodded.

“Yes.”

He vanished into the dimness of the living room. “I’ll see you tonight at the club.”

I yelled after him. “If there’s another murder, all bets are off. Murder takes precedence over watching my boyfriend strip.” There was that word again, boyfriend.

I heard Nathaniel’s laugh trail down the stairs. It reminded me of another man in my life, who’d left me with a laugh this morning. I was just amusing the hell out of everybody today.

27

MICAH’S KISS WAS still warm on my lips when Ronnie rang the doorbell. Having had no sleep last night was finally catching up with Micah, so he’d gone to bed. Besides, Ronnie wouldn’t want an audience.

She was eyeing the door as I dragged it open. “What happened here?”

I tried to think of a short version, couldn’t come up with one, and said, “Let’s get coffee first.”

Her eye brows went up, but it was all I could see of her eyes behind the dark sunglasses. She shrugged. She was wearing the brown leather jacket that had become her latest favorite coat. She had it zipped up more than halfway and a cable-knit sweater peeked out from under it.

I hid my frown. It had to be seventy outside. I eased the door back into its frame. “Is it cold outside, or am I missing something?”

Her shoulders hunched. “I’ve been cold since I left the wedding last night. I just can’t seem to get warm.”

I did not remark that most shapeshifters have a slightly higher body temperature than we mere humans, and that maybe the warmth she was missing went by the name of Louie. I didn’t say it, because it would have been too obvious, and too cruel.

She walked through the darkened living room, to the opened curtains of the kitchen beyond. When I’d been sure that Damian was down for the day, I’d opened the drapes. She hesitated just inside the kitchen. “Where is everybody?”

“Micah had to get some sleep. Gregory and Nathaniel are upstairs working on an outfit for work. Something about some straps breaking.”

She sat in the chair that Richard had been in, so she could keep an eye on most of the doors, and still look outside at the view. Or maybe it had been an accident, and I was projecting why. I doubted Richard had thought about safety considerations when he chose the seat. But again, maybe I wasn’t being fair. Oh, well.

She kept the dark glasses on, though it wasn’t that bright anymore. Her blond hair was straight, but thick, and looked like she’d combed it, but nothing else, so the ends didn’t do the curl up that she liked. She almost never went out without more done to it than this. In fact, she sat hunched at the table, over the coffee mug, like a hangover victim.

“You ready for biscuits?” I asked.

“Does he actually cook?”

I almost said, If you were around more, you’d know, but I was good. “Yeah, he cooks. He does the grocery shopping, most of the menu planning, and most of the housework.”

“My, isn’t he a regular domestic goddess.” Her voice was ugly when she said it.

I’d be nice because she was hurting, but that would only cover so much, then she’d piss me off, and I really didn’t want to fight with Ronnie this morning. “I needed a wife,” I said, and managed to keep my voice neutral.

“Don’t we all,” she said, and there was no malice now. She took the tiniest sip of coffee. “I don’t think I could eat right now.”

I took a much bigger sip of coffee, and said, “Okay, do you have a plan for how this talk will go?”

She looked up at me, still wearing the glasses so I couldn’t see her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You wanted to talk, I assume about Louie and what happened last night, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then talk,” I said.

“It’s not that simple,” she said.

“Okay, then can I ask a question?”

“Depends on the question,” she said.

I took a big breath and plunged into the deep end. “Why did you say no to Louie’s proposal?”

“Oh, not you, too.”

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t tell me you expected me to just say yes?”

I wanted her to take off the glasses so I could see her eyes, see what she was thinking. “Actually, yeah.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because I’ve never seen you happier for longer with anyone,” I said.

She pushed her coffee away, as if she was angry at it, too. “Happy the way things are, Anita. Why does he have to go and change everything?”

“You spend more nights at each other’s places together than alone, right?”

She just nodded.

“He said he offered to move in together first, why not try it?”

“Because I want my stuff. I love Louie, but I hate how he’s taken over my closet, my medicine cabinet. He’s taken two of the dresser drawers over for his clothes.”

“The bastard,” I said.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

“No, I know. Did you tell him you didn’t like him moving his stuff in?”

“I tried.”

“Do you want him gone, poof, out of your life?”

She shook her head. “No, but I want my apartment back, the way it was. I don’t like coming home and finding that he’s rearranged everything in my cabinets so it’s easier to find. If I want to dig through every cabinet to find tomato paste, then it was my choice. He didn’t even ask, I just came home one night, and he’d organized everything in the kitchen. I couldn’t find anything.” She must have sounded pouty even to herself, because she jerked off the glasses and gave the full force of those pain-filled gray eyes. “You think I’m being silly, don’t you?”

“No, he should have probably asked you before rearranging everything.” The fact that Nathaniel had not only rearranged everything in my kitchen, but also thrown out the non-matching stuff was probably best kept to myself.

“I love dating Louie, but I don’t want to marry anybody.”

“Okay.”

“Just okay, you’re not going to try talking me into it?”

“Hey, I’m not headed for wedded bliss either, who am I to force you into it?”

She looked at me, as if searching my face for a lie. She was pale and hollow-eyed, as if she hadn’t gotten much more sleep than Micah. “But you’ve let Micah move in with you.”

I nodded and drank coffee. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you want him to move in with you? I thought you liked your independence as much as I do.”

“I’m still independent, Ronnie. Micah moving in didn’t change that.”

“He doesn’t try to order you around?”

I just looked at her.

“I’m sorry, Anita, but my dad was such a bastard to my mother. I’ve seen pictures of her on stage in college. She wanted so much, but he wouldn’t have a wife that worked. She had to be the perfect little homemaker. She hated it, and she hated him.”

“You aren’t your mother,” I said, “and Louie isn’t your father.” Sometimes in these heart-to-heart talks you have to state the obvious.

“You weren’t there, Anita, you didn’t see it. She fell into a bottle, and he never noticed, because on the outside she was perfect. She never got roaring drunk, or falling down drunk. It was just like she needed this constant buzz to see her through the day, and the night. A functioning alchoholic is what they call it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. We’d both told each other our sad stories years ago. She knew all about my mother’s death, my father marrying the ice princess stepmother, and my perfect stepsister. We’d shared our bitterness toward our familes long ago. I knew all this, so why tell it again? Because something about the proposal had brought it up.

“You told me months ago that Louie is nothing like your dad.”

“Yeah, but he still wants to own me.”

“Own you,” I said, “what does that mean, own you?”

“We date, we have great sex, we enjoy each other’s company, why does he have to move in, or make me marry him?” There was something like real fear in her face.

I touched her hand where it lay clenched on the tabletop. “Ronnie, he can’t make you marry him.”

“But if I don’t agree to something, he’ll leave. We either move forward, or he’s gone. That’s him trying to force me to marry him.”

I felt like I wasn’t qualified for this talk, because her logic wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t like that. I knew Louie, and he’d have been horrified that she saw his proposal and his need to finalize things as ownership. I was almost a hundred-percent certain he didn’t mean it that way. I squeezed her hand and tried to think of what to say that would help things instead of hurt. Nothing came to mind.

“I don’t know what to say, Ronnie, except that I don’t believe Louie meant to hurt you like this. He loves you, and thought you loved him, and when people love each other, they tend to want to get married.”

She took her hand back. “How do I know this is love? I mean the love, like till-death-do-you-part love?”

Finally something I could answer. “You don’t.”

“What do you mean, you don’t? Isn’t there supposed to be a test, or a sign, or something? I thought if I ever fell in love that this panic wouldn’t be here. That I would be totally sure and unafraid, but I’m not. I’m terrified. Doesn’t that mean that Louie isn’t the one? That it would be a terrible mistake? Aren’t you supposed to be sure?”

Now I knew I was unqualified for this conversation. I needed like a pinch hitter to offer better advice than I had. “I don’t know.”

“Were you sure when you let Micah move in, sure that it was the right thing to do?”

I thought about it, then shrugged. “It wasn’t like that. He moved in almost before we’d dated, I . . .” How do you put into words things that you only feel, things that have no words attached to them? “I don’t know why I didn’t panic when he moved in, it just happened. One day I walk into the bathroom, and there’s a razor and a shaving kit. Then, when the clean clothes got put away, his T-shirts got mixed in with mine, and since they’re the same size, we left it that way. I’ve never dated anyone before who can wear the same clothes I can, it’s kind of neat to wear his jeans sometimes, or his shirt, especially if it smells like his cologne.”

“God, you love him,” she said in despair, almost a wail.

I shrugged and drank coffee, because talking was making it worse. “Maybe,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, no, your face goes all soft when you talk about him. You love him.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me like I’d betrayed her somehow.

“Look, Micah moved in gradually, but I didn’t feel crowded the way you did with Louie. I like having his things in the bathroom. I like having a his and her side of the closet. Seeing his stuff with my stuff gives me a full cupboard feeling.”

“A what?” she asked.

“Getting a T-shirt out and realizing that it’s one I bought for him because it brings out the green in his eyes gives me that I’ve got my favorite foods in the cupboard and it’s a winter night, and I don’t have to go out in it feeling. I’ve got everything I need at home.”

She looked at me in soft horror.

Hearing myself say it out loud was a little frightening, but mostly it was thrilling. Because I’d answered my question, in trying to answer hers, I’d answered my own. I was smiling, even as she looked at me in shock. I couldn’t help the smile, I was feeling better than I’d felt in days. But another thought occurred to me. I wasn’t smiling when I said, “Remember how you couldn’t understand why I didn’t just jump at Richard when he asked me to marry him?”

“I didn’t say marry him, I just said dump the vampire and keep the werewolf.”

That made me smile. “I remember coming home, and Richard had used his key to get in to cook me dinner without asking, and I hated it. I felt all grumpy and like my privacy had been invaded.”

She nodded. “That’s it, it’s like putting on a new sweater that’s just the right color and fits perfectly, but the next time you wear it, you realize it’s scratchy, and unless you wear a shirt under it, it itches you. It’s a great sweater, but you need a little distance between it and your skin.”

I thought about it and had to agree. “That’s pretty good, scratchy, yeah.”

“But you didn’t feel that way when Micah moved in?” she asked in a voice that had gone soft and small.

I shook my head. “It was very weird. I knew nothing about him, really, but it just . . . clicked.”

“Love at first sight,” she said, softly.

“ ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure,’ they say.”

“But you didn’t marry him,” she said, “why not?”

“One, neither of us has asked, and two, I don’t think either of us feels the need.” There was also the matter of Jean-Claude and Asher, and Nathaniel, but I didn’t want to muddy the waters, so I didn’t bring them up.

“Then why does Louie want to get married?”

“You’d have to ask him, Ronnie. He did say he’d offered to just live together, but you didn’t want that either.”

“I like my space,” she said.

“Then tell him that,” I said.

“I’ll lose him if I tell him that.”

“Then you’ve got to decide whether you like your space or him more.”

“Just like that,” she said.

I nodded. “Just like that.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“I don’t mean to,” I said, “but Louie wants the two of you to go to bed together every night and to wake up beside you every morning. That doesn’t sound so bad.”

She laid her head on her arms, so that all I could see was the back of her head. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t crying, but . . . “Ronnie, did I say something wrong?”

She said something I couldn’t understand.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear that.”

She raised her head enough to say, “I don’t want to go to bed every night and wake up every morning with him.”

“You want separate bedrooms?” I asked before my brain could tell me it was a stupid question.

“No,” she said and sat up, brushing at the tears that had just started. She seemed more angry or impatient than tearful. “What if I meet a cute guy? What if I meet someone I want to sleep with, and it isn’t Louie?” The tears were gone. She was just looking at me with that appeal on her face. That, Don’t you understand? look.

“You mean, you don’t want to be monogamous,” I said.

“No, I mean I’m not sure I’m ready to be monogamous.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that one, because it wasn’t something I’d had to give up. “Most people want to be monogamous, Ronnie. I mean how would you feel if Louie slept with someone else?”

“Relieved,” she said, “because then I could be mad and kick his ass out. It’d be over.”

“Do you mean that?” I asked, and I tried to see past the pain and confusion, but there was too much of it.

“Yes,” she said. “No, oh, hell, Anita, I don’t know. I thought we had a good thing going, if I could get him to slow down a little, then he suddenly puts it into high gear.”

“How long have you guys been dating?”

“Almost two years,” she said.

“You never told me about feeling crowded before,” I said.

“How could I? You were drowning in domestic bliss. All the things that I didn’t want, you were enjoying.”

I remembered that Louie had said maybe Ronnie hadn’t distanced herself because I was dating Jean-Claude, but because she had problems with me not having problems with Micah. I’d thought he was wrong, now I wasn’t so sure. “I’m always willing to listen, Ronnie.”

“I couldn’t, Anita. You fuck this guy you’ve just met, and suddenly he’s living with you. I mean, it was everything I hated. Someone moving in, and taking your space, and losing your privacy, and you just lapped it up.” Again, there was that feeling in her voice that I’d betrayed her.

“Am I suppose to apologize for being happy?”

“Are you happy, really happy?”

I sighed. “Why do I think you’d be happier if I said no?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t mean it like that, but, Anita,” she took my hand, “how can you let all these people in your house, all the time? You’re never alone anymore. Don’t you miss that?”

I thought about it, then said, “No, I spent my childhood alone in a crowd of family that didn’t understand me, or didn’t want to understand me. I’m finally with people that don’t think I’m the weird one.”

“No, because they’re weirder.”

I took my hand back this time. “That was mean,” I said.

“I didn’t mean it that way, but isn’t Jean-Claude jealous of Micah the way he was of Richard?”

“No,” I said, and left it at that, because Ronnie wasn’t ready to hear the arrangements among the three of us. She thought we were weird already. If she only knew.

“Why isn’t he?”

I just shook my head and got up to get more coffee. She thought my lover was weird, she had always hated Jean-Claude, I wasn’t about to share intimacies about them with her. She’d just lost her privileges. And that made me sad. I’d thought this crisis with Louie might help Ronnie and me rebuild our friendship, but it wasn’t working out that way. Shit.

I poured coffee and tried to think of something useful to say. I finally realized that if I let her last remarks go, then we’d never be friends again. It was truth or nothing.

I leaned against the cabinet and looked at her. Something must have shown on my face, because she said, “You’re mad.”

“Do you realize by saying that my lover is weirder than I am, it says you think I’m weird. You don’t think your friends are weird, Ronnie.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Then how did you mean it?”

“I didn’t mean it, Anita, I’m sorry, but I am weirded out, I mean, I didn’t like Micah coming out of nowhere. And that Nathaniel is living here, cooking and cleaning, what is he, like a maid?”

“He’s my pomme de sang,” I said, and my voice was as cold as my face.

“Doesn’t that mean he’s like food?”

“Sometimes,” I said, and I tried to tell her with my eyes that she should be careful.

“I don’t take my steak to bed with me, Anita. I don’t read bedtime stories to my milkshake.” I’d told Ronnie just enough of my personal arrangements for her to throw them back into my face and belittle them. Great. “Ronnie, you need to be very careful what you say right now. Very careful.”

“You’re insulted, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I came to you with very personal stuff, back when it bothered me that Nathaniel was sharing the bed with Micah and me, and I told you we were reading to each other. That wasn’t a complaint.”

“Has something changed between you and Nathaniel? Last I heard, he was food, and one of your leopards, but that was all.”

“Yeah, things have changed.”

“You have two men living with you?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“Two men, two lovers?”

I took a deep breath, and just said, “Yes.”

“Then how can you encourage me to say yes to Louie?”

“I didn’t encourage you. I just asked which you value more, Louie, or your privacy. It’s him that’s made it a choice, not me.”

“But you didn’t have to choose.”

“Not yet,” I said.

“What’s that mean?” she asked.

“It means that I never underestimate the power of the men in my life to complicate things. So far, so good.”

“So far, so good. How can you let that be enough? Don’t you want a guarantee that they aren’t going to cut your heart out and stomp on it?”

“I’d love a guarantee, but it doesn’t work that way. You’ve just got to take the plunge and hope for the best.”

“Marry him, you mean.”

“Ronnie, the only one here obsessed with marriage is you. You, and maybe Louie. I’ve got no plans in that direction.”

“So what, you just keep living with both of them?”

“For now, yes.” I sipped coffee and tried not to let my eyes be as unfriendly as I felt.

“But what about later?”

“Later will take care of itself,” I said.

“That’s not enough for me, Anita. I want to know that I’m making the right decision.”

“I don’t think you ever know, Ronnie. Most of the people I know that are absolutely certain they’re right, are the most wrong people I know.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“That means, marry him or don’t marry him, but don’t take your issues out on my relationships.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means don’t ever call my boyfriends weird again.”

“And you don’t think that living with two men is a little unusual?”

“It works for us, Ronnie.”

“And how does Jean-Claude feel about you sleeping with Micah and Nathaniel?”

“He’s okay with it.”

She frowned. “So you’re, what, sleeping with”—and she started counting fingers—“three men?”

“Hmm, four, hmm, nope, five.”

“Five? Jean-Claude, Nathaniel, Micah, and who?”

“Asher and Damian,” I said, and my face was nicely empty when I said it.

Her face wasn’t. She was left openmouthed, astonished, apparently so shocked, she was speechless. If she hadn’t been picking at me, I’d have broken it to her gently, or not at all. Ronnie had started by not being able to handle me dating a vampire, then hadn’t been able to handle my being comfortable cohabitating with a man, and less able to handle me living with two men and enjoying it, two extra vampires to hate, well, that was nothing.

“Let me get this straight, you are fucking all of them?”

I knew she meant, was I having intercourse with all of them? Technically, no, but since it was only Nathaniel who was on the “no” list after today, I said, “Yes.”

“When did all this happen?”

“Asher happened after you’d made it very clear you hated me dating Jean-Claude, because he’s a vampire, so I stopped talking to you about vampires as boyfriends.”

“And Nathaniel moved from food to sex when?”

“Recently.”

“And Damian, I mean, Damian wasn’t even on the radar.”

“It’s been a busy day.”

She goggled at me again. “Are you serious, just today?”

I nodded, and almost enjoyed her astonishment.

“All this has been happening, and you didn’t tell me.”

“You haven’t wanted to hear it. You just get mad about Jean-Claude, and I think you hated hearing how much I enjoyed the very things with Micah that you were hating with Louie. You said yourself that it made it hard to talk to me, because I seemed so happy with the things that were driving you crazy.”

She let out a long, long breath. “I’m sorry, I’ve cut you out of so much.”

“I’ve missed us talking,” I said.

“We talked,” she said, “but we both started editing ourselves to each other. You can’t stay friends like that.” She looked sad.

“No,” I said, “you can’t. You don’t have to tell each other everything, but you can’t hold back this much.”

“I still don’t trust Jean-Claude, and you’re the one that taught me that vampires are just dead guys, no matter how cute they are.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“I haven’t,” she said.

“So no talking about the vampires in my life.”

“That still leaves you with two men to talk about.”

“Not if you compare one of them to steaks and milkshakes.”

“Look, last time you talked about Nathaniel it was to complain that you were so uncomfortable around him. You talked about Nathaniel the way I felt about Louie, then about the time I thought we had common complaints, you started to change. You started getting all soft when you talked about Nathaniel, too.”

“Did I?”

She nodded. “Yes, you did.”

“Everyone noticed Nathaniel and me, before I did, even Richard.”

“What?”

I shook my head. “I do not want to talk about Richard, other than to say I met his new girlfriend, Clair.”

“Jesus, when?”

I shook my head, because there was no way to tell the story without sharing more than Ronnie wanted to know about vampires. The very fact that she got angry when I talked about the vampires in my life made it almost impossible to share my life with her. How did I explain what had happened between Richard and me today without including the ardeur, Jean-Claude, Damian, and Damian’s old master? And if I did share it all, then she’d give me another lecture about how Jean-Claude was ruining my life, or had ulterior motives. I wouldn’t even be able to argue about the ulterior motives. Jean-Claude was what Jean-Claude was; I’d made peace with that a while back.

I finally said some of what I was thinking out loud. I’d learned lately that truth is really the only way for relationships to survive, let alone grow. I wanted to be friends with Ronnie again, really friends, if it was still possible. “Most of what happened today revolves around vampire stuff, Ronnie. If I can’t talk to you about vampires, then I can’t even begin to tell you what happened.”

“Jean-Claude fucking up your life some more.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think Jean-Claude could have planned some of this in his wildest imagination. Besides, he’s pissed that Damian got to me first.”

She frowned. “First, you mean he’s upset that you and Damian are lovers?”

“I’m not sure we’re lovers, so much as we had sex. I haven’t decided about the rest.”

“You’ve always treated intercourse like it’s a commitment, Anita. I never understood that. It’s just sex, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not so good, but it’s just sex, not a vow of honor.”

I shrugged. “We agreed to disagree on that topic a long time ago.”

“Yeah, we did. You’ve been monogamous as long as I’ve known you. One date and that’s it until you either don’t want to date him anymore, or you’ve decided that he didn’t deserve the one date he got. Until Jean-Claude came into your life, you were the most straitlaced person I knew. I mean I didn’t think I slept around until I had you to compare me to. You made everybody else seem like sluts to your nun.”

That sounded sort of bitter, too. “I didn’t know you felt that way,” I said.

“It never bothered me, in fact you probably saved me from some bad decisions. I’d think, okay, what would Anita say, and I’d wait a while and see if a guy was more than just cute.”

“Gee, I’ve never been the angel on someone’s shoulder before.”

She shrugged. “I’m not mad about your moral values as opposed to my moral values. I just don’t understand how I ended up headed for a life of monotonous monogomy, and you ended up with a harem. It just seems wrong.”

On that we could agree. “Wait a minute, monogomous maybe, but you told me Louie was the best sex you’d ever had.”

“No, the best sex I ever had was that guy . . .”

I finished the story for her, “With the really big tonker, who knew how to use it. He was gorgeous, blond curly hair, big blue eyes, shoulders . . .”

She laughed. “I take it I’ve told this story too often.”

“It was a one-night stand, and he vanished before you woke up the next day. You tried to find him, and he’d lied about who he was, so you couldn’t find him. No sex is good enough to overcome that.”

“Spoken like someone who’s never had a one-night stand in her life,” Ronnie said.

My turn to shrug. “Can’t say that I have.”

“If you’ve never had one, then you don’t know what you’ve been missing.”

I let it go; we’d learned years ago that we had philosophical differences about men, sex, and relationships. “Fine, have it your way, but Louie is the best repeatable sex that you’ve ever had.”

She seemed to think about that for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll agree to that. Yes, he is the best steady sex I’ve ever had.”

“How are you going to feel without it?” I asked.

“Horny,” she said, and laughed, but when I didn’t laugh with her, she looked sad. “Jesus, Anita, don’t go all serious on me. I need one friend who just tells me that marriage isn’t for me and that it’s okay to dump him when he starts giving ultimatums.”

“If you aren’t in love with Louie, then dump him, but I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t ask, is it that you don’t love him, or your fear is too great to allow you to love anybody?”

She frowned up at me. “Great, then I’ll die alone and old with a bunch of cats and guns.”

“What I meant was, maybe therapy isn’t a bad idea.”

She looked at me in amazement. “You’re giving me the you-need-therapy talk? I thought you hated all those therapists that stand by the graveside and ask people what they’re feeling, as their long-dead, abusive parent rises from the grave. God, what a nightmare.”

“There are good therapists out there, Ronnie. I just don’t get to meet many on the job.”

“Have you gone to see a therapist behind my back?”

I thought about that, then said, “I finally realized that what I was going to Marianne for was only partially to learn how to control my psychic abilities. People in New York go to see their witches instead of their therapists. I’ve just decided to be ahead of the crowd.”

“Who do you know in New York?”

“Another animator, and vampire executioner. She said that going to a therapist who was a witch meant she didn’t have to spend time explaining magic or psychic stuff to them, because they already knew it. She’d had some of the same problems I’d had over the years with going to my priest or a regular therapist. I mean, my dad took me to one when I was in my early teens. The therapist tried to help me with my latent issues with my mother’s death and my dad’s remarriage, but he wouldn’t believe that I could raise the dead by accident. He kept trying to tell me that I was doing it on purpose to get back at Judith and my father.”

“You never told me that,” she said.

“It was after the therapist told my dad that I was ‘evil’ that he contacted Grandma Flores and got some help that at least understood what I was going through.”

“So you knew when you started with Marianne it was therapy?”

“No, of course not, I’d never have done it that way.”

She smiled. “That’s the Anita I’ve come to love and know.”

I smiled back. “Even now it makes me grumpy to admit it out loud, and you’re the only person I’ve told, though I think Micah suspects. I’m getting easier to live with, something has to be responsible.”

“It’s really helped?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You think I should go down to Tennessee?”

“I think you should try something closer to home. You don’t have the same issues that I do. A therapist isn’t going to tell you that you’re wrong, or evil, or simply not believe you.”

“Are you telling me my problems are mundane?”

“Unless you have a problem with Louie being furry once a month, yeah they’re mundane.”

She frowned, and dragged her coffee cup back toward her. “Not really, I mean I’ve seen the whole show, and I don’t do animals. He’s okay with that, because most nonshifters draw the line at doing their significant others in animal form. You know it can be transferred via sex in animal form, if the sex is rough and you get some fluid in an abrasion.” She said it like a lecture, or a warning, without thinking about it.

“I did know that.”

“Oh, sorry, you’re the preternatural expert, not me.” Again, that trace of bitterness. When had she first gotten mad at me? How far back did it go?

“No, really, Ronnie, it’s good to share information when you know someone else is dating the lunarly challenged.”

She looked up then. “Did you just say ‘lunarly challenged’?”

I nodded. “The latest PC phrase.”

“Since when have you been PC?”

“Since I heard the phrase and thought it was funny as hell.” I was still leaning against the cabinet, because there was way more anger in her toward me than I understood. The vampire thing I could sort of understand, but her problems with me letting men into my life, that seemed harder to work around.

“Lunarly challenged, I’ll have to tell Louie. He’ll get a kick out of it.” The moment she said it, her face fell, and the weight of it all came crashing down on her. “Oh, shit, Anita, what am I going to do?”

“I don’t know.” I came back to sit at the table and patted her hand. If it had been Catherine, she’d probably be clinging to me for support, but Ronnie had my issues on closeness, so we didn’t hug as much. Alright, Ronnie had my old issues on closeness, except about sex. I’d never understood why if you don’t want someone hugging you for comfort that you’d be okay with fucking them, but that was just me.

“I don’t want him just gone from my life, but I’m not ready to get married. I may never be ready to get married.” She looked at me, and there was such anguish in her eyes. “He wants children. He said, one of the reasons he’s happy that I’m not a shapeshifter is so we could have children. Anita, I don’t want children.”

I squeezed her hand and didn’t know what to say.

“I’m a private detective, and I’m thirty. If we got married we’d have to start thinking about kids right away. I’m not ready.”

“Do you want kids, ever?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I grew out of wanting two kids and a white picket fence about five years ago. I don’t think I ever really wanted it, but it’s what you’re supposed to want, you know.”

“I know.”

She looked at me with her serious, sad eyes and asked, “Do you want kids?”

“No,” I said, “my life doesn’t have that kind of room.”

“No, if you had a different job, would you want to be a mother?”

“Once upon a time I thought I’d get married and have a kid or two, but that was before.”

“Before what, Jean-Claude?”

“No, before I became a vampire executioner, and a federal marshal. Before I realized that I’m probably never going to get married. My life works for me right now, but it wouldn’t work for a child.”

“Why, because you don’t have a husband?”

“No, because people try to kill me on a semiregular basis.”

“Speaking of violence, what happened to your door?” she asked.

“Gregory broke it down because I wasn’t answering the phone and he heard screams.”

“Why did he hear screams?”

“Without mentioning vampires, I can’t tell you the story.”

She sighed. “I thought Jean-Claude was a passing thing, your one big fling. You know, he’s the bad guy that you have this great sex with, then you wise up and move on.” She looked at me, and she really looked at me, searching my face. “He’s not a fling for you, is he?”

“No,” I said.

She took in a lot of air, then let it out slowly. “I’m not saying I want or could handle all the details, but tell me enough so I know what happened to your door.”

Even edited down, the story took a while. We were just past the point where Richard dumped me royally, when Nathaniel and Gregory came into the room.

Ronnie had her face all set for massive sympathy, and was actually reaching out to offer a hug, when she saw them. Her face froze, and her arms just stopped moving, as if she was suddenly a statue in that kid’s game.

Nathaniel was nearly naked, wearing only a leather thong and a whole bunch of straps across his upper body. So many straps that for a moment it gave the illusion that he was bound in some way. He padded into the room, looking totally comfortable in his nearly nothing bondage gear. That might have been what stopped Ronnie in her tracks, or then again, it might have been Gregory. He was still in leopardman form, and still totally nude. He wasn’t happy to be nude anymore, but he was still naked except for his very natural fur coat.

From the look on her face, I wasn’t sure Ronnie had really seen that much of Louie in ratman form, or if she had, he’d been more discrete than Gregory was being. He had three straps in his clawed hands and was looking at the rivet on the end of one of them as he glided through the door.

“Hi, Ronnie,” Nathaniel said, as if she wasn’t staring at him openmouthed. “Anita, have you seen my punch?”

“Your what?” I asked.

“It’s a punch for reattaching leather rivets. I forgot that two of the straps came loose last time I wore this.”

“I don’t even know what a leather punch looks like,” I said. I sipped coffee and watched both the men, and Ronnie’s face. She was trying to recover her cool, but the effort was visible and near painful to watch.

“Sort of like a big stapler, with one of those round things on the top.” He knelt down to open up the tool drawer. This flashed the back of his body to us, and there was a lot of back to flash. The thin black stripe that was all that covered his ass didn’t exactly cover anything as much as it emphasized what was there.

If I hadn’t had Ronnie’s reaction to watch, I’d have been more distracted myself, but I was enjoying her total failure to hide what she was thinking. There’d been a time when Ronnie had been the more sophisticated of the two of us, and I’d been the one who blushed all the time. She wasn’t blushing, she’d actually paled, but the shoe was very firmly on the other foot. She hadn’t been around much, so she hadn’t seen Nathaniel in maybe six months. Her reaction told me that it wasn’t just me who’d noticed the shoulders and the extra muscle development. To someone who hadn’t seen him in half a year, the changes must have been even more impressive.

“What makes you think a piece of sewing equipment would be in the kitchen?” I asked, and my voice held that first hint of amusement that I was trying to hide from Ronnie. It was kind of nice not to be the one who was embarrassed for a change.

Nathaniel moved from drawer to drawer, talking without turning around, his hair still up in its high, springy ponytail. “Zane borrowed it to fix his leather jacket and never put it back. You know how Zane is, he doesn’t think. He’s got to stop borrowing my stuff, if he can’t put things back where they belong.”

Zane was one of my wereleopards, and he tried to play dominant, but he really wasn’t. And Nathaniel was right, Zane never seemed to put anything back where it was supposed to go. “I don’t think you’ll ever teach him to put things back,” I said.

“You could wear it without these three straps,” Gregory said. “Most people wouldn’t notice.” He touched one of the straps on Nathaniel’s back, gave it a little flick. “I mean there must be over a dozen of them.”

“I’ll notice,” Nathaniel said, and he kept opening drawers. “If you were Zane, where would you put a punch?” I think he was asking it of no one in particuliar.

Ronnie had managed to stop gaping. She’d closed her mouth and was trying to look like it was no big deal that two nudish wereleopards were wandering around my kitchen. She watched them covertly out of the corners of her eyes. I don’t know if it was because she was embarrassed or because I’d called one of them my boyfriend. Girlfriend rule number one, you don’t lust after your best bud’s boyfriend.

I got up to help them look. Nathaniel had said it looked like a stapler. Even I could recognize a stapler, so I started opening drawers, too.

Nathaniel found it in the drawer that was supposed to hold only big spoons and oversized cookware. “Why here?” he asked.

“It does look like a really big stapler, maybe that’s why.” I offered it up as the best idea I had.

Nathaniel was shaking his head, making his hair dance around his shoulders, in a way it never did except in that very high, tight ponytail. “Whatever the reason, he is not allowed in my stuff anymore.”

“Sounds fair,” I said. I was looking at all the straps. “You look pretty secured into that outfit, how do you strip out of it?”

He smiled at me. “Are you trying to get me out of my clothes?” He made it sound like teasing, but underneath was something that wasn’t teasing at all. I wished I hadn’t said it, because he wanted me to want him so badly. I didn’t know how this game worked, and I’d never been good at flirting, not really.

I ended up blushing, which I hated. “No,” I said, and it sounded whiny even to me.

He could have said a half-dozen things that would have made it worse, but he had mercy on me. “You get it off the same way you get it on.” He slid his left arm through the front of all those straps, then raised his arm up his chest, along side his neck, and did something with his shoulder that I couldn’t see from where I was standing. The straps just peeled down, and suddenly he was nude from the waist up, with the straps hanging around him like the petals of a black leather flower. “The straps come off completely, but it takes time to reattach them, so you’ll have to come tonight if you want to see the whole show.” He smiled gently, to take some of the sting out of my embarrassment. I wasn’t sure why I was embarrassed, unless it was because Ronnie was there, or I was worried about having to come across soon. Who knew, pick one.

“Your shoulder,” Ronnie said, in a strained voice, “didn’t that hurt what you did to your shoulder?”

He shook his head, sending all that shining auburn hair flying. “No, I’m double-jointed.”

Ronnie was having trouble with her face, like the expression that was wanting to come there wasn’t one she was willing to have. “How double-jointed are you?”

“Ronnie,” I said.

She shrugged and gave me a look like, Sue me, I couldn’t help it. “Well, you won’t tell me. You just told me today that he’s moved from food to boyfriend.”

“Ronnie,” I said again, a little more urgently.

She made a face. “Sorry, sorry, I’m not myself today. I’m babbling more, like you usually do.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” I said.

“You do babble when you’re nervous or horny,” Gregory said.

“Stop helping me, Gregory.”

He shrugged, which looked odd on the leopardman shoulders, not bad, just odd. “Sorry.”

“Do you want me to answer her question?” Nathaniel asked, in a careful voice.

“Answer the question, don’t answer the question, I don’t care.”

He cocked his head to one side, the expression on his face clearly said that he knew that wasn’t true. He was right, I’d have preferred him to not answer the question. He’d given me the opportunity to be his master and tell him not to answer, but I’d blown it. I’d abdicated the throne he seemed to want me to take, and if you’re not in charge, you can’t control what happens.

He walked over toward Ronnie, and he made sure he swayed that luscious ass at me as he moved. Sometimes I wondered if Nathaniel knew how beautiful he was, then he’d do something that let me know he knew exactly what he looked like. Like now.

Heat crept up my face just watching him walk, and I finally decided why the embarrassment. I’d promised to mark him, but what he wanted was intercourse, and watching him move across the room like an ad for a wet dream made me all squirmy and uncomfortable, like being a teenager again and having “those feelings” for the first time, and having no one to talk to about them, because good girls weren’t supposed to have feelings like that.

He flicked his head and sent all that hair spilling over Ronnie, and away, like a curtain that she’d walked through, except she was sitting still. It looked as if he’d slapped her instead of teased. He stood up very straight, very tall, beside her chair and clasped his hands behind his back. “To answer your question, I,” he began to raise his arms backward, “am,” his arms went to the middle of his back, and kept on moving upward, “very,” until his straining clasped fingers were even with his shoulder blades, “very,” his arms rotated all the way up so they pointed at the ceiling, “double-jointed.” Then he slowly put his arms back down, but it wasn’t Ronnie he was looking at when he finished.

I didn’t blush, I paled. I felt trapped. Trapped by what? That was the ten-thousand-dollar question. Even to myself, I wasn’t sure I had an answer.

They left to repair Nathaniel’s costume. The silence in the kitchen after they left was deep, long, and uncomfortable. At least for me. I didn’t look at Ronnie, because I was trying to think of something to say. I shouldn’t have worried, she found just the right thing to say. “Damn, Anita, I mean, damn.”

I did look at her then. “What’s that supposed to mean?” My voice was a little shaky to come off as indignation, but it was worth the effort.

Ronnie had a look in her eyes that I didn’t like. It was way too discerning. We’d been best friends for years, just because we’d drifted apart didn’t mean she still couldn’t read me. “You haven’t had sex with him yet.” She sounded sure, and amazed.

“What makes you say that?”

“Oh, come, Anita, you’re never quite this uncomfortable once that bridge has been crossed. For you, intercourse is permission to have a relationship, until that happens, you never really relax around them.”

I was blushing again, arms crossed over my stomach, leaning against the island, using my hair to try to hide the blush, and failing. “So you’ve always known every time I made love to someone?”

“Most of the time, yeah, except with Jean-Claude. He messed up your radar and mine.”

I glanced up then. “How so?”

“You stayed uncomfortable around him even after the two of you were having sex together. I think it’s one of the reasons I didn’t like him. I guess I thought if you were that conflicted, then it wouldn’t last.”

I shrugged. “I don’t remember being uncomfortable around him afterward.”

She just looked at me.

I had the decency to squirm. “Okay, maybe I was. But it’s not true that I stop being uncomfortable after having sex just once. It takes a few sessions, a little ‘montonous monogamy’ for me to truly relax.”

She smiled. “Point taken. The best sex is after you’ve learned a few things about each other.” She looked at me, very serious again. “You really haven’t had sex with him, have you?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?” she asked.

I looked at her.

“Anita, after the little show he just put on, I’d do him.”

I looked at her harder.

“You say he’s been sleeping in your bed, with you and Micah, right?”

I nodded.

“For how long?”

“About four months,” I said.

“Four months of climbing between your sheets, and you haven’t fucked him?”

“Pick a different word, okay? If we’re going to have this talk, pick a different word.”

“Sorry, okay, you haven’t made love to him, that better?”

I nodded.

“Why haven’t you made love to him? He obviously wants you to.”

I shrugged.

“No, I want an answer on this one. Has Jean-Claude decided to draw the line at sharing you with this many men?”

“No,” I said.

“Micah has a problem with it?”

“No.”

“Then why not?”

I sighed. “Because when I first let Nathaniel move in, he was like a wounded puppy, something to take care of and help heal. He was so submissive that he wanted someone to run his life and order him around. I’ve got enough to do to run my own life, so I sort of demanded he change, become more independent. He did it, he’s doing really well.”

“He’s a lot more confident than the last time I saw him,” Ronnie said. “I mean he’s almost like a different person.”

I shook my head. “He’s a stripper, he has to have a certain level of confidence in himself.”

She shook her head. “Nope, had a roommate in college that stripped her way through school on the weekends. She had a terrible self-image.”

“Then why did she strip?”

“It made her feel like someone wanted her. Her childhood makes yours and mine read like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Yeah, stripping made her feel good and bad all at the same time.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“She graduated, found a job, found religion, and is now married with two kids and an attitude so holy that you can’t have a conversation with her without her trying to convert you.”

“They say that no one is as holy as a reformed sinner.”

“Stripping isn’t a sin, Anita. Being naked isn’t a sin, it’s the way God sends us into the world, how bad can it be?”

I shrugged.

“Sex isn’t a sin either, Anita.”

“Intellectually I know that, Ronnie, but part of me just can’t shake my grandmother’s voice. Sex was evil, men that wanted to touch you were evil, your body was dirty. It was all bad, and the nuns didn’t help change that attitude.”

“I guess once a Catholic always a Catholic,” she said.

I sighed. “I guess.” Truthfully, I thought a lot of the damage had been my grandmother’s doing, and my stepmother, Judith, who made every touch some sort of favor. Physical touch was not a big thing in my family after my mother died.

“You feel guilty about Nathaniel, why?”

“I’m supposed to take care of him, Ronnie, not screw him.”

“Anita, you can take care of someone and still have sex with them, married couples do it every day.”

I sighed again. “I don’t know why he weirds me out, but he does.”

“You want him.”

I covered my face with my hands and almost yelled, “Yes, yes, I want him.” And just saying it out loud like that made me cringe inside. “He started life with me on the I’ll-take-care-of-him list, not the future boyfriend list.”

“Don’t you and your boyfriends take care of each other?”

I thought about that. “I guess so. I mean, I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Why are you so busy trying to find reasons to talk yourself out of Nathaniel?”

I frowned at her. “Jason told me that it’s because Nathaniel won’t be aggressive enough. That if a man’s just a little commanding, I feel like the choice isn’t all mine, and the guilt isn’t all mine either. Nathaniel’s sort of forcing me to make the move, to be in charge, to be . . .”

“The one to blame,” she offered.

“Maybe.”

“Anita, I am terrified of spending the rest of my life with one man. I mean, what if a body like Nathaniel’s comes walking up to me the day after I say yes to Louie? I’m going to turn it down?”

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what being in love means, doesn’t it?”

“Spoken by the girl who’s sleeping with more men than I’ve dated in the last three years.”

“I was raised that marriage would make everything that was dirty okay. Suddenly, all those feelings were legal, holy. Part of me has trouble letting that go.”

“Letting what go?” she asked.

“That I’m never going to get married. That I’m never going to do anything to make how I feel about Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel, or Asher, or, hell, Damian, okay. That no matter what happens, I am going to be living in sin.”

“You mean that you’d like to be in love with just one man and do the marriage thing?”

“I used to think so. Now . . .” I sat down at the table. “Oh, Ronnie, I don’t know. I can’t see being with just one person anymore. My life wouldn’t work with just one of them in it.”

“And that bothers you,” she said.

“Yes, it does.”

“Why?”

“Because this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”

“Anita, ‘supposed to be’ is for children. Grown-ups know that it’s what you make of it.”

“My life is working, Ronnie. Nathaniel is like my wife, and Micah is the other husband. He works for the coalition and helps me take care of the leopards and all the other shapeshifters. It’s partnership the way I always thought marriage could be, but never seems to be.”

“And where does Jean-Claude fit into this little domestic scene?”

“Wherever he wants, I guess. He runs his business and polices his territory, and we date.”

“You, him, and Asher date?”

“Sometimes.”

She shook her head. “And Damian?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She looked down at her hands on the tabletop. “I guess we’ve both been having some interesting personal choices to make.” She looked at me and frowned—a little frown. “Why is it that your choices seem so much more fun than mine?”

I smiled. “You have issues with commitment, marriage, and being tied to just one man. I have issues that anything short of that monogamous setup means your a slut. We’re both being set up to deal with our issues.”

“You do sound like you’ve been to therapy.”

“Glad to hear it shows,” I said.

“So you’re saying that we’ve fallen into the love lives we have so that we can face our demons and slay them?”

“Or realize that what we thought were monsters aren’t that much different from us.”

“You really did think that vampires were walking corpses once, didn’t you?”

“Down to my toes.”

“That must make it really hard to be in love with one of them.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

She took my hands in hers. “I’m sorry I’ve been pissy about Jean-Claude. I’ll try to do better.”

I smiled and squeezed her hands. “Apology accepted.”

“I’m thirty, and I’ve never been this happy with anyone. I’ll talk to Louie about giving me a little space and maybe finding a premarriage counselor.”

“Can I say I’m happy to hear that, without you accusing me of wanting you to marry him?”

She smiled and had the grace to look embarrassed. “Yeah, and sorry about that, too.”

“It’s alright, Ronnie, we all have our hangups.”

“Trust you to find a witch for a counselor, but if you can do therapy, I guess it’s not too late for the rest of us.”

“I was talking to Marianne for months before I realized what it was.”

“You’re saying that you went to therapy by accident.”

I shrugged, squeezed her hands, and got up. Please, God, let some of the coffee still be warm.

“So you went to therapy by accident. You became the lover of the Master of the City, kicking and screaming that you wouldn’t do it. Now you’ve fallen into one, or is it two ménage à trois, when your goal in life was monogamous marriage.”

The French press was cold, but the coffeemaker was not. Yeah. “That about sums it up,” I said.

“And my goal was to never tie myself down to any one person and never to marry. Now here we are, each getting what the other one thought she wanted.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I didn’t try. I’d never gotten the impression that God had a sadistic sense of irony, but someone sure did. Was there an angel in charge of relationships? If so, that particular winged messenger of diety had a lot to answer for. I got that tiny pulse in my head that I sometimes got when I prayed. It was more feeling than words. Be happy, just be happy. Easy to say, so very hard to do.

28

AT 3:00 THAT afternoon, I was at work, right on time. Neither sex, vampires, shapeshifters, nor metaphysical meltdowns will deter this animator from her appointed rounds. At least not today.

I was sitting in Bert Vaughn’s office. He’d been the boss at Animator’s Inc. once, but recently we’d had a sort of palace coup. He was still office and business manager, but he was more like our agent than our boss. It hadn’t lost him any money, so he was happy, but it had meant that most of the animators here were like partners in a law firm. Once you made partner, you almost had to kill someone to lose your job, well, kill someone and get caught. So Bert wasn’t the boss anymore. Which meant he didn’t get to treat us like the hired help. He hadn’t liked that part, but it was either agree to our terms, or we all walked, and since he can’t raise the dead, that would pretty much put him out of business. Especially if we opened another firm in direct competition with him. So we had a new power structure, and we hadn’t worked all the kinks out of it yet.

Bert’s office was now a warm yellow with orange undertones. It was cozier than the pale blue cubicle it had once been, but not by much. The entire office had gotten a face-lift, along with buying out the offices next door, so that most of the animators at Animator’s Inc. no longer had to share their office space. Since most of our time was spent out in the field, or cemetery as it were, I thought the new offices were a waste of money, but I’d been outvoted. Charles, Jamison, and Manny had wanted bigger offices. Larry and I had been fine sharing, but Bert voted with the other three, so they’d taken out a wall and voilà, we were suddenly twice as big. The reason that most of the offices had gone to warmer tones, earth tones, comforting tones of yellows, browns, tans, ecru, was that Bert was dating an interior designer. Her name was Lana, and, though I thought she was far too good for him, she irritated me. She constantly went around talking about the science of color and how with a business like ours we needed to make people feel loved and cared for.

I’d told her that it wasn’t my job to love my clients. That I wasn’t in that business. She’d taken it wrong and hadn’t really liked me since. That was fine, as long as she stayed the hell away from my office.

Mary, our daytime secretary, had asked me to wait in Mr. Vaughn’s office as soon as I hit the door. Not a good sign. To my knowledge I hadn’t done anything wrong at work, so I had no clue what the meeting was about. Once it would have bugged me, but not now; I was used to not knowing things.

Bert came in, and shut the door behind him. Shutting the door was not a good sign either. Bert is 6' 4", and played football in college. He’d started to gain that past-forty, nearing-fifty extra around the middle, but Lana had put him on a diet and an exercise program. He looked better than he had for most of the time I’d known him. She’d even persuaded him that tanning cocoa brown every summer was not healthy for anyone. So he looked pale, but healthy. It also meant that his hair hadn’t gone that white-blond that it used to in the summer. His hair was actually a pale yellow, with a little white creeping in, but the white was so close to the way his hair used to look with his tan, that it had taken me days to figure out it was his way of going gray.

I was sitting in one of the two dark brown, nicely upholstered client chairs that had been another of Lana’s ideas. They were more comfortable than the straight-backs he’d had before. My legs were politely crossed, my hands folded in my lap. I was the epitome of ladylike.

“That skirt is too short for business hours, Anita,” he said as he rounded his big desk and eased into a chair even bigger and browner and more leathery than the one I was sitting in.

I slumped down in the chair and put my boots up on his desk, with my ankles crossed. The movement raised my skirt up high enough to flash every last inch of the lace tops of my thigh-high hose. I was a little short for the movement to be comfortable, but I doubted Bert could tell I was uncomfortable. I looked at him around the heels of my knee-high black boots.

“The skirt is also black. We all agreed that we don’t wear black to work. It’s too depressing.”

“No, you think it’s too depressing. Besides the skirt has flowers embroidered on the side by the slit. Blue, green, and turquoise, which matches exactly the shade of turquoise of the jacket, and the blue of the top, it’s like an outfit,” I said. I was also wearing a gold chain with an antique locket on the end of it. It had two tiny paintings, one in either side of it. They were tiny oil paintings of Jean-Claude and Asher. The locket had once belonged to Julianna, and was more than three hundred years old. It was handwrought gold, heavy and solid, and very antique-looking. Tiny sapphires traced its edges, with one larger one in the middle. I’d thought it looked great with the outfit. Apparently not.

The short little turquoise jacket also covered the black shoulder holster and the Browning Hi-Power under my left arm. I’d have put on the wrist sheaths, but with the jacket off, the knives showed under the thin material of the top. I could just take off the gun if it got hot enough in the office, but to remove the wrist sheaths, I’d have to strip off the shirt. It didn’t seem worth it. They were in the car, just in case I started to feel insecure.

Bert didn’t have any weapons under his rich, chocolate brown suit, which had been tailored to fit his body. As he’d lost weight, the athletic cut to his suits had emphasized his broad shoulders, which had sort of appeared as his waistline had decreased. His shirt was pale yellow, and his tie was a paler brown, with tiny gold and blue figures on it. All the colors suited him, they even brought a little warmth into his gray eyes.

I slumped down further into the chair, using the padded corner to brace my back and head. The skirt had scooted up far enough that the black silk of my underwear was peeking out, though it probably couldn’t be seen from where Bert was sitting.

“If I tell you the skirt is too short, you’ll wear something even shorter tomorrow, won’t you?”

“Yep.”

“And if I complain about the black . . .”

“I’ve got black dresses,” I said, “I’ve even got short black dresses.”

“Why do I even bother?”

“Arguing with me,” I said.

He nodded.

“I have no idea.”

“At least you’re wearing makeup, I appreciate that.”

“I’ve got a date after work,” I said.

“That brings me to another problem,” he said. He leaned forward and folded his hands on his desk. He was trying for fatherly, but he never quite made it. It came off more as pretentious.

I did straighten up in my chair, because I simply wasn’t comfortable. I straightened the skirt as I sat up. There was enough skirt to smooth down the back of my thighs. My rule for skirts was that it was too short if there was no skirt to smooth over your ass. This skirt passed the test, so I was glad Bert had given up. I really wasn’t comfortable in skirts much shorter than this one. Wearing them just to spite Bert wouldn’t have been as fun as it once would have been.

“And what problem would that be, Bert?”

“Mary tells me that the young man in our waiting room is your boyfriend.”

I nodded. “He is.” Strangely, the ardeur hadn’t risen today at all, not a quiver, not a shake. But we’d all been a little concerned about what might happen if it suddenly sprang to life at work. There was nobody at work that I wanted to have sex with, so that meant I needed someone nearby, just in case. Nathaniel was sitting outside in the warm sienna orange waiting room, looking very decorative in one of the brown leather chairs. He was wearing street clothes—black slacks, a violet business shirt that was almost a match to the one he’d worn to the wedding, and black over-the-ankle boots. He’d braided his hair so it looked as professional as ankle-length hair can, and he was reading back issues of some music magazine that he had a subscription to and had fallen behind on reading. He’d brought a messenger bag full of magazines from home and was prepared to wait until I dropped him off at work, or until he was needed, whichever came first.

“Why is your boyfriend out in our waiting room, when you’re supposed to be working?”

“I’m dropping him at work later,” I said, and my voice was much more neutral than his had managed to be.

“Doesn’t he have a car?”

“We only have two cars at the house, and Micah may need the other one if he gets called into work.”

Bert did the slow blink, and what little warmth he’d managed to get into his gray eyes faded. “I thought the one in the other room was your boyfriend.”

“He is.”

“Doesn’t that mean that you’ve broken up with Micah?”

“Your assumption is your problem, Bert.”

He gave another long blink and leaned back in his chair, looking puzzled. I’d always puzzled Bert, but just not in the personal departement. “Does Micah know you’re dating . . .”

“Nathaniel,” I said.

“Nathaniel,” Bert said.

“He knows,” I said.

He licked his thin lips and tried a different tact. “Would you think it was professional if Charles or Manny brought their wives into sit in our waiting room?”

I shrugged. “Not my business.”

He sighed and started rubbing his temples. “Anita, your boyfriend cannot sit out there the entire time you’re in the office.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because if I let you start bringing in people, everybody else will want to, and it would be a mess. It would disrupt business.”

I sighed. “I don’t think anyone else will be bringing their sweeties to work,” I said. “Charles’s wife is a full-time registered nurse, she’s a little busy, and Rosita hates Manny’s job. She wouldn’t darken the door. Jamison might bring a girl around, if he thought it would impress her.”

He sighed again. “Anita, you’re being deliberately difficult about this.”

“Me, deliberately difficult, why, Bert, you know me better than that.”

He gave a surprised burst of laughter and sat back in his chair and stopped trying to treat me like a client. He looked instantly more comfortable, and less trustworthy. “Why did you bring your new boyfriend to work?”

“None of your business.”

“It is, if he’s sitting in the waiting room that we all share. It is, if you’re going to let him sit in on clients.”

“He won’t sit in on clients,” I said.

“Then he’s going to be in our waiting room for how long?”

“A few hours,” I said.

“Why?” he asked again.

“I told you, none of your business.”

“It is, if you bring him to work, Anita. I may not be the boss anymore, but we’re also a democracy. You really think that Jamison won’t kick a fuss?”

He had a point. I couldn’t think of a lie that came close to explaining it, so I tried for partial truth. “You know that I’m the human servant to Jean-Claude, Master of the City, right?”

He nodded, eyes uncertain, as if this was not the start of the conversation he’d expected.

“Well, there’s been an interesting side effect. Trust me when I say that you’ll want Nathaniel here if things go wrong.”

“How wrong are they going to go?” he asked.

“If I take him into my office, just lock the door and make sure we aren’t disturbed. No harm, no foul.”

“Why would you need privacy with him? What side effect? Is it dangerous?”

“None of your business. You wouldn’t understand even if I told you, and it’s only dangerous if I don’t have someone with me when it happens.”

“When what happens?”

“See first answer,” I said.

“If it’s going to disrupt the office, then as manager I need to know.”

He had a point, but I wasn’t sure how to tell him, without telling him. “It won’t disrupt anything, if Mary keeps everyone away from the door until we’re finished.”

“Finished?” he said. “Finished what?”

I looked at him. I tried to make it an eloquent look.

“You don’t mean . . .” he said.

“Mean what?” I asked.

He closed his eyes, opened them, and said, “If I don’t want your boyfriend sitting in the waiting room, I sure as hell don’t want you fucking him in your office.” He sounded outraged, which was rare for Bert.

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” I said.

“Why is this a side effect of being a human servant to the Master of St. Louis?”

It was a good question, but I was so not willing to share that much with Bert. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“I would say you’re making it up, but if you were going to pull some elaborate joke on me, it wouldn’t be this.” That one comment proved Bert knew me better than I thought.

“No,” I said, “it wouldn’t.”

“So you’ve become like a what, a nympho?”

Trust Bert to find just the right thing to say. “Yes, Bert, that’s it, I’ve become a nymphomaniac. I need sex so often that I have to take a lover with me wherever I go now.”

His eyes went wide.

“Calm down, boss man, I’m hoping today will be the exception, not the rule.”

“What made today different?” he asked.

“You know, Mary told me to report to your office as soon as I hit the door. Before you could have possibly known that I’d brought my boyfriend with me, or worn a black skirt that is shorter than you would like. So you didn’t call me in here to discuss my wardrobe or my love life. Why did you want this little meeting?”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you can be very abrupt?”

“Yes, now what’s up?”

He sat up straighter, all professional and client-worthy again. “I need you to hear me out before you get upset.”

“Wow, Bert, I can hardly wait for the rest of this little talk.”

He frowned at me. “I turned the job down, because I knew you wouldn’t take it.”

“If you turned it down, why are we discussing it?”

“They doubled your consultation fee.”

“Bert,” I said.

“No,” he put a hand up, “I turned it down.”

I looked at him and knew my face said clearly, I didn’t believe him. “I’ve never known you to turn down that much, Bert.”

“You gave me a list of cases that you wouldn’t handle. Since you gave me the list, have I sent anything your way that was on it?”

I thought about it for a second, then shook my head. “No, but you’re about to.”

“They won’t believe me.”

“They won’t believe what?” I said.

“They insist that if you’d only see them, you’d do what they want. I told them you wouldn’t, but they offered fifteen thousand dollars for an hour of your time. Even if you refuse, the money belongs to Animators, Inc.”

When I said we worked like a law firm, I meant it. That meant that this money went into the kitty for everybody. The more we made, the more everyone made, though some of us got a higher or lower percentage of our fees. We’d based it on seniority. So my turning down money didn’t just hurt me or insult Bert anymore, it affected the bottom line for everybody. Most of those everybodys had families, kids. They’d actually come to me en masse and asked for me to be more flexible on my consulting fees, i.e., take more of them. Manny had a daughter about to enter a very expensive college, and Jamison was paying alimony to three ex-wives. Sob stories, but most of them, except for Larry, had more overhead than I did. So I’d started being nicer about at least talking to people when they offered outrageous sums of money. Sometimes.

“What’s the job?” I asked. I didn’t sound happy, but I asked.

Bert was all smiles. Sometimes I suspected that he’d been behind that en masse meeting, but Manny and Charles swore up and down he hadn’t been. Jamison I wouldn’t have believed either way, so I didn’t ask.

“The Browns’ son died about three years ago. They want you to raise him and ask some questions.”

My eyes were unfriendly slits. “Tell me all of it, Bert, so far I wouldn’t have turned it down.”

He cleared his throat and fidgeted. Bert didn’t fidget much. “Well, the son was murdered.”

I threw my hands into the air. “Damn it, Bert, I can’t raise a murder victim. None of us here can. I gave you a list that you were supposed to refuse for all of us, for legal reasons, and that was one of them.”

“You used to do it.”

“Yeah, before I found out what happens when you raise a murder vic as a zombie, and that was before the new laws went into effect. A murdered person rises from the grave and goes after their murderer, no ifs, ands, or buts. They will tear through anyone and anything that tries to stop them. I had it happen twice, Bert. The zombies don’t answer questions about who killed them, they just go rampaging off and try to find who did it.”

“Couldn’t the police just follow them, sort of like they do bloodhounds?”

“These bloodhounds will tear people’s arms off and crash through houses. Zombie’s do a very straight line to their murderers. And the way the law reads now, the animator that raised the zombie would be liable for all the damage, including the deaths. If one of us raised this boy and he killed anyone, even his own murderer, we’d be charged with murder. Murder with magical malfeasance. That’s an automatic death sentence. So no, I can’t do it, and neither can anybody else.”

He looked sad, probably about the money. “I told them you’d explain it to them.”

“You should have explained it to them yourself, Bert. I’ve told you all this before.”

“They asked me if I was an animator, when I said no, they wouldn’t believe me. They said if they could just meet with Ms. Blake, they’re sure they could change your mind.”

“Jesus, Bert, this is really unfair. It can’t be done, and watching their son rise from the grave as a shambling murderous zombie is not going to help them heal.”

He raised eyebrows at that. “Well, I can’t say I put it as well as you just did, but I swear to you that I did tell them no.”

“But I’m meeting with them anyway, because they offered fifteen grand for an hour of my time.”

“I could have gotten them to twenty grand. They’re desperate. I could smell it on them. If we turn them down flat, they’re going to try to find someone less reputable, less legal.”

I closed my eyes and let the air out in a long slow sigh. I hated that he was right, but he was. When people get to a certain level of desperation, they’ll do stupid things. Stupid, foolish, horrible things. We were the only animating firm in the Midwest. There was one in New Orleans and one in California, but they wouldn’t take this job for the same reason we wouldn’t. The new laws. I could say it was to save the clients pain, but in all honesty the idea that you could raise a murder victim from the grave and just ask them who killed them was so tempting that several of us had tried to do it. We’d thought it hadn’t worked because of the trauma of the murder, or that the animators doing it weren’t powerful enough, but that wasn’t it. If you were murdered, you rose with only one thought in your dead brain: revenge. Until you got that revenge, you wouldn’t listen to anyone’s orders, not even the animator or voodoo priest or priestess that raised you from the grave.

But just because none of the reputable people would do it, didn’t mean that a disreputable person wouldn’t do it. There were people here and there across the country that had the talent without the morals. None of them worked for the professional companies because they’d either been fired as a libility, or they’d never been hired. Some because they didn’t want to be hired, but most because what they did was secret and rarely something they wanted the authorities to know about. They kept a low profile, and didn’t advertise much, but if you started waving twenty grand around, they’d come out of the woodwork. The Browns would find someone willing to do what they asked, if they were willing to pay for it. Someone who would give them a false name, raise the kid, and run with their money, and leave the bereaved parents to clean up the mess and explain things to the police. There was a test case in New England at state supreme court level that was seeking the death penalty for the person who paid a magical practitioner to kill someone by magic. I didn’t know how it would go, and it would probably get to the Supreme Court before all was said and done. I’d never forgive myself if the Browns found someone less reputable and ended up on death row for it. I mean, that would just suck, especially if I could prevent it here and now.

I gave Bert the look he deserved. The one that said he was a greedy son of a bitch, and I knew he’d turned down their money for something other than humanitarian reasons. He just sat back and smiled at me, because he knew what that particular look meant. It meant I would do it, even if I hated it.

29

MRS. BARBARA BROWN was blond, and Mr. Steve Brown was brunette with gray coming in at the temples. He’s was taller than she was by about five inches, but other than that, they matched. You could still see the pretty round-faced cheerleader she’d been in high school. The handsome football player was still there in his shoulders and the edges of his face, but the extra weight and the extra years and the grief had covered over who they’d been. Their eyes were bright, but it was an unnatural brightness, almost shocky. She spoke too fast, and he spoke too slowly, as if he had to think about each word before he said it. She spoke as if talking about her son was something she had to do, or she’d explode, or break down.

“He was a straight-A student, Ms. Blake, and here’s the last picture he painted. It was a watercolor of his youngest sister. He had such talent.” She held up the picture, which they’d brought in one of those art carriers that looks like a thin briefcase.

I dutifully looked at the painting. It was a very soft picture, all watery blues and delicate yellows, and the child’s curls were almost white. The little girl was laughing, and the artist had caught a shine in her eyes that usually required a camera to capture. It was good. For a junior in high school, it was spectacular.

“It’s a wonderful painting, Mrs. Brown.”

“Steve didn’t want me to bring it. He said that you didn’t need to see it, but I thought if you saw what kind of person he was, that you’d be willing to do what we want.”

“I don’t think that seeing Stevie’s paintings will influence Ms. Blake, that’s all, Barbara.” He patted her hand as he finished, and she didn’t react to it at all. It was almost as if he hadn’t touched her. I began to understand who was the driving force behind this tragic farce. Because it was a farce. She wasn’t talking like she wanted her son brought back as a zombie so he could say who’d murdered him. She was talking like she was trying to persuade me to do a Lazarus on him, to really bring him back. Had Bert heard that in her voice and ignored it, or had she saved it for me?

“He was a track star, and on the football team.” She opened the yearbook to appropriate places, and I looked at Stevie Brown running in shorts with a baton in his hand, head thrown back, a look of utter concentration on his face. His hair was dark and not long. Stevie Brown kneeling on the ground in full football gear, helmet on the ground by his hand. He was grinning out at the camera, his bangs spilling over his eyes. He had his father’s hair, and a thinner, younger, brighter version of his mother’s face, except for the lips and the eyes, which, again, were his father’s.

I saw a picture of him on the yearbook staff, bent over a layout table, face very serious. He looked like someone that would run track, thin, muscled, but not much bulk. I wouldn’t have picked him for football, not beefy enough. But who knew if he might have filled out in the summer between junior and senior year. But he never got the chance.

Prom night, he and his senior girlfriend had been crowned king and queen. There was a picture of them in front of a background of fake silver stars and too many sequins. He was beaming into the camera. He’d cut his hair and styled it so it was neat and thick and flattered his face more than the way it had when he ran track. His shoulders were a little broader than in the yearbook or track photos. He looked taller in his white tux. The girl was blond and looked like a thinner, taller version of his mother. The girl looked confident and lovely, with a smile that was more mysterious than Stevie’s had been. Looking at their pictures, it was obvious they didn’t know that in less than six hours they’d be dead.

“Cathy and Stevie had been dating for almost two years. High school sweethearts, just like Steve and me.” She leaned forward as she said it, her lips half parted, her tongue moistened them as if she was having trouble keeping her mouth from drying out.

Her husband kept patting her hand and looked at me out of his fine dark eyes, which were so like his dead son’s. He told me with those eyes, and his so-tired face, that he was sorry. Sorry I had to see this, hear this, be here now.

I wasn’t up to the subtle eye message thing, the best I could do was nod sympathetically and give him more eye contact than I gave her. He gave a small nod where Barbara couldn’t see him. There, we’d had our moment, a very guy moment. I see you, I see you, too. I understand what you mean, I understand what you mean, too. If I’d been a better girl, I’d have said something out loud to be sure.

“He sounds like he was a wonderful person,” I said.

She leaned forward a little more, she had a small photo album in her hands, one of those thick ones that grandmothers carry in their purses. She fumbled it open, and I was staring at pictures of a dark-haired baby, toddler, grade-schooler.

I put my hand over hers, stopped her from turning the pages. “Mrs. Brown, Barbara . . .”

She wouldn’t look at me. Her eyes were getting shinier.

“Mrs. Brown, you don’t need to prove to me that your son was a good kid. I believe you.”

Mr. Brown stood up and tried to help her put the photo album back in her purse. She didn’t want to do it, and he wouldn’t fight her. He stood there, sort of helplessly, with his big hands hanging at his sides.

She leaned into the desk again and turned a page. “Here he is winning the fifth grade science fair.”

I didn’t know how to stop this without being cruel. I leaned back in my chair and stopped looking at the pictures. I made eye contact with Steve, and his eyes had grown shinier, too. If they both started crying I was going to leave. If I could have helped them, I would have, but I couldn’t. And truthfully, I didn’t think Barbara Brown had come to me to produce a zombie.

I looked back down at a picture of Stevie in eighth grade, his first year on the football team. That surprised me, I’d have thought his father would have put him in peewee league. It made me think better of Steve that he’d waited until his son wanted to play.

I covered her hands and the book with my hands. I pressed down enough that she had to finally look up at me. Her eyes were wild, as if tears were the least of our worries. There was something almost violent in that look.

I changed what I’d been going to say, because she wasn’t ready to hear me say, Leave, I can’t help you. “You told me that it happened on prom night, but you didn’t give me any details.” I didn’t really want details, but anything to stop the pictures and the desperate flow of memories. Murder I could handle. The trip down memory lane was getting on my nerves.

Her eyes flicked right, then left, and she leaned back, leaving the album in my hands. I left it open to his thirteenth birthday party. The smiling faces of him and his friends clustered around a cake.

Her breath came out in a long, slow rattle. Not a sound that you hear out of the living much. She swallowed convulsively and reached for her husband’s hand. He was still standing. His face relaxed a little just because she’d reached for him.

“They found Stevie’s car off the road, as if they’d been run into the ditch. The police think that they were picked up trying to hitchhike,” he said.

“Stevie wouldn’t have gotten into a car with strangers,” Barbara said firmly, “and neither would Cathy.” Her eyes were a little less wild. “They were good kids.”

“I’m sure they were, Mrs. Brown.” People seemed to want to make saints of the dead, as if their very goodness should have protected them. Purity was not a shield against violence, in fact sometimes ignorance got you killed faster.

“I’m not saying they weren’t good kids,” Steve said.

She ignored him, and she’d taken her hand back. Both her hands were clasped around her purse, clutching it in her lap, as if she had to hold on to something, and his hand wasn’t enough.

“They wouldn’t have gotten in a car with strangers. Stevie was very protective of Cathy. He wouldn’t have done it.” She was so certain that there was nothing else to say about that particuliar speculation.

“Then did they know the people that gave them a ride?” I asked.

That seemed to throw her. She frowned, and her eyes darted from side to side, like something trapped. “No one we know would have harmed Stevie, or Cathy.”

She’d been sure about the stranger thing, but she wasn’t really sure about this one. Somewhere in her was enough logic to know that either they got into a car with strangers or they got into a car with people they knew. There were no other choices.

“The police think that they might have been forced into another car, maybe with a weapon,” Steve said.

She was shaking her head over and over. “I can’t bear the thought of someone pointing a gun at them. I just can’t think who would have done such a thing.”

He patted her shoulder. “Barb, maybe you better wait out in the other room, while I finish talking to Ms. Blake, here.”

She was still shaking her head. “No, no, she’s going to help us. She’s going to bring Stevie back, and he can tell us who did this to him and to Cathy, and it’ll be all better. We need to know who could do such a horrible thing.” She looked up at me, and her eyes cleared for a moment. “Stevie and Cathy would not have gotten into a car with strangers. We’d talked about it. He knew that if someone pointed a gun at him and tried to force him into a car that they wouldn’t let him live. We’ve talked about that since he was a little boy.” Her breath caught, but she didn’t cry, not yet. “I know he would have done what I’d told him to do. He would have grabbed Cathy and run into the woods. The car was parked right next to the woods. They could have hidden in there. It had to be someone he knew, or she knew. It had to be someone we know, Ms. Blake,” she said, changing her tune from a minute ago. “Our beautiful boy was taken away by one of the people that have been over to our house, eating our food, giving us flowers. Someone we know is a monster and we didn’t know it.” There, that was the true horror. Not just that her son and his girlfriend had been murdered, but the murderer had to be someone Barbara and Steve Brown knew.

What must it be like to stare into the faces of your friends, your children’s friends, and wonder, was it you? Or you? Which one of you did it?

I couldn’t even argue with her, because you are more than 80 percent more likely to be killed by someone you know than by a stranger. An ugly statistic, but true.

“You say ‘monster.’ Do you mean just that they could kill your son, or something about how it was done?” Maybe it had been something supernatural. Maybe there was more than one reason they’d come to me. I could hope there was something I could do for them.

She put her hands over her face and started to cry, not quietly either.

Steve Brown spoke over her sobs, as if he’d heard them before. “What was done to them, Ms. Blake, what was done to them was monstrous.” He didn’t look like a man who’d had to say monstrous a lot in his life. I didn’t think it was a word he’d chosen lightly.

Barbara Brown was rocking back and forth, back and forth, while she wept. Her sobs must have been as loud as I thought they were, because the phone on my desk rang.

I jumped, but got it. It was Mary, our very good secretary. “Is everything alright?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you need me to pretend you have another client?”

“Fifteen minutes,” I said.

“Or sooner if it gets louder?” Mary asked.

“Yes, that would be fine.” I hung up, promising myself to send Mary flowers, or chocolates, or both.

Steve Brown was trying to calm his wife. She’d stopped rocking and was leaning in against him. The sobs had quieted, a little. When her blue eyes turned to me again, they contained that promise of violence again. If she knew who had done it, I wasn’t sure what she’d do to them. Looking into her eyes, I wasn’t at all certain that she’d wait for a judge and jury.

She spoke very fast, her words almost sliding into one another, “They raped Cathy, raped her, and they mutilated Stevie, they cut . . .” She just stopped talking, her hands pressed over her mouth, eyes impossibly wide. There wasn’t a lot of sanity left in that look.

I kept my eyes on her, while I asked Steve Brown, “So someone gave them a lift after they had car trouble, and then . . .”

“They found them in a shed in the woods,” he said, “and they’d raped them both.” He said in such a quiet voice, no change of inflection, as if he felt nothing when he said it, and maybe he didn’t, not up where he was aware of it anyway. He’d had to push his pain underground, as far as he could shove it, because Barbara’s pain was more important than his, more all-consuming.

“They cut him . . .” He almost broke then, but he rallied, and I watched him fight his face to hold it all together. “They castrated him.” One of his eyes gave an involuntary flutter. “While he was still alive.” His voice had gotten softer.

“The police never found it,” she said, and her voice was shrill, “they can’t find it. The monsters took a piece of him away, and the police can’t find it. We had to bury him without it. They took it, and we couldn’t get it back for him.” Her voice was growing louder and louder, not exactly a scream, but not far from it. The shrill edge of hysteria was in full cry. “They didn’t take anything from Cathy. Why didn’t they cut her up? Why just Stevie? Why that? Why did they take that? Why that?”

If I’d had a dart gun full of Valium, I’d have used it. But I didn’t. It was awful, horrible, but I couldn’t fix this for them, and I really didn’t need another nightmare to add to my list. I couldn’t help them. It was a human monster, and I wasn’t an expert on that kind of monster.

I finally went with that. “Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Brown, Barbara!” I yelled it, and it didn’t phase her. She was gone, gone into her pain, her sorrow, her loss. I was yelling, but there was no one home to hear me.

Mary opened the door and said something twice before I could hear it over Mrs. Brown’s voice. “Your next client is here, Anita. You’ve gone fifteen minutes over already.” Mary was looking at me, but her eyes were a little wide. She’d been a secretary and law clerk once for a criminal attorney, so she’d seen grieving and hysterical clients before, but either this was a new variety, or Mary didn’t like it any better than I did.

“I’ll use one of the other offices, Mr. Brown. I’ll give you and your wife a few minutes to collect yourselves.”

Barbara Brown ran to me. “Please, Ms. Blake, please, please help us.” She grabbed the front of my jacket. Her hand brushed the butt of my gun, and that made her pause, but only for a second. Then she wadded her hands tight in the cloth of my jacket. If she’d been a man, she might have jerked me into her, but she didn’t. She just clung to me, and begged, “Please, Steve show her the check.”

“Barbara, she’s not going to help us.”

She dug her hands tighter into my jacket, making fists of the cloth. It was a girl’s jacket, not a man’s, and there just wasn’t enough material to treat it that roughly. It pulled my shoulders forward and was limiting my mobility, and she’d made it impossible for me to go for my gun. I didn’t believe she was going to get so out of hand that I’d need the gun, but it was standard policy for me. No one got to compromise my gun, no one. The trouble was, I couldn’t figure a way to get free of her without hurting her physically. And I didn’t want to do that.

“Steve, show her the check.” She was so close to me, that it was strangely intimate, close enough to kiss, too close to fight.

“Show me whatever she wants me to see, Mr. Brown,” I kept my voice calm, no anger, no hint of what I was thinking, which was get her the fuck off me. I wasn’t unsympathetic, but a stranger had breached my personal space, and I never liked that.

His face was all apology as he drew something out of the inner breast pocket of his suit coat. It was one of those oversized checks, a cashier’s check. He held it up so I could see it clearly. The check was for a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, payable to cash.

“Take the check, Ms. Blake, we’ll sign it over to you, now, today. Right now.”

I shook my head and put my hands gently over hers, I was going to have to get her off me. “I can’t take your money, Mrs. Brown.” I tried to pry her hands away, but she gripped them tighter. The jacket was going to be permanently wrinkled.

“It’s our life savings, but we could refiance the house. We could get you more.” Her eyes were so bright right next to mine. Again that unnatural brightness, and I wondered if she was on something, something prescribed. If it was prescribed, then it was the wrong medication.

I couldn’t get her hands off of me without hurting her, and I still wasn’t willing to do that. I patted her hands, I’d try to be friendly. “It isn’t a matter of money, Mrs. Brown. If I could raise your son and find out who did this, I would. Honest to God, I would, but it doesn’t work like that.”

Nathaniel was at the door. He gave me a look, like is there anything I can do? I couldn’t think of anything, so I gave a small shake of my head.

Mary must have gone for Bert, because he appeared in the doorway with her behind him. “Mrs. Brown, you need to let Anita go. I told you before you had the meeting how it would go.” His voice was even, almost singsong, as if he’d done this before. He hadn’t done it much for me, but not everyone had my charm and ability to scare people. Usually, the gun made most clients nervous, but Barbara Brown didn’t give a fuck about my gun.

She glanced at Bert, but then turned immediately back to me, her hands still strangling my jacket. “You can’t say no, Ms. Blake, if you say no, then it’s over, and it can’t be over.” She began to give me a little shake with every other word. “And it,” shake, “can’t be,” shake, “over.” Shake.

Mother of God, how do I help her, and how do I get her off me without making it all worse. We had grief counselors on file, but I doubted she’d go to one. She wasn’t at that therapy-will-be-helpful stage. She was at that I’m-going-crazy stage.

I stopped trying to pry her off me, but I was tired of being shaken. I decided for truth. “A murdered zombie kills its killer.”

“I want them dead,” she almost screamed it, and tightened her grip so that she spit in my face, just a little, accidentally.

“The zombie cuts a path of destruction through everything and everyone in its way until it kills its killer. I’ve seen zombies kill innocent bystanders by accident.”

“Stevie wouldn’t do that,” she said, and her face was so close to mine I wanted to draw my face back to focus on her, but she had too much of my jacket in her hands, so that I was effectively trapped. “Stevie was such a gentle person. He’d never hurt anyone. He’d just tell us who did this awful thing.”

“Mrs. Brown, Barbara,” I said, and she looked at me, there was a hint of sanity in there somewhere. “It won’t be Stevie, Barbara. It will be the walking dead. He won’t be your son, he’ll just be an animated corpse.”

She lowered her face, so that I was looking down at the top of her blond head. Her shoulders slumped, and I thought I’d gotten through to her.

Bert said, “Mrs. Brown, if you’d come into my office for a few minutes, so we can all calm down, so we can all get on with our day.”

I think it was the “get on with our day.” She stiffened, and I had a second to decide whether I was willing to really hurt her, or not. I hesitated, and that was enough. She had me held too close with the jacket, I couldn’t move back, and I couldn’t raise a hand until she let me go. She scratched my face. But to do it she let go with one hand. I raised the freed arm up, and blocked her next attempt to scratch my eyes out. She let go with the other arm, but I grabbed her wrist and stepped away, pulling on the wrist at the same time. And used her own momentum to turn her around, and she ended up on her knees with one of her arms behind her back and my other arm across her shoulders. I didn’t make it a true choke hold, because I was hoping that someone might drag her off me before it got that far.

My face was burning sharply, from just below my left eye to mid-cheek. Even before I felt the first trickle, I knew it was going to bleed, it just had that feel to it.

She was screaming, loud, ragged screams.

Steve Brown was closest to us, and he said, “You’re hurting her.”

“I’m hurting her,” I said, “she tried to take out my eye.”

I didn’t have as good a hold on her as I should have, I was still trying to be nice to the poor bereaved crazy woman. She twisted in my grip and dug her nails across my hand. I tucked my elbow tight across her throat and pulled up sharp on her arm behind her back. She cried out, but it stopped abruptly because I was applying pressure to her neck. I knew how to do a choke hold so that all it did was make you pass out. I knew not to crush the Adam’s apple or anything stupid. And I admit I was pissed by this point, but Mr. Brown shouldn’t have done what he did.

He yelled, “Let her go!”

I said, calmly, I thought, “If you can’t control her, I will.”

She struggled, and I tucked my head down tight to her. Then two things happened at once: Nathaniel said, “Anita look out,” and Mary screamed. I looked up, in time to see Steve Brown hit me in the face.

It rocked my head back and made reality shift just a little to the side, like a televison that isn’t quite in focus. It didn’t really hurt immediately, not like the scratches at all. You can usually judge how bad an injury is by how long it takes for you to feel the pain. Quick pain, small to medium injury; long pain, not good.

It was a good hit, nice and solid. I think he’d expected me to go down, because he had this surprised look on his face. Or maybe he hadn’t ever hit a woman that hard before, or maybe at all. We had one of those long seconds that seem to last forever, but are really just the blink of an eye, to look at each other over his wife’s head.

I saw his lips move, but couldn’t hear what he said. The only sound was a high, white, buzzing, static, and the taste of blood in my mouth. It didn’t matter that it was my own blood. It only mattered that it was blood, and I was angry.

I had a moment, a heartbeat, where I smelled Barbara Brown’s skin underneath the sweetness of her perfume. A moment where I could smell her skin, salty, sick, almost, sick with her grief like some poison coming out of her skin. She was wounded, she was hurt, I could end that suffering. I tucked myself tight in against her body, tight enough that her husband couldn’t hit me without risking her. I still couldn’t hear his voice, but I could hear something else. I could hear her heartbeat. So loud, so very loud. It was a thick, meaty sound, not like that fragile tinny sound you get through a stethoscope. This was what a heart would sound like, if you could put your ear inside someone’s chest. This was what someone’s life sounded like, beating inside their body, beating fast and faster. Barbara Brown had smelled like food before, but now that first flush of adrenaline kicked through her system. Some part of her that she couldn’t even name knew something was wrong. Knew that danger was very, very close.

I must have closed my eyes, because I felt him looming over me. I opened my eyes to see Steve Brown about to touch me. I think he was going for my hair to pull me off his wife. But I saw the hand, and I grabbed it, just stopped it with my hand. My hand looked small around his bigger one, but my arm was solid, and when he tried to pull away, he couldn’t do it.

I still had his wife on her knees with my other hand around her wrist and her arm up almost to her shoulders. Distantly, I thought, if I kept pulling I’d dislocate her shoulder. But another part of me, which felt much closer, thought, that’s alright, we’d have to pull her apart to eat her anyway. True, if we were going to eat her. Were we?

I’d always thought that the beast was a thing of passion, because passionate emotions could bring it on. This wasn’t passionate, this was passionless. There was no right or wrong in my head. No sympathy, no sense that these two people were fellow human beings, and it would be wrong to hurt them. That wasn’t even in my head. They’d hurt me, and I was hungry, and she smelled so good, and so bad at the same time. She smelled of sickness, and I realized it was drugs. I could smell them in her sweat—acrid, bitter.

I let her go so abruptly she fell forward on the carpet, but I kept my hand on Steve Brown, and I drew him past his wife, because he had bent to see to her, and I’d pulled him off balance. He smelled of fear and anger, but nothing else. He was clean.

He stumbled, and I put a hand in his shirt, while the other used his arm to bring him in closer. I could hear his heart now, thudding, thudding, so thick, so meaty, so . . . so good.

I felt movement behind me, and I whirled, taking Steve Brown with me, tripping him without thinking about it, so that he was on the ground at my feet, with me still gripping his arm. Food should be on the ground.

Nathaniel was there, touching my face. I jerked back, as if he’d hit me, but with that one touch sound roared back into my head. A woman was screaming. Mary was asking, “Should I call the police?”

“No,” Bert was saying, “no, we can handle this.”

I doubted that. But the moment I thought that, I looked down at Mr. Brown. He was staring up at me, eyes wide, and he was afraid. I let him go as if his skin burned mine. I backed up, until I bumped into Nathaniel. I grabbed for his hand without looking, and clung to it. Just touching him helped me think. Usually all touching Nathaniel made me think about was sex or food, but today, it helped me remember that I was human and what that meant.

“Help me,” I whispered.

“Everybody out,” he said.

Everyone stared at him.

I screamed it, “Out, get out, all of you out!” I started to rush at them, but Nathaniel caught me around the waist, and I let him pick me up. I fought not to struggle. But I kept screaming, “Get them out! Get them out!”

Steve Brown grabbed his wife’s arm and started dragging her toward the door. Bert finally moved, taking her other arm, and helping. He was looking at me as if he’d never seen me before, and maybe he hadn’t. Bert had a gift for only seeing what he wanted to see.

Mary’s pale face was the last thing I saw before the door shut, and the words, get them out, changed to a wordless, formless scream. One ragged scream after another, until my throat went raw and I sagged in Nathaniel’s arms.

Before I’d only felt the beast like it was some huge pet that rubbed itself against my body and my mind, but today, I knew that that wasn’t the most dangerous part of the beast. The most dangerous part was that it was an animal, and true animals have absolutely no sense of right and wrong. I screamed, because to stop and do anything else was to risk that mind coming back up through me, and I wasn’t sure I could stop it again.

30

NATHANIEL CALLED MY name, but I couldn’t answer. I was afraid to answer. Afraid if I took even a moment to think that that other colder mind would take over again. Nathaniel dropped to his knees with his arms still around my waist. The sudden movement startled me, stopped the screams like a switch had been thrown. That other mind spilled into the silence. But it wasn’t cold anymore, it was frightened. Leopards are solitary. There are only three reasons to meet another leopard in the wild. Fighting, fucking, or eating. He was either something that would hurt us, something that would fuck us, or something that would eat us. There were no other choices in the fear that roared through my brain. I thought I’d understood what the fight or flight response was, but I’d been wrong. This made anything I’d ever felt as a human being pale by comparison. The need to strike out, or run away, thrilled all the way down to the tips of my fingers and toes. It was a rush of adrenaline like I’d never known. My entire body was thick with it, stronger, faster, because I was about to fight to the death.

I fought that panic, fought not to struggle, not to fight Nathaniel. I could get away. I knew it, and that other mind knew it. We could get away. We could be safe. But that small part that was still human knew that Nathaniel wouldn’t hurt us. We had to let him pin us, had to, because I knew I could escape. What I didn’t know was what would happen if I got away. What would happen if Nathaniel couldn’t pin me and hold me down until I could think like a person again? I didn’t want to find out, because it would be something bad, something I wouldn’t want to live with afterward.

I struggled to be still. To let Nathaniel take me down, to be limp in his arms as he pressed me to the floor. That other mind shrieked through me as my body touched the carpet. It shrieked that we would die, and it believed that. It had no friends here. I’d always thought that at least part of my beast was Richard’s wolf, but in that moment, I knew it wasn’t so. What fought me wasn’t anything that recognized the larger social order of the pack. There was only prey, rivals, mates, and young. No part of me saw Nathaniel as a child.

I let him pin me facedown on the carpet. My skirt was too short for being flat on the ground, and it began to ride up. His body molded to my back, his hands on my wrists. I fought that screaming voice in my head, to lay still, to let Nathaniel get as good a hold on me as he could. He had no training in how to pin someone. He did it the only way he knew how, by forcing my legs apart with his hips, so I couldn’t just go to my knees and lift him off. The skirt rode up my hips until it was bunched so high that there was nothing between him and me but the silk of my panties and his pants. It was a horribly vulnerable position. Even the part of me that was still me, didn’t like it. Because once you’re pinned under someone like that, your options vanish. I like options. Options keep you safe.

Nathaniel won’t hurt me. Nathaniel won’t hurt me. I kept repeating that over and over and over, as he settled his body tighter against mine. The part that was beast knew he could break our spines from this position. The part that was me felt like it was a prelim to rape. I knew that Nathaniel wouldn’t do that, and I also knew that truthfully if you’re intent on rape you want some clothes off before you get here. Because once you’ve pinned someone like this, your hands are busy, and men’s pants don’t unzip themselves. Logically, I was safe, but logic isn’t always what wins when you’re scared. The beast was scared because it couldn’t trust another leopard. I was scared of what would happen if the least dominant person in my life couldn’t dominate me enough to keep me from tearing out his throat, or breaking through that thin office door and slaughtering everyone outside. I trusted Nathaniel not to hurt me. I did not trust him to control me and keep everybody else safe. I especially didn’t trust him to keep himself safe. Hadn’t he begged me just this morning to set my teeth in his throat and draw blood? I didn’t trust him to be . . . enough. Enough leopard, enough man, enough person, just enough. And that doubt fed my fear, fed all the fears, and I lost. Lost myself. Lost control. Lost.

The last clear thought I had before panic set in was, I have to get up off the floor. I had to get up. I forgot everything I’d ever known about how to use my body, how to fight. Panic was all I felt, and panic does not plan. It reacts.

I went from that limp stillness that I had fought for, to bucking, writhing, throwing my body from side to side. I struggled with my whole body, with every muscle. I literally threw everything I had into simply trying to get up.

Nathaniel’s body rocked with me. He fought to keep my wrists pinned to the carpet, my hips pressed down, my legs apart so I couldn’t just get to my knees and throw him off. I felt him struggling above me, but he wasn’t used to being the one on top.

I threw my body to the left and lifted us both half off the ground. He shoved us back down, and I had a moment to feel the potential strength. So terribly strong as he forced us back to the floor. If he’d been willing to let go of one wrist, and used his other arm for something else, but he kept my wrists, and maybe I couldn’t get up, but he couldn’t control me either, not enough.

He was saying something, I don’t know how long he’d been repeating it, before I understood it. “Don’t make me hurt you, Anita, please, please, please!” He almost screamed the last word.

The panic in his voice told the leopard that we were winning. Make him afraid of us, and he’ll let us go. It spurred the cat, and we threw ourselves to the left again. If his back hadn’t hit the desk we’d have rolled him. I screamed, but it wasn’t fear this time, it was triumph.

We ended sitting with his back propped against the desk. His legs encircled my waist. I scratched at them, and part of me didn’t understand why the cloth did not part in bloody strips. One arm went across my chest, and only later would I realize that he’d covered my gun butt with his hand. His other hand balled into my hair, jerking hard enough that it tore a scream from my throat. I had a moment to feel his breath like heat on the back of my neck. The leopard screamed that he would snap our neck, the other part of me was just confused. Nathaniel bit me.

He sank his teeth into my skin, into my flesh. I felt his teeth slide inside me, and I stopped fighting. It was as if he’d hit a switch I didn’t know I had. At first I simply stopped fighting. My hands fell limp to my sides. My body relaxed, and what should have been pain, felt warm and comforting.

Nathaniel growled with his mouth still locked against my body, and it drew a moan from my throat. The growl turned to a purr, a deep vibrating sound, and because his mouth was locked over the top of my spine, that deep, pulsing rhythm played down my spine, as if my body were a tuning fork for his voice.

I cried out, but it wasn’t fear or triumph now.

He loosened his legs around my waist. I stayed limp and easy against his body. He uncurled his legs, slowly, body tense, as he waited for me to react, but I was past reacting. I was waiting, waiting for him to master me, it was the only word I had for it. It was the most wonderful feeling, so peaceful, so safe.

He kept his teeth around my neck, his hand in my hair, but the other hand, he took slowly away. I sank into him. My body sliding along the front of his, held in place only by teeth and hair. My skirt had bunched like a belt at my waist and rode higher behind from my body sliding against his. Nathaniel slid his arm around my waist, pulling the bunched skirt even higher, I think by accident. He drew us both to our knees with his arm around my waist. He moved his arm away from my waist, slowly. I stayed on my knees, swaying a little, because every muscle was loose and calm. I actually had to concentrate to stay kneeling and not simply fall to the ground, but his hand in my hair, and his mouth at my neck kept me upright, made me want to stay on my knees. But that little bit of effort on my part started to help me climb back into my own head, a little, not a lot, but a little more of me was here. Enough to both worry and enjoy his bite on my neck. Worry, because what would happen when he let go, would I revert back to that cold mind? Enjoy, because part of me that wasn’t just cat liked that firm grip, that pull of teeth in flesh.

I knew I was feeling better, because faintly, I could hear what Nathaniel was feeling. Not a sound, but I had no word for sensing another person’s feelings. He was scared, excited, frustrated, confused, unsure, scared, unhappy, worried. I felt each emotion like a cobweb blown across my body in the dark. Nothing to see, and when you brush at it, it breaks apart and blows away, as if it wasn’t there at all. Animals didn’t have this many emotions all at once. Confused and scared, yes, but not the rest. The rest was still too much for my beast.

Nathaniel’s free hand fumbled at the waistband of my panties. My skirt was already pushed up around my waist on its own without any help from him. He pulled my panties down to my knees, but since he was working one-handed, they came down in fits and starts, and it was anything but smooth. He growled his frustration against my skin, and it caught my breath in my throat, made me go weak at the knees. He used my hair like a handle, making it clear that if I went down on the floor it would hurt. It helped me stay on my knees. Helped me concentrate, and that helped me slide a little more inside my own skull.

I wanted to say his name. It seemed like that would help. But I couldn’t think of his name. Couldn’t say it out loud. It was as if name were an alien concept. Smell, his smell, that I knew. I tried to say it, and it took me three tries before I whispered, “vanilla.”

He’d wrestled my panties down almost to my knees. But at that one word, he stopped. He kept his hand on my hair, but he lifted his mouth from my neck, just enough so that his breath caressed like heat on the wound he’d made. “Anita, can you hear me? Are you in there?”

Was I in there? It seemed like too hard a question for me. Was I in there? I think I took too long to answer, because the next thing I felt was his belt smacking against my bare butt. His pants fluttered against me.

The beast ground my hips against him, but not to slow him down. The thoughts weren’t this clear, but it amounted to: He’d bested us in a fight, he’d earned the right to mate. I knew now why the big cats fought before they mated. You had to prove you were strong enough. That old biology imperative to only breed with the best, with the male that can give your offspring the genes they need to survive.

The leopard didn’t mind. She was ready. I, on the other hand, had a problem. Of course, I couldn’t remember what it was. Couldn’t think. Because the human part of me agreed that Nathaniel had earned his right to be here. He’d saved us. Saved all the nice people outside the office door. Office, that was it. I didn’t want to fuck at work. That was it. I moved away from Nathaniel’s body. I pulled away from him, and his fear skyrocketed. He had no way of knowing that it was the human me that was wanting to pull away. The beast smelled that rush of fear, and let out a sound in my throat that I’d never heard come out of me. It wasn’t a human sound.

He pulled on my hair so hard that it brought a gasp from my throat, but strangely, made me relax. It hurt, but it felt good, too, and gave an echo of that wonderful peacefulness that had happened when he bit the back of my neck.

He brushed the head of himself against my body, and the beast writhed for him. He whispered, “The angle’s wrong.” Then he used my hair like a handle and his other hand to put me on all fours on the floor.

The leopard crouched down in front of him, giving him my ass like we were in heat. He pulled my panties the rest of the way down my legs, got them tangled on the boots’ heels, then they were gone. Maybe the beast was in heat, but I wasn’t. Maybe it was losing my underwear, but the ass-in-air position was a little too undignified for me. I raised back up enough to be on all fours, so I didn’t look like I was offering myself to him. I opened my mouth to say something, and he pushed himself inside me, and I forgot that I could talk.

The beast had been willing, but there had been almost no foreplay, and I was tight. So terribly tight. Nathaniel had to work himself inside me. He used his hand and my hair to spill me back to the carpet so that I was back where I started. It was just as undignified, but I didn’t seem to care. For the first time the beast and I were in agreement.

I’d slept with Nathaniel, but I’d put very firm rules in place. I’d never touched him between the legs, not on purpose. To go from having deprived myself of even a caress to the sensation of him pushing his way inside my body was overwhelming. It wasn’t just that it felt good, though it did, it was that it was Nathaniel. Part of me, though I might never say out loud, had been wanting to cross this barrier, to shove it aside, to bend it, break it, ignore it.

He worked until he was sheathed inside me as far as he could go, then he hesitated, stopped moving, frozen against me. “Anita, can you hear me?”

Hear him? Hear him? The cat screamed through my head, and that scream spilled out my mouth. I lost some of the ground I’d gained, because the beast wasn’t conflicted, not in the least. It, she, began to work our hips, so that Nathaniel stayed still, but we drew him out of our body, out and out, and then when the tip of him seemed about to spill out, we drove ourselves upon him.

His voice came, “Oh, God.”

We moved over him, against him. Shoving as hard and fast and deep as we could. It was as if nothing would be enough. I wasn’t open enough to be this rough. I felt him almost catching on the sides, because I hadn’t given myself time to grow wider. But I felt frantic. There was no thought about waiting, just the need. I wanted him to fuck me. Sex was too mild a word for it. I couldn’t make him do what I wanted. I wanted deeper, I wanted more, and I needed him to help for that.

He let go of my hair, and his hands touched my hips, and he began to ride our rhythm, the cat’s and mine. We pushed and he shoved, and just like on the dance floor where I’d followed his body, now he followed mine.

It was a dance of flesh, his into mine, until I was wet and warm, and he moved easily inside me, out and in, out and in. When he could glide inside of me, he shoved himself deeper, harder, as if he understood what my body was asking without words. He used his hands to move me just a little, until he found the spot he wanted, and then he plunged inside me, as if he meant to come out the other side, and I screamed for him.

I looked back over my shoulder, and his eyes weren’t lavender, they were blue with hints of gray, and they weren’t human anymore. His shirt was open, so I could see his stomach and chest. He did a movement with his stomach like a belly dancer, and his rhythm changed, grew more urgent and somehow smoother, or cyclical, as if he were doing a circle inside me, and out of me. A circle that went lower going in and higher coming out, so that he touched all of me, but not all at the same time.

He’d worked me larger by being rough, making me take all of him and more, and now that he had a hair’s breadth of room, he used it. He used it in that circular rhythm, to caress along the walls of me. It was one of the most delicate things I’d ever felt when a man was inside me. So careful, and yet the push of his hips was so strong. The control took more strength than just shoving himself inside me. Strength of so many different kinds.

It was the upper stroke as he was pulling out that found that spot. I’d had the spot manipulated by hand and had it included in intercourse, but never quite like this.

Every time he slid over that one spot, my breathing changed, and he heard it, because he changed his rhythm again. Sliding himself over and over that small spot. Not just the tip of him, but the head, and as much of the shaft as he could manage. He used himself to stroke me in a way that I’d only had done with fingers and hands before. As always when that place inside was touched just right, the sensation of pressure was just this side of unpleasant. My body felt as if when he brought me, all the fluids in my body would fly, and not just the ones we wanted. It was always like that, that pressure, more pressure than any other kind of orgasm, as if you would lose control of your body completely. Jean-Claude had had to ease me through it the first few times. Reassure me that whatever happened it would be fine. It would be wonderful.

The pressure built and built, dancing along that line of too much. A pleasure so large it was almost pain. A pleasure that grew and grew inside me like some warm expanding thing, as if the orgasm were something separate from me, something that grew inside me and would burst out of my body.

I managed to whisper—almost hiss—his name, “Nathaniel.”

He hesitated a fraction. “Anita, are you . . .”

“Don’t stop, please, don’t stop.”

He didn’t ask again. He shifted his positon a fraction, then closed his eyes and gave himself to the rhythm of his body. I tried to move my hips, but his hands clamped tight on my hips, keeping me still. Holding me in place.

The pressure built, built, until my body was thick with it, full of it, and then it spilled out. Out in a burst of liquid between my legs, out in shrieks, out in my hands clawing the carpet. I had to claw at something, had to do something with the pleasure. It was as if it were too much pleasure for my skin to hold. If I’d had a beast inside me, it would have spilled out along with that thick liquid between my thighs.

He eased himself out of me, and I lay on the carpet, unable to move. Hell, I was having trouble focusing my eyes, let alone moving anything else.

He crawled to my head, stroking my hair back from my face. “Are you alright?”

I started to laugh, then blinked and tried to see better. He was still spilling out of his pants, and he was still hard and firm, and though there was liquid on him, it wasn’t white enough or heavy enough to be his.

I swallowed the laugh and said in a voice that was still breathy, “You didn’t go.”

“You weren’t in a head space where you could give me permission.”

I closed my eyes and willed myself to sober up. When I opened them, I could see again, no bleary edges. Good. “What do you mean, give you permission?” I asked.

“I don’t get to have orgasm unless you tell me I can.”

The look on my face must have been eloquent, because he said, with a smile, “I knew that would weird you out, but look at the benefits, Anita. I can go for a very long time, because that’s the way I was trained.”

“Trained,” I said.

He nodded.

I closed my eyes again. “You’ve been begging for orgasm, for intercourse. You had the perfect excuse, and you don’t take it.” I opened my eyes and stared at him. “Why didn’t you take it?”

“I want you to want me, Anita. Not just use me for a metaphysical emergency.”

I sat up and was reminded that I had no underwear on. I glanced at the carpet and for the first time was glad it was a dark woodsy brown. The wet spot didn’t show as badly. “Where are my underwear?” I asked.

He started looking around as if he weren’t sure either. Great. He was also still perfectly erect, and it was distracting.

“If you’re not going to . . .” I started to make a gesture, but stopped, “then can you put . . . that away.”

He turned with a smile that was perilously close to a grin. “Why, does it bother you?”

“Yes,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, pulling my skirt down over my hips.

He held my underwear out toward me. He was fighting a smile, but it filled his lavender eyes with supressed laughter.

I snatched them from his hand, but couldn’t think of a slick way of getting them on. Truthfully, I was wet enough that I needed towels before I got back into my panties.

I walked, a little wobbly, around my desk. I had baby wipes in the desk drawer. They helped with cleanup when I came into work with a spot of blood I’d missed. I was debating whether I could sacrifce my extra T-shirt that I kept in a drawer for blood emergencies, too, when Nathaniel started talking again. And not about anything I was comfortable hearing.

“You know it’s rare for a woman to be able to do that.”

I had the drawer open and the moist towelettes in hand. “What’s rare?”

“You’re a rainmaker.” He was kneeling on the other side of the desk, with his arms on the desktop and his chin resting on them. It was a strangely childlike gesture, and it did nothing to make me feel better.

“The only definition I know for that term is a lawyer who brings in big bucks for their law firm. I’m assuming that rainmaker has a meaning that I don’t know.” I made sure my unhappiness about the whole topic showed in my voice. I was uncomfortable enough just cleaning myself up. I was wet down to my knees and beyond. Jesus, what a mess.

“It’s a term for a woman who can ejaculate.”

I took in a lot of air and let it out slowly. “Can we not talk about this?”

“Why are you mad?”

That was a fair question. Why was I mad? I had to think about it to be honest even with myself. I got the spare T-shirt from the bottom drawer and dried off with it. So much for extra clothes. I slipped my underwear back on, and felt better. I always felt better dressed. Why was I mad?

I sat down in my chair, getting out the spare hose that I also kept in a drawer. I went through a lot of hose in my line of work. They just weren’t meant to be worn to animal sacrifices, bad guy chases, or vampire slayings. Nope, nylons were just not made for my lifestyle. I started unzipping my boots so I could take off the hose we’d shredded struggling on the carpet.

“Why am I mad?” I said, almost to myself. My fingertips hurt, a sharp immediate pain as the last of the endorphins left. I’d torn off half my nails down to bloody quick. Once I saw the blood it hurt worse. Why did it always hurt worse when you saw the blood?

He stood up and zipped himself back into the dress slacks. There were stains on the legs of the trousers that weren’t going to be fixed by baby wipes and a T-shirt. I didn’t have extra clothes for Nathaniel. “Yes,” he said, when he got himself safely inside, still hard, still thick, still ready. “Why are you mad?”

“You didn’t go,” I said, and started peeling off the hose. It gave me something useful to do instead of meet his eyes.

“You’re mad because I didn’t go?”

“I’m mad because if you’d gone we’d have that barrier crossed, and now we don’t.”

“And?” he said.

I sighed. “And, if we’d crossed it, it would be easier to cross it again. But doing it this way, makes it more . . .”

“Important,” he said.

I nodded. “Yes.”

He came around the desk and went to his knees at my feet. “I want it to be important to you, Anita. I don’t just want to be someone you take because you have to take someone, anyone. I want you to want me.”

“You said that before.”

He touched my hands where they held the new hose, and he moved them gently out of my hands and laid them on the desk. He took both my hands in his, and there was such a serious look in his eyes that I was afraid. Afraid of what he’d say. “You loved me before today. You loved me without sex. No one’s ever loved me, or even wanted me, without fucking me first. No one since my mother died and . . . Nicholas . . .” He bowed his head for a second, and I squeezed his hands. I’d seen that memory, and I didn’t want him thinking about it. So horrible, and he’d been so little. I wanted to protect him from things like that. I wanted to keep him safe.

He smiled up at me. “Gabriel and Raina taught me that I could be worth something, but that worth was all about my body, the way I looked, and how good I could fuck.” He squeezed my hands tighter. “You taught me that I was worth more than just fucking. You taught me that I was worth more than just being used.”

I started to say something, but he put his fingertips against my lips. “I know what you’re going to say. You think you use me with the ardeur, because I’m your pomme de sang. You don’t know what using somebody is, Anita. You just don’t know.”

There was that look in his eyes that he got sometimes that made his eyes look so much older than he was. A look of murdered hopes and more pain than anyone his age should have had to experience.

I kissed his fingers, then rested my face against his hand. “Someday I want you to stop getting that look in your eyes. I want there to be enough good in your life to balance that out.”

He smiled, and there was a tenderness in his eyes that made me have to look away. “See, Anita, you think you’re hard, and that you use people, but you aren’t, and you don’t.”

I pulled away a little. “I can be hard when I need to be.”

“But not to me, and not to Micah. Not to anyone that will let you be nice to them. If they’re shitty, you’re shitty back, but you give them the chance first.”

I shook my head. “I’m not that good a person, Nathaniel.”

He smiled and touched my face where Barbara Brown had scratched me. I winced. “Yes, you are, you just don’t like admitting it.”

“We better get dressed and out there before someone calls the cops.”

“Bert won’t call the police, he’s too afraid of bad publicity.”

I laughed. “You haven’t met Bert often enough to know him that well.”

“I’ve known a lot of people like Bert. He’s not as bad as they were, but it’s the same . . . kind of thinking. He wants his moneymaker to keep on making money more than he wants anyone to be safe or happy.”

I looked into that terribly young face, and there was no one young looking back at me. As much as I’d seen of life, Nathaniel had seen things that would have broken me. Or at least bent me all to hell. I cupped his face in my hands, and said, “What am I going to do with you?”

“I want you to make love to me,” his voice was soft, but oh, so serious.

I tried to make a joke of it. “Not right now, I hope.”

He gave me his gentle smile, the one that said he wasn’t going to let me get away with it. “No, not right now, but soon.”

I drew back from him, and I was almost afraid of him, afraid in a way that guns can’t help with. “Why are you making this so hard?”

“Love should be hard, Anita, or what is it worth? You taught me that all these months in your bed, with your body against mine and no release. You taught me how hard love can be.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t understand until yesterday.”

He leaned up on his knees and got close enough to kiss my mouth. “Don’t be sorry, make love to me.”

My voice was shaky as I said, “Not right now.”

“No,” and he breathed against my lips, “but soon.” He kissed me, one chaste touch of lips, then he stood and moved away to give me some room.

I watched him move across the room toward the door. “I’ll tell them we’re alright.”

I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. He’d given me room, physically, but emotionally, emotionally, he was giving me no room at all. I waited for the panic to set in, but it didn’t. What came was the memory of him inside my body and the thought of what it might be like to have him spill himself inside me.

31

I’D BEEN LOUD enough, and it had taken long enough, that part of me wished there was a back door to my office. But there wasn’t, so I couldn’t slink off even if I’d been willing to do it. Besides, if Bert ever suspected that I was that bothered by it, he’d use it against me. Try for some kind of leverage in the ongoing game of one-upmanship that Bert and I had played for years. The only cure for it was a bold face. Sigh.

I ran my fingers through my hair, which is all you’re supposed to do when your hair is as curly as mine. Brushing just makes it frizz. I checked my makeup in the little mirror that I’d started having to keep in the desk. The problem with dressing more like a girl was that it forced you to have to care. Once you put on the lipstick, you had to look at it periodically to make sure it hadn’t smeared like clown makeup. I liked the way lipstick looked on me, but I hated having to think about it.

The eye shadow had surived pretty well, but the lipstick was pretty much smeared all over my mouth. Again, I was grateful that the carpet was dark. Red lipstick on a pale carpet would have looked awkward. On the deep brown, you couldn’t see it.

I used some makeup remover that was supposed to be used to take off eye makeup, but I’d found it worked dandy on lipstick. I used a moist wipe to get everything off and then had to reapply the lipstick. See, so much trouble. I was just happy that I almost never wore base makeup. That would have been a bitch to get off the carpet.

When my mouth was as red as when I started, I put everything back into the desk drawer, got up, straightened my skirt, took a deep breath, and went for the door. With everything that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, having to face Bert down still took more courage than was pretty. You do not fuck at work. You just don’t. It’s déclassé to say the least. Shit.

When I stepped out into the reception area, I got a surprise. No one assumed we’d been having sex. The screams had been violent enough that everyone assumed it had been a bloody battle, a near thing. The fact that both Nathaniel and I came out bloodier than when we started helped. Mary had sat him down in her very own office chair. She was laying out bandages, while Nathaniel cleaned the wounds on his hand. They were deep, bloody nail marks. Once I would have said that it looked like a leopard ripped him up, but I’d seen the damage that real leopards could do, and I knew better now. I was sort of amazed that I’d done that much damage, though.

I went to stand near him. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m not mad.”

This close I could see that the front of his knuckles on both hands were raw as well. I frowned. “I didn’t do your knuckles.”

“Carpet burn,” he said.

I looked at the bloody scrapes and made a face. “Ow,” I said.

“I don’t mind,” he said.

Mary looked up at me. “That woman and man are in with Bert. They wouldn’t leave without their son’s things.” She looked pissed. “I cannot believe that they abused you like that.”

I licked the edge of my lip where Steve Brown had belted me and realized that it was healed. I’d put on lipstick and it hadn’t hurt. Shit, and wow. A very positive side effect. It’s nice that there were positive ones.

I touched my cheek where Barbara Brown had sliced me, and it still hurt. I hadn’t seen it in a mirror, but it had probably looked worse an hour ago.

“I’ll help you clean that up, when I’m finished with your friend,” Mary said without a trace of sarcasm. Friend, without any double meanings. It wasn’t just her typing skills that had kept Mary on as our daytime secretary. She had a real gift for taking things in stride. She had Nathaniel hold a gauze pad over his hand while she taped it. She hadn’t put plastic gloves on. I couldn’t remember if I’d told her what Nathaniel was, or not.

In human form he wasn’t contagious, but she probably had the right to know. Almost as if Nathaniel read my mind, he said, “I tried to get her to let me clean it up myself.”

Mary glanced back at me. “He told me”—she seemed to search for a word—“he told me, and I told him, that you can’t catch lycanthropy from a human being.”

Nathaniel looked up at me with those big eyes. The look said, I tried.

“You’re right, Mary, in human form there’s no contagion.”

She smiled at Nathaniel in a very motherly way. “See?”

“Most people don’t want to take the chance,” he said, softly.

Mary finished bandaging his hand and patted him on the shoulder. “Most people are just silly.”

He smiled at her, but it left his eyes wounded. Most people are just silly. She had no idea. I guess I didn’t either, not really. I’d just begun to get the reactions from people who thought I was a lycanthrope. I hadn’t lived with it for years the way Nathaniel had.

Mary turned to me, touching my cheek gently. She was shaking her head. “I wanted to call the police on them. It’s enough to file assault charges.” She started dabbing at the scratches. There must have been some alcohol in the stuff, because it stung.

I took a deep breath so I wouldn’t wince. “I don’t want to press charges.”

“You feel sorry for them?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re a better woman than I am, Anita.”

I smiled, and the cheek was a little tight for it. “I’ve been hurt a lot worse than this, Mary.”

“Never by a client,” she said.

I let that go. There were stories that Mary didn’t know, and we all stayed out of jail that way.

She was frowning at me. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re healing.”

“It’s clean enough, Mary, thanks.” I went around her to the desk and the bandages. I’d need a gauze pad bigger than the one on Nathaniel’s hand. Of course, my scratches would probably be healed by dawn, and his hand wouldn’t be. Damage that I caused seemed to heal as if another lycanthrope or vamp had cut them up. We’d noticed that just lately.

Mary turned me around with a hand on my shoulder. “You hold the gauze in place, and I’ll put the tape on, just like I did for your friend.” The look in her eyes said plainly that I was being silly, too.

I let her tape up almost the entire left side of my face just short of the eye. Barbara Brown had done this before, I’d have bet money on it. Women will try to scratch in a fight sometimes, but most of them aren’t good at it. Barbara was good at it, like she’d had practice.

Mary looked at my torn nails. “Does that hurt as much as it looks like it does?”

I never know how to answer questions like that. Hell, yes, or how should I know? “It hurts,” I said.

She handed me a small bottle of alcohol. “Take this and soak your hands in the bathroom until they stop bleeding.”

I looked at her. “Hell, no.”

She gave me the parental look. “You’ve ripped off most of the nails on both hands. Do you want to get infected?”

I thought about telling her that I couldn’t get an infection, but we didn’t know that for sure. I wasn’t truly a lycanthrope, and while I’d gained their ability to heal, I had no way of knowing if I’d gained all their abilities to keep healthy. It would be a bitch to ignore Mary’s advice, and then lose a finger to gangrene or something. But damn, it was going to hurt.

The door to Bert’s office opened before I could run off to the bathroom. His face was very solemn, though there was something in his eyes, some flicker, that I didn’t trust. Not supressed laughter, but something.

“Anita, do you want to press assault charges on the Browns?” He said it straight-faced, in a serious voice. He spent a great deal of effort making me take all kinds of shit from clients and never before suggested we press charges.

I studied his face, trying to read where this was going. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

Steve Brown showed at the door first, with his arm around his wife. “We are so sorry, Ms. Blake. Really, I don’t know what came over us. It was . . . inexcusable.”

“Thank you for not pressing charges, Ms. Blake,” Barbara Brown said. She’d been crying, and the last of her makeup had worn away. She looked older than when she’d entered my office, and it wasn’t just the lack of makeup. It was as if what had happened had sucked a little more of her life away.

“We just need our son’s things, and then we’ll go,” he said. He looked horrible, too. Not that they shouldn’t have looked horrible, but something else was going on. I didn’t know what, but something wasn’t right. Something beyond just grief and embarrassment, and fear of the cops.

“Mary will escort you into the other office for your things,” Bert said.

Mary couldn’t keep her opinion completely off her face, but she led them into my office. When they were out of earshot, I stepped up to Bert and said quietly, “What are you up to?”

He gave me innocent eyes, which meant he was lying.

“What did you do, Bert? You know I’ll find out eventually, so just tell me.”

He kept giving me that innocent blank face of his, with that false sincerity that was still in place for when the Browns came back out. I had an idea. But the act was so low I didn’t think even Bert would have tried it.

“You pretended to call the cops, didn’t you?”

He gave me a “who-me” look, which meant I was right.

“You took their check. The house check.”

“Anita, even I wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, you would, if you thought you could get away with it.”

His eyes thawed to their usually level of insincerity. “They’re coming back, just smile and agree with me.”

“Bert, either you tell me what you did, or I’ll blow it all to hell.”

He took hold of my arm, which he never does, and smiled over my head. “Ms. Blake needs a little more persuasion to agree to our deal.”

“Oh, please, Ms. Blake, please, don’t press charges. I don’t want it in the papers that I’m crazy. Our daughters have seen enough bad publicity about us.”

I turned and would have said something, but Bert whisked me into his office and closed the door. Unless I was going to put up a fight, I had no choice but to let him manhandle me a little.

He stayed by the door, with his back against it, as if he were afraid I’d bolt. “Anita, this is fair.”

“What is fair?” I said, and my voice was already warming up, ready to be pissed.

“We could press charges against them,” he said.

“But we’re not going to,” I said.

“But we could.”

“Bert, either tell me the truth, or get away from the door.”

“A bonus, Anita, for them beating the hell out of you. What’s wrong with that?”

“How much?” I said.

He looked uncomfortable.

“How . . . much?”

“Ten grand,” he said, and then went on hastily, “he owns his own contructuion firm. He can afford it, and they did go way over the line.”

I shook my head. “Bert, you bastard.”

“The wife offered me the check for the refinancing of the house when I started to talk about pressing charges. I didn’t take it. So I’m not quite as much of a bastard as you think I am.”

“You can’t take money not to press charges. That’s illegal.”

“I didn’t say outright that that was what the money was for. Hinted at it, maybe, but I know better than to say something specifically. Give me a little credit.”

I stared up at him. “You get as much credit from me as you deserve, Bert. If they calm down and tell the cops what you did, what will you say the money is for?”

“A retainer,” he said.

“I can’t raise their son, Bert, or his girlfriend.”

“Can you at least talk to the detective in charge of their case?”

“So you can keep the money?”

“I was thinking more that you might offer your expertise to the police.”

“I am not a specialist in murder, Bert, not unless there are monsters involved.”

“Does a serial killer count as a monster?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Their son and his date were the first, but not the last. He killed a couple the year after.”

“Are they sure it was the same person?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You’d need to talk to the police on the case, and for that you’ll need the permission of the parents, since as you pointed out it’s not a crime that you have jurisdiction over.” He almost smiled.

“I’ll make you a deal, boss man. I’ll talk to the cop in charge. If they think they know who it is, but don’t have proof, then I can’t help, but if they’re lost, then I have one idea.”

Bert smiled full out. “I knew you would.”

“But if my idea tanks, and they get nothing out of it, you will write them a personal check for ten grand.”

“Anita, I’ll just give back the money.”

I shook my head. “No, your personal check for ten grand.”

“You can’t make me,” he said.

“But I can start a vote to kick your ass out of here. You don’t know shit about raising the dead, or crime, or vampires. You’re the money man. But you’re not the only money man in the world, are you?”

“Anita . . . you really mean it,” he said, and he sounded surprised.

“You just cheated these people out of ten thousand dollars, Bert. It makes me wonder what else you’ve done. Makes me wonder if we need an audit of the books.”

He was getting angry, it showed in his eyes and the tight line of his mouth. “That is out of bounds. I have never cheated anyone in this company.”

“Maybe, but if a man will cheat in one way, he’ll cheat in another.”

“I cannot believe you would accuse me of that.”

“I can’t believe I haven’t wondered about it before,” I said.

His face was darkening with his effort not to explode. You could watch his blood pressure rise. “Audit and be damned.”

“I’ll make you a deal, Bert. I’ll settle for you giving them back their check, instead of a personal check from you, but you have to stop this shit. We make enough money, Bert, you don’t have to cheat people.”

“They offered the money. I didn’t ask for it.”

“No, but I bet you made it so they’d think of it. Nothing said outright, like you said, but you put it out there, somehow, you made them think of it.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then leaned back against the door. “Maybe I did, but, Anita, they made it so easy.”

“You just couldn’t resist, could you?”

He let out his breath in a long shoulder moving sigh. “I lost my head, a little.”

I shook my head and almost laughed. “No more losing your head, Bert, okay?”

“I’ll try, but I can’t promise. You wouldn’t believe me.”

I did laugh. “I can’t argue that.”

“Do you want me to tear up the check now?”

I watched his face for the signs of pain that parting with money usually cost him, but all I saw was a resignedness, as if he’d already given the money up for lost.

“Not yet.”

He looked up, hope showing momentarily in his pale eyes.

“Don’t get excited. It’s a slender little hope, but if it helps lead to something that can help the police then we’ll have earned some money. If it doesn’t, then we can return the money.”

“Do I want to know what your plan is?” What he was asking was, was it illegal, and did he not want to know so he’d be able to deny it later. Bert knew that I stepped over lines that wouldn’t just get jail time, but an execution notice. I knew that he was just this side of a con-man, a swindler, but he knew, or suspected, that I was just this side of a cold-blooded killer. There were bosses that couldn’t have handled that doubt, or that almost knowledge. We stood and met each other’s eyes, and we had an understanding, Bert and I.

“I’m going to see if the cops will bring down some of the boy’s clothes for Evans to look at.”

“The touch clairvoyant that tried to cut his own hands off?” He made a face when he said it.

“He’s out of the hosptial,” I said.

He frowned. “But didn’t the paper say that he tried to cut off his hands so he wouldn’t see murders and violence every time he touched something?”

I nodded.

“Anita, I never thought I’d say this, but leave the poor guy alone. I’ll give back the money.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he being nice to fool me? Did he mean it? Out loud, I said, “Evans is feeling better than he has in years. He’s taking active clients again.”

Bert looked at me, and it wasn’t an entirely friendly look. “This man has tried to kill himself to keep from seeing these things, and you want to take items from a serial killer case where he cut up a nice teenage couple. That’s cold, Anita, that’s truly cold.”

“Evans put himself back on the market, Bert, I didn’t. He’s married now, and he’s a lot more relaxed than he ever was before.”

“Love may be grand, Anita, but it doesn’t cure everything.”

“Nope,” I said, “it doesn’t.” What I didn’t try to explain to Bert was that Evans’s new wife was a projective psychic null. She negated most psychic abilities within yards of her. Evans was a lot calmer around her. She truly had saved him.

His small pale eyes narrowed at me. “That man out there, the boy, he’s your boyfriend.”

I nodded.

“Just your boyfriend?” he made it a question.

“What else could he be, Bert?” And it was my turn to have the innocent face.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but the noises from your office were a hell of a show, and that was without any visuals.”

I didn’t blush, because I was working too hard at keeping control of my face and eyes. “Do you really want to know, Bert, or do you want deniability later?”

He stood there for a moment, thinking, then shook his head. “I don’t need to know.”

“No,” I said, “you don’t.”

“But you’d tell me the truth, if I wanted to know?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Why, why would you tell me?”

“To watch your face,” I said, and my voice was soft, and not altogether pleasant.

He swallowed hard and looked just a little paler than his untanned face had a moment before. “It would be something bad, wouldn’t it?”

I shrugged. “Ask and find out.”

He shook his head again. “No,” he said, “no.”

“Then don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” I said.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said.

I nodded, again. “Exactly.”

He gave that roguish, I-know-something-you-don’t smile. “But we get to keep the ten grand.”

“For now. If Evans agrees to see the evidence, we’ll need a bankroll.”

“Is he that expensive?”

“He risks his sanity and his life every time he touches another clue. I’d make people pay for that, wouldn’t you?”

A light came into Bert’s eyes. “Does he have a business agent?”

“Bert,” I said.

“Just asking, just asking.”

I had to shake my head and give up. Bert had a real genius for making money from psychic gifts that other people thought of as curses. Would it be so bad if he could help Evans make more money? No. But I wondered if Bert understood that Evans was one of the most powerful touch clairvoyants in the world. That to brush against another person with his fingertip told him more about that person than most people would ever know. Bert would probably offer to shake hands, and the deal would be off. I only suspected what Bert was. One touch, and Evans would know for sure. In a way, if Evans didn’t run screaming it would be reassuring for me. I would never offer to shake hands with Evans. One, you never offer your hand to a touch clairvoyant, just bad form. Two, Evans had brushed up against me before, by accident, and he hadn’t liked what he saw. Who was I to throw stones at Bert, when he might pass Evans’s radar unscathed, and I knew that I would go down in bloody flames?

32

THE REST OF the afternoon appointments were damned boring compared to the Browns. Thank God. Nathaniel sat, quietly, in a corner of my office through all of them, just in case. Bert didn’t argue now. I’d had two appointments with lawyers to discuss wills and other priviledged material. They’d objected to Nathaniel, but I’d told them that legally the conversation with me wasn’t priviledged, so why did they care. Legally, I was right, and lawyers hate for a non-lawyer to be right. Or at least the ones I meet get cranky about it. So then, they’d wanted to know who he was and why he got to sit in on their meetings.

I told the first one, do you want this meeting, or don’t you, and he let it go. The second one didn’t let it go. My fingers hurt where I’d torn off the nails. My face hurt even if it was healing. My pride was hurt from having sex in the office. I was not happy, so I told the truth.

“He’s here in case I have to have sex.” I smiled when I said it, and knew that it didn’t reach my eyes, but I didn’t care.

Nathaniel had laughed and done his best to turn it into a cough.

The laywer, of course, didn’t believe me. “It was a perfectly legitimate question, Ms. Blake. I have every right to protect my client and his interests. You don’t have to insult us with ridiculous lies.”

So I stopped insulting him with lies, and we got down to business.

Every client, or group of clients, had to ask about Nathaniel. I told them he was everything from domestic help, to lover, to office boy, to personal assistant. Nobody liked any of my answers. I stopped caring long before I stopped seeing clients. I actually started telling the truth again, and the two new groups that I told it to got insulted. Insulting lies, they called it. Try to tell the truth, and no one believes you.

What I’d wanted to talk about all afternoon had been my beast. I had a lycanthrope right there, and we didn’t get five minutes of peace to even begin the discussion. I had so many questions, and no time to ask them. Maybe that was why I was so grumpy to the clients. Maybe, or maybe I’m just grumpy. Even I wasn’t sure sometimes.

It was seven o’clock by the time we climbed into the Jeep. Bert had passed my 7:30 cemetery appointment on to Manny without me having to ask. He even apologized for overbooking me. He always overbooked me, and he’d never apologized before. I think the realization that I could call a vote and get his ass kicked out had made him a better boy. Or maybe it was just the realization that I knew that any one of us could call a vote and kick him out. If Bert had any weakness in business it was assuming that those of us without a business degree didn’t understand business. A little fear isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it can be downright therapeutic for some people. I didn’t expect for the nicer version of Bert to last, but I’d enjoy it while I had it.

I’d actually turned off onto Olive in the direction of the city. I had just enough time to drop Nathaniel off at Guilty Pleasures and be only about fifteen minutes late for what was now my first outside appointment of the evening.

“Where are you going?” Nathaniel asked.

“Guilty Pleasures,” I said.

“You need to eat first.”

I glanced at him as I slowed for a stoplight. “I don’t have time to eat.”

“You know how when you don’t feed one hunger the other hungers get worse?” His voice was so gentle when he asked, but I’d begun to mistrust that particular gentle tone. It usually meant he had a point to make, and he was right, and if I’d only accept it, I’d see that he was right, too. It usually meant that the argument was lost before it had begun. But I never considered defeat a reason not to put up a fight.

“Yeah, I know. If I deny the ardeur the beast wants meat more, or the vampire wants blood. I know all that.”

“So what happens if you don’t feed your human stomach, you get hungry, right?”

The light changed, and I eased forward. Saturday night traffic on Olive was always fun. “Yeah,” I said. I was looking for the trick, and didn’t see it.

“So if your body gets hungry for normal feeding, then doesn’t that make all the other hungers worse?”

I almost hit the car in front of me, because I was staring at him. I had to slam on my brakes and endure much horn blowing, and, if it hadn’t been so dark, I’m sure I’d have seen some hand gestures. “What did you say?”

“You heard me, Anita.”

I sighed and started paying better attention to the traffic. But inside I was kicking myself, because it was so simple. So terribly simple. “I don’t eat regularly when I’m working, and that usually means that I’m running home with the ardeur riding me every night.”

“Sometimes twice a night,” he said. “How much do you eat on those nights? Real food, I mean.”

I tried to think, and finally had to say, “Sometimes nothing.”

“It would be interesting if you kept a food diary to see if there was a correlation between starving your human body and the other hungers rising.”

“You talk like you know this already,” I said.

“Haven’t you noticed that lycanthropes cook and eat?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I thought about it. Richard cooked, and had always been either taking me out to dinner or wanting to cook for me. Micah cooked, though Nathaniel did more of it. We usually had a house full of wereleopards for at least one meal a day.

“You mean there’s a reason that all the lycanthrope men I’ve dated have been domestically talented?”

He nodded. “We need to eat a nice balanced diet, heavy on protein. It helps keep the beast at bay.”

I glanced at him, and in the near dark of the streetlights, he was mostly in shadow. His lavender shirt was the palest thing about him. “Why didn’t someone mention this to me before?”

“We’ve been treating you like you’re mostly human, Anita. But what I saw today . . .” He seemed to be searching for words. Finally he said, “If I didn’t know that you were human and couldn’t slip your skin and be a leopard for real, I’d think you were one of us. The way you felt, the way you fought, the way you smelled, everything was shapeshifter. You did not come off like a human. Turn into the parking lot here,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we need to talk.”

I did not like the sound of that, but I turned in to the strip mall that had Culpeppers at one end. I parked in the first space I found, which was far away from any restaurant. Most of the stores were dark and closed. When I turned off the engine, the world was suddenly very quiet. The traffic on Olive was still snarling by, and in the distance was music from one of the restaurants, but inside the Jeep it was quiet. That silence that you get inside cars after dark. With one switch of a key, the space inside a car becomes private, intimate.

I turned to face him, having to work against the seat belt, but I wasn’t comfortable taking if off until I was ready to get out of a car. “So, talk,” I said, and my voice sounded almost normal.

He turned in his seat as far as his seat belt would allow. He knew my thing about seat belts. He faced me, putting one knee up to prop himself against the center panel. “We’ve been treating you like you’re human, and now I’m wondering if we were right.”

“You mean I’m going to shift because I’m in a new triumverate?”

He shook his head, and his long braid slid across his lap like a heavy pet. “Maybe what happened with that has made it worse, but I think one of the reasons you haven’t been able to get a handle on the ardeur is because you’ve been taking almost all your advice from a vampire. He doesn’t need to eat, Anita. There is only blood lust and the ardeur for Jean-Claude, that’s it. A lycanthrope doesn’t stop being human. You still have to eat like a person, you just add the hunger of the beast, but you don’t lose a hunger, you just add on to it.”

I thought about it. “So you mean that since I’m already fighting off normal hunger pangs, that it makes it harder to fight the ardeur?”

He nodded, and his hair slid across his lap again, as if the braid were moving closer to me. “Yes.”

I thought about it, and it seemed utterly logical. “Okay, say you’re right, what do I do? I’m still running late tonight. I’m usually running late.”

“Tonight we go through a drive-up. You get something easy to eat behind the wheel, and I get a salad.”

I frowned at him. “A salad, why? Most drive-up salads suck.”

“I have to eat before I go on tonight.”

“So you’ll be able to control your beast better,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But why a salad? I thought you needed protein.”

“If you were going to take off all your clothes in front of strangers, you’d get a salad, too.”

“One burger a few hours before you go on won’t make you gain weight.”

“No, but it might make me bloat.”

“I thought only girls did that.”

“Nope.”

“So you’re eating a salad so you’ll look good tonight,” I said.

He nodded, and his hair slithered over the edge of his leg and across the gear shift. I had this horrible urge to touch that heavy band of hair. A little voice in my head said, Why not? After what we’d done this afternoon, what’s a little hair touching. Logical, but logic didn’t have much to do with how I acted around Nathaniel.

I clasped my hands together in my lap to keep from touching him, then felt silly. What the hell was I doing anymore? I reached out to that heavy curl of hair and pet it, like it was more intimate to him than it was. The hair was soft and warm. I petted his hair while I talked. “The beast isn’t conflicted about anything, is it?”

“No,” he said, and his voice was both loud and soft in the quiet dark.

I began to pull his braid, gently up from around his body where the end had slid. “It’s not just the hunger for flesh and blood that you fight, is it?”

“No,” he said.

I got to the end of his braid and spilled it into my hands. “I thought that the hunger was the beast. That desire to chase and feed; I thought that was all of it.”

“And now?” he asked.

I stroked the tip of his braid across my palm, and just that made me shiver. My voice was shaky when I said, “Richard always talked about his beast like it was all his baser impulses, you know, lust, sloth, the traditional sins, but to sin implies a knowledge of good and evil. There was no good or evil, there was nothing like normal thought. I hadn’t really understood how all my thoughts are based on things. I’m always thinking about how one thing affects another. The consequences of your actions.” I lifted more of his braid in my arms, and it was like holding a snake, a soft, thick serpent. I gathered his hair into my arms and let myself cuddle it against my body. I was about at the limit for the seat belt, and I wanted to be closer to him. The seat belt stayed.

I hugged an armful of his braid to my chest as I said, “I stopped thinking about the Browns’ grief, their dead son. It wasn’t that I chose to ignore it. I wasn’t being callous, it just never entered my mind. It was just that they hurt me, and I got mad, but mad translated directly to food. If I killed them and ate them, then they couldn’t hurt me anymore, and I was hungry.” I met his eyes on that last word.

Some trick of reflected light made his eyes shine for a moment, like the eyes of a cat in a flashlight’s beam. He turned his head, and it was gone, his eyes lost in shadow again. The turn of his head tugged on his hair, and I had a second to decide whether I would let it go, or keep it. I kept it, and it put a strain down the line of his hair, a strain like pulling on a rope, and knowing it was tied tight.

His voice was a little breathy when he said, “You’re always hungry when you first change shape, especially if you’re new at it.”

“How do you keep from tearing into the crowd at the club?” I asked, and my voice was a little shaky, too.

He leaned back away from me, and it made the pull on his hair tighter, harder. “By channeling the hunger into sex instead of food. You don’t eat your mate. If you can fuck it, it’s not food.” His voice was lower, not deeper exactly, but lower.

“So how did I not eat anybody? I wasn’t thinking about sex with the Browns.”

“At first you are just the hunger, but after a few full moons, you can think, but you don’t think like a person. You think like your animal. A few more full moons after that and you can choose to think like yourself in animal form.”

“Choose?” I said, and began to pull him toward me, using his braid like a rope, but this rope was attached to his skull, and he didn’t come easily. He began to pull against me, and I knew that it had to hurt just a little.

His voice was low and soft. “Some people enjoy the purity of the animal. Like you said, no conflicts, no inner struggles. Just decide what you want and do it.”

“Undo your seat belt,” I said.

He undid his seat belt.

I pulled him to me with his hair tangled around my arms, like you’d coil a rope or a strings of lights. “Does anyone use the animal for a patsy, you know, crime? A lot of what keeps some people good is their conscience. The beast doesn’t have one of those.”

He was close enough to kiss, his face lower than mine, because of his braid holding him just a little to one side. “The animal is very practical,” he whispered. “It’s why so few people use their animal form when they commit murder. I don’t mean accidental kills, because they don’t have the control, but deliberate murder.”

I leaned over him. “Example.”

“Say, your uncle will leave you a fortune but he needs to be dead so you can inherit it. Unless your beast is hungry, it won’t kill your uncle for money, because the beast doesn’t understand money.”

I leaned close enough to almost kiss him. “What does the beast understand?”

He spoke with his lips almost against mine. “It will kill someone you truly fear, or someone who’s hurt you, especially physically. The beast understands being hit, being injured.”

I almost asked if he’d hunted down the man who beat him and his brother, but I didn’t. I’d seen his memories. If someone had done that to me, what would I have done? Bad things, most likely. And I didn’t want to fill the car with hurt and bad memories. I’d had enough of those.

I laid a kiss on his mouth, and he pressed me back against my seat. I found that still being seat-belted, I couldn’t move well. My arms were tangled in his braid so that it felt like I was being bound. I had a moment of panic, then I relaxed into it. Nathaniel would not hurt me, and it was my own fault about the hair being where it was. He hadn’t wrapped me up, I’d done that.

He drew back just enough to talk, his lips brushing mine. “What about your clients?”

I drew my head back as far as I could, which wasn’t far, and said, “I’m not offering to fuck you here and now.”

“You’re not?”

That made me mad, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. “No, I’m not.” I started trying to untangle myself from his hair.

He drew back with a smile that showed for an instant in the lights. “I want to encourage you to touch me. God knows I do, but if you do too much with the ardeur not fed, and neither of us fed, then the night is over. You’ll be pissed with yourself, and me, and I don’t want that.”

I got most of me free from his braid, except for the part that was caught on the back of the Browning. If it hadn’t been a gun, I’d have jerked, but even with the safety on, I didn’t trust it enough. Stupider accidents have gotten people shot. Neither Zerbrowski nor Edward would ever let me live it down. So I took a deep breath and forced myself to carefully untwine Nathaniel’s hair from my gun.

Nathaniel had buckled himself back into his seat. “I would love to repeat this some time and place where we didn’t have to stop.”

I was still trying to get his hair off my gun. The fact that he was in his seat but his hair wasn’t told you just how long his braid was. “You had your chance,” I said, and I sounded mad.

“Don’t be grumpy at me,” he said, “I wasn’t the one who pulled you into my lap.”

I had the last of his hair free of my gun. I started to fling the end of his braid back at him, but stopped myself. He was right. Right about who started it. Right about how mad I would have been if the ardeur had risen before I got my work done. He was right. When people are right, you shouldn’t get pissed at them. Or that was the new theory.

“Fine, I’ll go through a drive-up. I’ll eat a burger, you can have your salad. Will that make you happy?” I turned on the engine and started pulling out of the parking space.

“No, but it’ll get us both to work tonight.” He sounded sad.

I glanced at him as I maneuvered may way through the parked cars. “Don’t be sad.”

“I’m not sad,” he said, but he sounded it.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just that you reached for me. There wasn’t a metaphysical emergency. The ardeur hadn’t risen, yet. The beast was nowhere in sight. Blood lust wasn’t anywhere, and I had to say, stop. But the ardeur will rise tonight, Anita, and having sex with it not being fed yet is just inviting trouble.” He leaned his head against the window. His shoulders were rounded, as if he’d hunched in upon himself.

“You’re right about the schedule and the ardeur and needing to eat, Nathaniel. I don’t know what came over me just now.”

He turned to look at me, and we were in the bright halogen lights of the street, so I could see his face clearly. He looked almost in pain. “Couldn’t it just have been that you wanted to touch me, is that so wrong?”

I sighed and concentrated on the road, because I had to. But also, it gave me time to think. I turned us back the way we’d started, but this time I knew we’d go through the drive-up at McDonald’s. Honest.

I finally did the only thing I could think of to take that miserable look off his face. I touched his thigh, because it was the only part of him I could reach easily. He’d pulled so far away in his seat that I couldn’t reach anything else without straining. I was driving, and that had to take priority over offering comfort, even when it was my fault for saying stupid things. I touched his leg, gently, tentatively. I wasn’t always good at touching when sex wasn’t involved. I was trying to get better at it, but the learning curve seemed to rise and fall depending on my mood, or someone else’s.

He touched my hand with his fingers. I held my hand up to him, eyes still on the road. He laid his hand in mine.

“I’m sorry, Nathaniel. I’m sorry that I’m such an ass sometimes.”

He squeezed my hand, and when I glanced at him, he was smiling at me. That one smile was worth a lot more than hand-holding to me. “It’s alright,” he said.

“I notice you don’t disagree that I’m being an ass.”

He laughed. “You don’t like it when I lie.”

I stared at him for a second, mouth open, then I went back to staring at traffic. “I can’t believe you said that.”

He was laughing so hard that our hands jiggled up and down on his leg. “Neither can I,” he said.

But I didn’t get mad. When you’ve been an ass to someone you care about, you should just admit it, move on, and try not to do it again.

33

THERE IS ALMOST no parking on The Landing. The streets are narrow, and most of them are cobblestoned. It’s very quaint, but the streets were originally planned for horses, not cars, and it shows. There is no employee parking at Guilty Pleasures, because there isn’t room. So I had to park the Jeep down a ways, and we got to walk, but Nathaniel touched my arm before I got too close to the bloodred neon sign and the front entrance. He took me down an alley that I hadn’t even known was there. I mean, I knew it was there, but not where it went. I’d never really thought that there must be a performers’ entrance just like for Circus of the Damned.

The alley was an alley, which meant it was narrow, cramped, not as clean as you’d like, not as well lit as you’d prefer, and made my claustrophobia complain. Not badly, but enough to let me know that any alley that I could touch both sides of was too damn narrow for comfort.

I’d meant to simply drop Nathaniel at the club and run to my next appointment, but a call on my cell phone had taken a lot of the angst out of my schedule. My second appointment for the night, now my first, had to cancel. Mary said that the lawyer had told her that he had to tend to the needs of another client unexpectedly. Translation: He needed to bail someone out. It didn’t have to be that, but it probably was. I’d gotten better at translating lawyer over the years, though no better at legal jargon. Jargon is meant to be as unclear as possible, and it’s good at its job.

So suddenly my first appointment of the night was at nine o’clock, and I had time to escort Nathaniel inside and talk to Jean-Claude. God knows there was enough to talk about. So that’s how I came to be threading my way down an alley, following Nathaniel’s broad shoulders. His shoulders almost brushed the walls. I don’t think Dolph would have fit at all.

Nathaniel hesitated, and I couldn’t see around him, but just his posture let me know something was wrong. Women’s voices, high and excited, called, “Brandon, Brandon!”

He waved, then turned sideways so I could see past his chest. There was a handful of women near the steps leading up to a door with a bright light over it.

I leaned in to him and whispered, sort of, “Why do I think you’re Brandon, and are they supposed to be here?”

He whispered back, smiling and waving at the women, who were beginning to come down the steps, as if trying to decide whether to come meet him. “My stage name, and no. Security is supposed to keep this area clear.” He started to walk toward them.

I grabbed his arm. “Shouldn’t we go back the way we came?”

“They probably just want an autograph or to touch me. It’ll probably be okay.”

“Probably,” I said.

He patted my hand. “If I tell you I’m sure that they won’t get bad weird, then I’d be lying, but probably they don’t mean any harm.”

“I’d feel better if we went back,” I said.

“No,” he said, and he sounded very firm. “These are my fans, Anita, and this is my job. I’m going to smile and talk to them, and you can pretend to be my bodyguard, or pretend to be security, but it’s bad business for you to be my girlfriend. It hurts the illusion.”

“The illusion?” I made it a question.

He smiled. “That they can have me.”

I gave him the long blink, the one that means I’ve just received more information than I wanted and don’t know what to do with it. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll be security.” There, I was cool. I could handle this. Sure, I could.

He let me go in front, because that’s what I’d do if I were security. He didn’t try to argue, since he could wave and smile and call to them over my head. I fought to keep my face blank and not cranky, but I think I failed.

There were four of them: two blondes, one brunette, and one with hair as black as mine. Though I could tell hers came out of a bottle, because it was too solid, all-over black, no highlights. Black hair isn’t supposed to look like you’ve poured ink on your head. But again, maybe that was just me being cranky.

Nathaniel, alias Brandon, chatted the women up like a pro. The two blondes were regulars, apparently, on a first-name basis. “We were so excited when we got the E-mail that you were going to be here tonight,” one gushed. She kept touching his arm while she talked. They’d brought a friend, the one with black hair, who was new, but had seen his pictures on the club’s Web site. I hadn’t known that Guilty Pleasures had a Web site. Of course, I didn’t own a computer, so what did it matter to me?

Raven-hair said in a voice that was breathy with nervousness, “Your pictures were amazing.” She looked at him with little covert glances, as if she was afraid to stare at him head-on. One of the blondes got an honest-to-God autograph book out for Raven-hair, who was quote, too shy to do it herself, unquote.

The brunette wasn’t joining in the squeal fest. She was looking at me, and it wasn’t a friendly look. “Who’s she?” she asked.

I was standing beside the door at the top of the steps, hands loose at my sides, trying to look bodyguardish, and probably failing. My little blue and black skirt outfit, complete with high heeled boots, didn’t look much like security detail.

“Security,” he said smiling, and signing Raven-hair’s book.

“She doesn’t look like security,” the brunette said.

“I’m new,” I said.

Brunette didn’t look like she believed me. She crossed her arms underneath her small, tight breasts and glared at me.

I smiled back sweetly.

That deepened her scowl and gave her little lines between her eyebrows. I felt better.

Nathaniel gave me a little flicker of a look that said as clearly as if he’d spoken, “Be nice.” I was nice. I smiled and stood and let the blondes touch his arms, his back, but when one of them patted his ass, that was it.

I pushed away from the wall, and said, “Ladies, Brandon here needs to get inside and prepare for his performance.” I managed to keep smiling even when one of the blondes threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. Then the other blonde grabbed him and kissed him on the other cheek.

I grabbed his arm and moved him back far enough so I could open the door. The two women were still clinging to him. Raven-hair was blushing, and the brunette was still scowling at me. I kept my smile in place, though it felt more like a grimace.

Nathaniel said, “Beth Ann, Patty, if you don’t let me go, I can’t get on stage.”

“Stay out here with us, and we wouldn’t care,” one of them said.

I glanced behind me and saw a black-shirted man. It was Buzz, the vamp that usually worked the door here. He had the same black crew cut that he had always had, small pale eyes, and more muscles than you should need as a dead man. His black shirt said GUILTY PLEASURES SECURITY in red letters. I didn’t usually like Buzz much, but tonight I was glad to see him. Help had arrived.

I could have cleared the steps if I was allowed to be mean, but having to be nice at the same time I was trying to be firm was beyond me. My skill set simply did not include it.

He forced his face into a smile before the women behind me could see him clearly. He was the newly dead, around twenty years, which meant he looked very alive for a dead man. Most humans wouldn’t have spotted him in a crowd. Most people think that vamps gain the ability to pass for human, but that’s never been my experience. Older is less human, just better at the mind games so humans don’t notice.

“Ladies, you’re not supposed to be back here,” Buzz cajoled. He moved past me, and his chest was so muscle-bound that it looked like there wasn’t room for all of us and his upper body to stand on that small landing.

The brunette said, “Is she really security?”

“If that’s what she said,” he said in the same good-fellow-well-met voice. He was cheerfully extracting Nathaniel from the blondes. He managed to make a game of it, and they spilled around Buzz’s muscular body, as if to say, if they couldn’t cling to Nathaniel, any male would do. Of course, from the sound of the joking conversation, the blondes knew Buzz, too.

Raven-hair had backed down the steps, eyes a little wide. She didn’t want to play. It made me think better of her.

I drew Nathaniel in through the open door, with the brunette giving me a murderous glare. She was taking this way too personally. It was sort of unnerving. Nathaniel and I were safely through the door, but I didn’t like closing it and leaving Buzz out there alone. I mean, he’d helped us. What were the rules about security guards? Did they get protected, too, or just the dancers and customers? If you cut a security guard did he not bleed? So I stood there uncertainly with Nathaniel. It was Nathaniel who gently closed the door.

“Buzz will be fine, he knows how to talk to them.”

“What, you read my mind?”

He smiled. “No, I just know you. He helped us, and now you feel obligated.”

I fought the urge to squirm or shuffle my feet. I hated when anyone figured me out that clearly. Was I that transparent? Apparently so.

I decided to change the subject. “How did they know that ‘Brandon’ would be here tonight?”

“When we change headliners, we have an E-mail list that we notify. There’s even a list just for Brandon.”

I looked at him. “You mean that some of these women dropped everything, changed all their plans, because they found out that Brandon was going to be here tonight?”

He shrugged and managed to look a little embarrassed. “Some of them, yes.”

I shook my head. I changed the subject again, because I was losing again. “Who was supposed to be keeping the fans away from this door?”

The door in question opened. Buzz laughed and joked, until the door closed behind him, then he leaned against it and looked tired. “Primo was.”

It took me a second to realize that he’d answered the question I’d asked with the door closed. “You heard me ask the question?”

He nodded. Then he grinned flashing fangs, the sign of a new vamp. “You didn’t know I could hear you through the door?”

“Hear, yes, but I thought you were too busy concentrating on the women outside.”

He looked past me at Nathaniel. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

Buzz pushed himself away from the door and stood, settling his big, overdeveloped shoulders like a bird settles its feathers. “I better go talk to Primo, for what good it will do.”

“What do you mean, good it will do?” I asked.

He looked at me. “Primo is old, really old. He wants to be one of Jean-Claude’s vamps, but he had his eye on like the number two, or at least number three slot. He’s pissed that he’s having to be security at a strip club. He’s more pissed that a baby like me is his direct boss.” Buzz looked worried. “He’s old school, and he thinks if he keeps pushing me, that I’ll call him out. But I am not going to challenge that thing. He’d kill me.”

“Have you told Jean-Claude what’s going on?”

He nodded. “He told Primo that if he couldn’t stomach this job and obey me, then he could get out of town.”

“Did that help for awhile?” I asked.

Buzz smiled. “Have you heard this story before?”

“No, but I know how the really old vamps can be. They are proud bastards.”

Nathaniel touched my arm. “I need to talk to Jean-Claude about tonight’s performance.”

“I’ll join you in the office in a minute.”

Nathaniel started to say something, then seemed to think better of it and just went down the white hallway. I watched him go into the office that was just a few doors down. Then I turned back to Buzz. “Is it just not doing what he’s told, or is there more?”

“He’s started taking money to let in people we don’t let in.”

“Like who?”

“Men.”

I raised eyebrows. “You don’t let in any men?”

“Not a lot. It makes the women uncomfortable, and some of the dancers don’t like it either. You’re either comfortable shakin’ your thing in front of other men, or you’re not.”

“I guess that makes sense, but you let some in.”

“Couples, just like they do at most female strip clubs across the river.”

“But Primo is letting in single men,” I said.

He nodded.

“What did Jean-Claude tell you to do about it?”

“He told me to deal with it. That if I wasn’t vampire enough to control Primo that maybe I didn’t deserve my job. Jean-Claude is old, too, Anita. I think they’re both setting me up for some kind of showdown, and Primo will hurt me, or kill me.”

“You look like you can take care of yourself.”

“If it’s just strong-arm stuff, yeah, but Primo isn’t a brute, Anita, he’s dripping with power. I even agree with him that Jean-Claude isn’t using him well. He’s too powerful to be down here doing this, and he doesn’t have the temperament for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s more likely to start fights than stop them. He’ll take money from men to get in, then he’ll throw their asses out.”

I shook my head. “You know, Buzz, this doesn’t sound like a problem that Jean-Claude would let go this far.”

“Not normally,” he said, “but it’s like Jean-Claude is waiting to see what we’ll do before he steps in. I’d just as soon not be dead before he does it.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“The women out there were okay, but we’ve had one dancer that was stalked. Another one had an irate husband go after him with a knife, because he was jealous that his wife was a member of the dancer’s fan club.”

“The dancers have fan clubs?”

“The headliners do.”

“Nathaniel has a fan club?” I made it a question, because it seemed like it should be.

“Brandon has a fan club, yeah.” He looked at me and laughed. “You didn’t know.”

“I don’t really pay attention to the day-to-day business here.”

He nodded. He was back to looking worried.

I’d never liked Buzz. I didn’t exactly dislike him, but he wasn’t my friend. But, if his version of what was going on with Primo was accurate he was in a bad spot. A spot that I didn’t understand. Jean-Claude was a good business vampire, and this didn’t sound like good business.

“I’ll talk to Jean-Claude, Buzz. I’ll find out what his thinking is about Primo.”

Buzz sighed. “Well, I can’t ask for more.” He grinned, suddenly flashing those fangs again. “In fact, until now I thought you didn’t like me.”

It made me smile. “If you thought I didn’t like you, then why pour your problems in my ear?”

“Who else do I have to go to?”

“Asher is Jean-Claude’s second in command.”

He shook his head. “I work here, problems stay here, all the businesses are run that way.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. It was probably a holdover from the days when each business was run by a different vamp. “So, because I visit all the businesses, I’m what, an ambassador?”

He gave that fang-flashing grin again. “Kind of.”

“I’ll try to find out what’s going on, that’s the best I can do. If Jean-Claude is really setting you up for a power struggle with Primo, I’ll tell you.”

He looked relieved. “I just need to know where I stand, ya know.”

I nodded. “I know.”

A black-shirted man came running through the door at the end of the hallway, accompanied by a sudden blast of music and noise. He was blond and looked like a college student, but he ran down the hallway like he was on springs. Lycanthrope of some kind.

He was talking before he got to us. “We got a problem out there. Primo let a bunch of guys in, they started heckling Byron. You said come get you the next time it got ugly. It’s ugly.”

Buzz was already moving down the hall, not exactly running. I hesitated for a second, then started trotting with them.

Buzz glanced at me. “You coming along?”

I sort of shrugged. “I’d feel funny just walking away.”

“Our job is to tone things down a notch,” he said. “Not make it worse.”

“Are you saying you don’t want me?”

“Hell no,” the blond said. “The Executioner on our side. I’ll take that.”

“Who are you?” I asked, running to keep up with their fast walk.

“Clay,” he said, offering his hand over the front of Buzz’s body.

“Be sociable later,” Buzz said. He hesitated at the door, as if he were gathering himself. There was suddenly a faint hum of energy coming off of Buzz. I’d never felt anything from him before. His gray eyes glowed—if gray could glow. “I am so tired of this shit,” he said, and opened the door.

34

THE MUSIC WAS still playing, a pulsing beat, but the man on stage wasn’t dancing, because he wasn’t the show anymore. The show was a small ocean of college students surrounding a man that towered above them. He was like a pale tower caught in the middle of their jeans and letter jackets. The tallest of them only came to his shoulder, but there were a lot of them, and almost all of them were wearing a jacket that indicated they did some kind of sport. Some of them looked almost as muscle-bound as the club security. Primo had picked a good bunch if he wanted to start trouble, and he so wanted to start trouble.

The other black-shirted security guards didn’t seem to know what to do. Their divided loyalties showed in the fact that they hadn’t waded in to help Primo. They were on the fringe of the gang of college guys, keeping them contained as best they could, but they weren’t pulling them off the big vampire. If I hadn’t known anything about Primo and what had gone on before, I’d have learned something just by watching the other men refuse to help him.

It wasn’t Primo’s size that was the problem. It was the waves of power that radiated off of him. Most vamp power, and even lycanthrope power, filled a room like water rising, until you drowned in it. Primo’s power literally pulsed and flowed. Every time he smacked someone with his big open hand, the power spiked and tightened along my skin. His power seemed to feed off his own violence. But he was keeping his big hands open, just slapping them around, which was, of course, insulting the college students’ manhood.

One of the biggest of the group jumped onto Primo, hanging on to his shoulder and arm. Primo grabbed him by the shoulder and peeled him off like he was nothing. He tossed him into the coat check booth and earned a scream from the holy item–check girl that worked there.

Primo’s power was thick enough to walk on, but only for a second, then down it went. He couldn’t sustain it.

“Enough,” Buzz said, and he sounded unhappy to have to say it. He motioned, and that one motion ended the security guards’ hesitation. The other black-shirts moved in and started helping the college guys move toward the door. They made some progress, but the guys didn’t want to leave their buddies ass-deep in giant vampire. I couldn’t really blame them.

Again, this was outside my skill set. I could have drawn badge and gun and stopped it, if I was willing to arrest, or kill Primo, but I didn’t know how to tone it down. As Buzz had said, their job was not to make it worse, but to make it better. I didn’t know how to do that. Not really.

Buzz was yelling, “Primo, Primo, stop fighting back. We need to get this out of the club.”

Primo’s answer to that was to pick up two college students by the throat, one in each hand, as if he meant to bang their heads together. But while his hands were busy, another enterprising young man, with short brown hair and shoulders nearly as wide as Buzz’s, hit him in the face. He knew how to throw a punch. It rocked the vampire’s head back, and blood blossomed at his mouth, like a crimson flower on all that white skin.

The music from the stage died abruptly, and into that sudden silence Primo screamed. A huge rage-filled battle cry. He dropped the two men in his hands like they were nothing and went for the man who’d hit him. I expected him to throw him around like he had the others, but he didn’t. He picked him up by the front of his jacket until his feet dangled off the ground, and he was probably choking on his own collar. But instead of those big pale shoulders bunching to throw the man, Primo’s hand went back, and this time he closed his fist. From that close up, with that kind of strength, he was going to snap the man’s neck.

I drew the Browning, but truthfully without a court order of execution, I was in the same boat as a police officer. I couldn’t shoot him if I thought he was only going to hurt someone. How did I argue in court that I knew how strong a vampire was and how fragile the human body could be? And call it a hunch, but I figured once I shot Primo, I had to kill him. I did not want that level of muscle and magic touching me. I was harder to kill, not immortal.

I aimed down my arm, because court and explanations would come later, and that kid was about to die. I was about to take a shoulder shot, because it was my best bet with this many people around, when everyone else got brave, too.

Clay was closest, and he jumped him. Primo tossed the shapeshifter into the first row of tables. Women screamed and scattered. Clay was getting to his feet, but that big fist was pulling back again.

Buzz was screaming, “No, Primo, no!”

I had the gun pointed at the floor, because when you’re tense, your fingers are tense, too. If I shot someone, I wanted it to be on purpose. I started to move closer and to one side for a better shot, when the black-shirts swarmed him, and I had no shot at all.

If I’d been ready to kill his ass, I’d have yelled for them to get away, but I was still hoping to avoid it. I moved closer, and to one side, farther away from the tables, where I thought I had a better chance at getting a clear shot. I’d never tried to shoot anyone in the middle of a bar fight. Just the tumble of bodies was intimidating. It was like trying to hit a target with civilians flying around it.

Primo tossed them around like they were dolls, while still holding the man straight-arm. The more they fought him, the stronger his power spiked and billowed, as if every blow, whether his or theirs, powered him up. He was lost behind a mound of black-shirts, then I felt his power draw in like an atom bomb breathing, and I had time to yell, “Everybody down!” I wasn’t sure what was coming, but it was going to be bad.

I hit the floor like I’d told everybody else to do, though I put myself flat to the ground. I glanced at most of the women and waiters behind me and saw them crouching on the floor. Jesus, didn’t anyone know how to take cover?

Primo didn’t use his body to throw them off in a burst of black shirts, he used his magic. It blew them airborne in a spray of black shirts and falling bodies. If I’d been crouched like the people I’d complained about, I could have moved faster. But flat on the ground, I had a split-second to decide whether I was going to cover my head and hold my ground, try to roll farther away, or get to my knees and scramble for it. Flat to the ground doesn’t help when things as heavy as bodies are falling. I got up to scramble away, and a body smashed into me. I had a moment to be quietly stunned, and then another one landed on top of me.

I’d been hit, I’d been thrown, I’d been a lot of things, but I’d never had two adult men land on me from the air. All the breath was crushed out of my body, and if I’d been as human as I looked, things would have broken. I laid there for a second, stunned, and the two men on top of me weren’t moving at all.

The first thing I moved was my head, back to look over my shoulder to where Primo had been. He was still there. Still standing. He’d picked up a different college student and was dangling him in his hand. His big fist was cocked back again. Fuck.

I realized two things at once. One, I could move my hands, two, my gun wasn’t in either of them. My body was pinned underneath several hundred pounds. I was strong, and I could get out, but it wouldn’t be quick, and I had no idea where my gun was. No one that he’d thrown off was moving. Primo’s fist started forward, and there was one of those moments where the world slows down. I had all the time in the world to watch him land that blow, all the time in the world to watch him snap that man’s neck and know I couldn’t stop him.

35

I REACHED OUT toward him and screamed, “No!” I didn’t expect it to help, but I had to do something.

Blood spurted from Primo’s arm, and he hesitated, staring around the room as if he didn’t know where the scream had come from.

I wasn’t sure either, but I’d spent months learning how to control what power I had, and I’d felt something. This was the second time I’d done something like this, both times when I was desperate. The question was, could I do it on purpose?

Primo raised the man upward again, as if he’d set his goal and nothing would turn him from it. I reached out with my hands, and I thought about it. I thought about what it had felt like. Like my thoughts hit something around him, formed it into glass to hurt him.

Primo raised the man higher and seemed to be saluting someone behind me, but I didn’t glance back, there wasn’t time.

I reached out not just with my hands but with that power I had over the dead, that link I had with two vampires, and I slashed at him. Blood flared along his arm again, more red to join the first. It wasn’t as much blood, and I didn’t know why, because I really didn’t understand what I was doing. A few bloody cuts were not going to distract him for long.

“You are not doing this,” he said. His voice was a deep rumbling growl that matched the big body and held an accent that I couldn’t place.

Jean-Claude’s voice floated up from behind us. “No, but I am doing this.”

I wanted to look backward and see him, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the vampire in front of me to look at the vampire behind me. But I didn’t need eyes to feel his power. It flowed through the room like a comforting hand. It caressed the bodies that pinned me to the floor. I got a whiff of musk and wolf fur and knew that both men were pack. That scent of fur and home filled me, too. I knew that it was partly his tie to Richard, but it was more than that. His magic was seeping down through them to me. He hadn’t meant for it to, but I had my own ties to Richard and his wolves. It was hard for him to reach out to them and not touch me.

They both drew long shuddering breaths, as if they’d come back to life, though I knew that wasn’t it. The blond, Clay, blinked at me from inches away. He looked surprised, and I couldn’t blame him. The one on top had hair the color of mine, though it was straight as straight could be. He blinked dark eyes at me as if he didn’t remember seeing me before, or know how he came to be lying on top of me.

He muttered, “Sorry, miss,” even as he started moving slowly, stiffly off the top of the pile.

Clay made small protesting noises as the first man began to get off him.

“How do you think I feel? I’m on the bottom,” I said.

Clay wasted a smile on me.

Buzz was getting stiffly to his knees from a few feet away. He caught my eye and gave me a look. I didn’t know him that well, but it seemed to say, well that solves that.

Jean-Claude was here, and his power filled the room like a warm blanket. It felt so good, and so unlike his power in some ways. I knew what was wrong, it felt too alive. But he was the Master of the City, and none of his vampires would defy him to his face. I believed that was the only excuse I have for letting my guard down and looking away from Primo. You’d think I’d learn that crazy is crazy, dead or alive.

“All of them could not stop me before, Jean-Claude. Three will not do.”

The way he said it, made me look back at Primo. He didn’t sound like he was giving up. That wasn’t right. Challenging Buzz was one thing. Challenging Jean-Claude was another thing entirely.

“They are not here to stop you, Primo, for you are stopped. I am the Master of this City, and I say you are stopped.”

“These humans bloodied me!” There was such rage in his words that they scalded along my skin. He fed on his own anger, as well as violence. I realized in that moment that he was a master vampire of sorts. At least some of his powers were master-level powers. That was bad.

Clay was on all fours, which meant I was finally able to get out from under him. I’d been looking around for my gun, but I couldn’t see it. It had to be here somewhere. Fuck, the shit was about to hit the fan, and I didn’t have a gun.

“How did a vampire of your power allow a mere human to bloody you?” Jean-Claude’s voice was easy, conversational, but in my head, his voice whispered something else, “I fear I have underestimated him.”

“No, shit,” I said.

Clay asked, “What did you say?”

I shook my head, my eyes still scanning the floor for my gun, but I couldn’t find it. Then I thought, Fuck it, I’d cut him twice without a gun. I could do it again. Part of me didn’t believe it. I told that part to shut the fuck up, too. I had enough problems without self-doubt creeping in.

Primo still had the man he’d picked as his scapegoat, but he was holding him sort of nonchalantly down at his side like a forgotten bag of laundry. I realized that the man had passed out, and got to my feet, trying to see if he was breathing. I didn’t like the way Primo had the man’s jacket collar twisted around his neck. Had I been so worried about the fist that I’d let Primo choke the man to death?

Jean-Claude’s voice breathed through my head. “He is not breathing, but his heart still beats.”

I said out loud, “We’re out of time.”

“Yes,” he said, and I think that was out loud. He reached out to me, not with his hand but with his power, and this wasn’t the warm living power of the lycanthrope. The cool grace of the grave touched me, and it flared that part of me that raised the dead. I suddenly knew how I’d cut him. I suddenly knew how it worked. It was like a puzzle box in my head, and suddenly I knew just where to press and just what it meant. Slashing from a distance used the beings’ own magical aura against them. It turned their magical shielding into a slender invisible blade that could be turned against them. Jean-Claude had known what it was and how it worked for centuries, but he’d never been able to do it himself. He knew the how, but could not do it. I could do it, but didn’t know the how. Together we suddenly had it covered.

My goal was not to kill Primo, but to make him let go of the man. I held my hand out toward him, and he still didn’t look scared.

“Do you think your little cuts will stop me?” he demanded.

“No,” I said, and I threw power at him, almost like throwing a ball, and that ball caught against his aura, his shielding, like a burr on a piece of cloth. But the ball didn’t stay a ball, and it didn’t exactly pierce Primo’s shielding. It was as if the ball melted onto it, and where it melted, it invaded the shielding, became one with it, and turned that protective coating into something long and slender and sharp. I visualized that sharpness cutting across his belly, and his shirt split like a skin to show white flesh and blood.

It was a bigger wound than the other two, and his hand went to it, as if it hurt, or as if he wasn’t sure how hurt he was.

“How do you like that one?” I asked. “Big enough for you?”

He snarled at me, flashing fangs that looked too big for his mouth.

It had done exactly what I wanted it to. Thanks to Jean-Claude’s centuries of frustrated study, I had a new weapon. I’d been afraid before to hit too close to the victim. All it would have taken was the vic to have a little psychic gift, and I could have done more damage to him than to Primo. But now I had it, I knew it, I felt it.

I flicked a hand at the arm that held the man, and that arm split open from elbow to wrist. Blood spilled down his arm in a crimson wash, if his heart had been beating enough, the blood would have jumped out of his open arteries, but he didn’t have the blood pressure for it. Not anymore.

“Do you seek to save this?” he lifted the man by his twisted collar. “It is dead and only meat for the animals now.”

“His heart still beats,” Jean-Claude said.

But we had only moments before mouth-to-mouth wasn’t going to save him from brain damage. I threw both hands up, and I cut him. I tried slicing his arm like you’d bone a fish, but I could not break the deeper tissue. I could cut his skin and meat away but the ligaments held, and that was all Primo needed to hold the vic until he died. Stubborn bastard.

“If you do not drop the man now, Primo, I will see this as a direct challenge to my authority.”

“See it any way you like, but I will not be a whipping boy for this,” and he pointed not at me, but at the men that lay unconscious around him, at Buzz who stood near, but not too near. We were out of his league, and he knew it.

“So be it,” Jean-Claude said. In my head he said, “Ma petite, it is not a knife, it is not a single blade, it is magic. If you can turn one small piece of his power against him, then why not all of it?”

I started to ask, what did he mean, then he showed me. It was like my mind was a wall, and he’d just plugged that bit of answer directly into my brain. I understood, and I didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t in me to hesitate when lives were at stake.

I didn’t point or throw up a hand. It wasn’t a game of ball. I could affect his shielding, and that shielding covered his entire body. I thought at that skin of magic, I threw power into all of it, and when I felt all of his shielding, as if I was caressing that invisible skin with my hands, I turned it all against him. I turned it all into inward-pointing blades. It was as if Primo were suddenly standing in the center of a reverse porcupine, a porcupine with spines the size of daggers.

Every inch of his skin I could see was just suddenly covered in blood. He screamed, screamed with a mouth that poured blood, screamed with a throat that was pierced in a half-dozen places. He screamed, and he let go of the man.

Clay and the dark-haired werewolf grabbed the man and dragged him over the bodies of his friends, and away, just away. I wanted to watch, to make sure they got him breathing, but I had other problems.

Primo started to charge us, but he stumbled and fell to his hands and knees. I realized in that moment that I’d blinded him. It wasn’t permanent, but it was permanent enough. For tonight he was blind.

He roared at us and yelled in a voice that sounded like he was trying to swallow broken glass. “Damn you, Jean-Claude, damn you. You are not vampire enough to do this. You were never vampire enough for this.”

“Did you come to St. Louis to destroy me and take my place?”

Primo raised his bloodied face toward the sound of Jean-Claude’s voice. “Why not? Why not be Master of the City?”

“You cannot even be master of your own self, Primo, that is why. Power alone is not enough to rule this city.”

I wanted to look behind me and watch him speak, but I didn’t need to. In that moment I felt closer to him than if I’d stood holding his hand. I knew then what I’d known before, but only in the back of my mind. He’d used the vampire marks between us more openly, more intimately than ever before. I should have been angry, but I wasn’t.

One of the waiters was bending over the man Primo had tried to kill. The waiter had bent back the man’s head and was breathing into his mouth. The man gave a sudden jolt, and his first gasp of breath was loud.

The dark-haired werewolf that I could give no name to raised a thumbs-up. The man would live. He would be alright. No amount of muscle that we had here would have freed him in time. Nothing else would have freed him without killing Primo, though I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. I thought we should kill Primo, and do it now, before he recovered.

Jean-Claude’s voice whispered in my ear, “If someone dies, I will have much more difficulty convincing them all that nothing bad happened here.”

I shook my head and thought, there aren’t enough vampire mind tricks in the world to blank the mind of an audience this big. Not about something this traumatic.

“Do you doubt me, ma petite?” He was suddenly standing just behind me. His slender white hand appeared on my shoulder, a spill of white lace around it, and a flare of black velvet sleeve framing that lace.

I raised my hand up to touch his and found his skin cold, as if he had not fed or had used a great deal of energy up. There was more warmth to the velvet as it brushed my fingers than to his skin. He was drained. How much energy had it taken for him to talk mind to mind with me, or had things been happening that I didn’t know about yet?

The rest of the black-shirted security began to move, slowly, stiffly, as if things hurt. Primo seemed to sense their movement, because he said, “Even blind, I am their match.”

He moved into a crouch on the balls of his feet. The movement must have hurt like hell, but he never winced. He put one big bloody hand on the floor and the other in the air, as if he were sensing movement. It was too close to a martial arts move for comfort. He was huge, a vampire, nearly impervious to pain, crazy, and trained in the martial arts. It didn’t seem fair.

Nathaniel came to my side, and he had my gun. He held it out to me wordlessy, exactly the way I’d taught him, butt first, fingers well away from the trigger.

I gave him half the smile he deserved, because I was still keeping an eye on the bloody giant on the floor. I clicked the safety off before I holstered it. Call it a hunch, but when Primo rushed us, I wouldn’t want to waste that second. I’d need it.

But he didn’t rush us. No, Primo had a much more interesting idea in mind. There was something about being this hooked up to Jean-Claude that made me feel safer, and that sense of safety was a type of arrogance. Arrogance made me forget that a really old vampire can do more than just hurt you physically. Jean-Claude’s arrogance made me forget.

Primo didn’t move a muscle, but he thrust power at us, poured his rage like flinging a red hot bucket of boiling anger on us. There was no time to shield against it. No time to do anything but take it. Jean-Claude tried to let it wash over him, but I felt that awful rage trying to find a place to grow inside him. The Master of the City consumed by rage would be a very bad thing. But I understood anger, and I wasn’t Master of the City.

I took that anger, not to wash over me, but to drink, to swallow, to bathe in it. I drew his rage around me like a coat of fire, and I opened up a part of me that I kept hidden from everyone. I let Primo’s rage meet the great seething mass of my own rage. The rage I’d carried inside me since my mother’s death. The deep endless seas of my anger welcomed his anger embraced it, fed on it. I ate his rage and let him feel me do it.

I laughed, laughed while I stood there and burned with our twin furies. Laughed while I felt his anger falter and begin to pull back. Laughed while I let his anger mingle with mine. I already carried a bottomless pit of it, what was a few more buckets?

He stared up at me with sightless eyes, and then he did half of what I’d expected. He moved forward, but not in a mindless rush. He moved forward with a speed that was breathtaking, and I’d seen speed. He was blind, so he grabbed in the dark, and it was Nathaniel he grabbed. Nathaniel who was standing near us. I don’t know if that was who Primo was aiming at, or if he missed. He grabbed Nathaniel’s wrist and tried to yank him in against his body, but Nathaniel braced and would not go.

We were suddenly all moving. I was aware that the security guards were moving, but they’d be too late. My gun was almost free of its holster, but Primo had started forward as soon as he felt Nathaniel’s resistance. I was closest, and I moved faster than I planned. I wasn’t used to being more than human quick. I was reaching out for Nathaniel’s arm, but I got too close to the vampire’s face.

Primo sank fangs into my wrist, and I knew better than to try and jerk free. It would have torn my wrist open. I had my gun out as I screamed. Screamed as his mouth fed on me. Screamed as I put the gun to his head.

My finger had started that pull on the trigger, when Primo’s mind slammed into mine. It wasn’t his rage. It was his memories. Roman army, the murder that got him condemned, the arena where he could murder to his heart’s content, where he could slack that rage, or feed it. Death after death after death. And each one fed him in a way that nothing else did.

Then one dark night a noblewoman requested he come to her bed with the blood and sweat of his victory painted on his body. He went, and found so much more than he’d ever dreamt of. She offered him freedom and a new way to feed his rage. A new way to kill. He did not know her real name. She had simply said, “I am the Dragon, and you will serve me,” and he had.

Abruptly, the memories stopped. It staggered me, and I had a moment to fight not squeezing the trigger. A moment to point the gun skyward and try to relearn how to breathe and use my body at the same time.

Primo still had his mouth pressed to my wrist, but now there was healed flesh, and sight in his eyes. I knew with Jean-Claude’s knowledge that Primo could heal almost anything with a little special blood. He’d been aiming for a lycanthrope. But my blood had done the trick. I understood why Jean-Claude had wanted him. Such a powerful soldier, if you could control him. The calmness in my head wasn’t me.

Primo released my wrist, and his eyes rolled white with terror. “What are you?” he whispered.

“Not what, Primo, who,” I said, and I reached the hand he’d wounded out to him. I meant to touch his face, but he cringed back from me as if I’d offered him harm. “Who am I, Primo?”

That great body cowered before me. He abased himself before me, and I remembered him doing it long ago for the one who had made him. “Master,” he whispered, and the word seemed to be forced from his lips. He hated it, that he would never be his own master. When he took that bloody kiss, he had always assumed that someday he would rule, and now he knew different. “You are my master.”

The moment he’d tasted my blood he had been bound in a way that had nothing to do with sex, or love, or friendship. It was a belonging that was possessive in a way that none of the others were. Primo simply was mine, no, ours.

The marks between Jean-Claude and I were wide open and had been when Primo attacked me. When he bit me, he wasn’t just tasting me. Blood of my blood, wasn’t just a pretty phrase. It was real. I understood in that moment that with the marks cranked open, to take blood oath to one was blood oath to both. I could control the dead, and Jean-Claude had power over any vampire that took blood oath, or that he’d made. Primo had been overwhelmed with a double whammy. Because in that instant, my blood had been Jean-Claude’s, and his mine. I had a moment to wonder what all this might be doing to our reluctant Richard, but the thought didn’t last. I had enough problems of my own without borrowing his.

I looked down at the big man at our feet and knew that Jean-Claude was utterly sure of him. Utterly certain that Primo’s oath to us would hold him. It wasn’t like reading minds. I just knew that Jean-Claude was no longer worried about Primo. He was confident of him. I wasn’t.

I turned to look at Jean-Claude, to try to persuade him of just how dangerous Primo could still be, but of course, my being willing to turn away from Primo said that in my way I was certain of him, too. And that was wrong. He was like walking rage with a big muscular body to back it up. That wasn’t safe. That could never be safe.

I think I would have turned back to Primo, but I was suddenly looking at Jean-Claude, and the world vanished. There was nothing but Jean-Claude. Black velvet had been made into a waist-length military jacket with silver buttons down the front and a high stiff collar to frame a white mound of cravat. A silver tie tack with a sapphire in its head pierced the white at his throat. The jacket fit the spread of his shoulders, emphasized his slender waist, and took the eye to the black leather pants that looked as if they’d been braided together on the sides, as if he hadn’t so much slipped them on as been bound into them. The boots were only knee high, made of the same rich dark velvet as the coat. I was bespelled and I knew it, and I couldn’t help but stare, but I left his face for last, because I knew in what was left of my self-control that if I looked into his face, I would truly be lost.

One slender hand came up to my lowered face. That hand surrounded by a spill of white lace. He touched my chin, the barest of touches, and began to raise my face upward. It was a delicate touch, I could have fought or stopped him, but I didn’t want to. It had taken all of my willpower simply to avoid his face at first glance.

His black curls mingled with the velvet until it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. His eyes were huge and beautiful, a color darker than the sapphire at his throat. His eyes were as dark as blue could be and did not hold a single shade of black. His face was a pale perfection like a painting almost finished. He was pale, and the fingers against my face were like ice. He was like some pale sculpture waiting for someone to breathe it to life, except for the dark glitter of those eyes. Those eyes held all the life in the world.

His voice was low and soft, like fur sliding across my skull. “Ma petite, let me in. Let me in. Do not leave me to the cold.”

I actually opened my mouth to say, of course, but closed it. Once before when we’d been less bound than this, he’d taken energy from me without drawing blood. That had been because big bad vamps were in town and he needed to not look weak in front of them. And if they were to find out that his human servant didn’t allow him to take blood, he would have looked weak indeed.

He needed to feed, desperately so. “Why?” I found my voice, hoarse and not at all like the smooth pull of his. “Why is your energy so low?”

“I have done what I could from a distance to make your day easier.”

I reached up and laid my fingers against his cheek. “You’ve drained yourself for me.”

“For your peace of mind,” he whispered, and his voice trailed down my spine like a tiny drop of water trickling low and lower.

“You want to feed,” I said.

He gave a small nod, moving his cold skin against the warmth of my fingers. In my head, he whispered, “If I am to maintain our control of Primo, I need to feed.”

“You don’t mean blood,” I said.

“No,” he raised his other hand to my bandaged cheek. “Are you hurt?”

“Not much,” I said, and my voice was sounding almost like my own. I realized that he’d pulled back. He was letting me think. He didn’t have to, but he knew me too well. If he didn’t let me think now, I’d be mad later.

“You don’t mean like you did when the council was in town, do you? You’re asking something else.”

His voice in my mind, “Something has happened with your binding of Damian and Nathaniel. More power is everywhere, but also more need. I have denied myself for a very long time, ma petite.” His hands slid along the edge of my jawline, until they cradled my face, and his fingers were buried in the warmth of my hair. I heard him think that he was warming his hands against my hair. So cold, so empty, so needy. I’d never seen him like this, never.

This wasn’t his need. I turned enough so that I could see Nathaniel, who had gone to lean against the wall. He wasn’t close enough to project like this. He gave me innocent lavender eyes. I couldn’t feel him in my head. It was just Jean-Claude and me, but even with only two of us connected, it still felt like Nathaniel’s need, or Damian’s skin hunger.

I looked back into those dark, dark blue eyes and whispered, “You’ve inherited their neediness.”

Aloud, he said, “I fear so.”

“What can we do?” I asked.

“Let me in, ma petite, let me through those wonderful shields. Let me in,” and his voice spilled over my skin as if he’d covered me naked in satin and drawn it along my body.

I shivered, and only the cool touch of his hands kept my knees from buckling. I stared into those eyes, that face, and I whispered, “Yes.”

His face filled my vision, then his lips brushed mine. I expected him to take me in his arms and kiss me with the desperation I felt in his need, but he didn’t. He touched me only with his mouth, and even that was the barest pressure of his lips against mine. I actually pushed agianst him, raised a hand to touch him, and he put a hand on my shoulder and held us apart. A second after he’d done it, I understood why, because it was as if my soul spilled up into my lips, as if the very essence of me was a taste upon my lips. My power, my magic, my heart, my soul, everything was there for the taking in one soft brush of lips. I’d thought we’d fed the ardeur upon each other before, but I’d been wrong. He sipped from my lips, delicate, so much more he wanted. I could feel it. Feel his need. But he held me back with his hands on my shoulders, while I struggled to close that distance. But I knew with his knowledge that bare skin was bare skin, and all of it could drink me down.

It was the most careful kiss I’d ever been given, and one of the most frustrating. I was making small noises deep in my throat, because I wanted more. I wanted so much more.

When he drew back, he held a spot of my lipstick like a crimson stain in the center of his lips. There was the tiniest bit of color to his cheeks. He was like the cold of winter touched by the barest breath of spring, so that warmth was only a promise, not real, not now, but a distant hope. But hope is better than the alternative.

He swallowed convulsively, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment, before he straightened and his hands on my shoulders were firm. “That is but a taste of what I need, ma petite.”

“Don’t stop,” I said.

He smiled, but it was sad. “Let the effects wear awhile, then give me an answer about more.”

I shook my head. What was he talking about? Of course, of course he could have more.

“It is my fault, ma petite. I asked you to let me in your shields. I did not mean for you to drop all the defenses in your considerable repertoire. It was nearly overwhelming for both of us.” He looked at me as if he saw something new there, or someone new. “I must attend to our fair audience.” He almost came to me again for a good-bye kiss, but he pushed away, and he called to someone, “Attend her until she recovers. No, not you, not until she is herself again. I fear what she would do if you touched her now.”

His voice when it came again, filled the club, echoed into the shadows of it, and yet, seemed intimate, as if he whispered it against your skin, and only your skin. “Primo has walked through fire and blood to be reborn for you tonight. Transformed before your eyes from the warrior of nightmares to the lover of dreams.”

“They’re too scared, they won’t believe it.” It was Nathaniel’s voice.

I turned toward that voice, but met a different face. Nathaniel was standing just beyond, out of reach, but Byron was standing so close that it startled me. He wasn’t quite three hundred years old, and I normally heard him move as if he were human. He wasn’t powerful, and never would be, but tonight, I hadn’t even known he was standing nearly touching me. That helped sober me up more than anything else. I hadn’t heard one of the weakest of the new vamps that Jean-Claude had welcomed to town. Bad necromancer, no cookie.

“You’ve never seen him after he’s fed like this,” Byron said in that nicely accented British voice, “watch.”

I fought not to look at Jean-Claude. I looked at the audience instead. Their eyes were wide, their faces pale, or flushed. Some of them were still hiding under the tables. If the fight hadn’t taken place between them and the most obvious door, they’d have probably fled. All they needed was a sign above them that said “scared shitless.” It was probably the most spilled blood that any of them had ever seen. Scary stuff.

As long as I looked at the audience I agreed with Nathaniel, but when my eyes drifted to Jean-Claude’s back as he spoke with them, well . . . I had to look away. I had to not look, because the craving was still there. I’d been told that my desire to touch him had been part of the same craving that any servant felt for their master, but I hadn’t really believed it. This, this was craving.

I found myself staring at Primo, who was still on his knees, looking confused, a half-circle of black-shirted security guards standing around him. He looked up at me, and his eyes held something like pain. He spoke, and no one at the tables heard him, just me and security, and the vampire and wereleopard at my back. “You have trapped me.”

I opened my mouth to say, “I didn’t mean to,” but someone touched my left wrist, and it hurt. A sharp immediate pain. I whirled and found Byron touching me. “Let go of me.”

He opened his hand and just let my arm fall back. He whispered, “You’re bleeding. Jean-Claude told me to attend to you. Let me tend your wound.” Here was a face younger and more innocent seeming than Nathaniel’s. He’d been in his late teens when his master had brought him over. His hair was a soft brown that fell in loose curls just past his ears, leaving his slender neck bare and showing the V of white skin at the neck of the robe he wore. I remembered that someone had said the college students were heckling Byron. He must have been the one on stage.

He was shorter than I was, and slender, not preadolescent, but young, unfinished, and he’d be unfinished forever. Whether his shoulders would have broadened, or he’d have gotten taller, we’d never know. He could lift weights and add definition, in fact, he had, at Jean-Claude’s insistence, but he’d never have the body he might have had if the vampire that killed him had waited a year or two.

His eyes were gray and seemed to take up most of his face, huge, soft gray. The color that fog can have when it’s at its thickest, that close suffocating wall of mist.

I had to shake my head and draw back. Shit. Byron had almost rolled me with his eyes. That shouldn’t have been possible. Jean-Claude had said that I’d let down all my defenses. I hadn’t meant to. It was more as if Jean-Claude had taken down all my defenses. But Byron was no Jean-Claude. Him I could keep out.

I actually closed my eyes and did the deep-breathing exercises that I’d learned. Draw yourself to the center of your body. Draw yourself in and center yourself down a line that goes into the earth itself. Marianne called it grounding, and it was. Grounding, as in being grounded, solid on your feet, secure.

But it was hard to stay focused, because Jean-Claude’s voice was still there, and closing my eyes didn’t get rid of it. “Who among you has not wished to tame a savage heart, to take a man and change him beyond reckoning? To make him into what you wish him to be? Primo kneels before your beauty, and he is what you will make of him. He will rise and fall to your desires.”

I felt Jean-Claude walk between me and Primo. Even with my eyes closed, even with me trying to anchor myself, I felt him like a hand sweeping all my concentration away. I looked up and saw him touch Primo’s face, the lightest of touches. “Show them that magnificent body.”

Primo shook his head. He did not want to play.

I felt Jean-Claude’s will flex, like a muscle squeezing around Primo. I felt that flare of warmth spill out from him to the bigger man. I had actually stepped closer to them, when Byron pulled me back.

“I wouldn’t advise that,” he said, and again I felt the pull of those soft gray eyes, like being wrapped in the warmest of blankets.

Primo stood, and that turned me back to them. The big man balled his hands into his black, blood-soaked shirt, and tore it like it was paper. Naked from the waist up, he was magnificent, if you were into giants. It wasn’t the hugeness that came from weight lifting. It was just how big he was.

“Who will be his first kiss?” Jean-Claude asked.

I felt the movement before I turned and saw the audience. There was no fear now, Jean-Claude’s voice had taken their fear. All I saw now was eagerness, at worst, uncertainty, as if they just weren’t sure. The first few hands went up with money in them, and once that happened, more followed. No one wants to be first, but no one wants to be left out, either.

Byron pulled gently on my shoulder. “We need to bind that wound, Anita. Let’s go backstage.”

“He’s right,” Nathaniel said, and he was closer now. Close enough that I could see that there was some blood spattered on his lavender shirt. He must have been closer to Primo than I remembered. But I wasn’t thinking well. It was as if I hadn’t been quite myself since I got out here. What was wrong with me?

I nodded. “Okay, okay, yeah.”

I let Byron and Nathaniel lead me away, but my glance stayed turned to the room. The brunette from the alleyway was running her hand up Primo’s skin, and that skin was clean and smooth, no blood, no signs of the struggle. She ran her hands over his skin, but his glance was for me. His eyes held a mute appeal for help, and I didn’t understand why.

Jean-Claude touched the big man’s bare back, and Primo’s face turned back to the woman. There was no confusion on his face now. There was nothing but lust, and in that moment I understood. Jean-Claude was controlling Primo. He was manipulating the vampire more than he had ever manipulated the audience. They’d come for a little bit of lascivious fun. Primo had come to be Master of the City, but instead, he was just another act at Guilty Pleasures. He kissed the brunette like he’d breathe her in, as if to kiss her were life itself. When he let her go and one of the security guards eased her shaking body into her seat, money sprang up in hands throughout the room. Welcome to show business, Primo, I thought.

36

THE DOOR CLOSED, and like magic it was quiet. The backstage area was soundproofed, but it was more than that today. It was as if with the closing of that door I could think again, really think. I knew that proximity to Jean-Claude could make things worse, usually proximity meant touching. Tonight, in the same room was too close.

I shook my head. “What the hell is happening?”

“We have a first aid kit in the dressing rooms,” Byron said. He tried to lead me toward one of the doors on the right.

I took my arm out of his grip and looked at Nathaniel. “Did I hear Jean-Claude tell you not to touch me?”

He nodded. “He’s not sure what will happen right now.” His face was very solemn, serious, closed. He was being careful around me again, and I didn’t know why.

“Have I missed something tonight?”

“You’re dripping blood,” Byron said, and he motioned at my arm.

Blood was trickling down my hand to drop, drop onto the white floor. The hallway was so white and so empty that the spot of crimson seemed loud, as if color were sound. I shook my head again. “Something’s wrong.”

“You’ve lost more blood than you realize,” Byron said.

“Anita,” Nathaniel said, and it seemed like it took longer than it should have for me to turn and look at him. “Anita, come into the dressing rooms. We’ll take care of you.”

I nodded and raised my arm up to about chest high. It would help slow the blood loss. The sleeve of my jacket was a bloody mess, and I hadn’t noticed until now. Something was terribly wrong, and I didn’t know what it was. I knew that making a new triumverate with Damian and Nathaniel was probably the cause, but that only told me why it was happening, not what was happening. Why didn’t matter very much to me right that moment; what was happening, that mattered a great deal.

Byron touched my arm, only enough to guide me through the door that Nathaniel opened for us. As I walked past Nathaniel, I felt something open between us, as if there were a door in the middle of our bodies. A door that wanted to close around us, to press us tight together.

Byron literally put his body in front of mine and kept me from touching Nathaniel. I growled at him, and Nathaniel echoed me at his back. “Ease down, kitty-cats, I am only doing what the Master of the City ordered me to do.” His eyes were a little wide, and I got a whiff not of fear but something close to it. “Do you remember what Jean-Claude’s kiss felt like out there?” He grabbed my hurt wrist and ground his fingers into it.

“That hurts,” I said, and I turned on him, angry, ready to be angry.

“But you can think now, can’t you?”

That made me take a step back into the dressing rooms beyond. Byron followed, a hand still on my wrist, but loosely now, not to hurt, but more to guide.

“What’s happening to us?” I asked.

“It looks like you’ve all hit a new power plateau,” Byron said, as he led me between the little lighted tables scattered with makeup and bits of costume.

“Which means what?” I asked.

He stopped in front of a big gray metal cabinet that was at the far end of the room. “Which means, answer my question. Do you remember what the kiss felt like in the other room?” He opened the cabinet, and it seemed to be full of cleaning supplies and extra bits of things that people might need. On the top shelf, so he had to stand on tiptoe, was a first aid kit, a big one.

“It was like he drank my soul,” and saying it out loud was too poetic for me. I blushed and tried again. “I thought he’d fed the ardeur during sex with me, but if that kiss was feeding the same thing, he’s been holding back.”

Byron tried to find enough clean space on the nearby tables to open the medicine chest, but gave up and asked Nathaniel to hold it, while he rummaged through it. “He’s been holding back, luv, trust me on that.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

He gave me a very flat stare out of his big gray eyes. “Jean-Claude liked London once, he liked it a very great deal, and I liked that he liked it.” There was something almost unfriendly in the way he finished that sentence.

“Why do I feel like apologizing?” I asked.

“Just hold your arm up higher,” he said. He had his hands full of things, but still wasn’t satisfied. “Nothing to apologize for, duckie. Except for Asher, Jean-Claude prefers his meat of the gentler persuasion, always did. Ah, here it is.” He held up an unopened package of gauze pads. He smiled at me, and the smile was so harmless, so not matching the situation. “Now, let Uncle Byron see to the big, bad boo-boo.”

I gave him a look that wasn’t entirely friendly. “I’m bleeding, not brain damaged, can the baby talk.”

He shrugged. “Whatever you say, lover.”

I started to correct him, but Byron used pet names, mostly the same pet names, for everybody. If I took it too personally, it would be impossible to have a conversation with him. I was tired tonight. I let it go.

“Why doesn’t he want me to touch Nathaniel?”

Byron looked at me like I was being slow. “Because, luv, if Jean-Claude’s kiss is suddenly more, then maybe yours will be, too. The servant rises in power with his master.” He looked at everything in his hands, then shook his head, looked impatient and dumped it all back into the box. “Hand me things when I ask for them,” he said to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel nodded, but he was looking at me. I found myself staring into those lavender eyes.

Byron snapped his fingers in the air between our faces. It made us both jump. “The two of you are so not touching right now. Dangerous is what it would be. Now take off your jacket.”

I did what he asked, and it hurt to get the sleeve off, but it wasn’t until I saw my wrist that I gasped, and Nathaniel said, “Oh, shit.”

Most vampire bites are neat, almost dainty things. This wasn’t. It was as if, even once his fangs sank home he’d used his other teeth to bite down, so that it looked more like an animal bite. A big, angry animal bite. Blood was seeping out of the two deepest fang marks, seeping in a nice steady line. The moment I saw it, I was dizzy, and it hurt like hell. Why does it always hurt so much more when you see the blood?

“You are lucky you’re still standing,” Byron said. He hooked a chair with one naked foot, and said, “Sit.”

I sat. Because truthfully, I was a little shaken. It was a bad enough wound that I should have noticed it sooner. Really noticed it. A fraction of an inch better, or worse, or just deeper, and I could have bled nearly to death before I noticed it.

“Why didn’t I notice sooner?”

“I’ve seen bespelled humans bleed to death from tiny wounds, a smile on their face all the way to the end, duckie.” He ripped open the sterile gauze pads. “Put this on it, and press hard. You’ve lost enough blood for one night, let’s see if we can save the rest.” When he was serious, the nicknames vanished. He’d only been in town a few weeks, and already I knew that when the duckies, luvs, and crumpets disappeared, things were bad.

“What can I do to help?” Nathaniel asked.

“Find more gauze pads. That’s the only pack in here, and she’s going to need more.”

Nathaniel put the first aid kit on a chair that he moved close to Byron, then he went for the door. Apparently he knew where they kept the extra gauze. “How bad do you guys get cut up here?”

“Usually scratches,” he said, “though you’d be surprised the number of women that try to bite.”

I looked at him.

He grinned. “Now, duckie, why would I lie?”

One second I was looking at Byron and thinking nothing really. My wrist hurt, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it sooner, and then suddenly I was wondering if he was naked under the robe, and I was hoping he was.

I closed my eyes and tried to shield. Tried to nail anything and everything I had between me and Jean-Claude, but his voice came through. “I am sorry, ma petite, so sorry, but Primo is still fighting me, and I have not fed enough. I cannot feed and control him, but you can feed for me. You can give me what I need, ma petite. Please, please, do not deny me. If I lose control of Primo now, he will slaughter these women. He will see himself humiliated by them. Please, ma petite, hear me, and know that I speak only truth. Help me!” He cut contact abruptly, and I got a glimpse of Primo’s rage stabbing at the lust that Jean-Claude had fed him. It was as if Primo were a human besotted, but still fighting, fighting to break free.

“Damn you, Jean-Claude,” I whispered.

Byron touched my arm. “Don’t faint on me.”

I opened my eyes, and his gray ones were so close to mine. He was so close. I don’t know what showed in my eyes, but he let go of me like I’d burned him. His eyes were a little wide, and his voice was breathy when he said, “I don’t like the look in your eyes. It doesn’t look much like you.”

I leaned into him, and he leaned back. I kept moving forward, and he kept moving back, so that I slipped out of the chair, and he ended up on the floor for a second, before he rolled to his feet. I was left kneeling on the floor, but I had a handful of his robe. The cloth stretched away from his body, and I saw that he was wearing something under it, but not much. It was lust, but it was more than that. It was lust, as if sex were food. I’d thought the ardeur was the worst of it, but this felt . . . less, worse. Except for that first time I’d had some control over the ardeur. Not liking someone, or knowing someone helped me fight it off. This was different. It wouldn’t have mattered. This was need so raw that it just wouldn’t have mattered.

Jean-Claude screamed through my head, “Anita, help me!” He’d used my real name, and his desperation cut through me like a knife.

Some of that desperation fell into my voice. “I’m sorry, Byron, but Jean-Claude is about to lose control of Primo. He needs more food.”

“And who gets to be the food?” he asked, and there was that edge of fear to him.

I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath. “There’s no time.”

“I won’t let you tear my throat out, just because the master has bitten off more than he can tame.”

I shook my head, eyes still closed. “Don’t be afraid, Byron, please, that fuels the beast. I’m offering the ardeur.” I opened my eyes and stared up at him. He still stood as far away as the stretched fabric of the black robe could take him. My voice had found an edge of growl when I said, “But it’s a limited time offer. Either come across, or food won’t be a euphemism.”

A funny look crossed his face. “Do you mean sex? Real sex? Not a euphemism for anything?”

If I’d had time, it would have been funny. “Yes.”

“Oh, duckie, why didn’t you say so?” He came to me, undoing the sash of his robe and letting it fall away. He was wearing only the tiniest of black thongs, with his pale, pale body exposed everywhere else. The muscles that he’d managed to acquire in less than a month worked under his skin as he dropped to his knees in front of me. “Who gets to be on top?” he asked with a smile.

I put my hands on his bare shoulders, and the moment I touched his skin, the smile faded. “I do,” I said, and pushed him to the floor.

37

BYRON LAY BACK against the floor with my body riding him, my hands on his wrists, pinning him to the floor. The only thing I’d ripped off my own body had been underwear. There was no foreplay, there was no time for it, no need for it. Everywhere I touched him, I could feed a little. Bare skin was all I needed now, but it was an incomplete feeding. It wasn’t enough. I pressed our mouths together, slid my tongue into his mouth, and again I could feed, but it wasn’t enough. I ground myself against him, but he was still trapped in the thong. I let go with one wrist, and his hand found the side of the thong first.

“Snap away,” he said, in a voice that was deeper, more real than his usual.

I tore the cloth away, and he was suddenly naked against me, not inside me, but pressed against me, and he was warm. Warm with the blood he’d taken from someone else. The feel of him pressed against me made me cry out.

Nathaniel said, “Anita?” He came pressed as far from us as he could get and stayed where I could see him. “It’s like the ardeur, but worse, more.” He looked almost panic-stricken. He had an armful of gauze packets.

I wanted to say I’m sorry, or something civilized, but Byron moved his hips underneath me, and that one small movement brought my attention back to the man underneath me. His eyes had darkened like sky before a storm. And staring down into them, I wondered how I’d ever thought they were soft. He spent so much time being the charming youth, playing to the body he’d been given, but now suddenly out of his eyes I saw just how much grown-up I was dealing with.

“Fuck me,” he said, and it came out softer the second time, “fuck me, fuck me.” He whispered it over and over, softer and softer, until his breath itself whispered, “Fuck me.”

I leaned over him, pressed my mouth to his, and it was as if I could feel his soul down the long tunnel of his body, as if I knew how to reach in and snatch it away. I knew in that instant that I could feed on everything that Byron was. I could feed on that divine or infernal spark that made him vampire. I could eat him up, completely and utterly, and leave only the lovely corpse behind.

I came off his mouth screaming, because the urge to do it was almost overwhelming. The hunger wanted it all. All of him. It couldn’t have all of him. It couldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to him. I wouldn’t do that to anyone. For the first time I understood just what they meant by a fate worse than death, or rather that sex wasn’t it.

If I could feed the ardeur, then maybe this darker thing would go away, but even willing, I had trouble. I didn’t know Byron’s body. I tried to simply rock back onto him, slide him inside me, but twice we slid across each other but didn’t go in. I finally yelled my frustration, and he said, “Let me have my hand, lover, and I’ll help.”

A hand appeared between us, and it actually took me a moment to realize it was Nathaniel. He had a condom in his hand. “We don’t know where he’s been.”

I growled at him, but he growled back. “The only way you can catch something from a vampire or lycanthrope is if one of us has fucked someone who’s got something, then fucks you after. You want to take that chance?”

“Let me have my hands, lover, and I’ll put on anything you want.”

I let go of his wrists, and he moved himself just enough so he could open the foil packet and slip it on. Then he slid himself back where we’d started, with him pressed against me, but not inside. He put his hands on either side of my thighs and lifted me at the same time that he shifted his own hips. He slid inside me, in one smooth movement that threw my head back and made him yell, “Oh, yes!”

When I looked back at him, his gray eyes had lost focus, his lips were half-parted. I wanted to cover his mouth with mine, I wanted that brief sweet taste of his soul again. I finally realized it wasn’t the ardeur we were fighting, not entirely. Something else was happening, something darker, something worse. I’d thought the worst would be sex with strangers, but I was wrong. Byron wasn’t my friend yet, I didn’t make friends that quickly, but he wasn’t a bad man. I liked him, with his “duckie” and “luvs.” I liked that he had told me the first time we’d met, that no, he wasn’t that Byron, and that actually Lord Byron wasn’t one of us, that had just been a rumor spread by people that wanted an excuse to burn him at the stake in some backwater country. Though if he’d known the great poet was going to get himself drowned before the age of thirty, he’d have offered.

I liked Byron. He didn’t deserve to die. There was an angry echo in my head. I thought it was Primo, and then knew it wasn’t. He didn’t have the kind of power it took to interfere from a room away, not through my shielding and Jean-Claude’s. I asked myself the question, Where would the power go if I sucked Byron’s life away? I threw the question out to Jean-Claude. I let him see that darkest of desires in my head.

“That is not our hunger,” he said.

“Who is it?”

“She is the Dragon.” He spoke in my head, and there was urgency there.

“She made Primo,” I said, and it was only then that I realized I wasn’t talking out loud.

“She’s using him as a conduit for her own power.”

“How do we stop it?”

Byron suddenly drew back and thrust himself inside me again, and did something with his hips and legs at the same time. It blew my concentration all to hell, and all I could do was stare down at him. “A man likes to know he’s not boring a girl,” he said, but there was no smile to go with the light-hearted comment.

Jean-Claude echoed through my head. “We stop her as we did Moroven, by sending her something she does not understand.”

“Let me guess,” I said, and again it wasn’t aloud.

“Sex, or love, ma petite, what else is there for us?”

I don’t know what I would have said, because Byron rolled me. He rolled us over in a sudden amazingly fast, fluid movement, and never fell out of me, which is harder to do than it sounds. I was suddenly on the floor staring up at him, my hands on his shoulders as if I’d grabbed the nearest thing to prevent me from falling. He grinned at the surprised look on my face and said, “You’re not moving enough, luv, let me show you how it’s done.”

He did two quick thrusts that left me breathless, then he raised up on his hands like he was trying to do a bad push-up with his groin pressed tight against mine. His smile faded, and he frowned. “You’re bleeding, luv.”

I’d forgotten about my wrist again. I followed his glance and found that blood was seeping out from it. There was blood spattered across my blue top.

“Some gauze, please,” he said.

I think it took both Nathaniel and me a second to realize who he was talking about, and why. Nathaniel fumbled a package open and handed it to him. It was acutely uncomfortable to be trapped under the body of a strange man while Nathaniel knelt beside us. It was more embarrassing than having Richard watch with Damian. It just felt worse, as if I should apologize.

I think I would have done just that, but Byron pressed the gauze to my wounded wrist, pinning it to the floor. It hurt, sharp and immediate, and I was left gasping and staring up at his face. He pinned my other wrist, so that he was pressed above me, and I was very, very pinned.

I might have complained, but Jean-Claude roared through my head. “Ma petite, I need to feed. You are not moving fast enough with Byron.”

“You’re a big vampire, feed yourself,” I said, and that was out loud.

“Do you understand what you’re giving permission for, ma petite?”

“Tonight, yes, help me, Jean-Claude. Feed, for God’s sake, feed.”

Byron hesitated, poised above me. “Something wrong?”

“We’re not moving fast enough for him, apparently.”

A nearly evil grin crossed Byron’s face. “Oh, we can fix that, luver, we can fix that.” And he fixed it. He moved himself in and out of me in long writhing waves of his body. It was as if the thrust started at his shoulders and danced its way down his body until he thrust himself inside me. Once inside me, he did something with his hips that seemed almost to make him roll inside me. It was as if that writhing dancelike movement went all the way down his body and inside mine. It wasn’t fast, as in speed, but it was fast in other ways.

My breathing had sped up, and my body had figured out at what point in his writhing that he plunged inside me, so that my hips thrust upward to meet him. It began to be like a dance, except we were both flat on the floor, but when he realized that I wanted to move, he changed how his lower body pinned me, so that mostly only him sliding in and out of me pinned my lower body, and the rest of me was left to rise and fall against his body.

He kept my wrists pinned, and I kept thinking I should say something about that, but I kept forgetting, and I finally realized I didn’t want to say anything.

Another British voice came from behind us. “Jean-Claude said I was needed in here, but it looks like you’ve got a queue.”

I said his name, “Requiem,” just that and nothing more, but he came to me. He knelt in a fall of black-hooded cloak. He pushed the hood back to reveal hair as straight and black as the cloak itself. His eyes were a deep, rich blue like startled cornflowers in the white skin and black hair of his face. The thin mustache and Vandyke beard were as raven dark as his hair and the eyebrows that framed those startling blue eyes. He’d once told me that Belle had wanted to buy him from his old master. She’d wanted a third blue-eyed lover. Asher had the palest blue, Jean-Claude the darkest, and Requiem had the brightest. His master had refused, and they had fled France.

He knelt by my head, kneeling over us on his knees like some dark angel in the cloak he would not give up for any modern coat. “What would you have of me, my lady?”

My voice came breathy, but clear. Good for me. “If you take blood at the same time I feed on him, then I’ll feed on both of you.”

He didn’t argue. He simply laid down behind us, so that his face was close to mine. “As my lady wills it, so shall it be done.”

“Well if it’s to be done, do it fast,” Byron said, and his voice sounded more strained than mine.

Requiem looked up at him, propped on his elbows by my head. “Are you implying that you won’t last much longer?”

“Yes,” and his voice sounded half-strangled.

“You’re out of training,” Requiem said.

“You haven’t fucked her. Don’t criticize until you’ve tried.”

“Are you implying that she’s such a good shag that she’s going to bring you early?”

“Stop bickering,” I said, and my body still rose and fell with Byron’s. He was still fighting to keep the rhythm even and pretty, but he was beginning to lose that smooth glide, and I knew when he stopped dancing above me, that that would be it. “Hurry, or you’ll miss us.”

“As my lady bids.” Requiem dropped to his chest, his stomach, and ran his hands through my hair. “Bad angle,” he whispered, “may I improve the angle, m’lady?”

“Yes,” and it was a strangled sound.

He dug his fingers through my curls and pulled my head sharply to one side, exposing a long line of my neck. He balled his fist in my hair and pulled it sharp. I gasped, and it wasn’t a pain sound.

I found myself staring not into Byron’s gray eyes, but at Nathaniel. He was still there huddled near, but not too near. He looked both afraid and eager, and I didn’t understand the look. I wanted to, and I had an instant to feel how he saw this. One lover pinned my wrists to the floor, grinding his hand into a fresh bite, plunging himself into me over and over, while I writhed underneath him. Now another man had jerked my hair tight and painful, exposed my neck, and when I orgasmed, he would plunge his fangs into my neck. Both vampires would plunge inside me at the same time, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It didn’t matter to Nathaniel that I’d given permission. It mattered that I was trapped and helpless and at their mercy, and the entire scene did it for him. It just flat did it for him. He was enjoying watching, because this was the closest he’d come to what he’d wanted in months.

I felt his need like a weight in my mind, and I knew that he would have given almost anything to be the one on the bottom.

Byron’s body began to lose its smooth gliding rhythm, and he seemed to be fighting not to simply plunge in and out as fast as he could. “Close, very close,” he whispered.

I started to turn my head back so I could see his face, but Requiem’s hand tightened, and I couldn’t move. His breath was hot on my throat, and I knew that he’d borrowed that warmth from someone else. “Are you close, m’lady, are you close?” His voice spread like heat down my skin.

Byron leaned heavier on my wrists, grinding them into the floor, and his body took on a more urgent rhythm. I felt that weight in my groin, that grew and grew and would spill out, would spill out. I whispered, “Close, almost.”

Requiem’s lips touched my neck, just his lips, as if he kissed me. Byron fought for something smoother, more controlled, but his voice was hoarse, breathless, “Almost, almost, almost.”

That heavy warmth inside me burst outward, and I screamed. Fangs plunged into my throat, and Byron’s body bucked over me, convulsed against me, inside me. Requiem’s mouth sealed over the kiss of his fangs, and he began to feed. And it was as if every suck of his mouth brought a new orgasm.

Byron cried out above me, and his body rocked with mine. Requiem’s hand convulsed in my hair, and his hand gripped my shoulder, dug nails into me, and I felt his body jerking, rocking with us.

I screamed until my voice went hoarse, and still he fed, and still Byron stayed pinned inside me, thrusting into me. It was like being caught in an endless loop of pleasure, one movement feeding the others, until we finally collapsed into a quivering heap. Requiem’s mouth fell away from my neck. “I can drink no more.” His perfect voice was breathless, barely a whisper.

Byron collapsed on top of me like a puppet whose strings had been sliced. He lay on top of me, and I could feel his heart thudding inside his chest like a trapped thing. His breathing was ragged and sounded painful, and mine wasn’t much better.

He found his voice, hoarse, and shaking. “If I wasn’t dead already, I’d say I was having a heart attack.”

I tried to laugh and ended up coughing.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Byron said, “oh, please.” The coughing fit had tightened me around him again, and it jerked him up on his arms, pushed him one last time against me, which made me writhe under him.

He collapsed again, and begged, “No, more, please, Anita, no more. I never thought I’d say that from just one time, but give me a moment to catch my . . . breath.”

“Breath,” Requiem said with his face collapsed next to mine, “not breath, pulse. I knew you had the ardeur, but you should warn a vampire if you can do things like that.”

I found my voice, “Like what?”

He moved his head just enough so that he could look me in the eye with his face on my shoulder. “I knew you would feed from me, but I didn’t know you would bring me.”

“Bring us,” Byron said, “bring us again and again.” He was collaped across my chest and body so all I could see was his brown curls. “I usually try and keep track of things like that, but I gave up when we passed five. Or was it six?”

“Eight,” Requiem said, “or maybe more. I think if I could have kept feeding, we wouldn’t have stopped.” He closed his eyes, and a faint shiver ran through him. “I’d forgotten how many different ways the ardeur could be fed. I’d forgotten how good it could feel.”

“I don’t have anything to compare this to,” Byron said in a hoarse voice.

“You never met Belle Morte, did you?” Requiem asked.

Byron seemed to want to look at the other man when he spoke, but he gave up when raising his head was too much effort. “No, never had the pleasure.”

“It was a pleasure,” he said.

If I could have moved, and been sure I wouldn’t fall over, I’d have told everyone to get off of me, but I couldn’t move, and if I couldn’t, I knew at least Byron couldn’t, either. He’d been using more muscles than I had. But it felt odd to lay there with them draped around me and talk as if I wasn’t there. I asked him, “Why didn’t you let Belle keep you, then?”

“Have you met her?”

“In a manner of speaking, yeah.”

His blue, blue eyes, looked sad, the excited exhaustion fading in the light of memories. “Then you should know the answer. No pleasure is worth her price, and besides, I don’t like men, not even a little, and if you aren’t at least bisexual, you can’t survive at her court.”

“Why?” I asked.

“When she’s not fucking the men, she likes to watch the men fucking each other. I don’t think there was ever a waking moment at her court when someone wasn’t having sex either with her, or for her entertainment, or the entertainment of her guests.”

Byron managed to lever himself around so he could give gray eyes to the other vampire. “I like men, but you make it sound like I wouldn’t have liked it, either.”

“There is no pleasure without payment. No pleasure without some pain attached, and not the kind of pain you’ll enjoy. First she finds what you most desire, she learns your body as no other lover can, then she begins to deny you that love. She begins to make you beg for it. She addicts you to her, if she can. Then when she has you, truly has you, she begins to pull away, so that you spend the rest of eternity gazing into the face of paradise, but you are locked outside the shining gates and can only touch glimpses of heaven.”

I found that I could move my arm again. I reached around Byron’s curls, and touched Requiem’s face. “You didn’t end up with Belle,” I said.

His eyes lost their remembering look, but they didn’t regain the shine of pleasure. “If Jean-Claude had not offered me a home when our old master got himself executed, Belle Morte would have had me. If any other master had offered for me, anyone less than a le sourdre de sang, then I could not have refused her. You have no idea how rare it is that Jean-Claude has gained enough power to be his own fountainhead of blood. Not more than three vampires in nearly eight hundred years have gained that kind of power. It protected all of us when our old master lost his mind and went against the council’s orders. An entire court of nearly all Belle’s line, when it fell apart, she tried to pick up all the pieces.”

Britain was the only other country in the world where vampires were legal. They had rights, and you couldn’t just kill one of them simply because they were a vampire. It was murder. But in America we’d been doing it almost four years, and the Brits were newer at it. There’d been some hitches. Hitches that the human media and powers that be didn’t know about. The Master of the City of London had been very old. He’d been one of the first master vamps that Belle Morte made, oh, so long ago. Sometimes the really ancient vampires don’t take well to newfangled ideas. You know, electricity, modern medicine, and the fact that they were supposed to expose themselves to public view in a very modern, rock star sort of way. London had had more of Belle’s lovely vampires than any but three other groups, and that included Belle’s own court. So when the vamps got legal, the vampire council wanted the Master of the City to play to the human media. He called himself Dracula, because once the real vampire Dracula was assassinated, the name was up for grabs. Only one person at a time can hold a name per country, and only one person per time can hold some of the more well-known names. Dracula wasn’t really Dracula, but the news media didn’t seem to understand that, and they’d enjoyed talking about how they had the real Dracula as their Master of the City. They’d only wanted him to be as politically correctly visible as Jean-Claude and a lot of the masters in this country, but the new Drac didn’t take well to it. In fact, he went buggers and started slaughtering humans.

The council managed to hush most of it up. To assassinate Dracula again, and just to prove that vampires can be as superstitious as the next bunch, they declared Dracula a dead name. No other vampire was allowed to choose it, or hold it. There had been two of them, and both had broken council law and had to be assassinated. Two was enough.

Jean-Claude had offered the London vamps a home. Not all of them, but many of them. All of them that could trace their lineage to Belle Morte. Who better to be strippers and dancers than the most beautiful and seductive vampires in the world? I couldn’t argue with his logic. But lying there trapped under the weight of two of those vampires, I had to wonder if part of what was happening was just too damn many of them in one place. Was there such a thing as vampire pheromones? Probably.

“You’re safe now,” I said, “so everybody off the animator. I need to get up.”

“That I did not offer means I am no gentleman,” Requiem said, and he came to his knees with more grace than I was going to manage.

Byron got to all fours, head hanging down like a tired horse. I could see down the line of his body, and he looked tired, spent. “I can’t feel my legs below my knees, so I’m as far up as I’m getting for awhile. Sorry, luv.”

His getting up even that far left me suddenly naked from the waist down, or as naked as mattered to me. I never felt dressed in just thigh-highs and boots, and still wearing the shirt complete with gun didn’t matter either. My skirt was up so high that the front of me was totally exposed, and for me, that was naked. I know, I know, how middle-America, how small town. But truth is truth. If you gave me a choice of covering anything, that would be it.

I tried to pull the skirt down, but I was lying on too much of it. Requiem stood and offered me a hand, but Nathaniel was on the other side, with his hand out. There was a look I couldn’t quite read on his face, and this time I fought not to read his mind. I’d had enough surprises for one evening. But I took Nathaniel’s hand and not Requiem’s.

Nathaniel had to take both my hands to pull me out from under Byron. When he got me standing, my knees wouldn’t hold, and he had to catch me around the waist. I looked at Requiem, who had spilled his black cloak around himself. I thought he was insulted, so I said, “Nothing personal, Requiem.”

He gave me a brief and rare grin. He smiled, but grinning was rare. “I am not insulted, my lady.” He spread the cloak wide suddenly, so that the front of his body showed. The cloak was black, but his slacks were not. The pale gray slacks were stained on the front as if he’d not quite made it to a bathroom, but that wasn’t really what the stain was. It wasn’t the stain that got me, it was the fact that the stain ran from his groin down one leg of his pants nearly to his knees.

I gave him raised eyebrows.

I expected embarrassment, but didn’t get it. “A task well done, m’lady, a task well done.”

That made me blush, which made him laugh, that deep rolling chuckle that was all masculine. Byron joined it, and his was not as deep a sound, but had just as much maleness to it. He was finally on his knees, instead of all fours.

Nathaniel didn’t join in the laughter. He was helping me pull my skirt into place. Something about his face, his silence, reached the vampires.

Requiem made a low sweeping bow that flared the cloak around him, like wings. He used the cloak, or one similar to it, on stage. “My apologies, Nathaniel, it did not occur to me to ask your favor when I entered. Jean-Claude is our master and hers, but not yours.” He looked up at Nathaniel, giving him the full force of those startling blue eyes.

“Anita doesn’t need my permission for anything,” Nathaniel said, but his voice made the words not ring true.

I sighed. I guess I couldn’t blame him. He’d spent a lot of time lately watching everybody else but him get so much more than just sleeping privileges. But I couldn’t apologize in front of the vampires without explaining way too much. So I didn’t try.

“You get to sleep with her every night, mate, don’t begrudge us a few crumbs from your table.”

He took a breath like he’d say something, but I stopped him with a hand against his lips. “It was a metaphysical emergency. Nathaniel wants to opt out of those for awhile.”

He looked at me, and I felt his smile against my hand. A smile just for me, because no one else could see it. He kissed the palm of my hand and moved it away from his mouth, but some piece of unhappiness had faded from his eyes. It made me smile.

“Let’s bandage that wrist.”

I glanced at the wrist in question. The gauze had glued itself to the wound, and it had begun to close. Byron had put a lot of pressure on it. “And find my underwear,” I said.

Byron lifted what was left of my black undies from under the tables. “I think they’ve had it, luver.”

I sighed. Bert had been right, the skirt was too short, and it was certainly too short to wear without underwear.

“I might have something that fits you,” Byron said.

“What?” I asked.

“A thong, but at least the front bits will be covered.” He smiled when he said it.

I shook my head, but I took his offer. A little underwear was better than no underwear at all.

38

THE CLUB WAS dark except for a single soft spotlight in the middle of the stage. In that soft, white light Jean-Claude stood. The light hit only his shoulders and face, the rest of him was lost to darkness. It gave the illusion that his body formed from the darkness itself, to rise to the shining paleness of his face, the gleaming white of his cravat, the tiny colored spark of the sapphire winking only when he moved. His hair looked as if the darkness had been drawn out into some dark thread and formed into curls. The only color was the drowning blue of his eyes and the crimson smear of lipstick across his face. It wasn’t my lipstick, or at least not most of it.

His voice floated through the darkened room. “Who will taste my kiss?” Taste, left a sweetness on my tongue, as if I’d licked a piece of candy. Kiss, gave a ghost of lips brushing my cheek. “Who will embrace me?” Embrace made me feel faintly warm, as if I’d been given a really good hug by someone I cared about.

Jean-Claude’s voice had always been good, but not this good. Not this good. With my partial immunity, I probably wasn’t getting all of it. I had no idea how much more the audience was getting. It took a force of will to look away from him in that shining circle of light. I made myself look out at the audience. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but when I could see, nearly every face was turned to him. They gazed up at him in the dark as if he were the rising sun and they had never seen anything so bright before. Only a handful of faces weren’t turned toward the stage. A few women were shaking their heads and looking confused. A little psychic talent of the right kind or with the right practice helped. Marianne had proven to me that you didn’t have to be a necromancer to have some immunity to vampire mind tricks.

One of the few men was standing up, and the woman with him was tugging on his arm, trying to get him to sit back down. He was shaking his head, adamantly. No, no, he wouldn’t sit in the dark and let that voice wash over him. He didn’t understand that it wasn’t a matter of sexual orientation. It was Jean-Claude. His power was seduction, and it had nothing and everything to do with sex.

Two of the waiters were escorting a woman up on stage. She was tall and almost anorexically thin. She’d apparently been waving more money than anybody else, because Jean-Claude preferred more curves on his women. As he’d pointed out to me, the beauties of his day in the French courts were today’s size twenty. Most of the old vamps liked short women with curves. Most of us were living in so the wrong century.

The lights around the stage had been growing brighter so gradually that if you’d been gazing at the stage the entire time, you might not have noticed. The light was just barely bright enough so the audience could see more of their bodies. From the waist up, you could see his pale hands sliding over her body. Nothing déclassé, but he got more out of simply touching a woman’s back, shoulder, or waist, than some men got out of touching breasts and groin. Sometimes it’s not what you touch but how you touch it.

He pressed her against the front of his body so there was no space between them, so that her thin frame seemed almost to mold itself to his body. He lifted her face up to meet his, using one pale hand to cradle her face so that he would control the kiss. His arm slid around her waist, and tightened. Tightened enough to bow her neck and make her mouth open in a surprised little O. One of the women before this one had groped him, so he’d made sure there wasn’t enough space between the front of their bodies for anyone’s hands to wander too far. The women seemed to take the closer frontal contact as a sign of favor. I knew it wasn’t. It was a sign of control and damn near displeasure.

But when he bowed his head to her mouth and locked their lips together in a kiss, there was no displeasure. He kissed her as if he were trying to breathe her down through his mouth. He fed from her lips almost as if he were feeding from her neck. And in a way, he was, feeding at least.

He fed from their mouths in a way that the Dragon’s presence in my head had told me about. Except she knew how to eat the essence of the dead and make the undead, really, truly dead. This was not that, but it was eerily similar. He was feeding the ardeur, from a kiss.

“Nikolaos would never let him feed like that,” a quiet voice said from behind me.

I turned to find Buzz just behind me. I hadn’t heard him, or sensed him, which meant that I’d been more caught up in the show than I’d realized.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Nikolaos knew that he was feeding off the audience without ever touching them, so she forbade him to touch any of the customers.” His gaze went past me to the stage. “I think she had some clue what he could have been, and she did everything she could to make sure he didn’t come into that power.”

“She’s been dead almost three years. You make it sound like tonight is the first time you’ve seen this show.”

He looked at me. “It is.”

I gave him wide eyes. “Nikolaos was dead, she couldn’t stop him.”

“But you could,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you really think three years ago you would have dated him after you saw this?”

I glanced back at the stage. I watched him kissing a strange woman as if she were his deepest love, or at least deepest lust. Would I have tolerated it three years ago? No. Would I have used it as an excuse to dump his ass? Oh, yeah.

The woman swooned in his arms. Her mouth falling away from his as she seemed to half-faint, as if the kiss alone were so intense that she couldn’t stay conscious. I would have thought she was play-acting, or exaggerating, but I had to believe it, when the waiters carried her off stage and gave her back to her friends at their table.

Jean-Claude gazed out at the audience with fresh crimson lipstick smeared across his entire lower jaw. It looked eerily like blood, and I knew him well enough to know that the resemblance was not accidental. His blue eyes had bled to solid blue light, as if a summer’s dusk could burn in his eyes. “Who will be next?” And it was as if he whispered along my skin, as if he were standing just behind me. The illusion was so strong that I had to fight not to turn around and look. I was supposed to be immune to this crap, if this was how I was feeling, what must the women connected to all those eager faces be feeling?

I lowered my shields just enough to see Jean-Claude shining with power. This was what he was meant to be. This wasn’t just feeding the ardeur. This wasn’t a substitute for a blood feed. This was an end in itself. This was something I’d never seen, not in Jean-Claude, not in anyone. It was akin to all his other abilities, but more, somehow this was more.

I turned back to Buzz. “Him feeding like this is what saved me.”

He looked puzzled, vampires under twenty years dead have so many more human facial expressions. “Saved you from what?”

“If he hadn’t fed, then I’d have had to feed for him. That’s one of the things a human servant is for. We feed when the vamps can’t. I would still be trapped backstage fucking my metaphysical brains out.” I shook my head. “No, thank you.”

“So you’re not disappointed that’s he’s doing strangers?”

I felt my face go sort of unfriendly. “You sound disappointed that I’m not upset about this, why?”

He raised his hands, making his big arms flex. I think by accident. He meant it to be a harmless gesture, but he was too muscle-bound for it to look anything but impressive, or scary, depending on how you looked at it.

“It just seems like a fast turnaround, that’s all.”

I sighed. “The last time Jean-Claude asked me if he could feed off the audience, I didn’t really understand what he was asking.” I smiled, but not like I was happy. “Besides, I wasn’t fucking strangers to feed the vampiric powers then. Strangely, that’s changed my mind about a lot of things.”

He looked way too serious for my tastes.

I didn’t know what was up with Buzz, so I decided to change topics. “Primo all tucked away in the spare coffin?”

“We put him in while you were cleaning up.”

I nodded. I’d been told about it, but I’d also laid my hands on the coffin and felt Primo trapped inside, behind silver chains and a holy item. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust everybody, it was just good business to be cautious. Buzz’s odd behavior hadn’t changed my mind about that, not one little bit.

“Lisandro told me that you ordered him to baby-sit the coffin.”

I nodded. “Yes, I did.”

“Primo is in a cross-wrapped coffin, Anita. He’s not getting out.”

I shrugged. Lisandro was tall, dark, handsome, with the longest hair that any of the new security had. He was also the only one with a gun tucked into the small of his back under the black T-shirt. Once I spotted the gun, I pegged him for a wererat, and I’d been right. I told him if Primo started to tear out of the coffin, to kill him. Jean-Claude would probably have agreed with me, but he’d been busy on stage, so I’d made the call. I was happy with the call, and I didn’t like that Buzz wasn’t.

“Let’s just say that I feel better going off to raise the dead, knowing that Lisandro is sitting by that coffin with silver ammo, and a willingness to shoot.”

“I’m head of security here, Anita. You should have cleared it with me.”

I sighed. “You’re right. You’re right, I should have. I’m sorry.”

He just blinked at me like a deer caught in headlights. I think he’d expected an argument. But I was tired, and late, and feeling squidgie about having had sex with Byron and Requiem.

“I’ve got to go, Buzz.”

“Your security detail is waiting at the door,” he said, and nodded toward the door in question.

Requiem was by the door in his black cloak, wearing a fresh pair of pants that he’d borrowed from someone. The new pants were leather, so he’d probably borrowed them from another dancer. But we had a new addition, and that was the dark-haired werewolf that had fallen on top of Clay and me when Primo was fighting everyone. His name was Graham, and his body had that width of shoulder and impressive swell of arm that only semiserious weight lifting can get you. His black hair was cut in a longish layer on top so that it fell like a silken fringe over his ears, but underneath the hair was shaved close to his head and upper neck. It seemed an odd haircut to me, but it wasn’t my hair.

His face was exotic, in the way that people can be when some ancestor didn’t come from Northern or Southern Europe. The straight black hair, the ever-so-slight uptilt to the edge of his eyes made me bet he’d come from somewhere much farther east.

I’d argued that I didn’t need or want guards, but just as I’d made the call about Primo and Lisandro, so Jean-Claude had given his orders about this before he got carried away on stage. I was to go nowhere without someone with me. He wasn’t sure the Dragon was done with us for the night, and it would be a shame if something went horribly wrong. What he hadn’t told the security detail, vampire or otherwise, was about what had happened earlier in my office. That had had nothing to do with the Dragon and everything to do with my own metaphysical shit. Well, mine, and Jean-Claude’s.

Jean-Claude had even left a list of people he thought were appropriate to the job. Byron had not been on the list, nor had Clay. It had been a damn short list, actually, basically Requiem and Graham. The last thing I wanted to do was be trapped in a car with Requiem, but I didn’t have time to argue. I’d gone from having plenty of time, to having to call my clients and tell them to hold fast in the cemetery, I really was on my way.

I was wearing Byron’s leather jacket to take the place of my bloodied suit jacket. His was the only one that came close to fitting me and not making me look like I was wearing the upper half of a gorilla. It smelled faintly of his cologne.

Buzz’s eyes left me and went to the audience. The man who had been arguing with his date was still standing, but now so was the woman, and she was starting to make a scene. “Sorry, gotta catch that.”

“Be my guest,” I said.

Nathaniel seemed to appear from nowhere. He escorted me toward the outer door. He was smiling and seemed terribly at ease, more so than I’d seen him in a long time, maybe ever. It seemed an odd night for him to be happy. “You promised to get back in time to see some of my act,” he said, smiling.

“I’ve got two clients stuck in cemeteries,” I said.

He gave me the look that was half-pout and half-he-knew-he’d-already-won-the-argument. “You promised.”

“Can’t we just fuck at home later?” I asked.

He gave me a frown. “I’ll be furry, you don’t do furry.”

I had an idea, an awful idea. “I promised to mark your neck tonight. Oh, no, you so are not planning on me doing it in front of an audience?”

He smiled, and there was something in that smile that I hadn’t seen before. Some hint of confidence, of security that hadn’t been there before. He’d watched me have sex with two near strangers, and suddenly he felt more secure. Go figure.

“You little exhibitionist, you,” I said, “you like the idea of me marking you for the first time in front of all these people.”

He gave an aw-gee-shucks shrug, which was all act, because his eyes were bright with the answer. “I like a lot of things, Anita.”

I tried to frown at him, but couldn’t keep it up. “You got me to promise I’d mark you, and now you’re taking advantage of it.”

“You’re running late,” he said, “clients waiting in the cemetery.” He looked solemn except for the glint of humor in his eyes, which spoiled the effect.

I shook my head, smiling. “I’ve got to go.”

“I know,” he said.

“Would it ruin the illusion if I kissed you good-bye?”

“I’ll risk it,” he said.

I kissed him. It was chaste, a touch of lips, a little pressure, barely any body language. I drew back with a suspcious look on my face. It made him laugh and push me toward the door. “You’re late, remember.”

I went, but I went out into the October dark even more certain that I knew absolutely nothing about men. Alright, to be fair, that I knew absolutely nothing about the men in my life. I glanced back to see Jean-Claude on stage with another woman, kissing her as if he were trying to find her tonsils without his hands. Most people looked disturbing or awkward when they kissed that deep. He didn’t. He made it all seem sauve, erotic, and perfect. I realized I’d kissed Nathaniel good-bye, but not Jean-Claude. Didn’t want to interrupt, but didn’t want him to feel left out, either. I blew him a kiss as his arms emptied of the woman. He returned the gesture with one pale hand. The lower half of his face was smeared bright crimson with lipstick. It didn’t really look like blood, not if you’d seen enough of the real deal, but it was still a less than comforting image to take away into the night. One of the other men in my life was smiling at the door, looking forward to having me do foreplay on him in front of an audience. Sometimes the parts of my life that are weirdest to me aren’t the parts dealing with vampires and werewolves and zombies. Even vampire politics didn’t confuse me as much as my own love life.

39

WE WERE ON Gravois, trapped between an endless line of storefronts that had seen better days. The entire area was doing that slow slide into not being a good area to be in after dark. It wasn’t quite a danger zone, but if nothing saved it, in a couple of years it would be. The Bevo Mill restaurant, an honest-to-God windmill, loomed like a ship in a sea of lesser buildings and harder times. The Bevo Mill still served great German food. The slowly turning windmill was just ahead, and suddenly we were driving under the stone overpass blocks past the mill. I didn’t remember passing any of it. That wasn’t good. I was missing things, like my attention was going in and out. Not good at all, since I was driving. Graham squeaked a second time, you know, that sharp intake of breath that comes out when you’re trying to swallow the sound.

I glanced at him. “What? What is your problem?”

“You’ve almost hit two cars,” he said in a strangled voice.

“No I haven’t.”

“Yes,” Requiem said from the back, “yes you have.”

There was a white car in front of me, like magic, it just appeared. I slammed on the brakes, and Graham squeaked again. My pulse was thudding in my throat. I hadn’t seen that car. I signaled that I was turning right. Right meant I didn’t have to cross any lanes of traffic. The suddenly appearing white car had scared me.

I eased us into Grasso Plaza, which held the Affton Post Office, a Save-A-Lot, and a lot of empty storefronts. This whole area along Gravois seemed tired, as if it had given its best and its best hadn’t been good enough. Or maybe it was projecting. I cut the engine, and we sat in silence for a minute.

“Are you well?” Requiem asked, his voice was very quiet and deep like he was talking from inside a well.

I actually turned around and looked at him, and even turning around seemed to be slower, as if I wasn’t moving at the same speed as the rest of the world.

Requiem was just sitting in the backseat, with his hands clasped in his lap. He wasn’t far away, or doing anything odd. He was sitting, very still, as if he didn’t want to attract attention to himself.

“What did you say?” My voice seemed hollow, too, as if I had an echo in my head.

“Are you well?” he said, slowly, distinctly, and as I stared at his lips, watching them move; the sound and the movement seemed just a little out of sync.

I had to think about it as if it were a much harder question than it should have been. “No,” I said, finally. “No, I don’t think I am.”

“What’s wrong?” Graham asked.

What was wrong? Good question. Trouble is, I wasn’t sure I had a good answer. What was wrong? I was having something close to a shock reaction, why? Had I lost more blood than I knew? Maybe. Maybe not.

I was cold, and I huddled in the borrowed jacket, burying my face in the collar. Byron’s cologne, the scent of him, was there, and I jerked back from it, because the smell of his skin in the leather brought it all back. Scent brings memory stronger than any other sense, and I was suddenly drowning in the feel of Byron’s body, the look of his face as he gazed down at me, the weight of him, the sight of him going in and out of my body.

I fell back against the seat, my head thrown back, and it was as if all the pleasure of it was suddenly there again, rolling over me, through me. It wasn’t the exact experience, but like a strong, strong, echo. Strong enough to shake my body against the seat and leave my hands clawing at the air, as if I needed something to hold on to, anything to hold on to.

I heard Requiem’s voice: “No, don’t touch . . .” And I found something to hold on to.

Graham had tried to grab me, hold me down, keep me from hurting myself. I think he’d thought I was having a fit. His hand touched mine, and my hand convulsed around his, and it was as if from the moment our palms locked together that all that memory, all that pleasure, poured down my hand and into him.

Graham shuddered against me. I felt the shiver of it go down his arm, and it threw him against the seat so hard the Jeep shook from the impact. I let him have the memory, the pleasure, the sights and smells of it, I let it all pour away from me and into him. It wasn’t a conscious thought, because I hadn’t known until I did it that I could put it into someone else and not have to be pulled along for the ride. I didn’t mean to do it, but I wasn’t unhappy about it. I was glad, for once, to be the calm one on the other side of the seat, while I watched Graham writhing in just the echo of what we’d done. I was glad it wasn’t me. Because I knew now why I’d had the shocky reaction earlier, before the metaphysics had gotten out of hand.

I killed without thinking much about it. Not in cold blood, but if it came time to kill, I had no real problem with it. I’d mourned the fact that killing had stopped bothering me. Then on my first trip to Tennessee to help Richard back when we were still a couple, I’d tortured someone. The bad guys had sent us Richard’s mother’s finger in a little box, along with a lock of his brother Daniel’s hair. We had a time limit to find them, and we already knew that they’d been tortured. The man who’d delivered the box had bragged that they’d both been raped. I’d tortured him, made him tell us where they were, and when we were done with him, I’d shot him in the head, and made the screaming stop. I’d done it to save Richard’s family, and because I couldn’t see another way to do it. I’d done it because I never ask anyone to do anything that I’m not willing to do myself. It’s a rule. Of course, before that, my rule had been I did not do torture. That was a line I did not cross, and I’d crossed it. The terrible part was that I hadn’t regretted doing it, only having to do it. He’d raped Richard’s mother, if I could have I’d have killed him slower, but that wasn’t in me, not even for what he’d done. We’d saved them, but before all of it, the Zeeman’s had been like the Waltons, and now they weren’t. They weren’t broken completely, but they weren’t as fixed as when they started, either. I’d killed the men that did it, or helped them get killed, but all the revenge in the world wouldn’t really fix what was broken.

How do you give someone back their innocence? That wonderful sense of perfect safety that only exists for people that have never really had anything bad happen to them. How do you give that back? I wish I knew.

I’d crossed a lot of lines over the years, but one line I’d never crossed until tonight had been I didn’t have sex just to feed. I didn’t have sex with strangers. Byron and Requiem were strangers. I’d known them for two weeks, give or take. I had fucked them because Jean-Claude needed me to feed.

Requiem had moved to one side of the backseat, so he was close enough to see my face and to watch Graham still twitching on the front seat, but not close enough so I could touch him easily. “You had a flashback, didn’t you?”

I nodded, still staring at the werewolf in my front seat.

“Has that ever happened before?”

“Only after Asher rolled me completely with his mind, and we all had sex.” I didn’t look at him as I spoke, I watched Graham’s body begin to grow quiet.

“But Asher was not involved tonight.”

“No,” I said, “he wasn’t.” My voice sounded very even, very neutral, empty. Empty, just like I felt.

“Did you know that you could send that memory into someone else?”

“No,” I said.

Graham’s eyes were fluttering, like butterflies trying to open, but not able to do it. He looked boneless, as if he could have slid into the floorboard, if his body had been a little less solid.

“You spilled it into him, then watched him writhe. How did it make you feel?”

I shook my head. “Nothing, just glad for once that it wasn’t me twisting in the seat.”

He moved to lean against the back of Graham’s seat, a little closer to me. “Is that true? Is that really how you feel about it?”

I moved my whole head to meet his eyes, as if a glance wasn’t enough. I let him see how dead my eyes felt, how empty I was inside. “You’re a master vamp, can’t you smell it if I’m lying?”

He licked his lips like he was nervous. “The last vampire I knew that could do what you just did, did it on purpose. She would recall a memory of pleasure, and she would pick someone to give it to. It could be a reward, and it was, but it could also be punishment. Sometimes she would choose someone who did not wish to feel such pleasures, and she would force them to experience it.”

“A kind of rape,” I said.

He nodded.

“You’re talking about Belle Morte, aren’t you?”

He nodded, again.

“She enjoyed watching them writhe, especially if they didn’t want to do it,” I said.

“You say that as a statement, not a question.”

“I’ve met her, remember?”

“You are exactly right. She loved watching prim, proper women and men, forced to spill themselves upon the floor and flop about, experiencing a pleasure greater than any they had ever felt before. It pleased her to watch the righteous brought low.”

“Yeah, that sounds like her.”

“But you truly felt nothing. It did not excite you to watch Graham writhe.”

“Why should it?”

He smiled then, and there was relief in his eyes. “That you would ask the question makes me worry less about you.”

“Worry how?” I asked.

“It has been speculation for centuries whether Belle was formed into the type of,” he seemed to search for a word, “creature she was by the ardeur and her powers running to flesh and pleasure, or whether she was always as she is, and the power simply made her more.”

“It’s been my expereince, Requiem, that people become more of who they are in extremes, both good and bad. Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.”

He looked at me, with an odd expression on his face. “That was a very wise thing to say.”

I had to smile. “You sound surprised.”

He gave an almost bow from the neck, as much as he could sitting in the seat. “My apologies, but in truth I’ve always thought of you as more muscle than brain. Not stupid,” he added hastily, “but not wise. Intelligent perhaps, but no, not wise.”

“I guess I’ll just take the compliment, and leave the insult alone.”

“It was not meant as an insult, Anita, far from it.” There was a look on his face, a feel to him, that was anxious.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. A lot of people underestimate me.”

“They see the delicate beauty, but not the killer,” he said.

“I’m not a delicate beauty,” I said.

He gave a small frown. “You are most assuredly delicate in appearance, and you are beautiful.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not. Not beautiful, pretty, maybe, but not beautiful.”

His eyes widened a little. “If you do not think yourself beautiful, then you are using a different mirror from the one in front of my eyes.”

“Pretty words, but I’m surrounded by some of the most beautiful men living or dead. I may clean up well, but when comparing beauty, I don’t rank that high, not in this company.”

“It is true, perhaps, that your beauty is not a flashy beauty, as is Asher’s, or Jean-Claude’s, or even your Nathaniel’s, but it is beauty nonetheless. Perhaps the more precious, for it grows not at the first sight of the eye, but a little more each time one speaks with you or watches you move so commandingly into a situation, or watches the truth in your eyes when you say that you are not beautiful, and I realize that you mean it. That you are not being humble, or playing silly games, you simply do not see yourself.”

“See, that’s not beauty, that’s pretty with a personality that you like.”

“But do you not see, Anita, that there is beauty that hits the eye like a bolt of lighting, that burns and sears and blinds. It is more disaster than pleasure. But yours, yours is a beauty that lulls one into comfort, into not protecting one’s eyes from the light, then one night you realize that the moon, too, has its beauty.”

I shook my head. “I have no idea who you’re talking about, but it’s not me.”

He sighed. “You are a very hard woman to compliment.”

“You know, you’re not the first person to say that.”

He smiled. “That does not surprise me at all.”

Graham let out a long, long sigh, and sort of spilled himself back up onto the seat. It was like watching liquid fall upward. He had that same liquid grace that all the wereanimals seemed to have. He leaned his head against the headrest, but at least he was upright again. He gave me a slow, lazy blink, and his eyes were a dark, wolf amber, almost brown, but I knew the difference. I’d seen it often enough.

He smiled, and even that was lazy. “That was amazing.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.

“I don’t care.”

I frowned at him.

“Can you do it again, is all I want to know.”

I frowned harder.

Some of the laziness began to seep away from his face. “Look, you give me one of the most amazing orgasmic experiences of my life, and now you’re acting like the injured party. You’re the one that spilled all over me.”

“Not on purpose,” I said.

“You keep saying that, like you’re apologizing, why? Why are you apologizing?”

I looked at Requiem for help, though I didn’t hold much hope. But he did help. “I believe that Anita sees it as unasked-for sexual contact. A sort of rape, if you will.”

“Can’t rape the willing,” Graham said, and he stretched himself taller in the seat, settling more into it, and his eyes were bleeding back to human.

“I didn’t know you were willing, when it happened.”

He nodded. “Okay, but I’m okay with it.” He looked at me. “But you don’t seem okay with it at all. What’s wrong now?”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “I just had a flashback so strong that if I’d still been driving, we’d have wrecked. I fed it into you by accident. I didn’t mean to do it. What else am I not going to mean to do?”

“She and Jean-Claude have hit a new power plateau,” Requiem said.

“Oh,” Graham said, as if that made perfect sense to him, “so you don’t know what all the new power can do, yet.”

“No,” I said.

He nodded. “Yeah, that can get scary. I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was the first time you’d done something like this. I enjoyed it, you don’t owe me an apology.”

“But what if I grab a client next time?” I said.

“You had warning,” Requiem said, “or you wouldn’t have pulled off the road.”

“I don’t think that had anything to do with new powers.”

“Then why did you nearly run us up the back of three different cars?” Graham asked.

I opened my mouth, closed it, and didn’t know what to say. “I think I crossed my last few lines tonight.”

“What does that mean?” Graham asked.

“I broke some personal rules tonight, that’s all.”

“Rules that you thought would never be broken,” Requiem said softly.

I looked at him, surprised. “You say that like you know.”

“A person likes to think of himself in a certain way, and when something happens that makes that no longer possible, you mourn the old self. The person you thought you were.”

I shook my head. “I am still the person I thought I was, damn it.”

He gave a shrug that reminded me of that graceful lift of shoulders that Jean-Claude always did. “As you like, m’lady.”

I turned around in my seat and put my forehead against the steering wheel. I just wanted this night over with. I didn’t want to have to explain myself to anyone, let alone one of the men that I’d had sex with by accident tonight. The trouble was, I wasn’t sure that I believed what I’d just said. It wasn’t just the sex with Byron and Requiem, it was that tonight, for the first time, I’d let Jean-Claude into my head as far as he could go. For the first time we’d touched what might be possible if only I’d get out of our way. Until tonight, I hadn’t realized how much I’d crippled us. As much in my own way as Richard. I’d thought that sleeping with Jean-Claude and doing small things with him was being his human servant. I’d learned differently less than an hour ago, and that knowledge was eating me up. It wasn’t that I had crippled us as a triumverate of power. No, I’d guessed that before, just not the amount of crippling. I thought my limits and boundaries had hobbled us, not cut both our legs off at the knees. What I hadn’t expected, what I hadn’t wanted to know, was how good it felt to let Jean-Claude roll me. It had been a-fucking-mazing. Peaceful and intoxicating all at the same time. I’d never really known what I was doing without, because I had been so careful not to let him show me. And he had respected my wishes.

I knew now that it had cost him dear. Cost him in power he might have had, safety he might have built for his vampires, and in the sheer pleasure he might have experienced. He’d cut himself off from so much, just because I couldn’t handle it. That made me feel guilty, but part of the real problem was that after I’d let Jean-Claude in that deep, I’d then turned around and had sex with Byron, and let Requiem bite me. Two things I didn’t do lightly. Yeah, it had been imporant, maybe urgent, maybe it had saved the lives of most of those women in that club. Maybe it had even saved Jean-Claude’s life. I’d felt Primo’s power and the whisper of the Dragon. But that wasn’t what bothered me the most.

Jean-Claude had gained Nathaniel and Damian’s neediness. What had I gained? I’d had sex with Byron and Requiem, and I didn’t feel bad about it. Even now, I felt bad only because I didn’t feel bad. It hadn’t bothered me. That’s what made me almost run into three cars, and pull into the parking lot so I could have my little moment of shock reaction.

I didn’t feel guilty about Byron. I only felt guilty about not feeling guilty about it. And even now, I wanted to turn the car around and go back to Jean-Claude. I wanted him to hold me, to kiss me, to feed from me. I wanted the whole ride, now that I’d had a taste. I wanted it the way junkies want their fix. That’s not love. That’s control. I wouldn’t let anyone control me like that. I couldn’t, not and still be me.

I didn’t explain any of this to Graham or Requiem. They weren’t close enough to me for a heart-to-heart. I just said, “Whoever feels better to drive, drive.”

“I do not know how to drive,” Requiem said.

“I’ll drive,” Graham said, “just don’t touch me while I’m behind the wheel.”

“I’ll do my best to resist,” I said, and made it plain by my tone that it wouldn’t be hard.

He laughed and got out his door to walk around. In the moments it took him to walk around the car, Requiem said, “You feel very serious tonight, Anita.”

“I’m always serious,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he said, and he might have said more, but Graham opened the door and I got out. I walked around the car and got into the passenger seat, as Graham started the engine. “Where to?”

“Sunset Cemetery. It’s less than five minutes from here.”

“Do you feel well enough to raise the dead tonight?” Requiem asked.

“Just get me there, and don’t let me touch any of the clients. I’ll do the rest. Just don’t let me fuck anybody or tear anybody’s throat out.”

“What if you order us to allow you to fuck someone?” Requiem asked.

“Or kill someone?” Graham said.

“I’m not planning on it tonight, okay?”

“You weren’t planning on it earlier,” Requiem said quietly.

Graham pulled carefully into the traffic on Gravois, as if he were trying to make up for my bad driving earlier. “What do we do if some new vampire power kicks in?” he asked, as he eased us to the first stoplight.

“Just keep me from hurting anybody,” I said.

“And if the need arises for you to feed again, what then?” Requiem asked.

I turned in my seat as far as the seat belt would allow, so I could see his face in the streetlights. He was revealed in startling white light for an instant. It made his eyes glow, then shadow swept over the backseat, and his eyes faded to a dim blue glow. “What are you getting at?” I asked.

“Did you wonder why Jean-Claude chose us, and only us, to guard you tonight?”

“I had some ideas, but enlighten me.”

“He wanted people with you that were strong enough and dominant enough that if they had to, they could override you. That they would use their best judgment and not blindly follow.”

“Bully for you both,” I said.

“But it wasn’t that alone.”

“Just spill it, Requiem, the foreplay is getting tiresome.”

“I heard that about you,” Graham said.

I turned and looked at him. “What?”

“That you don’t like a lot of foreplay.”

I gave him a very cold look. “One, no one that would actually know would tell you shit, and two, don’t let a little metaphysical sex go to your head. Remember, I watched you writhe all over the seat, and it didn’t appeal to me. It wasn’t foreplay, or a preview, it was just an accident.”

“Sorry.”

I turned back to Requiem. “Now, you, just tell me what you need to tell me. No preface, no long explanation, just say it.”

“You won’t like it,” he said.

“I already don’t like it. Just tell me, Requiem, just tell me.” I was getting a headache. I didn’t know if it was loss of blood, or tension, but whatever, it was beginning to pound right behind my eye.

“He thought that if things went as badly as they could go . . .”

“Games, word games, just say it.”

He sighed, and the sigh seemed to fill the Jeep with echoes. “If you had to feed the ardeur, or if your beast rose, we were the two most likely to survive an attack without having to resort to hurting you.”

“You left something out,” I said.

“I’ve said enough,” he said.

“All of it, Requiem, I want to hear all of it.”

“No,” Graham said, “you don’t. That tone in your voice, no you don’t.”

“Just drive,” I said, and turned back to the vampire. “Tell me the rest.”

He sighed again, and it flittered through the interior of the Jeep like it had a life of its own.

“And can the voice tricks, or you’re really going to piss me off.”

“My apologies, it is automatic for me, when faced with an angry woman, to try and pacify her, by whatever means.”

“Talk to me, Requiem, we’re almost at the cemetery. I want that last bit before we get out of the car.”

He drew himself up even straighter in his seat, very formal. “We were also the two at the club most likely to be able to turn violence to seduction, if the need arose.”

“He must have a high opinion of you both, or a low opinion of me.”

“That last is not true, and you know it,” Requiem said.

I sighed. “Just the way I’m feeling tonight.”

Graham said it. “You’re feeling slutty because you did Byron.”

I looked at him. “Well, that’s one way of putting it.”

“It’s exactly how you’re feeling,” he said, sounding sure.

“And you’re sure of that?”

“The way you’re acting, yeah. Besides, I know your reputation. If anyone can resist temptation it’s you.”

“Everyone keeps telling me that, but I don’t seem to be resisting much anymore.”

“I have lived with others more powerful than I in Belle Morte’s line for centuries, Anita. I, more than most, know just how much you must fight every night of your exisitence not to be consumed by their power.” He paused and then whispered so that it filled the darkened car, “If you are not careful, their beauty will become both heaven and hell, you will betray every oath, abandon every loyalty, give up your heart, your mind, your body, and your immortal soul to have them near you but one more night. Then one cold night, a hundred years after the passion is spent, and nothing but ashes remain, you look up and see someone gazing at you, and you know that look, you’ve seen it before. A hundred years later and someone gazes upon you as if you were heaven itself, but you know in your heart of hearts that it’s not heaven you’re offering them, it’s hell.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but Graham did.

“Now I know why they call you Requiem. You’re poetic, but fucking depressing.”

Tonight, I just thought he was accurate.

40

SUNSET CEMETERY WAS a nice combination of old and new. Big monuments of angels and weeping virgins combined with flat, modern stones—so much less interesting. It was still a place for the rich and famous to be interred, like our local famous brewery family, the Busches.

In his day, Edwin Alonzo Herman had been a very important man, and his monument showed that he thought so, too. It loomed up into the darkness like some winged giant. There was enough light to see that the huge angel had a sword and shield, and it gave you sense that it was waiting to pass judgment, and you wouldn’t like what it decided. Of course, maybe that was just the way I was feeling tonight.

There were more than a dozen people waiting at the paved road, most of them lawyers, though with enough family members to have nearly caused a fistfight when I introduced myself and briefly explained what I’d be doing. I’d started telling people up front that I’d be using a machete and beheading chickens, for two different reasons. I’d had an overzealous bodyguard of a very wealthy man nearly shoot me when I drew the big blade. At a different graveside for a historical society, the secretary of said society had jumped me and tried to save the chicken. She’d turned out to be a vegan. That’s like a rabid fundamentalist vegetarian. I’d been glad later that it hadn’t been cold enough to wear a coat, because leather is the only kind of coat I own.

Tonight was cold enough for coats. October isn’t usually that chilly in St. Louis, but tonight had decided to be cold. Or maybe it just felt colder because I was wearing a thong. I’d been surprised by two things about the skimpy underwear: One, once I got over the sensation of having something in the crack of my butt, the thong wasn’t uncomfortable; two, a thong under a short skirt on a cold night was damn cold. I’d never fully appreciated how much warmth a little extra bit of satin or silk could hold in against my ass. I certainly appreciated it as I walked over the grass in my little boots and skirt. I huddled in the borrowed leather jacket, but kept my face away from the collar. I did not want a repeat of what had happened in the car. I willed the warmth in my upper body to travel downward. I was suddenly wishing I’d taken one of the taller men’s jackets. It wouldn’t have looked as good, but it would have covered my ass.

I stood in front of the grave, though, since it had been nearly two hundred years in a cemetery that was as well-maintained as Sunset, there was no way for me to truly be sure of where the grave had been, not really. A lot of the graves had been moved here from smaller cemeteries over the years, as increased population had needed the land. But I had dropped just enough of my shields to know exactly where Edwin Alonzo Herman’s grave lay. His bones were under there, I could feel them.

To the watchers from the road who had paid for this show, it must have looked like I was standing a little far away from the impressive angel. But it had been my experience that once the zombie crawls out of the grave, the crowd always thinks they’ve had a good show. They’ll forgive almost any lack of showmanship on my part, once they’ve seen me raise the dead. Funny, that.

The crate with softly clucking chickens was near my feet. Graham had carried it and put it where I said to put it. No arguments. Once we left the Jeep, he went back into serious security guard mode. He was the unsmiling, business only person he’d been when I first saw him at the club. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt with his black jeans, jogging shoes, and his own short, leather jacket. He’d changed out of the Guilty Pleasures shirt without being asked. The joking, half-flirting man of a few minutes ago had vanished behind a very serious face and a pair of dark eyes that kept searching the cemetery, the people near us, and farther away, so he was very obviously aware of the perimeter. He seemed to vibrate bodyguard. I’d let the lawyers think he was and showed them the many bandages on my face, wrist, and fingers, to prove the necessity. No one had argued that this was private business and they didn’t like anyone but me here with them, once Graham put his dark gaze on their faces. He had a really good stare, a hardness to his face and eyes that did not match what he’d been like in the car. Interesting.

Requiem had carried my gym bag with all the rest of the zombie-raising equipment, except the chickens. I could have carried the bag, but it would have taken me two trips to get the chickens. They tended to squawk if you didn’t carry them upright and carefully. Since I was planning on killing them tonight, I tried not to scare them. I had to kill them to raise the dead, but I could make it as painless as possible. And fear definitely goes under the heading of pain in the wrong situation. Being a blood sacrifice probably qualifies as a wrong situation, even if you’re a chicken.

I’d persuaded Requiem to leave his long, black cloak in the Jeep, because in it, he looked like a cute version of the Grim Reaper. Out of it, he looked like he should have been going clubbing. Maybe it was the leather pants? Or the boots? Or the long-sleeved silk shirt in a deep green jewel tone that made his white skin almost shine in contrast. The shirt had made his eyes turquoise in the light, as if there was green in that bright blue somewhere. He’d been harder to explain than Graham, because even without the cloak, he didn’t really look like a bodyguard. He looked like what he was, and that was nothing that any of Herman’s descendants thought should be here tonight. The only walking dead they wanted to see tonight was Herman himself. I’d told them the vampire stayed, they could like it, or lump it. I also reminded them that I was not obligated to return their down payment if they changed their minds about raising Edwin Herman from the grave. I was here, ready to fulfill my part of the bargain.

When you start needing more than a hundred years worth of zombie raised, it’s sort of a seller’s market, and I was the seller. There were two other animators in the United States that could do it. One in California, and one in New Orleans, but they weren’t here, and I was. Besides, they were nearly as expensive as I was, and they also came with the cost of plane fare and hotels. More money.

So the lawyers got them to shut up. Though there was an elderly woman on the side of the family that had inherited the money that wanted to leave if the “demon” stayed. Demon? If she thought Requiem was a demon, she’d never seen one for real. I had, and I knew the difference.

But the lawyers had settled them down, and one of the granddaughters had settled the grandmother down, and now they were waiting in the dark for me to do my job.

I had the chickens in their crate, and my gym bag with the machete and other paraphernalia. But before anything else, I had to drop my shields enough to do this. I’d learned how to shield, really shield, so that I could fight off the urge to use my gift. I’d learned long ago to control it enough so I didn’t raise the dead by accident. There’d been a professor in college that committed suicide. He’d come to my dorm room one night. He wanted to tell his wife he was sorry. That was back when I wasn’t raising anything, just shut it down, ignored it. I’m too damn gifted to ignore it. Psychic ability will come out one way or another, if the power is big enough, it’ll find a way. And you probably won’t like what it will find.

I dropped my shields, not all of them, but enough. Enough so I could open that part of me that raised the dead. It was like a fist that stayed clenched and tight, and only when I relaxed, spread wide those metaphysical fingers, could I be free. I knew people that had studied with animators or voodoo practitioners to aquire the skills needed to raise the dead. I’d studied to learn how not to raise the dead. But it took a little effort, all the time, to keep that fist closed, that power shut down. It was like a piece of me never completely relaxed, not even when I slept, unless I was here, with the true dead. Here to call one of them from the grave. It was the only moment that all of me could be free.

I stood there for a minute with my power spilling, cool and seeking, like a wind, except that this wind didn’t move your hair, it only crept along your skin. It was like I’d been holding my breath, tight, so tight, and finally I could let it out, let it all out, and relax. Once I’d stopped being afraid of it, it felt so good to be with the dead. Peaceful, so peaceful, because whatever was left in the grave had nothing to do with souls or pain. Quiet as the grave wasn’t just a saying. But I’d forgotten that there were dead near at hand that weren’t underground.

My power touched Requiem. It should have ignored him, but it didn’t. That cool not-wind curled around him like the arms of some long-lost lover. I’d never felt anything quite like it. For the first time I truly understood that my power was over the dead, all the dead, and that undead is still dead. I’d always thought, and been told, that vampires killed necromancers for fear that they would be controlled by them, but in that second, I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. It was as if a door opened inside me, to a room that I hadn’t known existed. Inside that metaphysical room stood something. It had no shape that my eye could see, no weight, nothing to touch, nothing to hold, but it was there, and it was real, and it was me, mine, sort of. A “power plateau” Byron and Requiem had called it, but that wasn’t it. Plateau is static, not growing, not changing. This wasn’t static.

It blew out toward me, and if it had been a real room in a real house, the house would have exploded outward with the force of its coming. It would have roared outward in a blizzard of wood and glass and metal, and there would have been nothing standing in that metaphysical yard, except ground zero of some mysterious blast.

It was inside me, so it couldn’t slam into me, that was silly, but that’s still what it did. It slammed into me, and for a second I was blind, deaf, weightless, nothingness. There was nothing but the rawness of that power.

I came to, with Graham’s voice. “Anita, Anita, can you hear me? Anita!” I felt him holding me, knew we were on top of the grave. I could feel the grave, could feel Edwin Alonzo Herman lying underneath me. All I had to do was call his name.

“Something’s wrong, Requiem.”

“No,” he said, and that one word was enough. I opened my eyes and saw the vampire standing over me.

“She’s awake,” Graham said, and he tried to cradle me into a sitting position, but I lifted my hand up toward Requiem.

The vampire reached down for me, and I reached for him. Graham helped, by pushing me upright, but he wasn’t there for me in that moment. My business was with the dead, and Graham was too warm for me. The blood I wanted was slow and thick, and holding its hand out to me.

Requiem’s fingers brushed mine, and the power inside me steadied, as if the world had been trembling, and now it was still. I touched his hand in that sudden stillness, and there was no pulse in his palm. No beat of blood to distract the senses. He blinked at me, his lips moved, but he did not breathe. He was still. He was dead. He was mine.

He pulled me to my feet, and we stood on the foot of the grave, hand in hand. I looked up into that face, met the turquoise flame of his eyes, but it wasn’t me that was pulled into his gaze. It was he that fell into mine, and I knew, because I had a glimpse from his mind to mine, that my eyes were solid pools of black with stars glittering in them. It was the way my eyes had looked when Obsidian Butterfly, a vampire that thought she was an Aztec goddess, had shown me some of her power. She was powerful enough that no one argued with her about whether or not she was diety. Some things aren’t worth the fight. I’d used the power I’d learned from her only twice, and both times my eyes had filled with stars.

The night was suddenly less dark. I could see details, colors, things that my own eyes could never have seen. Requiem’s shirt was so green it seemed to burn like his eyes. It was a kind of hyperfocus, and it wasn’t just sight. His hand in mine felt heavier than it should have, more imporant than it should have, as if I could feel each whorl of his fingertip like tiny silken lines against my hand. To make love like this would either be the most wondrous experience of your life, or drive you mad.

I remembered this power, but it wasn’t what I needed. I had another flash from Requiem’s mind, a tiny flash of fear, quieted almost immediately, because I was touching him and I didn’t want him to be afraid. The stars in my eyes drowned in a rush of flame, black flame with a center of brown, as if wood were the flame, and fire what it ate.

My eyes were, for a moment, what they’d be if I’d been a vampire. They filled with dark, dark brown light, so dark it was almost black. I turned those glowing eyes toward the grave, and Graham saw them.

“Oh, God,” he whispered.

“Get off the grave, Graham,” I said, and my voice was mine, almost.

He just knelt on the ground and stared up at me.

“Move, Graham,” I said, “you won’t want to be there when I’m finished.”

He scrambled to his feet and moved, until I told him, “Good enough.” He stayed close, eyes wide, fear like a scent off of his skin, but he didn’t run, and he didn’t try to distance himself. Brave boy.

I knelt on the hard ground and drew Requiem down with me, so that he knelt behind me with his hands on my shoulders. He was like some huge solid wall of quiet strength behind me. I’d known that I amplified Jean-Claude’s powers when I was near him, but I’d never felt anything like what was happening now. It wasn’t a triumverate of power between Requiem and me, it was that he was one of Jean-Claude’s vampires, and that made him mine in a way. Mine to call on, mine to use, mine to reward.

I bent until my hands touched the ground, until I could feel the dead just below me. It was as if the ground were water, and I knew there was someone drowning just below me, and all I had to do was reach down and save them.

I whispered, “Edwin Alonzo Herman, hear me.” I felt him stir, like a sleeper disturbed by a dream. “Edwin Alonzo Herman, I call you from your grave.” I felt his bones grow long and straight, felt his flesh coalesce around him. It was like restuffing a broken doll. He remade himself, and it was so easy, too easy. The power began to spread outward, began to seek another grave, but some small part of me that was still me, knew better. It wouldn’t be just one more grave. I knew in that instant that I could raise this cemetery. That I could raise them all. No blood sacrifice. No chickens. No goats. Nothing, but the power blowing through me, and the vampire at my back. Because the power wanted to be used. It wanted to help me, help me caress them all from their graves, pull them to the light of stars, and fill them with . . . life. It would feel so good to lift them all up, so good.

I shook my head and fought that helpful power. Fought not to spread like a sweet sickness through the graves. Fought to hold on to what was left of who I’d thought I was. I needed help. I thought about Jean-Claude, but that wasn’t it. I needed to remember that I wasn’t just the dead. I was alive.

I reached out to the other third of our triumverate. I reached out to Richard. He looked up at me as if I hovered in the air above his family’s dining room table. I saw his father like an older clone of Richard himself, and most of his brothers, sitting at the table, passing a blue bowl. Charlotte, his mother, came in from the kitchen’s swinging door just behind that chair. She was still about my size, with honey-blond hair and a figure that was both petite and full-figured. Except for the hair color and skin tone, Charlotte even reminded me of me. There was a reason that most of the Zeeman brothers had chosen small, tough women. I watched her bring in a big platter, smiling, chatting with her family. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, or any noise from the crowded, smiling family scene. They all seemed so happy, so perfect. I didn’t want to bring this here.

I started to pull away, and Richard’s voice was in my head. “Wait, wait, Anita, please.” He excused himself from the table and walked through the big living room, out onto the sweep of porch, and down the handful of steps until he could gaze up into the same sky that rode above me. By the time he gazed up into the air, gazed at me, he seemed to have sensed some of what was happening, because he said, “Dear God, Anita, what’s happened? I’ve felt your power before, but not like this.”

I didn’t have enough control to talk in my head, so Requiem was going to get the out loud version, but I was past caring. “The vampires keep saying that we’ve hit a new power level.”

He hugged his bare arms in the T-shirt. He hadn’t stopped for a jacket. “It’s like the night is breathing your power. What can I do?”

“Remind me that I’m not dead. Remind me that my ties are with things that have a heartbeat.”

“How will that help?”

I wanted to scream my frustration at him. “God, Richard, just help me, please help. If you don’t, I’m afraid of what I’ll raise in this cemetery tonight.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for so much, Anita.” He looked down, and I knew the gesture, he was thinking, or gathering his will for something. Usually something he didn’t want to do. But I didn’t have time to worry about Richard’s hangups tonight. I was too scared of the power that pulsed in the ground underneath me. A cold pulsing, but it promised to spread to all the graves. I knew that tonight I could raise one of those shambling zombie armies that the movies are so fond of portraying, and usually has nothing to do with real necromancy.

He looked back at the house and said, “I’m fine, Mom. I just need a little privacy. Keep everybody close to the house, okay.” He shook his head. “No, Mom, it’s not that close to the full moon.”

He walked out into the openness of the yard away from the lights of the house and he let down his shields—the metaphysical walls that kept his beast caged and helped him pass for human. The night was suddenly alive in a way that it hadn’t been. The still air held a thousand scents: the ripeness of apples from the orchard behind the house; grass like a thick green blanket against our face; trees, the spicy tang of sweet gum, the softer scent of birch, the sweet pungent wood of poplar, and over it all, the dry richness of fallen leaves all around us. Sounds, then. The last crickets of the year chirping their plaintive song. Other insects from the woods, singing their last songs before the cold came. The wind raised, and the trees creaked and groaned around the house. The big oak by the driveway threw its branches against the stars, and Richard raised his head to watch that wild wind. There was barely a breeze on the ground, but up high in the highest trees, the wind ran fast and pulled at the bare limbs at the very top of the trees. Most people don’t look up, animals look up, because they know that there is no true safety. They don’t worry about it the way we do, but they’re aware of it in a way that we aren’t.

Richard walked into the edge of trees that began the woods that bordered the western edge of the family land. He touched a trunk, laid his hands on it, and it was rough and hard, with deep grooves in the bark like tiny tunnels. He laid his face against that roughness, and it was spicy and pungent, and I knew it was sweet gum. He gazed up into the bare branches where the tiny rough balls still hung on to the edges of the tree. He hugged the tree, hugged it so tight that the bark dug into his skin, he rubbed his cheek against the roughness of it, like he was scent marking, then he was off. He was running at an easy lope through the trees, into the woods. He wasn’t hunting. He was running for the joy of it.

He twisted through the underbrush like it wasn’t there. And as I’d felt only once before, it was as if the trees and bushes welcomed him, or turned aside for him, or as if green growth could be water, and he dived through it, running, dodging, twisting, giving himself to the brush of twigs and branches and the feel of the living ground underfoot. There was life that didn’t run or hide, it was all alive, alive in a way that most humans never understand.

Richard ran, and he took me with him, as he had one night long ago. Then he’d held my hand, and I’d struggled to keep up, to understand. Now it was effortless, because I was inside his head, inside him. The night was alive for him in a way that it wasn’t for Jean-Claude, or for me. I was too human, and Jean-Claude’s interest in life was too shallow. Neither of us could feel what Richard’s beast could give him.

Something touched my hand, and I was jerked back to the grave. Requiem was still at my back, dead still, but Graham was on the grave. He looked uncertain, but he was sniffing the air near my skin. “You smell like trees and pack,” he said softly.

Richard looked up at us. “Why is Graham there?”

“Bodyguard. Jean-Claude was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t have someone with me.”

“Tell him he’s supposed to guard you, and he can’t do that on the grave.”

“You’re supposed to guard me, Graham, you can’t do that from here.” The sharp scent of wolf thickened around me as I said it.

Graham reacted to it like he’d been struck. He cringed to the ground, doing the wolf grovel. “I’m sorry, you just smelled so good. I forgot myself.”

“Stop groveling and get back to work.” Richard said it first, and I echoed it for him.

Graham did what he was told. He went back to very serious bodyguard mode, looking out into the dark for whatever might come.

Richard took in a deep breath, and I smelled that thick, sweet scent of deep woods. He’d run miles, effortlessly, not for the same reason that a human will run well, but because the land itself helped him run, gave him strength, welcomed him.

He stood there in the middle of the woods, his feet anchored into the ground. I realized that Richard was my ground, my center, his joy, his heart pumping in his chest from that joyous run. I kept my tie to him open and full of scents and sounds and things faraway from here. I put my hands on the grave, and even with Requiem at my back, touching me, it wasn’t as real as the pounding of Richard’s heart miles away.

“Edwin Alonzo Herman, with will, word, and flesh, I call you from your grave. Come, come now!” It was all wrong, all different from usual, but it was right just the same.

I felt the corpse shift, solidify, piece itself together like a puzzle, and begin to rise up through the earth as if it were water. I’d watched this happen countless times, but I’d never been kneeling on the ground when it happened. The earth buckled and rolled like an earthquake that was trapped in a few feet of ground. The ground flowed under my hands like it was something else, not water, not mud, but something both less and more solid. I don’t know what Requiem thought was happening, but he didn’t try to pull away, he stayed solid at my back. He rode it with me and never made a noise. Brave vampire.

Hands met mine through the shifting earth, cool fingers wrapped around my warmth. Edwin Alonzo Herman’s hands wrapped around mine like a swimmer who’s given up hope and finally touches a rope. The grave threw him upward like a flower springing free of the earth, but the push of it forced me to pull him upward, to find my feet with Requiem steadying me. If the vampire hadn’t been there to hold me standing on the writhing, twisting ground, I would have fallen. But Requiem kept me standing, and I pulled the dead man from his grave, pulled him perfect and whole, until he stood taller than me, with the grave dirt falling away from a perfect black suit that looked as if it had been freshly pressed. His hair was balding with a thick fringe just above the ears and down the collar, and thick sideburns that curved to a walrus thick mustache. He was portly, nearly fat, which had been in style among the rich. When Edwin Alonzo died, only the poor were skinny, only the poor looked starved.

I felt Richard still standing by the edge of that small stream. The air was cooler by that musical run, and his pulse was beginning to slow from the run, the light sweat starting to cool on his skin. He wasn’t afraid, or horrified. He simply stood rooted to the ground, steadying me with the pulse and beat of his body, the thick musk of wolf faint in the autumn air.

I stared up at the zombie, and even to me, it looked like damn good work. With a big enough blood sacrifice I could raise a zombie that looked alive, close at least, but this, this was perfect. His skin looked full and healthy in the starlight. He had a faint smile on his face, and his clothes looked as if he’d just put them on. Even his shoes were near spotless and gleaming with polish. Polish so shiny I noticed by moonlight. The hands that were pressed to mine were cool, but they didn’t feel dead. He wasn’t breathing, but he looked, felt, more alive than dead. It was unnerving. I’d known there was a lot of power tonight, and I’d had to force all of it into this one grave, so I guess it was alright that he looked this good, but for a moment when I looked into that plump, smiling face, I was afraid. Afraid that I’d done more than I’d been paid for, but when I reached his eyes, I let out a sigh of relief. The eyes were thick and full and looked, again, perfect, grayish in the starlight, probably would be blue in the brighter light, but there was no one home in those eyes. They were empty and waiting. I knew what they were waiting for, those empty eyes.

I lifted my left hand away from the zombie’s, and he didn’t cling to me, his fingers just opened as I moved. I held my hand at shoulder level, toward the vampire at my back. “Undo my bandage.”

Requiem kept one hand on my shoulder, but used the other hand to peel back the tape on my wrist.

“Take it off,” I said.

He finally ripped the bandage away. I couldn’t stop a small jerk of pain.

Richard called inside my head, “What are you going to do?”

“He needs blood, so he can speak. I didn’t kill an animal. This is all the blood I’ve got.”

He didn’t say anything, but I felt his pulse begin to pick up speed.

I offered my wrist upward to the slightly taller body in front of me. Something slid through those pale eyes, something I’d seen before in the better preserved zombies. It was as if something went through them, something that paused in their eyes, as if there were darker things waiting, waiting for a chance for a body to inhabit. Something, not so much evil, as just very, very not good. But that whiskered face turned toward my wrist, sniffed the air, and the moment it scented the blood, that otherness in its eyes vanished. Driven out by the promise of something that all the dead value, a bit of the living.

The zombie grabbed my arm with both of its hands and smacked its mouth against my wrist like you’d grab a kiss from your dearest lover. Just the impact hurt the wound, made me gasp. But I knew what was coming, because I’d fed zombies off my own blood before. Not often, but often enough. The mouth locked around the wound, and his mouth was wide enough to take it all in, to set his teeth against the torn edges, and grind. I made a small sound, because I couldn’t make no sound. Usually the zombie’s mouth felt less real than this one. Except for how cool the flesh was, I couldn’t tell the difference between the zombie and a person. It was a very good job, solid all the way through, even in places that only I would feel.

Richard bounded across the stream, hitting the edge of it with one foot, as if he wasn’t quite steady. He began to run up the other bank, began to run with the night and the trees and the smells.

Edwin Alonzo Herman’s mouth locked around my wrist and began to suck. The wound had begun to heal more than I’d realized, because to get to the blood, he had to pull hard and tight on my wrist. It hurt, really hurt. Yeah, I liked teeth in the right situation, but this wasn’t it, and what might feel good during sex just fucking hurts during violence.

Richard was running full out now. I’d thought he was fast before, but he’d just been playing. Now, he ran. He ran so fast that branches slashed at him, that the earth didn’t give to him, and part like water. He was running, running . . . running from himself. I had a bright glimpse inside his head. The sensation of teeth in my wrist, of that forceful mouth on my wound excited him. Excited him as both man and beast. He could have accepted if it was just about food, but it wasn’t. The mixture of human and animal blurred the differences between food and sex. Blurred so many lines. Lines that Richard had never known existed, let alone wanted to cross.

He ran, and slipped in the leaves, and fell and was on his feet and running before his body had time to realize it was down. It was only in that moment that I remembered his injured shoulder, and the thought got me the memory, he’d shapeshifted, briefly, and healed himself. So much more powerful than he wanted to be.

The zombie had fallen to his knees, as if sucking at my wrist was the most exquisite thing it had ever tasted. It cradled my wrist against its mouth, and its tongue explored the wound.

My breath came out in a harsh word, “Shit!”

“Are you hurt?” Requiem asked softly.

I shook my head. It hurt, but I wasn’t hurt. There was a difference, but usually a zombie starts to slow down about now. This one was still sucking hard and fast, as if he were a baby that had been starved. Of course, I’d never raised anyone this long dead without an animal sacrifice. Maybe that was the difference? I hoped so, because anything else would mean that something had gone wrong, really wrong.

He shook his mouth like a dog with a bone, and I swallowed a scream. It wasn’t just that it hurt. That was way too much enthusiasm for a zombie. “Edwin, stop feeding.” My voice was clear, and he ignored me. Shit. I licked suddenly dry lips. “He’s had enough. Help me pry him loose,” I said, voice low. Mustn’t scare the clients. Mustn’t let them know that everything had gone wrong tonight.

Richard fell again, slid in the damp autumn leaves, slid until a tree stopped him, sudden, and abrupt and bruising. He looked up, and I saw those wide brown eyes, saw what he was running from. He wanted to be there on his knees, he wanted to lick my wound, taste my blood, maybe widen that wound with sharp teeth. The thought didn’t just excite him. The thought did it for him, just flat did it for him. What he wanted to do in the deepest, darkest, places in his soul gave a whole new meaning to oral sex.

He waited for me to be horrified, but I wasn’t. If there was anyone who could resist doing the great bad thing, it was Richard. I trusted his control, not always his temper, but his control—that I trusted without doubt or reservation. I whispered, “Just because you want to do something, doesn’t mean you will do it, or even that you have to do it. You’re human, Richard, you have a mind and willpower. You aren’t just your beast.”

“You don’t understand,” he said, and the moment he said it, I knew what he’d done, by accident.

“You can feel what the zombie is doing?” I said.

He hid his face from me and scrambled to his feet, and ran. He ran out of the trees, and hit a paved road, and was across it before the headlights could be sure what they’d seen. Fast, faster, run, run. Run, but what he was running from, he couldn’t outrun, because no matter how fast, or how far, he would still be there. How do you outrun the monster, when you are the monster?

“Richard, make the zombie stop feeding on me.”

“I don’t know how,” and he was gone, crashing through the trees, but it wasn’t friendly now, or joyous.

The zombie bit me, hard, and damn it, it hurt. “Requiem, get him off of me.”

The vampire moved around so he could touch the zombie’s face and hands, but nothing holds on like a zombie. I’d had to help clean up other people’s zombies that had gone wrong, and sometimes you had to cut them apart a finger at a time to get them to let go of someone. Human teeth could still bite deep enough to sever a vein or artery. I wanted him off of me.

Requiem tried to pry him off, but he finally looked up at me. “I can pull him apart in pieces, but I cannot pull him off of you.”

I looked at the very bodyguarding werewolf and called him over. He came, face serious, hands behind his back, as if he didn’t exactly trust himself not to touch me again. Did I smell of wolf and forest, or was it the fresh blood? Don’t ask unless you want to know. I didn’t want to know.

The zombie plunged his tongue into the wound, as if he were trying to get the blood to flow faster. It hurt, and it surprised me, and I screamed, a little scream, but enough that one of the lawyers called, “Are you alright, Ms. Blake?”

“Fine,” I called back, “fine.” Mustn’t let the clients know that the zombie you raised for them is beginning to eat you. Fuck!

Using every ounce of strength he had, Graham was able to pry one finger off of my wrist, but he had to hold on to that finger, or it curled right back into place. “He shouldn’t be this strong.”

“You’ve never tried to fight zombies, have you?” I said.

He gave me wide eyes. “If they’re this strong, I don’t want to.”

“They’re not just strong, they don’t feel pain.”

“Anita, I can tear his fingers off,” Requiem said, “or break his jaw, but other than those extremities, I have no other suggestions.”

The bad part was, neither did I. The zombie bit me harder, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he hit something major. He was digging his teeth in deeper by the tiniest of increments, but eventually it was going to get bad, and I was no longer sure what would happen if a gush of fresh blood hit its mouth. I’d seen what flesh-eating zombies could do to people. I wasn’t exactly human, but I wouldn’t grow back a hand if you ripped it off.

We could burn him up, but he wouldn’t let go, and I’d burn with him. Shit.

Richard was sitting in a clearing under a tangle of naked limbs. “I have to shut the link between us, Anita. I have to. I can’t separate myself from the zombie. I keep feeling what he’s doing. Keep wanting him to find more blood.” He cradled his face in his hands, and he’d lost his shirt somewhere, so that his back was bowed and naked as the trees overhead. “I’m sorry, Anita, I tried, I really tried.”

“It’s okay, Richard, we’ll do what we can from here. Go take care of yourself.”

He looked up, and there were tears shining in the starlight. “I’m supposed to take care of you.”

“It’s a partnerhsip, Richard, we’re supposed to take turns helping each other.”

He shook his head. “I fucked this up, Anita, I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him say fuck when he wasn’t referring to sex.

“Go, Richard, go back to your folks’ house. They’ll be worried.”

The zombie bit hard enough that I screamed, and Richard was suddenly gone. He cut the tie so abruptly that it staggered me, and only Requiem’s and Graham’s hands kept me from falling.

“Anita!” Graham said, and he lost his grip on the zombie, trying to keep me standing. But the hands on my wrists eased.

I looked down at the kneeling zombie, and the eyes were filling up. There was personality there, someone home. I’d been stupid. Richard had accidentally tied the zombie to him, and when he broke the link to me, the zombie was mine again. Good news, but I felt stupid that I hadn’t thought of it sooner. The dead are supposed to be my specialty. I wasn’t feeling very special tonight.

The zombie blinked up at me, drawing its mouth back from my wrist. His big mustache was stained with my blood. He frowned up at me. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m doing here.” He let me go and stumbled to his feet, staring at his hands and my bloody wrist, horror showing on his face. “I beg your pardon, miss, I don’t know what I was doing to you. I do apologize most sincerely, it’s monstrous, monstrous.” He was staring at the blood on his hands and wiping at his mouth.

Shit, he didn’t know he was dead. I hated when they didn’t know they were dead. And as if on cue he backed up enough to bump into his own monument. He gazed up at that uncompromising stone angel, and then he had the Ebenezer Scrooge moment. He saw his own name on the tomb, complete with a date. Even by starlight, all the color drained from his face.

“Hear me, Edwin, by right of the blood you have tasted, hear me.”

He turned huge, stricken eyes to me. “Where am I? What’s happened to me?”

“Don’t be afraid, Edwin, be calm.”

The panic began to slide away from his face, his eyes began to fill with that artificial calm, because I willed it, and because I’d been the one to call him from the grave, and it was my blood on his lips. I’d earned the right to order him around.

I told him to be calm. I told him to be clear and concise and answer the questions from the nice lawyers. He informed me that he was always clear and concise thank you very much, and I knew he’d do what the lawyers and his descendants wanted him to do. This group of lawyers and clients had decided ahead of time that they didn’t want me asking the questions. Something about not trusting that I couldn’t control the zombie enough to get the answers that certain people wanted. The implication had been that some of the clients feared that other clients would bribe me. At the time they’d set the guidelines down, I’d been a little offended, tonight I was glad. It meant that I could go back to the Jeep while they questioned the zombie. I had a first aid kit in the Jeep, and I needed it.

The zombie hadn’t exactly reopened the wound, he’d made the old wound bloodier, and put new teeth marks into my wrist. So it was like a new wound around the old one. Some nights it feels like I have a target on my left arm. If I take a major hit, it that’s usually where it lands.

“You’ve lost more blood,” Requiem said.

“No shit,” I said.

He gave a small frown. “What I am saying is, could you not allow them to take the zombie home for the night and put him back tomorrow?”

I shook my head and winced as Graham raised the gauze to see if the bleeding had stopped. “He bit me, he actually injured me, zombies aren’t supposed to do that. They take blood from an open wound or animal that’s already dead, but they don’t make a wound. They don’t feed that actively.”

“This one sure as hell did,” Graham said, frowing at my wrist and putting pressure and a fresh gauze pad back on it.

“Exactly, so much is going wrong tonight, or not working exactly like it’s supposed to, that I can’t risk letting it have that much time. I have to put it back tonight, as soon as possible.”

“Why?” Requiem asked.

“Just in case,” I said.

“In case what?” Graham asked, this time.

“In case it becomes a flesh eater.”

They both looked at me, like you’ve got to be kidding. “I thought that was like legend,” Graham said.

“I have seen such things,” Requiem said. “Long, long ago. I thought that the power to do such,” he seemed to think what word to use and settled for, “things, was lost.”

“Evil, you were going to say, power to do such evil, was lost.”

He gave me a faint smile. “My apologies,” he said.

“That’s alright, nobody likes necromancers. Christian, Wiccan, vampires, whatever, nobody likes us.”

“It is not that we do not like you,” Requiem said.

“No,” I said, “it’s that everybody’s afraid of us.”

“Yes,” the vampire said, softly.

I sighed. “Tonight for the first time I felt that I could have raised this entire cemetery without a sacrfice of any kind. I could have raised them, and they would have been mine, totally mine. I contacted Richard, because I was fighting the urge to raise my own personal army of the dead.”

“Contacting your Ulfric went very wrong, from what I understood from your side of the conversation,” Requiem said.

Graham said, “He tried to help.”

“Yeah, he did, but just as Jean-Claude and I are gaining powers, so is Richard. Neither of us expected him to be able to link up with the zombie.”

“I have never heard of such a thing,” Requiem said.

“We’re a u-fucking-nique bunch here in St. Louis,” I said.

“Unique,” Requiem said, as he and Graham began to bandage my arm. “Well, that is one way of putting it.”

“How about scary?” I said.

He looked at me with those blue, blue eyes with their hint of green from the shirt near his face. “Oh, yes,” he said, “oh, yes, scary will do.”

Yeah, scary would do.

41

I CANCELED THE rest of the clients for the night. It had been too close for comfort. I would put this zombie back, but that was it until I figured out what the hell was going on. Bert would be pissed. The clients would be pissed. But not half so pissed as they’d be if I raised a shambling army of the dead and terrorized the city. No, that would be more bad press than even Bert could figure out how to cure.

Besides, I’d finally lost enough blood that I wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t metaphysics, it was just physical. I was light-headed, vaguely nauseous, cold even with the leather jacket and a blanket from the back of my Jeep. I’d lost enough blood over the years to know the signs. I didn’t need like a transfusion or anything, but I didn’t need to lose anymore blood tonight, either. In fact, I’d have Graham drive us back to the club, pick up Nathaniel, and beg off on any big sexy scene tonight. Sex called on account of blood loss. Surely he’d accept that as a good enough excuse.

We were all huddled in the backseat of the Jeep. Me, because I felt like shit. Graham and Requiem because I couldn’t get warm on my own. A blanket, the leather jacket, and I was still shivering.

“My lady, may I make a bold suggestion?” Requiem asked.

It took me two tries to stop my teeth from chattering long enough to say, “Sure.”

“If we do not get you warm, you will be fit for nothing tonight.”

“Just say it, stop”—I shook so hard it almost hurt, when the shuddering passed—“stop talking me to death, Requiem.”

“Graham under the blanket would double your body heat.” He said it very crisp, no wasted words, it was nice to know he could be concise when he needed to be.

If I could have stopped my teeth from chattering I might have argued, but I couldn’t, so I didn’t. Besides, a little fully clothed cuddling under a blanket seemed pretty tame after what had happened earlier tonight. What could it hurt? Oh, hell, don’t answer that.

Graham was still in his serious bodyguard mode, so he eased under the blanket, as if I’d bite. “I can’t really be security while trapped under a blanket in the backseat,” he said.

It took me three tries to say, “You carrying?”

“You mean a gun?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“If I’m the only one armed, then you ain’t my security.”

He looked like he’d argue, and Requiem said, “There are many ways to guard someone’s body, Graham. If we do not help her warm herself, then I fear we will be going to the emergency room with her. Would you like to explain to Jean-Claude how you let that happen, when you could have prevented it with such a small action on your part?”

“No,” Graham said, and eased himself in around my right side. It was as if he were a totally different person from the one that got that taste of orgasm from me earlier. He seemed stiff and uncomfortable. He slid his arm across my shoulders tentatively, awkwardly.

“She will not break, Graham,” Requiem said.

“I’ve forgotten my job twice tonight. I don’t want to do it a third time.”

I snuggled in against the warmth of his body, burrowing under his leather jacket to find where the heat was trapped between his own body and the leather. He was so warm, so incredibly warm.

“God, she fits under my arm.” That arm curled around me, almost reflexively, as if he just couldn’t help himself. “She seems so much bigger when she’s moving around, or talking, or doing anything.” His voice sounded puzzled, and soft. His arm wrapped around me, tucking me close in against the line of his body, and he was right, I did fit. He was around six feet, and I so wasn’t. He could have cradled me like a child, and I hated that, but he was so warm, so warm. His body felt almost hot. We were about a week away from full moon, and some lycanthrope’s body temperature went up before the change, almost like a fever. Either I was colder than I thought, or Graham was one of the wereanimals that ran hot.

My teeth stopped chattering, and it was as if my muscles began to unclench. I still had small involuntary spasms, but it was better.

“Can I pick you up?” Graham asked, and he sounded like he expected me to say no.

I said, “Why?”

“You’ll be warmer,” he said.

I thought about it. He was probably right, but it would reinforce that I was tiny enough to sit in his lap and cuddle against his chest like a child. I really hated doing shit like that. But he was probably right, it would be warmer. Damn it.

“Yes,” I said, and even to me it didn’t sound happy.

“Are you sure?”

“The lady has spoken, Graham, do not make her repeat herself,” Requiem said.

Graham hesitated for a second, then he scooped me up in his arms, like I weighed nothing. He sat me on his lap, and I found another downside to the thong. He must have been wearing new jeans because they weren’t soft. I was so not wearing enough underwear, or enough skirt. But I’d dressed mostly for meeting Jean-Claude and Asher later in the evening. I’d been thinking date, not medical emergencies. Silly me.

He was able to curl most of me underneath his jacket against his chest, the rest of me curled into a small ball in his lap, with just a little leg off to one side. He put one of his arms across that spill of leg, and the other arm held the jacket tight around me. Requiem helped us get the blanket draped around us, and the only thing uncovered was the top of my head. It was dark and warm, and I laid my head against his chest, and the T-shirt was a thin barrier between me and the heat of his skin. I let my body ease into the warmth of his skin, and the scent of leather, and just him. I realized why his scent seemed so comfortable to me. He smelled like pack, that faint scent that all of Richard’s wolves had. I was too friendly with too many of them not to equate that faint ruffling musk with safety. I let myself sink into a warm nest of leather, and blanket, and body, and shared warmth, and the distant smell of wolf, and I slept.

The next thing I was aware of was Graham’s voice, very soft, as if he didn’t really want to wake me. “Anita, Anita, they’re done with the zombie.”

For a second I couldn’t remember where I was, or who was talking to me. Fresh from sleep, to me his body felt more like Richard’s than anyone else’s. The size and the musculature and the faint scent of musk was all Richard, but the voice didn’t match.

“Anita, you are wanted by the graveside.” Requiem’s British accent.

The last of sleep and whatever wolf-scented dreams I’d had slipped away, and I knew where I was and whose lap I’d fallen asleep in.

Graham stroked my hair, and said softly, “Anita, are you awake?”

I sat up, pushing his arm, his jacket off of me, but we were tangled in the blanket. I pushed at the soft gray material, but it was caught at the edges, wedged under his body. I could punch at it, but I couldn’t get free of it. I had one of those moments of claustrophobia that make no sense. I wasn’t actually trapped, but there was something about being close to trapped with two people that I knew so little about. If it had been anyone on my list of people that I trusted implicitly, it wouldn’t have happened. But I didn’t know Graham, not really, and I’d fallen asleep in his arms. I’d fallen asleep with only him and Requiem to watch over me. Careless, terribly careless.

Maybe it was some remnant of an unremembered dream, or maybe there is no excuse, but whatever, I lost it. I panicked. If I’d been thinking clearly, I could have gotten out of a stupid blanket, but I wasn’t thinking anymore. My head was screaming, Trapped, trapped, we’re trapped!

Graham grabbed my arms, and I shoved an elbow back into him as hard as I could.

He let go and made a satisifying hummph sound. “Shit, you’ll crack a rib doing that.”

“Don’t grab me, okay, just don’t grab me.” My voice was breathy, but I was a touch calmer. Calm enough not to fight the stupid blanket. Calm enough not to struggle so that Graham thought something was wrong with me. My pulse was still wild in my throat, like I’d choke on it, but I could think again.

Requiem was there on his knees, looming over both of us. The panic flared through me in a cold wash that left my fingertips tingling with static, but I fought it off this time. I tried to relax as he pulled at the edge of the blanket and started to ease us free.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I think I had a bad dream.”

“No shit,” Graham said, and he sounded slightly offended.

I’d apologized once, he wasn’t getting it twice. Truth was I’d gotten claustrophobic from two things, a diving accident years ago, and waking up in a vampire’s coffin. Waking up in the tight darkness with a dead body wrapped around you. The stuff of nightmares.

There was a look on Requiem’s face that was eloquent. He knew I was lying, and I didn’t care. I made it policy not to parade my phobias in front of people. Never let people see what really scares you, they may use it against you later.

When he pulled enough blanket, I scrambled out, and was damn rude getting out of the Jeep. But I felt better as soon as I hit the open air. I took in deep breaths of the cool night air. About the time I got myself calmer, my lower body started to be cold. Shit.

“You’re shivering again,” Requiem said, from right behind me.

I jumped, because I hadn’t heard him slide out of the car. “I’m alright.”

“No, you are not.”

I frowned at him.

Graham slid out of the backseat. “He’s right.”

I frowned at them both. “It doesn’t matter how I feel. I’ve got a job to do.”

“Yes, you have a job to do, but how you feel still matters,” Requiem said.

I opened the front door and got my gym bag out of the seat. I didn’t leave it graveside because of the machete. The machete might only be magical in my hand, or in another animator’s hand, but it was still a damn long blade, and I didn’t trust civilians around it.

I shut the door, hit the beeper to lock it, and started walking back to the grave with the bag in hand. I’d gone about four feet into the grass, when I tripped and nearly fell.

Requiem’s hand was at my elbow. “You are not well.”

I stood there and let him steady me. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Usually raising the dead makes me feel good, better.”

“Tonight did not go as planned.”

I shook my head. “No, it didn’t. Part of that was my fault.”

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “I got distracted by all that new power and forgot to put up a protective circle. It keeps the zombie in, but it also keeps other things out. A lot of metaphysical shit likes to mess with bodies, if they get the chance. I knew better.”

“You were distracted.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I carry the bag for you?” Graham asked, though I noticed he was staying just out of reach. I wondered how hard I’d hit him in the ribs. I hadn’t hurt him, but I was more than human strong now, and I could have hurt him.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said.

He took the bag and then stood to one side and let Requiem and me go first. The vampire kept his hand on my elbow, and I let him. I was getting cold again.

“I’ve lost more blood than this before and not felt this bad,” I said, softly. One group of cars had left the cemetery, the group that had brought the suit. The lawyers from the winning side were at graveside, and there was a cheerful murmur of voices, as the descendants got to talk to their patriarch. He had a big booming laugh.

“Have you fed tonight?” Requiem asked. His voice brought me back to the dark and how far we still had to walk. It seemed like a long way, but it wasn’t that far, it just wasn’t.

“Yeah, I had dinner.”

He shook his head. “That is not what I meant.”

I thought about it for a second, or two, then said, “You mean like the ardeur?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I fed off of you and Byron.”

“No,” he said, “you were feeding for Jean-Claude. He got that energy.”

“I guess so. But if the ardeur needs feeding it just flares up, and I have to feed.” I put my hand on his arm, because my legs were feeling wobbly.

“Perhaps you have gained more control over it?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you can go without feeding it, until you choose to feed it.”

I stopped walking and looked up at him. “What?”

“You have many of the symptoms of a vampire that has not fed enough. The blood lust rules us at first, but once we are masters, then we can go without feeding if we must. We can choose to feed.”

“But I feel like shit.”

“The choice comes with a price,” he said.

“I’m confused,” I said.

“I think it took a great deal more energy from you than it should have to raise this zombie and fight what the Ulfric did by accident. I think it took energy to defeat Primo. To feed on Byron and myself. I think that took not just physical energy, but mental, as well. You are not a creature of casual lusts, and I think it cost you more than you will admit to feed your master tonight.”

I would have argued the master part, but it was becoming a case of the lady protesting too much. “So what do I do?”

“You need to feed,” he said simply.

I gave him a look.

He smiled and raised a hand as if to prove he was innocent. “It does not have to be me, or even Graham. It does not have to be this moment, but it must be soon, Anita. Surely, you feel that.”

I just stood there and stared at him. I’d wished for control of the ardeur for so long, and now I had it, sort of. I didn’t have to feed unless I wanted to, but if I waited too long, I’d get sick. I shook my head. “I thought control of the ardeur meant you could just skip it and not feed it at all.”

“Who told you that?”

I started to say, Jean-Claude, then stopped. What had he said about the ardeur? That I’d gain control of it. That I’d learn how to feed from a distance. Had he ever promised that it would go away? No, he hadn’t. I’d just wanted control to mean it would be gone. No one had promised that. No one. Shit.

“No one,” I said, “I just heard it that way. I wanted the ardeur to be gone. I wanted it to go away, so I just kept thinking that’s what it would mean.”

“I am sorry to be the one to tell you that it is not so.”

I looked at his face, studied it. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

“I do not carry the ardeur. To hold the complete ardeur as our dark mistress does is very rare, even among her own bloodline.”

“Then how do you know that that’s what’s happening to me?”

“Logic,” he said, “and just because I do not carry it, does not mean I have not seen one who did.”

“Who?’

“Ligeia.” He turned away as he said the name so I couldn’t see his face.

“I don’t know the name, at least not as a vamp.”

“It does not matter, for she is dead.”

I touched his face. “What happened?” I asked.

He looked at me, but his face held that distance that the old ones have when they don’t want you to know what they’re thinking. “Belle Morte killed her.”

“Why do I feel like I should say I’m sorry for asking?”

He gave me the smallest of smiles. “Because you are not insensitive.”

That one comment let me know that Ligeia’s death meant a lot more to him than just another cruel death. She’d meant something to him, and it was none of my business.

“The customers are getting restless,” Graham called back to us. He was standing a little ahead of us with my bag in his hands. He’d given us privacy like a good bodyguard.

I looked past him and saw one of the lawyers waving at us. Restless indeed.

“Even if I was willing, I don’t think they’d wait while we went back to the car to feed the ardeur.”

He gave me a real smile this time, with enough humor to drive out the blankness in his eyes. “I fear you are right.”

“Then we muscle through this, and you guys can drive me back to the club.”

“Where your pomme de sang waits,” he said.

“Yeah.” I wondered if I was going to get back in time to see any of Nathaniel’s dance. I suddenly saw Nathaniel in front of a mirror. He was putting eyeliner around his lavender eyes. He stopped in the middle of it and said, “Anita?”—a question like he wasn’t sure.

Requiem had both my arms now. I’d have gone to my knees, if he hadn’t caught me. “Anita, what happened?”

“I thought about my pomme de sang, and I could see him. He’s getting ready to go on.” I was dizzy, and when Requiem cradled me against him, I didn’t complain. “I’ve had mind-to-mind communication with Richard and Jean-Claude. It’s never been this draining.”

Requiem picked me up, and again I was wishing I’d worn a longer skirt. God knew what he was flashing the graveside with. But I couldn’t stand, the world was swimming. “Jean-Claude is the master of your triumverate with the Ulfric, but you are the master of Nathaniel and Damian. It is your power that makes this partnership move, and that, too, uses energy.”

“Does everyone know what happened between the three of us?”

“No, he told only Asher and myself, among his vampires. Perhaps his own pomme de sang, Jason. He keeps little from him.”

I frowned at him, as the world stopped spinning. “Why you?”

“I am his third, after Asher.”

News to me, though of the vamps I’d met, I couldn’t think of anyone I’d have preferred for the job. The night was solid again. “I think I can walk.”

He looked doubtful.

“Let me try,” I said.

He lowered me to the ground, but kept an arm around me like he expected me to collapse at any minute. I guess I couldn’t blame him, but it bugged me anyway. I didn’t collapse. Great. In fact, I felt pretty good, considering. I kept a hand through his arm, so it looked like he was escorting me the last little bit of the way. Only he and I, and maybe Graham, knew just how shaky I was feeling.

Edwin Alonzo Herman was regaling his audience with a story of how he’d tricked someone into signing away a small fortune. In these modern times it would have been considered swindling, but not back in the late 1800s or even early 1900s. Many of the laws on the books about money and how you can legally aquire it stem from the old robber baron days when almost anything was fair game. Most of the ways that the first millionaires in this country won their fortunes would be illegal today. But Herman had them laughing. He looked positively rosy-cheeked, and very much the center of attention of the group of lawyers and descendants. Everyone was willing to be happy, they’d won, and the man telling the story had helped them win. If someone had saved me millions of dollars, I’d like them, too, I guess.

He finished his story to laughter, and shining faces. “I’m ready to complete the contract gentleman, and ladies,” I said.

Some of them had to shake my hand.

“Splendid job, Ms. Blake, splendid job.”

“Wow, I mean, like wow.”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen you do it.”

Apparently, I was included in the good feelings. Most people get a little uncomfortable when it’s time to put the zombie back, if he looks alive enough.

Requiem stopped the compliments. “Ms. Blake has had a difficult night, gentlemen, if you could allow her to finish her work, then she can rest.”

“Oh, terribly sorry . . . We didn’t know. Thank you . . . worth every penny.” And they began to drift away.

Edwin Alonzo Herman looked down at me, and it wasn’t a friendly look. “I understand that I am supposed to be dead and only your magic gave me life again.”

I shrugged and asked Graham to please get the machete and the salt from the bag.

“I’ve also been told that vampires have rights and are considered citizens. Am I not merely another kind of vampire? If I were declared alive, I would be a very, very wealthy man. I would be willing to share that wealth, Miss Blake.”

I clung to Requiem’s arm and looked up at the zombie, so self-assured. “You know, Mr. Herman, you’re one of the few old ones that I’ve ever raised that have grasped the possibilites so quickly. You must have been something special in your day.”

“Thank you for the compliment, and may I return one? This must be a unique gift that you have. Together we could turn it into an empire.”

I smiled. “I have a business manager, but thanks anyway.” I let go of Requiem and found I could stand without falling. Good to know. I was actually feeling a little better just standing on the grave by the zombie, because no matter how good he looked, that’s what he was. I took the jar of salt from Graham’s hand.

“Miss Blake, if I am only another type of walking dead, then is it fair to deny me the same chance that this vampire has gotten?”

“You’re not a vampire,” I said.

“And how great could the difference be between what I am, and what he is?”

I did something that Marianne had tried to teach me, and I just had been too stubborn to try before. I wasn’t sure I had enough energy left to walk the circle, so I just pictured it in my mind, like a glowing circle around the grave, around the great stone angel, around all of us. It closed with the same neck-ruffling power rush that it did when I walked it with steel and blood. Good, very good.

“You want a difference, try and walk away from the grave.”

He frowned at me. “I don’t understand.”

“Just walk to the road, where you answered their questions.”

“I don’t see what it will prove.”

“It will prove the difference between what you are and what he is.”

Herman frowned at me, then took a deep settling breath and strode off of his grave, toward the road. He hesitated, then slowed, then stopped. “I seem unable to move forward. I don’t know why. I just simply don’t seem able to go farther.” He turned back to me. “Why? Why can I not go where I just stood?”

“Requiem, walk outside the circle.”

He looked at me, then he walked past the man. He hesitated for a moment, and I worried that I’d done too good a job on the circle, but it should have only kept in the zombie, and out other things. The vampire shouldn’t have been affected by it. Requiem pushed through, and the circle flared. It did recognize him as a type of undead, but not the one tied to this grave. I realized that with a little tweaking I might be able to throw up a circle that bound a vampire to its grave, or coffin, or a room. It couldn’t be kept up forever, but for awhile. I filed it away. It would be a sort of desperation measure, but I’d been desperate before.

Herman pushed against the cirlce, or rather pushed against his own unwilliness to cross it. Requiem glided back through it, and out again, and in again.

“Enough,” I said, “I think we’ve made the point.”

“Why can I not cross this point, and he can?”

“Because this is your grave, Mr. Herman, your body knows this ground, and it knows you. It holds you to it, now that I’ve made it do so. Now come back and stand on the grave like a nice zombie.”

“I am not a zombie.”

“I said, stand on the grave.”

He took a step toward me, before he stopped, and fought me. He fought his body, as he’d fought to cross the circle, now he fought not to come to me. I’d never had one that could fight me when I gave it a direct order, especially not one that had tasted my blood. I watched that well-made body, that so-alive person, struggle not to move closer.

I threw power into the next command, “Edwin Alonzo Herman come and stand on your grave, now.”

He walked toward me, slowly, jerkily, like a badly made robot. He had to come now, but he was still fighting me. He should not have been able to do that. Even when he stood on the grave, facing us, his body jerked and spasmed, because still he fought my control.

I had the jar of salt open. I handed it to Requiem. “Just hold it.”

Graham handed me the machete, and suddenly the zombie’s eyes went wide. “What are you going to do with that great knife?” He sounded uncertain, not afraid, he was made of tougher stuff than that.

“It’s not for you,” I said. I’d already pushed the sleeves of the leather jacket up above my wrists. Now, I started to lay the machete tip against my arm, but Requiem’s hand was suddenly wrapped around the hand holding the machete.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I need blood to bind him to his grave. I’d rather do a smaller fresh wound than reopen my left wrist.”

His hand stayed around my wrist. “You do not need to lose more blood tonight, Anita.”

“I need blood to finish this,” I said.

“Does it have to be yours?” he asked.

“Normally, it’s animal blood, but I’m not going to slaughter a chicken just to lay a zombie. The chickens have survived this far. If I spill a little more blood, they can make it through the night.”

“Would my blood do?” he asked.

I frowned at him. “You’re seriously not going to let me do this without an argument, are you?”

“No,” he said.

I sighed, and relaxed my arm just a little to save muscle cramp. He kept his grip on the arm with the machete. “I’ve used vampire blood by accident, but it went a little . . . odd. I don’t need more odd tonight, Requiem.”

“Will his do?” He pointed at Graham.

“Will my what do?” Graham asked.

“Your blood,” Requiem said, as if it was an everyday request.

“How much blood?” Graham asked, as if it wasn’t the first time he’d been asked.

“Just enough to touch the face, sprinkle or smear.”

“Okay,” Graham said, “I agree that you don’t need to lose more blood tonight. If mine will do, then okay. Where will you make the cut?”

“Lower arm, but above the wrist, less risk of hitting something that’ll bleed too freely. Also a wound in the wrist hurts more, because of all the movement that goes through it.”

He stripped out of his jacket and tossed it on the ground behind him.

I looked up into his face, searched it for some sign that he felt used, or abused. I didn’t see that. He looked like he said he was, okay with it.

“The look on your face,” he said. “Really, it’s okay. It’s not like I don’t donate blood on a regular basis.”

“Your neck and arms are clean,” I said, “no bite marks.”

“There are other places to donate from, Anita, you should know that.”

I blushed, which was bad, since I didn’t have enough blood to spare. There were other places to donate from, most of them intimate. “You someone’s pomme de sang?” I asked.

“No, not yet.”

“What does not yet mean?”

“It means that some of my brethren are hesitant to commit themselves to a single wolf, when your Ulfric has suddenly decided to share such bounty,” Requiem said.

“He asked for volunteers,” I said.

“Oh, I’m willing,” Graham said, “I just don’t like going around advertising the fact. Besides,” he said, and he put his hands on his hips, palms flat, “it is a wild,” he smoothed his hands down his jeans, “ride,” until his hands touched either side of his groin, “when they feed,” and his hands formed a frame of fingers and thumbs around the bulge in his pants, “down low.”

My gaze had followed his hands the whole way, like I was mesmerized. I think I was just tired. I blinked and tried to concentrate on what we needed to do. I was not going to feel well until I’d fed, but I also wasn’t feeding on anyone standing here. Nathaniel was waiting back at the club, and so was Jean-Claude. I had people who were willing, now that I could say no to the ardeur until I chose, I didn’t have to depend on the kindness of strangers.

“Fine, hold out an arm. I’d recommend it be your nondominant arm.” I had the machete in my hand. I’d made small cuts in the arms of other animators when we shared power so we could raise a bigger or older zombie. I choked up my hold on the hilt and held out my other hand for his arm. He tried to give me his hand, and I had to say, “No, I’ll hold your wrist to help steady us both.”

“Have it your way,” he said, and he let me grip his wrist in my left hand. Normally this was quick, but my hands were shaking tonight. It’s not good to be cutting on people when your hands are shaking. I blew out all the breath in my body, as if I were aiming down the barrel of a gun, and pressed the edge of the tip against his arm. I had to take a breath and did the downstroke as I breathed out. I was slower than I would have been if I’d felt steadier. I was working on not going too deep, rather than not causing pain.

He hissed, “Shit,” under his breath.

Blood welled out, almost black in the starlight. Not a lot of blood, just a trickle along the edge of the cut. The blood began to glide out of the wound, and I rubbed my fingers through it. I turned with my fingers stained with Graham’s blood, turned to the zombie still waiting on the grave.

“Don’t touch me with that,” he said, and he recoiled away from me.

“Stand still, very still,” I said, and he froze in place, unable to move, or back away. Only his eyes showed, wide and frightened.

I had to stand on tiptoe to touch his face, and Requiem was at my arm, as I wobbled. “With blood I bind you to your grave,” I said.

Herman’s eyes didn’t get one bit less frightened.

I raised the machete up, and he made small protesting sounds, because I’d told him not to move and he couldn’t scream. I tapped him with the flat of the machete. “With steel I bind you to your grave.”

I spoke to Requiem, “The salt now.”

He turned and got the open jar that he’d laid down by the foot of the grave. He held it out toward me. I took a handful of salt, and I’d used the wrong hand and gotten blood in the white crystals. All the salt would have to be dumped. Damn it.

I turned to the frightened zombie and threw the salt on him. “With salt I bind you to your grave.” I waited for what should happen next, and prayed that this part, at least, would go like normal.

The fear, and fierce personality in those pale eyes began to fade, to leak away, until he stood open-eyed, but empty. His eyes were the eyes of the dead.

Relief poured through me, because if his eyes hadn’t gone dead, then we’d have had more problems on our hands than I wanted for tonight. But he was just a zombie, a really good, well-made zombie, but just a zombie. Yeah, he’d fought me, but he was just dead clay, like all the others.

“With blood, steel, and salt, I bind you to your grave, Edwin Alonzo Herman, go, rest, and walk no more.”

He lay down on the ground like it was a bed, and then he simply sank into the ground. I moved us off the grave, so that that heaving, shifting earth settled around him, without us having to go along for the ride. When it was over, the ground was undisturbed. It looked as it had when we’d first walked up, like an old grave in an old cemetery.

“Wow,” Graham said into the silence, “wow.”

“Wow, indeed,” Requiem said, “you are very good at this.”

“Thanks. There are aloe baby wipes in the Jeep for cleaning up. First aid kit for Graham, then get me back to the club.”

“As my lady commands, so shall it be done.”

I looked at the tall vampire and frowned at him. “There’s going to come a time between us when I’m going to ask you to do something and you won’t say that.”

“How can you be certain of that?” he asked, and offered me his arm for the walk back to the Jeep. Graham was already packing everything up, except the machete, which I had cleaned with a rag for that purpose, and was oiling down with a cloth that I’d bought for the occasion. The two rags lived in the same bag, until one got bloody. Then it went in the trash. Organization is the key.

“Because, eventually, everyone says no.”

“You are terribly young to be so cynical,” he said.

“It’s a gift,” I said and put the machete back in its sheath, and that went on top of the bag that Graham had waiting. He was awfully efficient for a werewolf.

“No,” Requiem said, “it is not. It is something learned through harsh experience.”

Speaking of harsh experience, I had to check something. I knelt on the now pristine grave. I laid a hand on the hard ground.

“What are you doing, Anita?” Requiem asked.

“This zombie fought me more than most. It seemed more . . . real. I’m just checking to make sure that it is back to being bones and rags.”

“Why, what happens if he isn’t?” Graham asked.

I closed my eyes and opened just a little of that metaphysical hand that I’d had to squeeze back into a fist. “Then the zombie would be trapped down there, thinking, aware, but imprisoned. He won’t rot. He can’t die.” I thrust my power into that cold ground. It was quiet down there, peaceful again. Bones and rags were all that lay underneath. Good.

“Could you really trap someone like that?” Graham asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t want to take the chance. I wouldn’t want to leave anyone down there like that.” I dusted my hands off.

“Is it okay?” Graham asked.

“Yeah, just bones.”

“Vampires do not die when buried, either,” Requiem said. “There have been accidents where new vampires were buried too deep, or those that were appointed to retrieve them failed.”

Graham shuddered. “That’s just creepy.”

I stood and I almost fell. Requiem caught me, steadied me. “Is that buried alive stuff what they tell bad little vampires?”

He looked at me, and there were suddenly centuries of pain in those eyes. “I, too, have learned from harsh experience.”

“Just get me to Guilty Pleasures, and we’ll try to avoid adding tonight to the harsh list.”

“As my lady commands,” he said, smiling, and offering his arm. I took his arm and let him walk me to the Jeep, because I wasn’t sure I could have walked that far without falling over. I didn’t feel well enough to mark Nathaniel in public. I felt weak and ill, and didn’t want to be part of the show, but I also needed to feed, and he’d be furry after the show. Choices, choices, too many damn choices, and not enough options.

42

I WAS COLD by the time we got to the Jeep. Graham had to drive, and I wouldn’t ride without a seat belt, so we worked out a compromise. I rode in the backseat with the blanket, and Requiem did his best to cuddle with me while I was strapped into the seat. Which was a lot harder than it sounded.

He started with his arm around my shoulders, his body pressed as close to my side as he could get. The blanket spread over us. He was warm, warm with the blood he’d taken from me, but his wasn’t the heat of the werewolf, and sitting side-by-side wasn’t as warm as sitting in someone’s lap. By the time we’d pulled out of the cemetery I was shivering. A mile or so down Gravois and my body started to do those little involuntary spasms.

Requiem gripped my hand under the blanket. “Your hand is cool to the touch.”

“Yeah,” I said.

He wrapped his arms tighter around me, and the blanket slid off. He grabbed it, tried to spread it back over us both. “Allow me to unbelt you. Allow me to hold you as Graham did.”

“If”—and I had to fight past chattering teeth—“we get in an accident, I could die.”

“It is true you are no vampire and couldn’t survive a car crash, but it is also true that a vampire that goes too long without a feeding, cannot die. They may whither, as a grape upon the vine, but they will spring back to plump, ripe, life with the first taste of blood. I fear that you will not.”

My teeth began to chatter as if I was sitting on snow instead of in a car with the heater on high and a warm man wrapped around me. I was so cold that my muscles were beginning to ache from it.

“Allow me at least to cover more of your body with my own. I know you felt that the position lacked a certain dignity, but allow me this liberty, I beg of you.”

I would have said, no, but my teeth were shaking so hard I was afraid I was going to chip one of them. He took the silence for a yes, and slid to the floorboard. He burrowed under the blanket and laid his head against my stomach, his arms wrapped around me.

I fought to tell him, move, but the involuntary muscle movement eased, and my teeth stopped sounding like castanets. He’d been right, with more of his body against mine, it was warmer. Not a lot, but maybe just enough. I was still cold, so cold, as if I were ass-deep in the snow and more was falling all around me. I’d thought freezing to death was an easier way to die. You just fell asleep. This wasn’t easy, and I didn’t feel the least bit sleepy. A little scared, but not sleepy.

I wanted to be warm. I wanted heat. I needed something warmer.

Requiem’s voice came from under the blanket, his upper body completely hidden under the gray folds. “The shivering has slowed.”

“I noticed,” I said, and it was nice to just be able to talk without risking a tongue injury.

He snuggled his face against me, an oddly catlike gesture. I’d had enough of the wereleopards rubbing over me to know what I was talking about. “I would do anything that my lady required.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, and I was feeling better enough to sound suspicious.

He laughed and pressed his body against my legs hard enough that my knees moved just a little apart. His body was covering my legs, but that one little movement was like the beginning of something. It’s hard for most men to keep their thoughts above the waist when they’re touching below the waist, no matter how innocently. He was a vampire, but he was still male. I guess I couldn’t fault him for thinking about it, as long as thinking was all he did.

“I’m feeling better than I was. I don’t think we need any heroic measures.”

“The tone of your voice, the stiffening of your body,” he said from under the blanket, “such disapproval, as if you think I will try to ravish you.”

“Let’s just say that I’m not the trusting sort.” Though it felt a little silly talking to a lump under a blanket, when the lump was wrapped around my body. It did lack a certain dignity.

He laid his head against the side of my body, because he was too tall to lay his head in my lap with so much of him covering my legs. His hands wrapped around the back of my body, sliding between me and the seat. It was way too intimate for my tastes, and not long ago, when the ardeur was hungry this much up-close-and-personal would have raised it, but there was nothing. Nothing but the warmth and movement of him, and the awkwardness of having a near stranger that close to me. But I could think. I felt like crap, but him this close didn’t bring it on. I’d fed on him earlier tonight, and even that thought didn’t raise anything through the chill. If I’d felt better, I would have been happy. The ardeur wasn’t my master anymore. It couldn’t make me do impossibly embarrassing things anymore. Yeah, maybe I had to feed it, but it could be on my own terms. Or close to my own terms.

I sat there with a gorgeous male curled around my body, and smiled. Even cold and aching with emptiness, I was still happy. Still willing to trade that overwhelming heat for this cold waiting. Because it was a waiting that I could feel now. The ardeur wasn’t gone. It was like a fire that had burned down to cold ashes, but there was still life in the heart of that dying wood. It just needed a good poke and stir, and there would be flames, oh, yeah.

Just thinking that hard made it curl to life, a tiny flare. I squashed it. Pressed it down. Not yet, not yet.

Requiem raised his head against my body, so that the top of his head brushed my breasts, but through the leather jacket it wasn’t much of a touch. The jacket was bulky enough that it could have been accidental on his part, though I doubted it. If Requiem was anything like Jean-Claude and Asher, then he was very aware of where his body was, and what it was doing. But I let it go. I wasn’t that cheap a date for the ardeur anymore. Yea!

I felt Damian. I would like to say, I heard him, or saw him, but that wouldn’t be true. I felt him. He was sitting against a wall, and he was cold, so cold. Colder than I’d ever been. I called to him, “Damian, Damian what’s wrong?”

I didn’t hear him answer, but I felt his body, felt that aching cold at the center of it. Why, what was happening to him? What was wrong? “Damian, what’s wrong?”

“Did you say Damian?” Requiem asked.

“Yes, he’s hurt. He’s so cold, so cold, that he’s collapsed against a wall. There are people around him, but I can’t see who. He’s so cold, so cold.”

Requiem knelt upward, pushing his head out of the blanket and meeting my eyes. “You are his master now, Anita, you make him live. Your energy makes him live.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yes, you can refuse the ardeur’s call, but you are cold to the touch, and it is your warmth that gives warmth to Damian, in a way that goes far beyond sharing blood.”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Will you let him die for embarrassment’s sake?”

I opened my eyes. “That question would have a lot more merit if you weren’t the one kneeling by my knees.”

He put his head to one side, and a curious look came over his face. He looked as if he’d say something, then shook his head as if he’d decided better of it, and I was almost certain that what came out of his mouth wasn’t what he’d thought of first. “Are you able to feed the ardeur without intercourse, or donating blood?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then allow me to offer myself as a tiding over snack until you reach the club and your pomme de sang.”

“Define snack,” I said.

Damian screamed through my head, and I got a confused glimpse through his eyes of a blond woman bending over him. It was Elinore, one of the new vampires. She was speaking, but he couldn’t hear her anymore, only watch her lipsticked mouth move, noiseless.

I grabbed the front of Requiem’s shirt. “Out of time. Damian needs . . . needs to be warm.”

“Then let me share my warmth with you,” Requiem whispered it as his face bent toward mine. As happened so often, tonight I didn’t have to explain, or give detailed instructions. He just grasped what was needed, and acted.

His lips touched mine, and the kiss was gentle, and no liberites were taken, his tongue stayed nicely in his own mouth. Of course, that did nothing to raise the ardeur.

He drew back and searched my face with his gaze. “You are still cold in every way.”

I nodded, and down that long metaphysical line, Damian called out for help. He was dying, not like a human dies, but like you watch a flame fade from lack of oxygen. It was as if some invisible spark were being blown out inside him. I was his spark now, and I didn’t know how to fix this.

I looked up at the man in front of me. He was handsome enough, but without the ardeur’s heat, he was still a stranger, and I didn’t lust after strangers. I had to be seduced not by the color of someone’s eyes, or the flawlessness of their face, but by a smile that had become dear to me, a conversation so familiar that it had become like music to me. Familiarity never bred contempt with me, it made me feel safe, and until I felt safe, I did not lust after people, at least not in the front of my head, and it was the front of my head that I needed. I’d finally found the lock for my subconscious, which meant I had to bring the ardeur out on purpose, not just get out of its way, or stop fighting it, but truly had to coax it to life. Again, I hadn’t thought what it would mean to control the power to this degree. I seemed to spend my life not understanding the mess I was making until it was too late.

I grabbed Requiem’s arms, dug my fingers into his flesh. “Damian is dying, and I don’t know how to save him.”

“Simply raise the ardeur and feed.”

“I don’t know how to do it, without the ardeur pushing on me. Shit.”

“Do you mean you do not know how to raise lust for me?”

“Nothing personal, but I don’t know you.”

“There is no shame in not being a creature of casual lusts,” he said.

“Damian is dying,” I whispered it, because I could feel it. I could feel him beginning to pull away from me. He was trying not to drag me to the grave with him, so he was shielding as best he could.

“I can raise lust in you, Anita, it is not the ardeur, but it is one of my gifts.”

If we’d had time I would have asked him what the difference was, but we were out of time. “Do it, help me feed. Don’t let me kill Damian, not like this.”

“Drop your shields, or I am helpless to bespell you.” He cupped the side of my face in his warm hand.

Damian felt like a cold wind in my head. I dropped my shields, and two things happened at once. Requiem’s power crashed into me. It was as if that power had been pushing at me all night, and I simply hadn’t felt it. He couldn’t have gotten past my shields, he was right, but without them . . . without them, I was suddenly wet, soaking through what panties I had. It left me breathless, helpless, staring up at him, my body already moist and ready for him. It wasn’t lust, it was like hours of really good foreplay packed into seconds. The second thing that happened was my own special little power went, wow. It was as if his power complemented the ardeur, as if it were a key to the lock, or maybe all of Belle’s line were like this, that we could bring each other.

Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, the ardeur roared back to life. And I felt it smash into him the way his power had hit me. His eyes drowned in bright, blue flame, like gas lights sparkling in his skull. Our mouths met, and this kiss wasn’t gentle. This kiss was like feeding. Like we were trying to suck each other’s souls from between our lips. The thought brought the memory of what the Dragon had shown me, had tried to get me to do, but it was distant and gone. It wasn’t souls we were after.

I fed on him and shoved it down that cold line to Damian. I heard him in my head, “Anita,” but still he was cold, still he lay in someone’s arms.

The Jeep skittered around a turn and stopped. Graham yelled from the front seat. “What the fuck are you two doing back there? My skin is crawling with it.”

My hand was on the seat belt a second before Requiem’s. The seat belt unsnapped, and he spilled me to the seat with him on top. He was suddenly grinding me against the seat, and I was suddenly very aware that the front of the leather pants were laced up tight. Those lacings began to rub against me. I tore the side of the thong panties and pressed naked against the front of his leather pants.

He hesitated, as if afraid he’d hurt me, but I pulled at him, made him collapse on top of me. He looked down at me with eyes like drowned flames, and whatever he saw on my face seemed to decide him, because he slid hands on my naked hips, cupped my ass, and angled me up against the front of his pants, so the leather bindings rubbed directly onto the most delicate of places.

The sensation bowed my spine, threw my head back. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pressed myself tighter against the front of him, dug that strangely smooth roughness in against me.

That distant spark was growing brighter. I shoved the energy into Damian, shoved the feel of it, the heat of it, and knew he was awake. Knew he gazed up at the world through eyes that had swum to green flames.

His voice sounded soft in my head. “Anita, what are you doing?”

“Feeding.”

Requiem did something with his hips that brought me back into my head, my skin. I knew I was still giving energy to Damian, small bits of the pleasure, but I was back to gazing up at Requiem. His hands, his arms were around my waist, his groin pressing into me, the leather braiding rubbing up and down the front of my body. He rotated his hips and rubbed back and forth between my legs. I could feel him swollen and thick behind the leather.

I let my head fall back, so that my upper body draped backward, my hair trailing along the seat, and was staring upside down when the door opened. Graham stood looking down at me. He went to his knees, as if he meant to kiss me, but Requiem picked me up, moved me out of reach. He put one hand under my shoulders and lifted, so that my back was pressed against the back of the seat. I was suddenly trapped between his body and the seat in a way that I hadn’t been before. The push of his body was firmer, harder, rougher. It was as if he’d spread me wider with the push of his body, peeled back the layers of my most intimate places, until the leather braiding rubbed directly on those spots, that spot.

It was as if he knew exactly what he’d done, because he looked down at me with those burning eyes, and said, “Does it hurt?”

“No, not yet.” I put my hands on his shoulders, and would have drawn him down to a kiss, but he drew back, and stroked himself against me, so hard, so rough, so smooth. The leather was wet from my body, from how wet he’d made me. If I’d been a little less wet, he’d have hurt me, but it didn’t hurt. He began to pivot his hips, rubbing his groin against mine, beginning to rub across me, not just back and forth, but around, rolling himself over me, around and around, over and over. That bright spark of pleasure began to build inside me. It all felt good, but it was at the height of his stroke, as his groin brushed over that one small point, that the spark grew. It grew as if he were feeding some tiny flame. Every stroke, every rub of the leather, soaking wet from my body, every time he touched me there, the spark flared bright, and brighter. It was as if fire had weight to it, and that bright light grew heavy inside my body, until I could feel the brush of that heat every time he moved over me. Until it was as if my lower body became heat and weight, nothing but the building pleasure, and then finally at the height of one of those rough strokes, all that heat and weight spilled over me, through me, washing like heat across my body. Spilling in screams from my mouth, dancing down my hands, so that I ripped his shirt until I found skin to drive my nails into.

It was only then that he drove himself against me hard enough that it was almost pain. Hard enough that I felt his body convulse against me through the leather of his pants. His hands were on the back of the seat, holding us in place, but his neck was bowed, his eyes closed, and his body pinning me to the seat as if he would press himself through the leather and find himself inside me. His body convulsed a second time, and he crushed me against the seat, and the cry I gave him was part pleasure and part pain.

It was only then that the ardeur truly fed. It had gotten small bits, but not what it needed, not what I needed. Requiem had been controlling himself with an iron will, and that iron will had kept me out of something that I needed. Only with his release had all his walls come tumbling down, and the ardeur had roared into that breach, and fed.

His body collapsed down the seat, so that he was resting on his legs, still on his knees, still with my legs wrapped around him, but no longer pushing us against the seat. His shoulders slumped, and he pressed his face against the top of my head, one hand on the back of the seat, and the other around my waist.

I could hear his heart racing, feel his pulse against the side of my face, where his neck lay, warm and close above me. If I’d taken blood from him it would have left him colder, but the ardeur wasn’t blood, and it didn’t mind sharing its warmth with those who fed it well.

I felt Damian like a warm wind inside my head. He blew me a kiss. “Thank you, Anita, thank you.” Then he pulled away, and there was someone touching his arm, taking his hand. He let them lead him onto the dance floor, and I was alone inside my head with Requiem still holding me.

“Oh, God,” it was Graham, still kneeling in the open door of the Jeep. “Why wouldn’t you share, Requiem, why wouldn’t you share?”

Requiem turned his head, slowly, as if even that small movement were an effort. “She is not mine to share.”

Graham laid his head on his arms on the seat, almost as if he would weep.

I spoke staring at Requiem’s chest, where the lovely green shirt had been ripped away, and there was a glint of scarlet from my nails. The sleeve on his right arm was ripped away too, and there were more marks there. I said the only thing I could think of, “Did I hurt you?”

That made him laugh, and then wince as if the laughter hurt. “I think, m’lady, I should be asking that of you.” He eased me off his body, and himself to the floorboard, so that I was sitting on the seat, and he was kneeling in front of me. It was almost exactly how we started.

He moved down, until he was sitting flat in the floor, with his back against the opposite door from where Graham was still kneeling. “Did I hurt you?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I said, but even as I said it the endorphins began to fade, and the first ache began. It was suddenly harder to find a comfortable place to sit on the seats.

“I have hurt you,” he said, “and I am a clumsy fool.”

I eased until I was sitting more on one hip. “Fool, I don’t know you well enough to answer, but clumsy, that I know is a lie. You may be a lot of things, but clumsy isn’t one of them.”

“You compliment me, even as I see your discomfort.”

“Why didn’t you just take off the pants and fuck her?” Graham asked. His face looked more in pain than either of ours.

“I told her to let down her shields, and she did it. She trusted me, but she did not understand what my power can do.”

“You told me that it was lust,” I said, and my voice still sounded lazier than normal, almost sleepy.

“Yes, but it is not seduction as Jean-Claude and Asher can do. It is simply lust.”

“It was like hours of really good foreplay all at once. It felt wonderful.”

“But it is purely physiological, purely of the body. My gift does not touch the mind, only the flesh.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Graham asked.

“If a woman’s body reacts to my power, but her mind does not, I see it as little better than rape, and I have never been interested in such things.” He sighed. “Anita did not want to have intercourse with me, she made that clear. She’d offered me blood once tonight, but she needed to keep the rest for herself. I was hoping to be able to stop sooner, but you kept demanding more. The ardeur did not quiet as I had hoped.”

“I could feel it,” Graham said, “it was amazing, like what you did to me earlier, but more. It felt like if I could have just touched you, it would have been more.”

Requiem said, “More, yes, it would be more.”

“What could be more than orgasm?”

He looked at me, and I looked at him, and neither of us looked at Graham.

“I knew it,” Graham said, “I fucking knew it.”

“I obeyed Anita’s wishes. We did not have intercourse, we saved her vampire servant, and the ardeur has been fed.”

I looked at him as he sat on the floorboard. He still looked elegant, but sort of dissipated, like an elegant rake. If he’d unfastened those leather pants and made it intercourse, I wouldn’t have said no, because truthfully, I’d thought that was all that would save Damian. Or maybe I was just too American, and only intercourse meant sex. Maybe. But whatever the reasoning, Requiem had behaved himself in circumstances where most men wouldn’t have. He got a lot of brownie points for that. If I’d had a gold star, I would have pinned it on him.

I did the next best thing. I kissed him on the cheek and said, “Thank you.”

43

GRAHAM DOUBLE-PARKED IN front of Guilty Pleasures and said he’d valet the car for me. I let him do it, which said just how well I was feeling. I was better, but I’d shoved a lot of the last feeding into Damian, and apparently, not kept enough for myself. The learning curve on the new version of the ardeur was going to take some getting used to.

Requiem offered me his hand to help me out of the Jeep, and I took it. I was stiff and more than a little sore, and since he’d helped get me that way, it seemed fair he help me out of the Jeep. Besides, I couldn’t just flounce out of the Jeep like normal. I had no underwear on, and one of my great goals in life was not to flash anyone tonight by accident.

Clay, the new blond werewolf, was at the door. A trio of women were chatting him up. A man in coat and hat slipped past his back and into the club. Clay didn’t seem to notice. He was far too busy staring at the redhead’s chest.

He noticed us in time to suddenly usher the women into the club, before we got there. He stood, one hand on the opposite wrist, as if he’d been doing it all night. But everything about him screamed kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Requiem had a little trouble with the steps leading up to the door, too, which let me know that vampire or not, he might have a few rubby spots of his own. When we were at the top, even with Clay, I stopped long enough to say, “All those women better be of age, Clay.”

He looked surprised, either at the thought of it, or that I’d seen him. “They’re over twenty-one.”

“You see ID?”

He looked perplexed. “Well, Marla said that her friend had left her ID at home. I know Marla.”

I shook my head. “You better hope someone catches her friend inside.” I let Requiem lead me past the puzzled werewolf.

It was 1:00 in the morning, but when Requiem opened the door, the sound of many people in a small space, having a very good time, spilled out around us. It was hot inside the doors, and it wasn’t caused by the heating system, it was just that many bodies in a small space. I couldn’t see if Nathaniel was on stage yet, because my view was blocked by a curtain of black-shirted security.

Buzz was talking to the three women. “If she doesn’t have ID, she doesn’t get in.”

“But Clay told us it would be alright,” the redhead said, and I assumed it was Marla.

“Marla,” Buzz said, “you know the rules. No exceptions, not even for regulars.”

The man who’d come in just ahead of us was facing two of the largest security guards I’d seen. One was as blond as Clay, and the other was very, very brunette, as in African American brunette. They were both over six feet, with a shoulder spread that was nearly as wide as I was tall. They made Buzz look small, and I wondered where they’d been when Primo was beating everyone’s ass.

The brunette said, “You are not allowed in here.”

“I have a right to see my own son,” the man said.

“I told you, Marlowe is not dancing tonight. He called in sick.”

Marlowe was Gregory’s stage name, and he only had one biological unit that called itself his father. The man who’d sexually abused them as children, pimped them out to other pedophiles, and even put them in films. I knew he was in town, but we had a restraining order against him. Alright, Gregory and Stephen did.

I patted Requiem’s hand and said, “Excuse me a minute.” I went to the big security guards. Buzz saw me moving, and he gave the three women over to someone else to usher outside. He followed me. You’d think he didn’t trust me not to start trouble.

“Excuse me,” I said, “are you Anthony Dietrich?”

He turned, then had to look down, as if he’d expected me to be taller. “Who’s asking?”

The creepy thing was that he had their eyes. Those beautiful cornflower blue eyes stared out of a lined and aged face. He was close to six feet tall, and the face was flat and harsh, not the delicate bone structure of the boys. Only the eyes staring out of a stranger’s face.

The eyes shook me, so that I stood there staring for a second, and it was Buzz who said, “The boys have a restraining order against you. You can’t enter this club without violating it. Charon, Cerebus, get his ass out of here. Don’t hurt him, but get him out.”

The two big men took an arm apiece, lifted, and carried him, without his feet touching the ground, out the door.

I turned to Buzz. “Does he try to get in here often?”

“A couple of times, whenever Harlow or Marlowe are scheduled.”

I shook my head. “That is just so . . . wrong.”

Buzz nodded, then took a deep breath and shook his shoulders, like a bird settling its feathers. “I’m going to have to talk to Clay.”

“You talk to him, then send him to me, because I want to talk to him, too.”

He looked at me. “Okay, but Brandon saved a chair by the stage for you, and I think he’ll be very disappointed if you don’t at least catch the end of his act.”

It took me a second to remember that Brandon was Nathaniel’s stage name. “Oh, yeah, sorry, got distracted.”

“The fact that that piece of shit keeps trying to get in and watch his sons strip distracts me, too.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Requiem will take you to your seat. Enjoy the show.”

The vampire was just suddenly at my elbow, and I let him lead me through the crowd, but my eyes were back toward the door. What did Anthony Dietrich want with Gregory and Stephen? What could he possibly want from them after all these years? They were too old for a pedophile to be interested in them, weren’t they?

I bumped into a chair and had to apologize to the woman who sat in it, and pay more attention to what was in front of me than what was behind. It was worth paying attention to.

Nathaniel was on stage. I don’t know what I’d expected. I knew he stripped. I knew he performed. But I’d never seen him do it.

It wasn’t that Nathaniel was shy, but he was quiet, gentle. The person on stage was neither of those things. He stalked, he strutted, and he danced. It was similar to what he’d taught me, moving to the beat of the music, but this was the real deal. Him throwing himself around the stage, springing up in the air, and spilling himself back down, every movement fluid and graceful, and amazing.

He was down to a cream-colored G-string. It left his ass bare and held him tight in front, so that he filled the cloth, and I knew him well enough to know that he was already excited. That he liked what he was doing. His eyes sparkled with it, his face shone with a fierce joy. He threw himself into the air again and landed in a push-up position. The audience screamed.

Requiem lowered me to the chair by the stage and lifted the reserved sign off the seat before I sat on it. I forgot to smooth my skirt down in back until I touched the cold chair. I had to sit up enough to smooth it down and not put my bare cookies on a chair that someone else would have to sit on later. Just politeness. But my eyes never left the stage.

Nathaniel did push-ups, then his hips dropped lower, and his body came up, and he did a movement that managed to look like he was fucking the stage, and at the same time, was a bigger movement than that, like a wave that went from his head to his feet. Over and over again, until the women in the audience were almost hysterical. A woman two chairs to my right was pulling down her blouse, flashing her breasts at him.

He crawled across the stage in that way that the wereanimals had, as if they had muscles in places that humans didn’t. It was graceful and dangerous, and utterly sensual, as he slinked on all fours toward the end of the stage.

From the back, with his legs tight together, he looked nude. He laid his head on the floor, and the ponytail of his auburn hair spilled out around him like a cloak. He stayed that way for a moment, in a tight ball that looked so terribly nude. Then the music changed and his head flew up, his hair spilling in an arc through the air like a shining spray of colored water, until it fell around his back, and I realized that he had it up in a high, tight ponytail. So that the hair bounced and moved with him. He used it like it was a piece of costume, to hide his body, to peek pale flesh through it, then to swirl it around him so that the hair itself was the show for a moment, then he began to do that sensuous crawl around the stage, and people began to put money in the thin strap of his G-string. There was already a pile of money at the far end of the stage, as if he’d been getting it all along, but only now was he letting them slip the bills in so close to his body.

One woman pulled on the G-string, pulling it away from his body, and he cupped his hand over the front of him, to hide, and I almost got up. Almost rode to his rescue, but he didn’t need to be rescued. He kissed her, and she let him move her hand away from his clothes and sat back like he’d stunned her. He joked and chastized and flowed through their hands like muscled water. He was always almost close enough, but never quite where they reached, if they were reaching where they shouldn’t have.

I watched the other women, and the one or two men, and I felt something. Lust, I think, it was lust, but it was as if their lust was solid enough to grab, to pull out of the air itself and wrap around my body like a coat. Jean-Claude’s voice whispered through my head, “Ma petite, do you want to know how to feed on their lust, to feed without touching?”

“You know I do,” I whispered.

And it was like before with Primo, it was as if he stepped inside my skin almost, so that I suddenly knew what he knew. I knew how to open myself up and pull in the thick air. It wasn’t like breathing, and it wasn’t like feeding when I touched someone, it was closer to literally pulling at the air with metaphysical hands and dragging the lust hand over hand and pulling it inside me. It was the oddest sensation, as if the lust were silk or satin and I pulled it inside my body, as if silk scarves could pass through a hole in my skin. The sensation felt like I’d made a wound in my body and was pulling things through that wound. It was a sensation just this side of pain.

Jean-Claude’s voice in my head, “It will not be so uncomfortable when you have practiced it.”

“It feels awful.”

“But are you feeding?” he asked.

I had to think about it, because all my attention was on how disturbing it felt to draw the lusts of strangers inside me. But once I thought about it, I realized I was feeding. I felt less cold than I had, but . . . “Do you ever fill up this way?”

“It keeps one from starving, but it is not a meal, no.”

I don’t know what I would have said to that, because suddenly Nathaniel was in front of me. I think he was repeating himself, but I hadn’t heard him the first time. “I said, do you want to come play with the kitty?”

Jean-Claude was gone from my head, and I’d stopped feeding from the audience. Everything just shut down, everything but the lavender eyes staring at me from the edge of the stage. His hand was held out. Women’s voices were calling, “I’m not shy . . . pick me, if she doesn’t want to go. Brandon, Brandon, she doesn’t want you, but I do . . .”

I put my hand in his, but I made a face to show just how uneasy this whole thing made me. I didn’t like to dance where strangers, or even friends, could see me. Being dragged on stage at a strip club was so far beyond my comfort level. Until that moment, I hadn’t really thought about what it would mean to mark him tonight. On stage, in front of people. Eek!

I stumbled going up on the stage, because I remembered the short skirt and the lack of anything under it, so I was very ladylike getting up on stage. Trouble was the stage was too high from the floor to be that ladylike, so I stumbled, and he caught me and gave me a look. That look gave me a last refuge. That look said, If you can’t do this, I’ll let it go. He would have, too, but I also knew that if it wasn’t me, it was going to be someone else. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure how I felt about watching him get pawed, or paw another woman. The fact that I thought flaunting myself up on stage would be a lesser evil than watching someone else flaunt themselves at Nathaniel, said clearly that my priorities had become skewed.

They’d brought a chair up on stage, and I hadn’t seen it. The money was missing from his G-string, I think he’d put it with the pile at the end of the stage. I hadn’t seen that either, which meant that I’d missed some of the act while I was feeding off the audience.

He led me to the chair and sat me down in it with a flourish of his arm. I looked up at him and knew that the look on my face was suspicious. It said clearly, What are you going to do to me?

He laughed, and it was that full-throated laugh that turned his face from handsome to something younger, more innocent, for lack of a better word. I valued that laugh, because I didn’t get to hear it often. If me sitting here like this made him feel that good, then it just couldn’t be that bad.

He put a hand on the back of the chair on either side of my shoulders, leaning his face very close into mine. I could see the eyeliner around his lavender eyes now and realized that there was mascara there, too, not a lot, but his eyes didn’t need a lot to go from beautiful to freaking amazing. “You’re not allowed to touch me, and I’m only allowed limited contact with you, but your hands need to stay on the chair most of the time.” His lips showed the shadow of the smile that gleamed in his eyes.

I don’t know what I would have said to that, because the music came up, or maybe it just began, and he started to dance. It had been spectacular enough from the edge of the stage, up this close, it passed from spectacular to embarrassing. It didn’t matter that I slept with him almost every night, or that I’d seen him more nude than this more than once. It mattered only that it was in public, and I didn’t know what to do.

He started by writhing over me with his hands still on the back of the chair. His chest was so close to my face that it was harder not to have my lips touch him, than to touch him. I’d seen him use his body before, but not like this. It was as if every muscle from shoulder to groin was capable of moving independently, and he was using every one of them. It was amazing, and in private I would have told him so, but here and now, I blushed.

He sat in my lap with his legs wide around the chair, his hands still on the back of it. If he’d just sat, I could have handled it, but of course he didn’t. He moved his hips around my lap, like he was stirring something, but the movement didn’t stop at the hips, it danced up his body, so that it was a bigger movement and more of the crowd could see it, as if there was any doubt what he was pantomiming.

My face was hot, as if my skin would burn if you touched it.

He leaned in against my hair, where I’d hidden my face, and whispered, “I’ll stop and pick someone else if it’s too much.”

I raised up enough to meet his eyes. “Pick someone else?” I said.

“The act doesn’t change,” he whispered, “just who’s on stage.” The smile was gone from his eyes. He was serious again. I’d killed the smile in his face, or my embarrassment had. God.

I touched his face, cupped the edge of his cheek against my hand. I looked into those suddenly serious eyes, while the music beat and pulsed around us. In that moment there was no crowd. There was nothing but his face and my decision. I forgot the people, forgot that I was supposed to be embarrassed, forgot everything but that I wanted him to smile again.

“No, don’t pick anyone else. I’ll try. I’ll really try.”

He gave me that flash of smile that I’d only recently known he had in him, and he dropped to his knees in front of me. His hands played lightly on my knees, and he began to spread my legs apart, but he was still dancing to the music, even on his knees, and he saw the problem before the rest of the audience did.

He put his body between my knees and leaned in enough to say, “You’re not wearing anything.”

I had to smile at the almost surprised embarrassment on his face. It was nice to know that he could be embarrassed. “Nope,” I said.

He laughed again, and raised up high on his knees, his hands on the back of the chair again. He thrust against me, not touching, but it must have looked worse to the audience, because they yelled and screamed and began to throw money onto the stage.

He didn’t so much fall down my body, as spill down it, again that sense of liquid grace that the wereanimals had when they wanted to. He ended with his face in my lap, across the stretched fabric of the skirt, his upper body actually hiding the rest of me from the audience. The skirt had ridden up enough that everyone knew I was wearing black lace thigh-highs. His hands traced up my hose, above the boots, across my knees, and up my thighs, until his fingers came to the edge of the lace.

His fingers traced just above the lace, played along the bare skin of my thighs. He turned his head in my lap, just enough so that his lips were close to my bare thigh, and he kissed the inside of my thigh. That one small touch made me shudder, and close my eyes in a sigh.

He was up while my eyes were closed, hands putting my knees together so when his body moved, I wasn’t flashing anyone. He danced behind me, and suddenly his hair feel over my face and body like an auburn waterfall. I was suddenly drowning in the vanilla scent of his hair.

He whirled around me, touching me only with his hair, then he had my hand in his and pulled me hard and fast out of the chair, so that I was forced against his body. It was like a move in a dance but more forceful, if you wanted your partner to stay on her feet. If he hadn’t caught me, I might have fallen, but his body was there, and my hands were on that body, I couldn’t help it. I just caught myself with his arm and chest, but the sight of me touching him like that sent more money onto the stage, and raised the frenzy of the women grouped around the stage.

His other hand had gone to the back of my skirt and tugged it down. He made it look like he was taking liberties when it was the exact opposite. Whatever they thought he was doing, they liked it.

The music had slowed, changed, and he was suddenly dancing with me. It was almost a waltz, and he did three quick turns across the stage, and we were back at the chair. He used my hand to whip me out from his body and have me facing the back of the chair. He put my hands on the curved back of the chair, then put his body as close to mine as he could. He was close enough that I could feel the tightnes of him pressing against the back of my skirt.

He whispered against my hair, “This would be easier if you were wearing underwear.”

I started to turn and ask what would be easier, but his hands covered mine, trapping them against the curve of the chair, and he suddenly started pressing that tight part of him against my ass.

I’d said he pantomimed sex before, but I’d been wrong, because he was doing it now.

He thrust against the back of my body, with his hands trapping mine against the chair, and his body curved over me. With my legs together he wasn’t brushing up against anything that Requiem had hurt. With my legs together, the angle would have been wrong if we were actually trying to have sex, but that wasn’t what the show was about. As he’d said hours ago, it was an illusion, the illusion that they could have him. The illusion that he could bring someone up on stage and have them in front of everyone else.

The cloth of the G-string was satiny, but what lay inside that satin was hard and firm, and all I could think of was earlier in my office. Of the feel of him inside of me for real. Of him pushed inside me as far as he could go, of him sliding in and out of my body, of him stroking over that spot inside me, of the feel of him so careful, so delicate, so very strong, as he moved inside me. My imagination was suddenly not my friend. Because between one breath and another, the memory overwhelmed me, and suddenly that heavy warmth spread from low in my body to spill over my skin in a dance of goosebumps. I spasmed against the chair, against Nathaniel’s body. His body was still bent over mine, and the weight of him rode me as I spasmed, as I orgasmed. It was a small one, no screaming, no clawing, just that helpless spasming, and not much of that by my standards.

He whispered against the side of my face, his breath almost hot. “Anita . . .”

But the next moment there was movement behind us, I felt it like a disturbance of air, and there was a sound I didn’t know, and a sharp sound of something heavy hitting flesh. Nathaniel’s body reacted to the blow, spasmed, almost like mine had. A second blow came, and this time words, Jean-Claude’s voice, “Bad cat, very bad cat. Away from her bad cat, away from her.”

Nathaniel’s body responded to every blow, almost like it was a miniature orgasm. His body tightened around me, as if the feel of my body next to him while Jean-Claude whipped him was something he didn’t want to lose. But Jean-Claude drove him off, with a joking voice, and Nathaniel made sure my skirt was in place before he let Jean-Claude drive him across the stage.

I was left holding the chair, so weak-kneed I didn’t trust myself to move yet. Jean-Claude had a small many-tailed whip in his hand. Nathaniel crouched and crawled across the stage, and Jean-Claude beat him. It was like an odd version of an old-time lion tamer act, except the chair served an entirely different purpose.

“You are a very bad kitty-cat, very bad. How do we punish our bad kitty?” For a second I thought he was asking me, but he wasn’t. The women around the stage started to chant, “Tie him up, tie him up, tie him up.”

Jean-Claude smiled, as if that had never occurred to him, but what a good idea it was. At a gesture from him, chains descended from the ceiling. I hadn’t noticed them in the welter of lights and cables. Oh, hell, I hadn’t even looked up.

Two bare-chested waiters, wearing only leather pants, came up on stage and dragged Nathaniel to his feet. They chained his arms spread wide, wrists above his head.

Jean-Claude came to me, walking so that his hips rolled more than they should have. He touched my arm and whispered, with a smile that did not match the words, “Are you alright, ma petite?”

I nodded and whispered, because I knew he’d hear me. “Flashback.”

“Not as strong as those that our Asher can give.”

I shook my head.

“Interesting,” he said, “are you well enough to finish this show?”

“I promised,” I said.

His smile widened, and his voice was suddenly that room-filling, jolly sound, “Now, you may help us punish our bad kitty. You may make him pay for taking liberties.” I got a shadow of what he was doing to the audience. When he said “punish,” it was a sharp pull on the body; “bad kitty” made you think of very naughty things; “pay,” and more money hit the stage; “liberties” had a lascivious lilt to it that made the audience do that nervous giggle, like what they were thinking was worse than anything they’d seen tonight.

I just nodded and let him take my hand. That one touch was both a mistake and a help. It made me feel less shaky, but it also opened me to him more. Touching just his hand was more distracting than touching so much more on most men. He led me a little dazed across the stage, until we were standing behind Nathaniel, facing the bareness of the back of his body.

Jean-Claude let go of my hand and went to him. He touched the bare back. “You may hit him here”—his hand slid down Nathaniel’s back to his buttocks—“or here. He has been a bad kitty, but we don’t want to damage him. He is far too pretty for that.”

The audience agreed with him, most of them.

Jean-Claude handed the whip toward me. “I don’t know how to use a whip.”

“First, it is a what, my sweets?”

Most of the women yelled, “Flogger!”

“And second, it would be my pleasure,” and that one word slithered over my skin, and apparently over the other women as well, for they squealed, “to show you just how it works.” And every word seemed darker, more suggestive than it should have.

He tried to show me first by simply using it on Nathaniel. He made the heavy leather tails blur and blossom against Nathaniel’s skin. Nathaniel reacted to every blow with a spasm that went from his fingers to his toes and everything in between. I could see enough of his face to know that those closed eyes and parted lips weren’t from pain. Jean-Claude whipped Nathaniel, or I guess flogged him, until his skin was pink in places and the stage was littered with money at their feet.

He leaned close to Nathaniel’s face, said something, and Nathaniel said something back, then Jean-Claude turned to me. He held the flogger out again. “He’s such a bad kitty.”

I shook my head.

“Shall I show her how it’s done?” he asked the audience, and they yelled louder, and I wished I’d just taken the damn thing and tried, but too late now.

He put the flogger in my hand and pressed his body against the back of mine, with one arm around my waist and the other hand on the hand that held the flogger. It was the way lecherous men stand when they try to teach you how to golf or swing a bat. He swung my arm back and tried to make me give that sharp crack against Nathaniel’s body, but it wasn’t sharp, it was sort of flabby.

“You must relax and let me do the work, ma petite.” Loud enough for the audience he said, “Relax, my sweet, relax, and we will show him pain, and perhaps more.” The “perhaps more” was like a whisper in the dark against your skin.

I let out the breath I was holding and tried to relax, never my best thing. But I also knew that if I didn’t relax, this part of the show would last longer, and I wanted this part over. It was sort of demeaning, like I was a girl who couldn’t swing at the ball without help. Okay, maybe I didn’t know how to use a flogger, but I really didn’t need this much help.

We got a couple of good blows in, enough to make Nathaniel shiver in his chains. Then Jean-Claude stepped away from me, leaving the flogger in my hand. “Give the bad kitty what he wants.” And what he said was not what it felt like in my head, or on my skin, or deeper in my body. The women around the stage and farther into the room made small noises. Shit.

I threw the flogger at Jean-Claude the way you’d throw a baseball bat when you want someone to catch it. He caught it by the handle like I’d known he would. “I know what the bad kitty wants, and I am going to give it to him.”

The women made “ooh” and “aah” sounds, and several said, “you go girl!” One yelled, “lucky bitch!” I walked to Nathaniel and stood in front of him. His eyes were only partly focused. He’d liked the flogger. I’d known sort of academically that he would, but seeing it in his face was different. It bothered me, and I wasn’t sure if the entire thing bothered me, or if what bothered me was that this was something he liked this much, and I wasn’t sure I was willing to do it for him. I let the doubts go, because what I was about to do was something I could do, and wanted to do, and had promised to do.

I looked up at the chains and just wasn’t familiar enough with the concept to know, so I asked Jean-Claude, “Does this swivel?”

“It can,” he said, “why?”

“Because they’ll want to see his face.”

The audience liked that, and they shouted more encouragement, but I didn’t need it. I don’t know why, but suddenly I was calm. I wasn’t bothered that we were in public, or that we were on stage. It was very peaceful inside my head, very calm.

The waiters turned Nathaniel around so that he faced the audience. His eyes had gone back to almost normal. I could see his face reflected in the distant glass of the far wall. I’d never really noticed how much shiny surface there was all around until that moment, when I could watch Nathaniel’s face and mine.

I grabbed his ponytail, grabbed it and wound it around my hand, tight, tight enough that he gasped. I think the audience screamed, but the sound of them was receding, pulling away, and leaving me in a well of silence, where the only noises were Nathaniel’s breath and mine.

I pressed my body along his back, tucked him tight against me, so that his ass pushed against my stomach and my breasts pressed into his back. I kept my hold on his hair, and used it like a handle to keep him from moving, pulling harder if he shifted his weight, until he hung suspended, afraid to move, eager not to. I had to go on tiptoe to get the angle I wanted for the smooth expanse of his neck. I put my free hand around his upper chest, holding us tight together. I used his hair to stretch his neck to one side, to give me as much of that smooth, delicate flesh as possible. His breathing had already changed, already sped in anticipation.

I licked his neck, a quick flick of tongue, and he gasped for me. I licked harder, and he shuddered. I kissed his neck, and he made a small noise, not of protest, but of eagerness. I opened my mouth wide, and let my breath touch hot upon his skin, and then I bit him. No more foreplay, no more games. I bit him.

He struggled against me, he couldn’t help it, and I used his hair and my arm around his body, and the press of my body against his back, to hold him in place. I felt his skin under my teeth, felt the meat of him in my mouth, and underneath that was that frantic beating pulse. I could taste his life underneath his skin, taste it, and know that it was mine, mine if I wanted it. Mine because part of him wanted to give it up to me.

The sensation of that much meat in my mouth was almost overwhelming, and I fought not to bite down and take away all that flesh. I fought not to take everything that he offered in that moment. I bit down, held him as he struggled, held him as his wrists jerked on the chains, as his body began to spasm, and still I sank my teeth into his flesh. The first sweet taste of blood like salt and metal and something so much sweeter filled my mouth, and I felt him convulse against me, heard him cry out. And I fed, I fed the ardeur, and hadn’t even known it was coming. I fed on his blood, fed on the meat of his body, fed on his sex, fed on all of him. I fed, and when I looked up from his body, I saw my eyes reflected in the mirror. Black light, with that flash of brown light, my eyes drowned with power.

I let go with my mouth, abruptly, and saw blood on my mouth, on my chin, shining in the lights. I let go of his hair, his body, and stepped back, and I knew that my eyes were still full of that dark light. I was afraid for a second what I’d done, but found that other than a perfect set of my own teeth marks, set like a bloody necklace on his skin, I hadn’t bitten through to his pulse. I hadn’t hurt him, not more than he wanted to be hurt.

Jean-Claude was standing there, in front of me. “Ma petite,” he whispered, “ma petite.” But I knew what he was thinking, I knew what he wanted. Bound closer than we’d ever been, it cut both ways. He mouthed something about how did I feel, was I alright, but that wasn’t what he was thinking. Not really.

“Say what you want,” I said, “say what you want.”

He stopped trying to be careful, and said, simply, “Kiss me.”

I went to him, and he kissed me. He kissed me as if he were tasting me, as if with tongue and teeth and lips he could drain from me every last drop of Nathaniel’s blood and the taste of me along with it. He licked the roof of my mouth and drew a sound from low in my throat. His eyes had bled to midnight blue light, as if the darkest of water held starlight in it.

I caught the glint of my own eyes, and they were still full of light, blind with the darkness of it, except it wasn’t blind, it was anything but. It was like being hyperaware of everything, anything. I knew suddenly that as long as the light lasted, that every sense would be heightened. I remembered thinking in the cemetery that to make love like this would either be the most wondrous thing ever, or drive you mad. Staring up into Jean-Claude’s drowning blue eyes, I was willing to bet on wondrous.

“We must see to Nathaniel first,” he said, but his voice was hoarse and thick with need.

I nodded. “Yes, Nathaniel first.”

“And then?” he asked.

“Say what you mean,” I said, and my voice wasn’t as hoarse as his, but it didn’t sound exactly like me either.

“And then there is a couch in my office,” he said.

“I was thinking the desk,” I said.

He looked at me, and even with those drowning eyes, the look was very male. “Either will do for me, but it is you who will be on bottom, so it is your choice.”

“I’ll be on bottom?” I made it a question.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because that is what I want.”

“Okay,” I said.

44

NATHANIEL WAS DONE for the night, there would be no shapeshifting. He was barely conscious in that after great sex kind of way. A few of the customers complained, but not many. Most of them felt that they’d had a show worth the price of admission. We got Nathaniel settled in what the strippers called the quiet room. It had an oversized couch, blankets, low lights, and was just what the name implied, a quiet room, where you could either sleep or get your shit together when things went odd. There were smaller rooms where you could pay to have a private dance, but this wasn’t one of them. This was more a room for crashing when you were tired or had to pull a surprise double shift.

I stroked Nathaniel’s hair, and asked him, “Are you alright?”

He’d opened his eyes just barely and smiled up at me. I’d never seen his face so content. “Yes, very, yes.”

I told him to enjoy the afterglow, and I put Requiem on the door, because Nathaniel was mine to take care of, and I planned on being busy for awhile.

My eyes had bled back to normal by the time I walked down the hallway toward Jean-Claude’s office. He stopped in the hallway and called after me, “Where are you going, ma petite?”

I paused at the door and looked at him. “To your office.”

“Your mood is cooler now, and the power has left you.” He was trying to be utterly neutral, and failing just a bit.

I opened the door still looking at him. “Come into the office, Jean-Claude, and lock the door.” I didn’t wait to see what he’d do, I went through the door, leaving it open behind me. I went to the desk and hopped up on it. I could have tried for subtle, but it was late, and I didn’t feel the least bit subtle. I put my boots up on the desk, my legs apart, and let the skirt ride up as far as it wanted to go. It was outrageously slutty, but the look on his face as he came through the door made me glad I’d done it.

He leaned against the door and locked it, and was unbuttoning his jacket as he walked across the floor. I pulled off the leather jacket and threw it to the floor. His jacket was on the floor, the fluffy white cravat undone so that his upper neck showed pale. I slipped the shoulder holster off my arms but only had the belt partly undone, when he pulled the shirt over his head, and was naked from the waist up. I finished the belt, but he was at the desk before I got it off, slipping the shoulder holster free and setting gun and all beside me on the big black lacquer desk.

I went to my knees on his desk and fell upon the silken muscle and lines of his chest with hands and fingers and mouth. I licked the cross-shaped burn scar. I drew first one nipple and then the other into my mouth. Rolled them with my tongue, sucked them. Used my hands to mound the flesh of his chest, so I could take more of his nipple into my mouth, more of his breast. Until I could lock my mouth around as much as would fill it, and bit down until he cried out and his hands found my face, drew me away from his body, and to his mouth.

We kissed as we had on stage, as if we were exploring every inch with tongue, lips, teeth. He drew back from the kiss, and his eyes had bled to blue. Mine were still my own, but I didn’t care. His hands found my shirt, and he pulled it over my head and bent over me, kissing down the line of my neck, my shoulder, and mounds of my breasts where they spilled up from the black lace bra. He stuck his hands inside my bra and lifted my breasts out so they rested on the underwire, like it was a black frame for the pale mounds of my breasts.

He went to his knees and pulled me to the edge of the desk so he could run his tongue over my breasts. Flicking against my nipples, quick, and light, and wet, until I made small noises. He locked his mouth around my breast and drew as much of my breast as he could between his fangs without nicking me. He sucked, hard and harder, rolling his tongue along my nipple and drawing harder on my breast until he stretched me out in a line that felt so good, but I could feel how careful he was being. It wasn’t the first time he’d played with me like this, but it was the first time that I’d known that this was only the beginning of what he wanted. It wasn’t like telepathy, or a picture in my head, I just knew. I knew what he wanted to do. What he was fighting not to do.

“Bleed me,” I said.

He rolled his eyes up to me, so he could see my face.

“Bleed me, I know how long you’ve wanted to do that now. How careful you’ve been.”

He stopped and released my breast slowly, carefully. He said, “Ma petite, you are drunk with the new powers, but tomorrow night, you will not be.”

I shook my head. “Let me feel what it’s like to have you stretch me tight in your mouth and draw just a little blood. I’m not saying that the whole ride will appeal to me, but I am saying that I’m willing to try a little, to see if I’ll like a lot, or not.”

He looked strangely suspicious, and I realized that it was my expression in his eyes, more than his, as if I’d taught him that look, and this caution.

“I give you my word that I won’t punish you for anything I agree to try tonight. A little blood tonight, only a little, barely a nick, just a taste.” I leaned in toward his face. “I know that you want to feed there now. You never told me.”

“Nor would I have, ma petite, you let me take blood so infrequently, that I would never have dreamt to ask such a liberty. When you will not share your neck, why would I think to ask for more delicate parts?”

“I’m offering now. I’d take me up on it, if I were you. Who knows if I’ll ever offer again, if you say no now.” I stared into his face from inches away and let him see that there was no conflict here, no doubts, just eagerness. Eagerness to try.

“What has gotten into you, ma petite?”

“You, you’ve gotten into me, or I want you to. I want you inside me, Jean-Claude, I want you inside me. I want you to lie me back across this desk, with my breasts bare and your mark on them. I want you to push yourself inside me and watch the blood flow from the wound that you made. I want you to watch the blood flow fast and faster, while you fuck me.”

“You are echoing my fantasy, ma petite, have I taken you over?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, but even the thought of it didn’t panic me. “Just a little tonight, Jean-Claude, just a little nick.”

He reached around my body, and it took me a second to realize he was undoing the back of my bra. He slipped it off my shoulders, down my arms, and let it fall to the floor. He gazed up at me, and his eyes never got higher than my breasts. I didn’t mind in the least.

He cupped my breasts in his hands, gently, reverently, and laid the gentlest of kisses upon each of them. He raised eyes to me that were back to their normal midnight blue, as human as his eyes ever became. “Are you sure, ma petite, are you sure?”

I nodded. “Yes, oh, yes.”

He cupped my right breast in his hand, then took just the tip of it in his mouth, a quick drawing of his mouth over my flesh. He sucked and pulled until my nipple was tight and thick under his touch. It brought my breath faster, made my pulse race. He rolled his eyes upward to watch my face, and whatever he saw there reassured him, because he drew hard and fast, made me gasp. Then he drew, slowly, so slowly, more and more of my breast into his mouth. He’d never taken so much in at once, because to do even this much was to risk drawing blood. His mouth was so warm, so wide, the hard press of his teeth was as distant as he could make it and still hold me in his mouth.

He used his hands to help his mouth, pour so carefully over me, his breath like heat against my skin. He moved carefully off of me, his mouth sliding back until there was much less between his lips. He went back out to the safe distance that he’d been before. He drew just the tip of my breast in his mouth, and he sucked. He sucked and pulled and stretched it out and out, until I made small sounds low in my throat.

He squeezed my breast between his hand, squeezed it, and rolled his eyes up to watch my face. When I didn’t tell him to stop, he squeezed tighter, tighter until it felt like he was trying to garrote my breast with his fingers. It hurt, it did, but it was all mixed up with the sucking and the pulling on my nipple, and that didn’t hurt, not really. In fact it felt good, so good.

It fell out of my mouth in a voice that was almost a moan, “Yes, please, please, yes.”

He rolled his eyes up again to watch my face, and there was something in those eyes, some knowledge, or warning, and suddenly he bit down, not as hard as I’d seen in his head, but a little. He let the barest tips of those sharp fangs graze my breast as he sucked it, as he squeezed it with his hand. It was sharp, but it didn’t hurt. It was lost in the other sensations. His hand squeezing so tight, his mouth sucking so hard, the tiny bit of the fangs was nothing compared to the rest.

He let his mouth slide down my breast until only the nipple was caught between his teeth. But there on the mound of my breast were two tiny dots of crimson. As I watched those two tiny dots began to glide down my skin. He drew my nipple out and out, and we both watched those two tiny trails of red slide down my skin. He pulled on my nipple so hard and so long, that I cried out, “Enough, enough.”

He drew back, gently, and knelt for a moment watching the colors flow on my skin, not just of the blood, but of the marks of his fingers. They faded, but the two lines of blood didn’t fade. They glided down my skin, and as the sensation returned to my breast, they tickled down my skin. The feel of that tiny gliding touch, the sight of it easing down my skin, made me shiver.

He smoothed his hands up the insides of my thighs, and it was only as his fingers brushed certain parts that I made real pain sounds. “No manual manipulation tonight.”

He frowned. “Are you hurt?”

I explained as briefly as possible. “Let’s just say that the ardeur needed feeding and Requiem was a gentleman. I think we’d both be less sore if he’d been a little less of a gentleman.”

He looked puzzled.

“I’ll explain everything in detail, but later, please, Jean-Claude. Take off the pants, I’ve had all the leather pants up close and personal that I can handle tonight. Let me see you nude.”

He peeled off boots and the leather pants with the practiced ease of someone who wears a lot of them. I’d seen him nude more times than I could count now, but he never stopped amazing me with his beauty. Flawless was the only word I had for him. White and pale, and perfect, as if someone could carve cold white marble and breathe life into it, and plant a blush of color at his groin, where he sat straight and thick and ready. The hair that trailed from the delicate thimble of his belly button down to his groin was as black as the curls that fell around his shoulders. That black, black hair stark and unreal against the whiteness of him.

There should have been gentler words for what I wanted, but all I could think of was how much I wanted him inside me. How much I wanted him to sink that shining color inside my body. “Fuck me,” I said, because make love was not what I meant. I wanted the sex that went with what he’d done to my breast. I wanted the sex that matched the blood trailing down my skin.

“Fuck me.”

He bent over me and licked the blood off my chest, not a quick lick, but thick, long movements of his tongue, as if he’d never tasted anything so good and didn’t want to lose a single drop. I was making small wordless noises and writhing on the desk by the time he raised his face up and showed me eyes that had drowned in blue flame.

I whispered, “Please, Jean-Claude, please.”

He did what I’d seen in his head, he did what I’d offered. He laid me back against the desk and pulled my hips to the very edge of the wood. My skirt was completely bunched around my waist like a belt. I was still wearing the thigh-highs and the boots, and nothing else. He used his hands to spread my legs apart, then came to me, the tip of him sliding against my opening.

“You are wet, but you are still tight.”

“Fuck me,” I said, “please, just do it, please, please, please, please . . .”

Somewhere in the last please, he began to force himself inside me. I was tight, so tight, and so wet. On another night, I would have asked for more foreplay to make that horrible tightness loose, but tonight I wanted to feel him push his way in. I wanted to feel him shove himself inside me.

He pushed himself between my legs, using his hips and legs to drive himself into me. It was just this side of too tight, and I started to struggle underneath the push of it. Not struggle to get away, but struggle because I couldn’t help it. My hands and arms swept over his desk and knocked everything within reach off, including my gun. I wanted something softer to touch, something to scratch and hold on to, but there was nothing but the cool wood of the desk, and that wasn’t what I wanted to touch.

When he was as far inside me as he could go, he began to pull himself out, slowly, as if my body were trying to hold on to him, and maybe it was. He drew himself out slowly, and then began to work himself in, just as slowly. If he didn’t hurry, I wasn’t going to be tight anymore. I wanted that feeling of him forcing himself into my body, and we were going to lose that if he kept being gentle.

“Fuck me, Jean-Claude, fuck me while I’m tight, please.”

“That will hurt,” he said.

“I want it to hurt.”

He gave me a look, then gripped my hips in his hands, let me feel some of that otherworldly strength, and he did what I asked. He drove himself into me, and pulled himself out of me, as fast and hard as he could. It did hurt, and I wasn’t ready for it, and it was exactly what I wanted.

He drove himself in as deep and hard as he could, so that the impact of our bodies tore a grunt from my body and a sound in his that I’d never heard before. He trapped my hips under the strength of his hands, and he forced himself inside me, fought the tightness of my body, as if he were piercing my body, making a new hole, because this one wasn’t wide enough.

The blood was flowing across my chest in widening lines, as my heart beat faster, and my blood pumped itself out of those two little holes. The blood looked so red, so red, on the white of my skin.

He lifted my legs so that my feet were by his face, he grabbed my hips and pulled me further down the desk, closer to his body, and used his weight to push my legs back over my body, so that he changed the angle inside me, made it deeper, sharper.

I cried out.

He moved his hands to my waist and pulled me farther into his body, and he rode my legs down so that I was almost bent in two. We’d done gentler versions of this, and he knew I was limber enough for it, but it was suddenly a much different position. Because he rode my body into a tight knot, fucking me as hard and as fast as he could, but he pushed my body together so that he could lick my chest while he fucked me.

He raised his face up from my chest, and his mouth and jaw were crimson with my blood. He spilled my legs to either side, and jerked me up, off the desk, so that I was suddenly pressed to the front of his body, my legs wrapped around his waist. He kissed me, kissed me with the taste of my own blood like metalic candy in his mouth.

He was making low sounds in his throat, and he drove us into the wall hard enough that my back slapped against it, hard enough that if he hadn’t cradled my head, it would have hit the wall. He drove himself into me again and again and again, as hard and as fast as he could. I wasn’t tight anymore, I was wet and loose, and it didn’t matter.

His chest and stomach were decorated with my blood. Startling crimson splashes against the white of his body. He pressed his entire body against me as tight and close as he could, so that the slickness of blood began to flow between us, as he pinned me against the wall. I held him with my legs locked around his body, my arms locked around his shoulders, I held him, and he fucked me. It was like he was trying to put a hole in the wall behind me, so that every thrust felt like it was pounding me into the wall, crushing me against his body. I almost said, enough, almost said stop, but as I drew breath for it, the orgasm came like a huge overwhelming wave. It engulfed me, and I clawed at him, and screamed, and bucked against the weight and strength of him so that the orgasm became another kind of struggle, another kind of fight. My teeth dug into his shoulder, my nails tried to find a way through his back, and my body rode his, while he pounded me into the wall, and somewhere in all of that I felt his body convulse, felt his hips drive in one powerful effort up and inside me.

He screamed as he came, and I felt him pour himself inside me, felt it as he put his hand against the wall and tried to steady us as his knees collapsed, and we ended on the floor with my legs still wrapped around his waist, him still inside my body.

His breathing was ragged, and his eyes unfocused, as he stared into my face. “Mon Dieu.”

“ ‘Wow’ seems too junior high, but ‘amazing’ doesn’t cover it,” I said. I tried to touch his face, but found that my arms weren’t working that well yet. “Just promise me we can do it again some night.”

He smiled, and it was a tired smile, but it held an absolute delight in it. “That is one promise, ma petite, that I will happily make.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” I said.

“Oh, no,” he said, and found that he had enough strength left to lean in against me, “I will most certainly hold it against you.”

45

WE’D MADE OUR plan for the rest of the night. When we’d recovered enough to walk, we’d throw on our clothes. Pick up Nathaniel and drive to the Circus of the Damned. We’d tuck Nathaniel in somewhere, and Jean-Claude and I planned on a nice, hot bath. But before we’d even gotten to the throwing the clothes on part, my cell phone rang.

I almost didn’t answer it, because no one calls at three in the morning with good news. The number blinking in the little window was Detective Sergeant Zerbrowki. “Shit,” I said.

“What is it, ma petite?”

“Police.” I flipped the phone open and said, “Hey, Zerbrowski, what’s up?”

“Hey back at you. I’m across the river in Illinois, guess what I’m looking at?”

“Another dead stripper,” I said.

“How’d you guess?”

“I’m psychic. I assume you want me to come down and look at the body.”

“Never assume anything, but in this case, yeah.”

I looked down at my blood-covered chest and the wound that was still seeping. “I’ll be there as soon as I get cleaned up.”

“You covered in chicken blood?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, the body isn’t going anywhere, but the witnesses are getting restless.”

“Witnesses,” I said, “we have witnesses?”

“Witnesses or suspects,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come down to the Sapphire Club and find out.”

“The Sapphire, isn’t that the high end club, the one that calls itself a gentlemen’s club?”

“Anita, I’m shocked, I didn’t know you frequented the titty bars.”

“They wanted to use vampire strippers, and I got to go talk to them about it.”

“I didn’t know that was part of your official job description,” he said.

If it had been Dolph, I would have let it go, but it was Zerbrowski, and he was okay. “The Church of Eternal Life doesn’t allow its members to strip, or do anything else the church considers morally questionable. So the club needed Jean-Claude’s permission to import vamps from the next territory over.”

“He give it?”

“No.”

“And you went with him to help decide?”

“No.”

“You went alone?” he asked.

“No.”

He sighed. “Oh, hell, just get down here. If you said vampires were supposed to stay away from this place, your boyfriend isn’t going to be happy.”

“Just no vamps on stage,” I said, “other than that, not our business.”

“Not on stage, at least not paid,” Zerbrowski said.

“You said witnesses or suspects, and now you say no vamps paid on stage. Shit, are you sitting on some vamps that were in the audience?”

“Come and see, but I’d hurry, dawn’s coming.” He hung up.

I cursed softly.

“I take it a languorous bath is not going to be happening tonight,” Jean-Claude said.

“No, unfortunately.”

“If not a bath for you, then may I offer a quick shower here.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I can’t go see the police like this.”

He looked down at his own blood-spattered body and smiled. “Perhaps for me, as well, tonight.”

“We could conserve water, and share,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow at me and smiled again. The smile said worlds.

“Okay, okay, I guess we’d get distracted.”

“I am not sure I have the strength to be, as you put it, distracted quite so soon.”

“Sorry, I keep forgetting boys don’t recover as quick as girls.”

“I am not human, ma petite, with another blood donation I could indeed recover.”

“Really?” I said. My pulse sped just a little bit at the thought. Shit, I was too tired and too sore to be thinking of it again.

“Truly,” he said.

“I think if I donate any more blood to anything tonight, it would be bad.”

“It does not have to be your blood,” he said.

I stared at him, and he stared at me. I said what I was thinking, which I’d almost broken myself of. “So what, you take blood from me, then we fuck, and you have a blood donor standing by, and we fuck. We could like, what, have a room full of donors and just screw until we were so sore, or so tired, we couldn’t move?” I was sort of kidding. The look on his face wasn’t. The look on his face, the expression in his eyes, made me blush.

I had a sudden image so strong, if I hadn’t already been on the floor, it would have put me there. I saw Belle Morte stretched in the big bed, surrounded by candlelight. Asher and Jean-Claude were on the bed, too. There were men tied to the big posts of the bed, nude and pale, they were. Blood glittered in thin lines on their bodies, from neck, chest, the inside of their arms, down their legs. Not one bite apiece, or even two, but more than I could count. One man’s head had slumped forward onto his chest, and he sagged against his bonds. If he breathed, I could not see it.

Jean-Claude pushed me out of his memory, it was almost a physical shove. I came back to myself, on the floor of his office, covered in my blood, the phone still in my hand.

“I would not have had you see that.”

“I’ll bet.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “We were young and knew no better. Belle Morte was our God.”

“You bled them to death so you guys could have some marathon sex session,” I said it, and my voice wasn’t horrified, in fact, it sounded empty. Because I could still see the memory, not in livid detail like it had been, but now it was in my head, too. God, I did not need someone else’s nightmares.

“There are many things I have done, ma petite, that I would not have you know. Things I am ashamed of. Things that burn inside of me like bile.”

“It was your memory, remember. I felt what you were feeling. There was no regret.”

“Then I pushed you out too soon.” He didn’t pull me in, he simply stopped pushing me out, and I was back in that room. Back in that bed. I was inside Jean-Claude’s head when he noticed the man on the bed that wasn’t moving. He crawled across the bed and touched the cooling flesh. I felt his sorrow, felt his shame. Had his knowledge that these were humans that trusted us. Humans that we had promised to protect. Give us your blood and your bodies, and we will keep you safe. I looked back at Belle Morte stretched nude and luscious, under Asher’s body. Asher’s body before the human church had scarred him. I watched Asher’s face lift up, meet our eyes, and in the middle of what Belle thought was the most sensuous of nights, the seed was sown that we must escape. That there were things that you did not do, and lines you did not cross, and she was not a god.

And I was back in his office, with my blood drying on my body, and my breast beginning to ache, and I was crying.

He stared at me, dry eyed, and he expected me to run. To turn away, and run. Like I had so many times in the past. Nothing was pretty enough for me, nice enough, clean enough. I didn’t like messy people in my life, and once that had been true, until I woke up one day and realized that I was one of the messy people.

My voice was steady, and didn’t sound like I could have tears drying on my face. “I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn’t know anything for a long time.”

He just looked at me, his face closing down, hiding from me, because he was certain where I was going, what I would say.

“There are days, hell weeks, when I still don’t know anything. I’ve been pushed so far outside what I thought was right and wrong, that somedays I don’t know my way back. I’ve done things in the name of justice, in the name of my version of justice, that I wouldn’t want anyone to know. I can look a man in the eyes and kill him, and I feel nothing. Nothing, Jean-Claude, nothing. You didn’t mean to kill, and you felt bad about it.”

“You take life to protect life, ma petite. I have taken lives for pleasure, for the pleasure of she whom I served.” He shook his head and slowly drew his knees into his chest, hugging himself tight. “Did you ever wonder why I did not replace the vampires that you and Edward, and even I later, killed, when we destroyed Nikolaos?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said. “I know we’re suddenly lousy with vamps when we seemed a little empty before.”

“I called vampires home to me, because I had taken them long ago. But I have not made a new vampire since I became Master of the City. It had kept us dangerously low. If we had truly had another territory’s master declare full war, we would have lost. We simply lacked the manpower.”

“So why not make more?” I asked, because he seemed to want me to ask.

He looked at me, and there was something in his eyes that reminded me of someone else. It was a look of pain and confusion, and centuries of hurt. I’d never seen his eyes so raw, so human. “Because, to make them vampire, I must first take away their mortality, their humanity. Who am I to do that, ma petite? Who am I to decide who will live on, and who will die in their appointed time?”

“Who are you to play, God?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, who am I to know what it will change. Belle used to use our power to change countries, wars, who ruled, who was assassinated. There was a time when she ruled more of Europe secretly than anyone knew, even among the vampire council itself. She killed millions through war, and famine. Not by her hand, but by her choices.”

“What stopped her?”

“The French Revolution, and two world wars. Even death itself must bow before such wanton destruction. Now the council rides tighter rein on its members. The time when any in Europe could build such a secret power structure is finished.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said.

“What if I take someone and make them as I am, and that person would have cured cancer, or invented some great thing. Vampires invent nothing, ma petite, we are consumed by death and pleasure, and senseless power struggles. We seek money, comfort, safety.”

“So do most people.”

He shook his head. “But not all, and my kind are attracted to those who hold power, or wealth, or are unusual in some way. A beautiful voice, a gift of artistry, of mind, or charm. We do not take the weak, as most predators do, we take the best. The brightest, the loveliest, the strongest. How many lives have we destroyed over the centuries that could have made some wonderful, or terrible, difference to humanity, to the world at large.”

I looked at him, and not that long ago I would have distrusted this sharing. But I could feel him in my head. I worried about whether I was a monster. Jean-Claude knew for certain. He did not regret what he was, for he could not imagine another life, but he worried about others. He worried about making the choice for others. He worried about playing some dark god. He worried that one day he would become that which he ran from. One day, he would become a version of Belle Morte.

What do you do when you are suddenly able to see that far into someone’s darkest fears? What do you say to that much truth about someone else? I said the only thing I could think of, the only thing that would give him any comfort. “You’ll never become like Belle Morte. You’ll never become as evil as that.”

“How can you be certain of that?” he asked.

“Because I’ll kill you before I let that happen,” and my voice was soft when I said it, because it wasn’t a lie.

“Kill me to save me from myself,” he said, and he tried to make light of it, and failed.

“No, kill you to save everybody else you’d destroy.” My voice wasn’t soft anymore.

“Even if it destroys you at the same time?”

“Yes.”

“Even if it drags our tortured Richard down with us?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Even if it cost Damian his life?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Even if Nathaniel died with us?”

I stopped breathing for a second, and time seemed to do one of those stretches where you have all the time in the world, and none of it. My breath came out shaky, and I had to lick my lips, before I said, “Yes, on one condition.”

“And that would be?” he asked.

“That I could guarantee that I wouldn’t survive it either.”

He looked at me, and it was a long, long look. A look that weighed me down to my soul, and I realized that in a way, that’s exactly what he’d done years ago.

“You told me once that I’m your conscience, but that’s not all I am, is it?”

“What do you mean, ma petite?”

“I’m your fail-safe. I’m your judge, your jury, and your executioner if things go wrong.”

“Not things, ma petite, me. If I go wrong.” There was a peacefulness in his eyes, as if some weight had gone from his shoulders. I knew exactly where that weight had gone.

“You bastard. I’d have been happy to kill you once, but not now. Not now.”

“If it is too much to ask, then consider it unasked, unsaid.”

“No, you bastard, don’t you understand? If you do go mad and start slaughtering the innocent, I am exactly who they will send. I am the Executioner.” I stared at him.

“But, ma petite, you were always the one they would send. You have always been the Executioner.”

I got to my feet. My knees weren’t weak anymore. “But I’ve never been in love with someone I had to kill before.”

“But you have told me that your love for me would not stop you from doing your duty.”

My eyes burned. “No, it won’t. If you go bad, I’ll do my duty.” I closed my eyes, and shook my head. “You Machiavellian bastard, I would have killed your ass without being in love with you.”

“I did not want you to love me because you would be my fail-safe, as you put it. I wanted you to love me, because I was in love with you.” His voice was close, and when I opened my eyes he was standing in front of me. “It is only lately that I have worried that you were so besotted with me that you might forgive me crimes in this lifetime, now.”

I shook my head. “No, no.”

“I had to know, ma petite.”

“Don’t call me that, not right now.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “Anita, I am sorry. I would not cause you pain, not deliberately.”

“Then couldn’t this conversation have waited until the afterglow faded?”

“No,” he said, “I had to know if you loved me more than your sense of justice.”

I swallowed hard. I would not cry, I would not fucking cry. “I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.”

He took my hands, and I almost jerked away, but I made myself stand there and let him touch me. I was so angry, so pissed, so . . .

“Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,” he said, “That from the nunnery, Of they chaste breast and quiet mind.”

I looked up at him, and said the next line, “To war and arms I fly.”

“True, a new mistress now I chase,” he said.

“The first foe in the field,” I said, and let him draw me closer.

“And with a stronger faith embrace,” he said.

“A sword, a horse, a shield.” And the last word was whispered against his chest, still looking up into those eyes, searching his face.

“Yet this inconstancy is such, As thou too shalt adore,” he whispered against my hair.

I finished the poem with my face pressed against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, that truly beat with my blood. “I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.”

“To Lucasta, on going to the Wars,” Jean-Claude said. His arms were around me, holding me close.

I eased my arms around him, slowly. “Richard Lovelace,” I said, “always liked his stuff in college.” I kept moving my arms until they were around his waist, and we just stood there holding each other. “I don’t think I would have remembered the whole poem if you hadn’t helped.”

“Together we are more than we are apart, Anita, that is what love is.”

I held him, and the tears started down my face, hard and hot, and choking. “Not Anita.”

I didn’t have to see his face, to know the smile was there, I could hear in his voice, “ma petite, ma petite, ma petite.”

There comes a point where you just love someone. Not because they’re good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn’t mean you’ll be together forever. It doesn’t mean you won’t hurt each other. It just means you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.

46

THE SAPPHIRE CLUB is a low, wide building and doesn’t look that nice from the outside. It doesn’t look that different from many of the rest of the bars and clubs in the area, so why is it a gentlemen’s club and the others are just titty bars? Security, decore, and a dress code for the dancers, for starters. Tonight the VIP parking area was so full of official and semiofficial vehicles that you could barely see the front of the club through the flashing lights and milling people. There was even a big fire truck and a rescue truck alongside the regular ambulance. I had no idea why we needed the big truck, but murder scenes always attract more people than you really need, more cops, and more civies, more everything.

There was a crowd pressed against the police tape and sawhorse barriers. Some of the women looked barely dressed for the October cold, so it had to be people from the nearby clubs. Most of the dancers arrived at work in street clothes then changed there. So at least some of the women shivering in the cold had left work elsewhere to join the gawkers.

I actually had to park in the lot of the nearest club, the Jazz Baby, live music, and live entertainment. What could be better? Sleep, maybe. It was nearly four in the morning. My shower had beaten the record for speed, but it was still quite a drive from the Riverfront. We’d managed to get blood on the front of my shirt, so I was wearing a T-shirt that Jean-Claude had found for me somewhere. It was white, so the black bra showed through, or would have if I hadn’t been wearing Byron’s leather jacket again. Maybe I could just keep the jacket on. No, it’d be warm inside. Oh, well. If the worst thing that happened tonight was that someone noticed I was wearing a black bra under a white shirt, we’d count ourselves lucky.

Jean-Claude had also found underwear, again it was thong, but it was actually comfortable, because it was made of soft T-shirt material, even the bit that went between your cheeks. Most of the girl thongs I’d looked at had had elastic or lace running up your ass, and that just didn’t look comfy at all.

I had to flash the badge just to get through the crowd. When I got up to the line, the officer closest to me didn’t really look at me. He saw a woman in boots and a short skirt and a leather jacket and said, “Club’s closed for the night, you won’t be working.”

I shoved my badge into his face, and he had to back up to focus on it. “Actually, Officer,” and I read his name tag in the bright lights, “Douglas, I think I will be working tonight.”

He looked down at me, because he was taller than me. I watched his face try to wrap around the look of me and the badge in one package. He wasn’t the first police officer to have a problem putting it all together, and he wouldn’t be the last. I might think like a cop, but I don’t really look like one. Especially not tonight.

“I’m Marshal Anita Blake, Sergeant Zerbrowski called me.” Always good to remind people that I hadn’t invited myself into their party. I had the authority to do it, but I tried to do as little uninvited butting in as I could. No cop, no matter what the flavor, likes someone horning in on their case. Especially not a big one.

Officer Douglas stared at my badge like he didn’t believe it was real. “No one told me that the feds were coming.”

“Ya know, it’s four in the morning. I asked your permission to cross this line as a courtesy, but this badge is a federal badge and it gives me the right to cross this line, enter this crime scene, and do my fucking job. If you stop me, Officer Douglas, I will charge you with obstructing a federal officer in the performance of her duty.”

He looked like he’d swallowed something sour, but he waved another officer over. He had him take his place at the barrier and held the tape for me. “I’ll walk you through, ma’am.”

I guess I couldn’t blame him. I mean what if the badge wasn’t real, or wasn’t mine? Of course, if I’d been a big, strapping guy, he wouldn’t have-had a problem with it. You can always tell a new cop from a veteran. New ones still judge a lot on appearance, once you’ve been on the cop for a few years, you stop doing that. Because by then you’ve learned that what’s on the outside doesn’t tell you that much about what’s on the inside. A cute little old lady can pull a trigger just as well as a big scary looking guy. Rookies don’t know that yet. They haven’t learned the lesson that you can’t tell by looking.

Officer Douglas didn’t shorten his stride for me, and he didn’t need to. I was used to walking scenes with Dolph, who made Douglas look petite. I kept up with him even in the high-heeled boots. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. Probably just as well.

Some of the police on this side of the river don’t know me on sight. They thought what Douglas had thought, that I worked here, because they catcalled after us, “Hey, Dougie, going to get a piece. No lap dances on company time, Douglas.” And worse. I ignored it all. It was four in the morning, and I hadn’t been to bed yet, I didn’t care. Besides, I’d learned the hard way that the more attention you pay to shit like that, the more you have to shovel. Ignore it, and it usually goes away, because it just isn’t any fun if they don’t get a rise out of you. Besides, they were teasing Douglas more than me. I was just the nameless girl who gave them an excuse.

He ignored it, but his face was blazing by the time we got to the main doors. He actually held the door for me, and I let him. There’d been a point in my life when I would have not let him hold the door. But with his face already burning with embarrassment, I wasn’t going to arm wrestle him for the door. I might have to work with him again, so screw it, he could hold the door. Besides, if I put him on the spot about the door, it would have given his coworkers more to tease him about, and I didn’t want that.

We went through the glass doors into a little entry area that reminded me of the front of a nice resturant, complete with a little desk and a maître d’. Though that probably wasn’t the tall guy’s official title. But hey, he was wearing a white suit jacket with a tie, he did look like a maître d’. When I’d seen him last, he was tall and self-assured and had taken my name and Asher’s and called on a phone to have a “hostess” escort us in. Now he leaned on his counter, head in his hands, looking ill.

There were bathrooms off to the left, and a short hallway that led into the club. From the door you really couldn’t see into the club. It gave them a last chance to keep out the undesirables, or the underagers, before someone saw breasts. The color scheme was muted blues and purples, and if they hadn’t had silhouettes of naked women on the walls, it would have looked like a restaurant, oh, and the poster advertising that Wednesday was amatuer night.

I couldn’t remember the big guy’s name, just couldn’t remember it. But it didn’t matter, because Douglas took me past him without a word. Up the little ramp, and the club spilled out around us. There was a good solid bar area to the left that would have done any club proud, but the rest of the room was all strip club. I mean, what else do you use little round stages for? The room was mostly blues and purples, and maybe other colors. I couldn’t tell for sure, because most of the big room was lit by black light, or other odd lighting, so that the room was lit, but it was still terribly dark. I’d been surprised the first time I was here, it was as if light could be dark, so that though there was no actual shadowed area, the whole room seemed like it was in a shadow.

It was a weekend night, the place was packed, but quiet. They’d had to turn off the music, and the DJ’s endless prattle was mercifully absent. In fact, the room seemed wrong this quiet, as if the noise was part of the decor. There were men, and more women than you’d think in the audience, huddled now all together like mourners at an unexpected funeral. The dancers were all in one corner with a plainclothes detective that I didn’t recognize. A big man in a uniform that matched Officer Douglas’s strode toward us, with a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. He still had his hat on, as if his round face would have been incomplete without it.

“Douglas, what the fuck are you bringing me another stripper for? We got all the girls that were in the club tonight over there.” He motioned with his thumb over his shoulder. He had small, beady eyes, or maybe I was just tired of being called a stripper, and discounted like I didn’t matter, just because I happened to be a girl and not in uniform. “Unless, you saw some-thin’ outside. Did you, girlie, see anything?”

I raised my badge so he could see it, and stepped around Douglas so I was facing what had to be his boss. “Federal Marshal Anita Blake, and you are?”

I could see his face darken even in the odd lighting. “Sheriff Christopher, Melvin Christopher.” He looked me up and down, not the way a man will if he thinks a woman is pretty, but like he was sizing me up, and wasn’t impressed. “You know, if you don’t want people thinking you’re a stripper, you should dress better, miss.”

“That’s Marshal Blake to you, Sheriff, and in the big city, this is called date clothes. Dresses down to your knees went out of style a few decades back.”

His face got a little darker, his eyes went from unfriendly to hostile. “You think you’re funny?”

“No,” I said, and I took a deep breath in and let it out slow. “Look, you stop calling me a stripper, and I’ll stop making cute remarks at you. Let’s both pretend we’re here to solve a crime, and just do our jobs.”

“We don’t need federal help here.”

I sighed. I looked around the room and didn’t see anyone I knew. “Fine, you want to do it this way, we can do it this way. If you prevent me from questioning all the vampires before dawn comes, I will charge you with obstructing a federal officer in the performance of her duties.”

“Some of them your friends, that it? I heard you were coffin bait.”

I shook my head and walked wide around Douglas, which put me out of reach for the sheriff.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“To question the witnesses,” I said, and I kept a little bit of an eye on the sheriff, because I wasn’t sure what he would do.

“How do you know where they are?”

“They aren’t out here, or out in the parking lot, so they’ve got to be in the Sapphire Room.” I was almost to the little raised platform in front of a pair of nice wooden doors. There was another uniformed officer in front of the doors. I had been in there before, so I knew the sound was muffled inside the room. That’s why I hadn’t yelled for Zerbrowski already.

I unzipped the leather jacket as I went up the steps. I had my badge in my left hand, held where the uniform on the door could see it clearly. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do if the sheriff told his man not to let me in. I’d learned that just because I had the legal right to be somewhere, didn’t mean the local police would make it easy. They wouldn’t actually lay hands on me, or boot my ass out, but if they wanted to be uncooperative, they could be.

“Please move aside, Officer.”

He actually started to step to the side, but the sheriff said, “You don’t work for her. You move when I say you move.”

I sighed and thought, Well, shit. Then I had an idea. I reached into the pocket of the leather coat.

“Be careful what you reach for,” the sheriff said from far too close behind me.

I turned so I could see him and the other officer. I held up my cell phone. “No need to get excited, Sheriff. Just going to make a phone call.”

He had his hands on his hips above his Sam Brown belt. He hadn’t unsnapped his gun, so he wasn’t serious. He was just trying to see if I’d spook. If he thought this kind of shit could intimidate me, he’d been playing in the shallow end of the pool for too fucking long.

I hit the buttons, keeping an eye on the officers in the room. A lot of them had stopped questioning or guarding or whatever they were doing, to watch our little show. Zerbrowski answered on the second ring. “I’m in the club, just outside the doors.”

“And why aren’t you inside the doors?” he asked, sounding puzzled.

“The sheriff has ordered his man not to move away from the doors.”

“Not true,” the sheriff yelled, “but you sure as hell can’t order my man to do shit.”

I sighed loud enough so Zerbrowski could hear it. “A little help here.”

Zerbrowski opened the door with the phone still in his hand. “Thanks, Sheriff Christopher, I think Marshal Blake and I have it from here.” He clicked the phone shut, smiled at everybody, and moved aside enough for me to pass through, but not enough for the sheriff, who stood at the bottom of the steps glaring at him. I finally realized that the pissing contest had started before I got there, and I’d just gotten caught in it.

Zerbrowski shut the door behind us, and leaned against it shaking his head. He’s 5' 9", with short black hair going more and more gray every year. When his wife makes him get it cut, the hair is short and neat. When he forgets, or she’s busy, it’s curly and wavy, and as untidy as the rest of him. His suit was brown, his tie was pale yellow, and so was his shirt. I think it was the first time I’d seen all his clothes match in all the years I’d known him. Okay, match and not have food stains on them.

His glasses were silver and helped hide that his eyes were tired, but not that he was pissed. He took me off to one side by the fountain with a once-real-live stuffed lion crouching beside it. The Sapphire Room is a cross between a hunting lodge, a safari room, and other things people think men think is masculine. Most of the room was carpeted in leopard print, so that my first thought was, always, Oh, no, a leopard blew up and plastered itself all over everything, but hey, animal prints are in this year. People pay hundreds of dollars a night to be back here, so they must like it.

Zerbrowski turned his back on the room and motioned for me to move in front of him so that no one would see us talking. “Welcome to the party.”

“Why are you keeping out all of the sheriff’s men?”

“When we pulled up, they had the vampires in here and were using crosses on them. They didn’t touch them, just made the crosses glow like hell, and basically said, you talk, or we keep crosses out.”

“Shit, use of a holy item on a vampire for questioning was ruled assault, what, three months ago in federal court?”

“Yeah,” he said, and he raised his glasses up and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

“Every vamp here could press charges,” I whispered.

He nodded and readjusted his glasses. “Like I said, welcome to the party.”

Before the ruling, a lot of police departments had holy items as part of their uniform, like lapel pins or tietacks, but now they were back to carrying them undercover somewhere on their bodies. Holy items were now considered weapons when dealing with vampires. Which meant what the sheriff had done constituted assault with a deadly weapon.

“Was it just him, or his men, too?”

“Some of his men. Before we got here, they were all wearing little cross-shaped lapel pins. I got them to remove them, but only after I threatened to call the closest FBI office.”

I looked at him, because no cop likes to call in what they so affectionately call the Feebies.

“I’d rather let the FBI take this entire case away from us than let crap like this go down. The vampires are scared shitless now. If there are any guilty ones here, I can’t tell it, because they’re all either royally pissed, or scared. Most of them won’t even talk to us, and legally they don’t have to.” It didn’t really show in his voice, but he was as angry as I’d seen him. I could see it in the tightness around his eyes, the way his hands kept stiffening up. Zerbrowski was usually one laid back guy, but everybody has their limits. “We got a hit from New Orleans and Pittsburgh. Very similar crimes. Two in Pittsburgh, five in New Orleans, then they moved here.”

“Lucky us,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “but that means we have at least three more bodies to look forward to. We need these nice citizen vamps to talk to us.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Do you have anyone you want me to start with? I mean it’s 4:30, we’ve got about three hours or less until dawn. They’ve got to be allowed to go home before dawn, unless you can charge them with something.”

“We’ve got a woman dead in the side lot here, multiple vampire bites, and they’re vampires. I could probably get a judge to agree to holding them as material witnesses. I know a judge that hates vampires enough to give me a court order.”

I shook my head. “We’re trying to smooth this over, not make it worse. Right now they can only sue this city, let’s not give them a reason to sue us, too.”

He nodded then stepped aside and made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “They are all yours, good luck.”

There was a group of vampires around the big fireplace in the center of the main room. None of them belonged to Jean-Claude. Some of them were clustered around a table set in front of it the fireplace, in huge thronelike chairs, some on a cushioned seat near the fireplace. One of the vampires was clutching an animal print cushion while he sat in front of the fire. His eyes were wide, and he looked shell-shocked. The other five were scared, or angry, or a mixture of both, but they were holding it together better than the cushion-hugger.

I showed them my badge and explained who I was. But it wasn’t the badge that made the cushion-hugger whimper, “Oh, God, they’re going to kill us.”

“Shut up, Roger,” a tall vampire with sleek black hair and angry hazel eyes said. “Why are you here, Ms. Blake? We are being held against our wills, and we are guilty of nothing except being vampires.”

“And you are?” I asked.

He stood and straightened a rather nice, conservative suit. “I am Charles Moffat.”

“I know that name,” I said.

He looked nervous, just for a moment, then he tried to swallow it. He wasn’t twenty-years dead, a baby.

“You’re one of Malcolm’s deacons for the Church of Eternal Life,” I said.

He opened his mouth, then closed it, and stood very tall, and said, “Yes, I am, and I’m not ashamed of it.”

“No, but Malcolm has forbidden any of his church members to frequent this side of the river for nefarious purposes.”

“How do you know what our master dictates?” He was trying to bluff, and it wasn’t going to work.

“Because Malcolm talked to the Master of the City and got him to agree to tell Malcolm if any of the church’s members frequented his clubs. You guys aren’t allowed to be anywhere this naughty. You must, and I quote, be absolutely above reproach.”

One of the vamps who was balding and wore glasses, started rocking in his chair. “I knew we shouldn’t have come. If Malcolm finds out . . .”

“She is Jean-Claude’s servant, and she must tell him, and he will tell Malcolm.”

“Actually, the agreement was just to tattle about you coming to our clubs. Malcolm didn’t ask us to keep an eye this side of the river.”

The bald vampire looked up at me as if I’d offered him salvation. “You won’t tell?”

“If you guys tell me everything you know about this, I don’t see a reason to.”

The bald vampire touched Charles Moffat’s arm. Charles jerked away from him. “How can we trust you?”

“Look, I’m not the one who signed a morals clause with my master and has just been caught in a titty bar—you guys have. So if anyone is questioning someone’s word, shouldn’t it be me? I mean a vampire that goes against the express orders of his master, what good is he either to his master or his kiss?”

“We of the church do not use the word kiss for a group of vampires. Malcolm feels that it is too sensuous a word.”

“Fine, but my point stands. You’ve betrayed your master, your church, and your oath, or don’t you in the church take blood oath, either?”

“A barbaric practice,” Charles said, “we of the church are held by our own moral standards not some magical oath.”

I smiled and motioned around the room. “Hmm, nice standards.”

Charles blushed, which isn’t easy for a vamp, but it let me know he’d fed tonight, fed a lot. “Who was your feed for tonight?”

He just glared at me. “Look, guys, it’s 4:30 in the morning. We have less than three hours to get your asses back to your homes. We want you all out of here before dawn, alright?”

They all nodded. “Then answer my questions. I can tell which one of you has fed and which hasn’t. I need to know what dancers, or donors, you fed on. If they’re in the other room, I need to talk to them. If they aren’t, I need names, and a way to contact them tonight.”

“The relationship between a vampire and their partner is sacred.”

“Look, Charles, you’ve got enough blood in you to blush. You want me to start speculating where you got that much blood to waste?”

“We have already been threatened and abused. You can do no more to us.”

I turned to the rest. “Who wants to answer my questions and get an I-won’t-tell-Malcolm card?”

The bald vamp stood up. Charles yelled at him. But Baldie shook his head. “No, you aren’t my master, Charles. We are all free beings in the church, it’s one of the reasons we joined. I’m going to answer her questions, because it’s within my rights to do so.”

“Let’s find a private room,” I said, and motioned for him to follow me. There was a truly beautiful saltwater aquarium in a little area that was probably meant to be a smoking room, but there were smaller rooms off of it, where normally you could take one of the dancers and get a private dance.

I took Baldie into the first room. It was actually nice, not tacky in the least, with a small couch, a chair, a coffee table, and area lighting. The room still pulled off that leather and manly den theme, without being obnoxious about it. “Have a seat,” I said.

He sat, rubbing his hands over his knees, nervous. He was a little plump, and soft. He looked like an accountant, except that when he licked his lips, he flashed a little fang. The new ones do that. “How long have you been in the church?”

“Two years.” He was shaking his head. “I thought it would be sexy, you know, vampires, the clothes, the romance.” He clasped his plump hands together. “But it’s not like that at all. I’m still a law clerk, just at a different office where they let me work nights. I can’t drink, can’t eat a steak, and dying didn’t make me sexier.” He spread his hands wide. “Look at me, I’m just paler.”

“I thought the church required six months minimum of study before they let you take the last step?”

He nodded. “They do, but they made all the moral stuff seem high-minded, you know, we’re better than those other vampires. We aren’t perverts like Jean-Claude and his vamps.” He looked up and was scared, and it showed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .”

“I know what the church says about normal vampire society.”

“It sounded so noble.”

“Let me guess, there was this woman that happened to be a vampire.”

He looked up, startled. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess, and after you made the change, what happened?”

“She was my partner for the first few months, but after that, she had other duties.”

That was interesting, and I filed it away for later. If the church deacons were seducing members, that might be called illegal, at the very least questionably moral. “Who’d you feed off of tonight?”

The question threw him, and he blinked at me like a rabbit in headlights. “Sasha, her name was Sasha.”

“And you brought her back here?”

He nodded.

“You’re a club member?”

He nodded again.

“Charles is, too?”

Nod.

“Most of the people at the table are members?”

Nod, then, “It was Clarke’s first time here.”

“And Clarke is the one with the pillow?”

“How did you know?”

I shook my head, smiled, and said, “Do you remember any other girls that people fed off of, names or descriptions.” He remembered a lot. I ended up with four names, two descriptions, and only poor Clarke had not fed. Of course, I’d known that last part, but it’s always nice to have things confirmed.

With Zerbrowski as my guard, we ventured out into the club and fetched the women in question. We matched up every vamp with at least one girl. Charles had fed on three, and he was a big tipper. Two of the girls were his regulars. Pretty naughty for a church deacon.

It took me a little more than two hours to match up those who had fed with whom they’d fed on. It didn’t mean they hadn’t snuck out and fed again, but it made it less likely. I suggested that we could compare bite radiuses on the dead girl with the vamps later, if we needed to. We knew their names, and knew how to find them.

The most interesting bit of information I found out was given up only by the first vamp I talked to and by Clarke, who was so scared he’d have given up his mother. There had been three other church members here earlier in the evening, and they were also part of the crowd that liked to frequent the stripper bars. But none of them were members of the Sapphire Room VIP club. I had their names and an address for the most newly dead of them. Maybe they’d had something to do with the murder, or maybe they just gotten bored and went home early. It wasn’t a crime to leave a place.

Zerbrowski had actually called in state troopers to back us up, as we escorted the vampires to their cars. None of them was powerful enough, or old enough to be able to fly home. When we’d gotten the last of the undead safely off in their minivans and compact cars, Zerbrowski took me to one side and said, “Did I hear you right? The vamp church makes their members sign a morals clause?”

I nodded. “Other vamps call them nightshift Mormons.”

He grinned. “Nightshift Mormons, really.”

“Honest.”

“Oh, I will have to remember that one, that’s good.” He looked behind us at the waiting ambulance, fire truck, and all the personnel. “Now that you’ve helped save the vamps, how about looking at the acutal crime scene?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

He grinned, and it almost pushed the tiredness out of his eyes. “I get to go first down the ladder,” he said.

I frowned at him. “What ladder?”

“Our murder scene and body dump are in a hole left by some overzealous construction workers. According to the club manager, they broke ground, but didn’t have all their permits in line, so it’s just a big hole. That’s why we need the firemen to help us get the body up out of the hole when you’re done with it.”

“You are not going ahead of me down the ladder, Zerbrowski.”

“What are you wearing under that little bitty skirt?”

“None of your damn business, and if you don’t let me go first down the ladder, I’ll tell your wife on you.”

He laughed, and a few people looked our way. They were colder than we were, and just as tired. I don’t think they saw anything to laugh about. “Katie knows I’m a lech.”

I shook my head. “How messy is it down in the hole?”

“Let’s see, it’s rained, it’s frozen, it’s thawed, and it’s rained some more.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Where are those overalls you used to wear to all the crime scenes?”

“It’s against company policy to wear crime scene gear to a zombie raising now.” What I didn’t say out loud was that I’d forgotten and worn overalls that had blood on them to a zombie raising. The client’s wife had fainted. Was it my fault that she had a fragile constitution? It wasn’t Bert who said no more, it was a majority vote at Animator’s Inc. So I actually had to pay attention to the rule. “I didn’t plan on climbing into holes and looking at bodies tonight.”

The grin faded from his face. “Me neither, let’s get this done. I want to go home and hug my wife and kids before they go off to school and work.”

I didn’t point out that it was 6:30 in the morning, and his chances of making it home in time to see Katie and his kids before they rushed off to their days was slim to none. Everybody needs a little hope, who am I to take it away?

47

THE WOMAN IN the hole was beyond hope, or fear, or whatever had happened to her. Her face looked empty, the way the dead always do. You get an occasional one that looks scared, but it’s just happenstance. The way their face muscles worked at the moment of death. But mostly, the dead look empty, like something essential is missing, something beyond just no breath, no heartbeat. I’d seen enough eyes do that last glaze, to say that something more precious than breath goes with death. Or maybe I was just tired and didn’t want to be standing ankle-deep in mud, staring down at a woman that was probably younger than I was, and now always would be. I get more morbid the closer to dawn it gets, if I haven’t been to bed.

There were a lot of similarities to the first body. This one was lying on her back, just like the last one. They’d both been strippers. They were both killed just outside the clubs that they worked in. This one was a blonde, and white, which was the same as the first one. There were a set of bite marks on either side of the neck, and one in the bend of her left arm, right wrist, and chest. To see if she had thigh bites I was going to have to kneel in the mud, and I didn’t want to. Simple as that, I didn’t want to. I promised myself I would never again be caught out, anywhere, without a pair of coveralls, and mud boots. I’d had to borrow gloves from Zerbrowski. I’d been thinking about my date, not about my job when I packed the Jeep earlier. Stupid me.

I stood up and debated on whether I could get away without crawling around in the mud and looking at all the bites. “She’s taller, by almost a foot than the last one. Blond hair but very short, the last one had long hair. Other than that, it looks damn similar.”

“The bite radiuses are the same.”

“Who took the measurements?” I asked.

He told me, and the name meant nothing to me. I was across the river, and I didn’t actually do a lot of crime scenes here. I killed vamps for Illinois, but I didn’t do much actual investigative work. I couldn’t let someone else do it, not if I didn’t know them. If even one bite radius was off, it would mean a change of players in our vampire group. We needed to know if we were looking for five, or six, or more.

I sighed and fetched my little tape measure out of the jacket pocket. That I’d started keeping in the glove compartment with the baby wipes. I measured the easy-to-get-to bites first and had Zerbrowski take notes. Then I planted my knee carefully in the mud, between her knees. The mud was cold. I spread her legs and found the inner thigh bites. I measured everything I could find. The bite radiuses matched, or ballparked. I was using a different instrument to do the measuring, which I shouldn’t have done. I shouldn’t have let the CSU technician let me use something I wouldn’t have with me next time. What you measured with could make a difference in the field. The field was not a laboratory.

I got up from the ground carefully, my goal was still not to slide on my ass in the mud. High-heeled boots were not the best thing to wear to guarantee that. So I was careful. “The Sapphire has security people walking their lot. At least one security guy at any given time. It’s the weekend, there should have been two. Did they see or hear anything?”

“One of them saw the girl come out with her coat on. She was headed home, done for the night. He saw her go toward her car”—he riffled back through his notebook—“then, she wasn’t there.”

I looked at him. “What did you say?”

“He said, she was walking toward her car, he waved at her, then something attracted his attention to the other side of the lot. He’s a little vague on what attracted his attention, but he swears he only glanced away, then when he looked back, she was gone.”

“Gone.”

“Yeah, why do you have that look on your face, like that means something?”

“Did he check her car right away?”

He nodded. “Yes, and when he didn’t find her at the car, he went back into the club to see if she’d gone back inside. When he couldn’t find her inside, he got the other security guy, and they started searching the area. They found her.”

“How long does he think he looked away for?”

“He says a few seconds.”

“Has anyone checked with anyone else inside, who might have seen her leave? I’d like to know what time she left the building, and how long he was really staring off in the other direction.”

“Let’s just get out of the hole and find someone who saw her leave and actually looked at a clock.”

He was riffling through his notebook again. The lights that they had directed down into the pit illuminated everything, in fact made it all a little stark, and pitiless, as if she needed to be covered up and not stared at anymore. Maudlin, I was getting positively maudlin.

“Actually, one of the ladies inside, a customer, had liked the blonde a lot, she and her husband. So she noticed the time when she left.”

“And how does it tally with the security guy’s statement?”

He checked the times back and forth. “Ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes is an awfully long time to stare at something he isn’t even sure he saw.”

“You think he lied?”

I shook my head. “No, I think he told what he thinks is the truth.”

“I’m lost. What are you getting at?” Zerbrowski asked.

I smiled at him, but not like I was happy. “One of the vamps has to be a master, we figured that, but they also have to be able to cloud men’s minds enough to pull something like this off.”

“I thought all vamps could cloud men’s minds.”

I shook my head. “They can mesmerize one person with their gaze, and if they bite them, then they can blank their memory. If they’re powerful enough, they can mesmerize with the eyes and blank most of the memory. But the vic will usually have this vague memory of eyes, or sometimes an animal with blazing eyes, or car headlights that were very bright. The mind tries to make mundane sense of what’s happened.”

“Okay, so one of the vamps zapped him with its gaze.”

“No, Zerbrowksi, I’m betting it wasn’t eyes. I’m betting it was from a distance with no direct gaze. I’ll talk to him, see what he remembers, but if he’s bite-free and doesn’t have some weird memory, then it was done from a nice safe distance, with no direct contact.”

“So what?” he asked, and he sounded irritated and tired.

I didn’t take it personally. “It means that one of the vamps is old, Zerbrowski. Old, and a master vampire. We’re talking fairly major talent here. It’s a limited list.”

“Names?”

I shook my head. “Let’s talk to the security guy and get him to strip down for us.”

He looked at me over the rims of his glasses, before he pushed them back up his nose. “Did you just say what I think you just said?”

“We’ve got to check him for vamp bites. If he’s clean, then we’re looking for a major player, vampirically speaking. If he’s got a bite, then not so major. Trust me, it’ll make a difference in who we talk to.”

“Is this Jean-Claude’s people?” Zerbrowski asked.

“No,” I said.

“How can you be sure?” he asked.

How could I be sure? I was tired enough that I let that be a question in my head, let me wonder what Jean-Claude would say. Would he guarantee that this couldn’t have been his people? The thought was enough, he was suddenly in my head. Shit.

He was seeing what I was seeing, not good at a murder investigation when the vic had been done in by vamps. I started to shield, to kick him out, but I suddenly knew the answer to my question. “My blood oath will hold them from this, because it is against my express orders to bring us to the negative attention of the human police.”

I thought, Liv broke your oath once, and he heard me. “I was not le sourdre de sang then. My oath is not so lightly shaken off now, ma petite.”

I’d been quiet too long. Zerbrowski said, “You okay?”

“Just thinking,” I said. I’d known about blood oaths, but I hadn’t actually understood how important they were, or what they were supposed to mean. “Because all of Jean-Claude’s people have to take a blood oath. It binds them mystically to the Master of the City. He’s forbidden his vampires to do shit like this.”

“You’re saying the blood oath makes this impossible?”

“Not impossible, but harder. It depends on how strong the master is that they make the oath to.”

“How strong is Jean-Claude?”

I thought about a way to explain it and finally settled for, “Strong enough that I’d bet good money this wasn’t his people.”

“But you wouldn’t guarantee it.”

“Guarantees are for major appliances, not for murder.”

He grinned. “That’s cute, I may just have to use that one sometime.”

“Knock yourself out.”

The grin faded round the edges. “I still don’t really understand this whole blood oath thing. Maybe I’m just too tired for metaphysics, explain it to me again later.”

“Let me simplify it.”

“That’d be nice,” he said.

“I just learned tonight from the vamps I questioned that Malcolm has abolished the blood oath for the church. It’s too barbaric.”

Jean-Claude was still in my head and heard what I said. I got a rush of fear from him, fear bordering on panic.

“Okay, and that means what exactly?” Zerbrowski asked.

I had to take a deep breath to talk around Jean-Claude’s fear. His voice in my head said, “Are you certain of this, ma petite?”

I let my out loud voice for Zerbrowski answer Jean-Claude’s question, too. “It means, Zerbrowski, that you have hundreds of vampires in this area that have nothing to keep them from doing shit like this, except their own consciences, and a morals clause they all sign.”

Jean-Claude was cursing in my head in French, and though I caught a word here and there, most of it was too fast for me.

Zerbrowski smiled, and the smile broadened until it was a grin. “You’re saying that the church trusts its members to be good little citzens, and your boyfriend isn’t that trusting.”

“I’ll look at the new masters that have come to town at Jean-Claude’s invitation, but my money is on the Church of Eternal Life.”

“Dolph would say it’s because you don’t want it to be Jean-Claude’s people.”

“Yeah, he would, but I’ll tell you this, Zerbrowski, the thought that all these new little vampires have only their human morals to make them be good, makes me almost agree with Dolph.”

“Agree on what?”

“Kill them all.”

Jean-Claude said, “Do not say this out loud to the police, ma petite. It may come to that, and you do not wish your friend to remember this conversation.” He was right.

“Shit, Anita, some of your best friends are bloodsuckers.”

“Yeah, but there are rules to being a vampire, and Malcolm is trying to treat them like they’re just people with fangs. They aren’t, Zerbrowski, they really aren’t. Even if this turns out to be a bunch of rogues that somehow slipped through everyone’s radar. Mine, Jean-Claude’s, and Malcolm’s, we are so going to have to talk to him about his new policy.”

“Why I do I think when you said, we, just now, you weren’t including me, or any of the cops?” He was looking at me, and the joking, lecherous comments were gone. I was seeing a very intelligent pair of cop eyes.

I sighed and took a step toward the ladder. I’d said too much, way too much. Jean-Claude’s voice in my head, “You must say something to take the sting out of your words, ma petite.”

Out loud, to Zerbrowski, I thought of something to say. “I’m tired Zerbrowski, please don’t tell Dolph that I think all the vamps in the church should be done in. I don’t mean it, not really.”

“I won’t tell anyone, especially not Dolph. He’d probably start with his new daughter-in-law, and wouldn’t that be a shit.”

I nodded. “But if we had hundreds of vamps go bad, all at once, I’m still who gets the call. I so don’t want to ever have to try to take on that many of them. I’m good, but not that good.”

“For a few hundred, even you’d need help,” he said. He let out a long breath. “I can see where the thought would piss you off, and make you tired. Hell, it makes me tired, and nervous.”

“I’ll try to find out how long this no-blood-oath policy has been in effect,” I said.

“And then what?”

I had my hands on the ladder. “I’ll deal with it.”

“Ma petite, you are being uncautious again.”

I whispered, “Get out of my head.”

“What does that mean, Anita? You’re a federal marshal, you can’t do the Lone Ranger shit anymore. You got a badge.”

I leaned my forehead on the ladder, got mud on my face, and jerked back. I told him as much of the truth as I could. “We’ll give Malcolm a choice, either he blood oaths everybody, or Jean-Claude does.” Jean-Claude was suddenly louder than ever in my head. “Stop there, ma petite, I beg you, do not say it out loud.”

What I didn’t say out loud was that any vampire that didn’t want to take the ceremony was probably dead. I had Jean-Claude’s memory of it now, and I knew the blood oath was one of their most strenuously observed laws. I’d seen what could happen if the oath wasn’t strong enough, what would happen if it wasn’t there at all.

I was actually on the ladder, when Zerbrowski said, “And what if the vamps don’t want to take the oath?”

I stayed frozen on the ladder for a second, then lied, “I’m not sure. I’m hoping that it’s just Malcolm and not every church of their’s across the country that’s doing this. You’re talking about something that’s never been done before, Zerbrowski. As far as I know, no master vamp has ever just allowed vamps to breed like this without securing himself as their leader in more than just name. It’s never been done before. Vamps aren’t big on new ideas.”

“Are you talking about killing the ones that won’t take the oath? Anita, they’ve got rights.”

“I know that, Zerbrowski, better than most.” I was cursing Malcolm, cursing him for the mess he’d started. Even if the murderers weren’t his people, it was only a matter of time. Vampires are not people, they don’t think like people. I realized that Malcolm was trying to do with the Church of Eternal Life what Richard had tried to do with the Thronnos Rokke Clan. Both of them were trying to treat the monsters like they were just people. They weren’t. God help us, but they weren’t.

Jean-Claude whispered, “We will need to send envoys to the church and see how bad it truly is.”

I didn’t answer, because I was pretty sure who one of the envoys would be. Me.

I started up the ladder, and only when Zerbrowski whistled did I remember what I was wearing under the skirt. “Blake, you have a very nice . . .”

“Don’t say it, Zerbrowski.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you say it, I’ll put you on the ground.”

“Ass,” he said.

“I warned you,” I said.

He laughed.

When we were both on solid ground, I footswept him into a convenient patch of mud. He cursed me, everyone laughed. He said, “I’ll tell Katie you were mean to me.”

“She’ll be on my side.” And she would be. In fact, I knew Katie Zerbrowski well enough to know that her husband wouldn’t tell her he’d told me I had a nice ass. She’d consider it rude.

Jean-Claude’s echo in my head was, but you do. I told him to shut up, too, and this time he listened. “Dawn is near, and I must rest. We will speak again when I wake.”

“Pleasant dreams,” I whispered.

“The dead do not dream, ma petite.” And he was gone.

48

THE SECURITY GUY hadn’t liked stripping. I told him he could do it in privacy with just me and the nice officers watching, or he could do it on one of the stages. His choice. He’d looked like he didn’t believe me, but wasn’t willing to risk it. He was clean, no vamp bites. On the one hand, shit, because a master vamp is harder to catch, harder to keep, and harder to kill. On the other hand, great, because the list of vamps that could do this was pretty small. Or it was if I understood the deal between Malcolm and Jean-Claude. Okay, technically it had been a deal struck between Malcolm and Nikolaos, the old Master of the City. Having met her, hell, having killed her, I’d sympathized with vamps flocking to the church and not wanting to owe her a damn thing. But Jean-Claude had honored her treaty with the church, on a few conditions. One, no master-level vamps allowed in town without running it by Jean-Claude. So either Malcolm had reneged on the deal, or he didn’t know that he had someone that powerful in his community. Or neither Malcolm nor Jean-Claude had felt someone that powerful enter their territory. If that last were true, we were in deep, deep trouble, because that would raise the power level to something none of us would want to deal with.

Or had Jean-Claude approved a master for Malcolm without understanding that there would be no blood oath to keep control of it? I had so many questions that my head hurt, and no way of getting them answered until Jean-Claude woke for the day. I drove back to St. Louis in dawn’s early light, happy I had sunglasses with me. Happy that I wasn’t driving directly east. The indirect brightness was bad enough.

The Circus was closer than my own house, so that’s where I went. I bunked there sometimes to have a date with Jean-Claude, but often just because it was closer to crash. My eyes were so tired they burned, and my body had that achiness that feels almost like you’re sick, but is just your body using up all its reserves to keep you awake and moving.

I pulled into the employee parking lot of Circus of the Damned at nearly 8:30 in the morning. There were three other cars in the lot. One was Jason’s, and I didn’t know the others on sight. But it had to be people who didn’t just work here, but also lived here, and knew how to drive. That narrowed it down. I thought Meng Die drove, and maybe Faust, but I just wasn’t sure, and was too tired to care.

I walked across the parking lot in the fast growing light, and fought off an urge to hunch my shoulders. I used my key on the back door, and I pushed my way into the blessed dimness of a storage room.

I locked the door behind me, leaning against it for a second or two. Not long ago there hadn’t been a lock on the back door at all, you had to have someone let you in, but I’d had them put in a better door, reinforced steel, with a lock. Without the lock they’d had to keep someone in a little lookout up near the roof. The lookout would send someone down if the person at the door needed in. I said it seemed silly, since there was a lock on the outer doors in front. It just made it harder for the employees to get in, and besides there was a small window just before dawn when sometimes the lookout was empty, and that was often when I was trying to get inside. Banging on the door at dawn just got discouraging.

I made sure the door was secure behind me, then I wound my way through the boxes that were always there, to the big door that led to the stairs. The stairs went down, a long way down. I was tired enough that if there’d been an elevator I would have taken it. But there wasn’t. The stairs were actually part of the defenses of the Circus. One, it was a lot of stairs, so you had to be fairly serious to go down them. Two, there were places along the way that we could set up ambushes if we needed to. Three, the stairs were oddly made, as if whatever they’d originally been made for hadn’t walked on two legs, or at least hadn’t been the size of a human being. If you didn’t know what awaited you down below, you might start wondering what used these stairs. Actually, just vamps and wereanimals, but our enemies didn’t know that. Jean-Claude encouraged the rumors that there were other things down here, bigger, less human things. Fine with me, keep your enemies scared and guessing.

By the time I got to the big iron door at the bottom, my vision was blurry from lack of sleep. I dragged my keys back out. The key to this door wasn’t hard to find. It was the only huge, old-fashioned key on the ring. It looked like a giant among dwarves compared to the modern keys.

I put the key in, and the lock moved, smooth and well-oiled. The hinges were just as quiet, though probably if I had only been human strong I might have had to struggle with the weight of the door. It was meant to withstand battering by bigger things than hands.

I closed it behind me, and locked it, and set the big bar in place. If anyone else was dragging their ass in this late, they were out of luck. But you were usually safe this far after dawn to set the bigger lock in place. The fact that it hadn’t been set probably meant Jean-Claude had figured I’d come here for the day.

I passed through the long, silky curtains that formed the walls of the living room. I actually didn’t give much attention to the gold and white and silver furniture, or the painting above the faux fireplace. Sleep was the only thing on my mind, now that the outer door was locked.

I went to Jean-Claude’s room, but I should have known better. I found him and Asher curled under the sheets. Both of them beautiful in death as in life. Asher’s golden waves lay like metallic foam upon a white pillow. His eyes were closed, so I couldn’t see his pale blue eyes, like the eyes of a Siberian husky. As pale a blue as Jean-Claude’s were a dark blue. Asher lay on his side, so that the unscarred side of his face was up to the light. They’d left a light on for me, probably. Without a light, the room was dark as a cave. No windows. Jean-Claude lay spooning against Asher’s back, one arm over the other man’s waist, his hand trailing along the scars on the right side of Asher’s body. Asher had been the blond beauty to Jean-Claude’s brunette once, then some well-meaning church officials had captured him and used holy water to drive the devil out of him. Holy water acts on vampire flesh like acid on ours. Those same officials had burned Asher’s human servant and love, Julianna, at the stake. Christianity is a fine religion, but some of the things done in the name of it, aren’t so nice.

I touched Jean-Claude’s face, moved a stray lock of his hair behind one pale shoulder. His skin was cool to the touch, and would just get colder. I kissed Asher’s forehead, and it was like kissing the dead. Vampires didn’t sleep at dawn, they died. They truly were animated corpses. I just wasn’t sure what exactly animated them.

I couldn’t sleep in the bed with two corpses. The cooling flesh just creeped me out. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to sleep with a vampire, I mean really sleep. Which left me wondering what bed to use. If there’d been a couch in the room, I would have used it, but there wasn’t. Until I’d asked, there hadn’t even been chairs. When you’ve got a bed this big, I guess who wants to sit in a chair?

I walked back out and closed the door softly behind me, not that it would wake them, but just out of habit. I went to Jason’s room. I’d bunked with him before. I didn’t knock, because I expected everybody to be asleep, and I was right. Jason was curled up tight on the far edge of the bed, his blond hair showing just above the covers. Someone else was curled against his back, and for just a second I thought I’d goofed, and it was a woman, but I knew that spill of auburn hair. Nathaniel was bunking here for the night. Again, not the first time.

They’d left the bathroom light on, with the door opened a crack. I wasn’t sure if it was for my benefit, or so Nathaniel would know where he was if he woke in the middle of the night. The first few times I’d woken in absolute darkness in one of these windowless rooms, it had been claustrophobic. I liked a little light.

I’d cleaned the mud off my face in the car with the baby wipes, and once I got my boots and hose off, I was going to be mud-free. It was nearly a miracle that I hadn’t fallen down, wearing the heels in the mud. I took off the leather jacket and folded it nicely. There was no chair, so I sat flat on the floor and unzipped the boots and stripped off the hose, putting them against a wall, so no one would stumble over them. The skirt was stiff with dried blood. The fact that none of the vamps in the club had said anything about it said either that they couldn’t smell it, or they thought remarking on it would have been too barbaric.

I left the skirt in a pile by itself. I wasn’t even sure dry cleaning could save it.

I took off the white T-shirt and made a third pile for clothes that were actually clean. The bra went in that pile. I put the T-shirt back on and kept the thong underwear, too. I’d have slept better without the thong, but the T-shirt wasn’t enough clothes. I’d never slept nude with Nathaniel, and I had with Jason only once, when I’d passed out that way. I needed jammies. What I wanted more than anything in that moment was to wrap as much of my tired body around Nathaniel’s body as I could, and sleep.

I crawled under the sheets on the far side of the bed and moved until I touched Nathaniel’s bare back. The moment I touched him, he stirred in his sleep. I slid my body along his, until I spooned him from behind, which was how we slept most nights at home. He wasn’t wearing anything. It wasn’t a comment on sexual orientation for Nathaniel and Jason. It was a comment about them both being wereanimals. Wereanimals just didn’t see the point in clothes, not if they could go without them.

I settled in against Nathaniel’s body, and he snuggled himself between my body and Jason. Who never so much as stirred. I put my face against Nathaniel’s hair, and the vanilla scent of it was enough. I was home, and I slept.

49

SOMETHING WOKE ME. I wasn’t sure what. I was just suddenly awake in the dimness of Jason’s bedroom. I was still curled against Nathaniel, and Jason was a dim blond shape on the other side of him. Nothing had changed, so what had woken me?

I lay there, straining to listen. There was nothing to hear. It was just the boys’ quiet breathing, the rustle of a sheet when Jason moved in his sleep. The room was utterly quiet. Had I heard something? Then I did hear something—water. Water running in the bathroom.

I slid my hand under my pillow, and the Browning was there in its holster. If I wasn’t at home with the gun in its bedframe holster, then I kept the gun holstered and snapped, just in case. It’d be a shame if someone’s hand accidentally offed the safety, and another hand hit a trigger, and well, you get the idea. I unsnapped the holster, drew out the gun, and put a hand over Nathaniel’s mouth.

He jerked awake, eyes wide. I motioned with the gun toward the crack of the bathroom door. He nodded and touched Jason’s shoulder, as I slipped out of the bed and moved toward the bathroom.

I had the safety off, the gun held two-handed, pointed at the ceiling. It could have been one of the other shapeshifters come to borrow a shower. It would be like them, not to wake anyone and just assume it would be alright. It’d be a hell of a thing to kill someone because they used the wrong shower.

I crossed wide around the door, so my shadow wouldn’t cross the light, though probably with the dark room behind me, that wouldn’t happen. But better careful than not. I had to ball the black silk robe up over one arm to keep from tripping over it. I didn’t remember putting on a robe.

I was at the hinge side of the door, and I went to one knee, because if someone was on the other side with a weapon, most people aimed higher than my head was when I knelt. I kept as much of myself against the doorjamb as I could and began to ease the door open with my hands, which were still cupped around the gun. I was hoping to give my eyes time to adjust to the light, before whoever it was noticed the door moving. I knew better than to simply jump into the room from almost dark to bright light. I’d be blind for a second or two. If I’d been sure it was a bad guy, I’d have fired blind, but I wasn’t sure.

There was water seeping out from under the door, the robe under my knees was wet with it. What I thought had been the shower running was the bathtub. I could hear the difference now. Someone had flooded the bathtub. What the hell was going on?

I had the door flat against the wall now, and there was no one to be seen. There was just the bathtub with water spilling over its sides and the water still rushing out of the faucet at full blast. The lower part of my legs were soaked. It was cold, so cold. Like they’d turned on only the cold. Who took a bath in only cold water?

There was just the sink area, a partial wall, the stool, and the bathtub/ shower. The room was small enough that I could see it all in one glance. There was no place to hide. Was this joke? Had someone crept in while we slept, plugged the bathtub, and turned on the water? Did they think we’d notice before it flooded? Did they care? Stupid joke.

I got to my feet and started wading through the water. It was ankle deep, and that seemed wrong. I mean, it shouldn’t be that deep. The hem of the robe caught in the water, pulled in the current, like I was wading through a stream. It was like ice, so cold, so very cold.

I was standing over the bathtub now, and the water was cloudy. I couldn’t see to the bottom of the tub, and that was wrong. It wasn’t that deep. It was a white tub, and this was clear water. Why couldn’t I see through it?

I kept the gun up, but reached to turn off the water. I half-expected something to grab my hand, but it didn’t. The faucet just turned off, and the silence that followed was deafening. Small noises now, water sloshing, sliding around the room. The water cleared like a glass of water from a tap when there’s too many minerals in the water. That milky stuff settling to the bottom, and there was something in the water. Something swimming out of the murk, coming into focus.

A pale hand, a spill of red hair, and I was staring down into Damian’s face. His eyes were wide and dead, but it was daylight. He was dead. He didn’t need to breathe. He could be under water. It wouldn’t hurt him. But logic didn’t help. Seeing him floating there, I did what I would have done if he’d been human—I reached for him.

I dropped the gun to the floor and plunged my hands into the tub. I touched him, grabbed handfuls of his shirt, and I started to pull him up, up through the water, but it was as if the water was heavier than it should have been. So heavy and so cold. He was almost at the top, almost when I realized it wasn’t water, it was ice. He was frozen in a huge block of ice, and my arms were frozen with him, trapped with him.

“Anita, Anita,” Nathaniel’s voice, his hand on my shoulder, and I woke to Jason’s bedroom. My pulse was choking me. I sat up and stared around. The bathroom door was open a crack but there was no sound of water. Dream, just a dream.

I started to shiver. Except that I was still freezing. So cold, so very cold. “I dreamed, dreamed of Damian. He was so cold, in ice.”

“Your skin is like ice,” Nathaniel said.

Jason was sitting up, his short blond hair tossled and his eyes heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

Nathaniel wrapped his arms around me, rubbing his hands against my cold arms. “When did you eat last, Anita?”

“With you, the drive-up.”

“That was over twelve hours ago.” He looked at Jason. “She needs food now.”

Jason didn’t ask questions, just crawled over the bed and dropped to his knees beside the mini fridge that acted as one of his bedside tables. He pulled out a bowl of fruit—apples, bananas.

“I don’t like cold fruit,” I said.

“Anita, you dreamed about Damian because you’re eating his energy. Eat a banana,” Nathaniel said.

I suddenly knew he was right. The cold was making me stupid. Jason handed me the fruit. But Nathaniel helped me peel it, because the shivering had gotten worse, and I couldn’t peel it. Shit.

Nathaniel fed it to me in pieces, while my teeth started to chatter. When I’d managed to get it down, the shivering was a little less, but not a lot. “Meat, protein,” Nathaniel said.

Jason lifted out a carton of Chinese takeout, but shook his head without offering it. “Too old.” He got out a flat foam container and handed it up. “Fajita fixings from El Maguey, from yesterday.”

Nathaniel opened it, lifted out a piece of the beef with his fingers, and held it close to my mouth. “Eat.”

I ate, and the meat was unbelievably good, even cold. The meat seemed to fill up more than just my stomach. I picked through the grilled onions and peppers, and ate the beef. When my skin wasn’t cold to the touch, and I’d stopped shivering, I slowed down, then shook my head. “I can’t eat any more.”

“You’ve eaten most of the meat,” Jason said. He was kneeling beside the bed, his arms propped on it, his chin resting on his arms. “Did I hear Nathaniel say that you were eating Damian’s energy?”

I nodded.

“Jean-Claude said that you’d formed a second triumverate with Nathaniel and Damian.”

“Apparently,” I said.

“I take it there’s a learning curve,” he said.

“You could say that. This is the second time in less than twenty-four hours that I’ve almost killed Damian.”

Jason’s eyes went wide. “How?”

“She’s trying to do what she always does,” Nathaniel said, handing the now closed box to Jason. “Barely eat, barely sleep, not do anything to take care of herself except exercise.”

“I can’t tell the cops, oh, sorry, I need a nap,” I said.

“No, but I told you that you needed to eat more. I told you that you were acting more like a lycanthrope than a vampire. All you had to do was go through another drive-up. There are all-night drive-ups.”

I didn’t like his tone. “I didn’t think of it. I just wanted to get to sleep. I was so tired I was nauseous.”

“Or maybe you were nauseous because your energy was bottoming,” Nathaniel said, and he was angry, “but you didn’t think of that did you?”

“No, I didn’t. Happy?”

“No,” he said, “because once Damian’s dead, who do you think you’ll start draining next?” He was so angry that his eyes had darkened, so they were almost purple.

I started to be angry back, because the nightmare had scared me, and endangering Damian again had scared me. I felt stupid that I hadn’t thought to eat, when Nathaniel had explained it to me. I’d just been so tired. Come to think of it, I’d been more tired than I should have been, hadn’t I? I wanted to be angry at him, because it was my fault. I hate it when it’s my fault. I hate being wrong, especially this wrong.

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. I am.”

“You’re not going to argue?” Jason asked.

“Why argue when I’ll lose? I was careless. It’s not just the triumverate, or the new one, it’s the ardeur. I’ve finally got it conquered, sort of.”

“What does ‘sort of’ mean?” he asked, and came up to sit on the edge of the bed. He was nude. He’d been nude the whole time. I just really hadn’t noticed. I noticed now, and gave him very good eye contact.

“It means that the ardeur doesn’t rise on its own anymore.”

“That’s a good thing, right?” Jason said, he was studying my face like he was puzzled by my expression.

“That’s the good news,” I said, “the bad news is that the ardeur doesn’t rise, but it still needs to be fed. It won’t remind me, it’s time to be fed. That’s what happened with Damian earlier. I hadn’t fed the ardeur in over twelve hours, a lot over, but it hadn’t raised either.”

“So you didn’t feed it,” Nathaniel said, softly.

“Exactly,” I said.

“And you started sucking energy off of Damian,” he said.

I nodded. “He called inside my head, sort of.”

“Then you fed the ardeur,” Jason said.

I nodded.

“Before you got to the club,” Nathaniel said, and his voice was soft.

“Yes.” I turned and looked at him, and what I saw in his eyes both made me feel bad and pissed me off. He looked hurt, and it wasn’t my fault. But saying it wasn’t my fault that I had to have sex with other men sounded wrong somehow, so I didn’t say it. He had every right to be tired of me fucking everyone but him.

“I did the minimum for a snack, just to tide me over,” I said.

“With who?” he asked, and his eyes were wide and careful.

“Requiem.”

“If you were already feeding off of Damian’s energy, then you needed to have fed the ardeur earlier, right?” Jason said. I think he actually wanted to know, but I think he was also trying to stop a fight before it started. I wasn’t sure we were going to fight, but I wasn’t sure we weren’t, either.

I thought about Jason’s question and finally said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“You gain energy through the ardeur, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And now you’re the power source for a new triumverate. Your energy powers Damian especially, and to a lesser extent, Nathaniel?”

“Why a lesser extent for me?” Nathaniel asked.

“You’re alive. You make your own heart beat; Damian doesn’t.”

Nathaniel nodded. “Okay.”

“What’s your point, Jason? I know you have one.”

“Would I have a point?” he said with a grin.

I shook my head. “There’s a very fine mind hiding beind those baby blues. You just don’t let everyone see it, so yeah, you have a point. What is it?”

“Anita is having to eat more often, right?”

We both nodded.

“What if she needs to feed other things more often?”

I think we both took breath to ask what he meant, then we both got it at the same moment. “Oh, shit,” I said.

Nathaniel said, “Oh, God.”

“Before tonight it was every twelve hours, fourteen if I stretched it,” I said. “How much more often could I need to feed?”

Jason spread his hands wide. “How should I know? I’m just pointing it out.”

“It makes sense,” Nathaniel said. “You fed off of Requiem about how long before we fed?”

I thought about it, tried to do the math in my head, and it was harder than normal, because that little flutter of panic was so loud. “Two hours, maybe less.” I shook my head. “No, absolutely, not. I cannot feed the ardeur every two hours.”

“No, but you could keep like snacks in the Jeep and eat every two hours,” Nathaniel said. “Like I said, if you meet one hunger, the other hunger lessens.”

The panic pulled back a little, not much, but a little. “Are you sure that peanuts in the car are going to do it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think so.” He suddenly looked young, and not sure at all.

I hugged him, and he hugged me back. “God, Nathaniel, God, we were already low on daytime feeds. What am I going to do?” I let some of that panic out in my voice.

He squeezed me tighter. “We’ll work something out. I’m sorry, I got mad about Requiem. It’s just . . .”

“That everyone gets me, and you don’t,” I said.

He nodded. Then drew back enough to smile at me, that wonderful smile. He took my hand and placed it on the side of his neck. I felt the marks of my teeth under my fingertips. “This was good, Anita. This was exactly what I wanted in that moment, exactly.”

I had to smile back at him, but the smile didn’t last. “What time is it?”

Jason answered, “Ten o’clock.”

Great. Less than two hours of sleep. Out loud I said, “I fed on you at about two in the morning, which means it’s only been eight hours. Eight hours is too soon, Nathaniel.”

He looked at me, and there was a fierceness there, a determination. “Make love to me, Anita. Make love to me, and then you can feed on someone else. But you’re right, I am tired of watching everyone get there before me.” He was on his knees, and he touched my arms, not quite clutching at me, not quite holding me. “Make love to me, and I won’t have a reason to be jealous.”

“I’ll still be having to have sex with other men,” I said. “Why won’t you be jealous?”

“Because I’ll know that you want to make love to me, and you have to have sex with them.”

My head was beginning to hurt. Nathaniel often made me feel out of my depth. I loved him, and wanted him, but, hell, I didn’t know what to say to him. “If it was you in other women’s beds, I’d be jealous, no matter the why.”

He blushed. “Would you really be jealous of me?”

“I wasn’t entirely happy watching you get pawed at the club, so yeah, I think it would bother me.”

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“That I’m jealous of other women around you?”

He nodded.

“You’ve had girlfriends be jealous of you before,” I said.

He shook his head. “I’ve never had a girlfriend.”

I stared at him. I didn’t know what to say. I knew he wouldn’t lie about it, but I just found it hard to believe. “You’ve been in pornographic movies. You’ve—”

“Been a prostitute,” he finished for me, and his eyes never flinched.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, but . . .”

“Fucking isn’t dating, Anita. Fucking for money really isn’t dating.”

“But . . .” I said.

He touched my lips with his fingers. “Hush,” he said, “you are the first girlfriend I’ve ever had.”

I stared at him with a sort of soft horror growing in my mind. I was his first girlfriend? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. How can you do porn and be a prostitute and not date? Some of the confusion must have shown on my face, because he smiled and touched the side of my face. The bandage had come off and he traced the healing scratches that Barbara Brown had given me.

“I told you, you’re the first person who ever wanted me, for me. Not because of the way I looked and what I could do with my body. You love me without sex. You let me take care of you. You let me organize your kitchen.”

“You cook in it more than I do,” I said.

He smiled, and his eyes were gentle, as if I were the child and he was so much older than I was. “That’s it, Anita. You let me buy the tea set, even though I know you think it’s sort of silly.”

“You like the tea set,” I said.

He nodded. “You do things not because you want them or enjoy them, but because it makes me happy. I’ve had people buy me jewelry, clothes, weekends in great hotels and spas, but no one ever let me buy what I wanted with their money, only what they thought I wanted. Let me remake their schedule. Let me make a place for me in their life.” He cupped my face between his hands. “Maybe girlfriend isn’t the right word, but I think any other word I could think of will make you run away, and I don’t want that.”

My lips were suddenly dry.

“Make love to me,” he whispered and started to lean in for a kiss.

I felt the bed move on the other side. I had to fight the urge not to grab Jason’s arm or something, anything to keep him with us. Anything not to be alone with Nathaniel. Ronnie was right, it wasn’t rational, but I felt like if I consumated our relationship, I had to keep him. She was wrong. It wasn’t sex that was a commitment for me anymore. The ardeur had taken that away from me. But sex with the right person was still a commitment, and the person bending in to kiss me, oh, so gently, was the right one.

I turned out of that kiss, to see Jason going for the bathroom. “I’ll turn the shower on, enjoy.”

“Sorry to kick you out of your own bed,” I said. And I was, for more than one reason.

He grinned, and tried not to, as if he were pretty sure it would get him into trouble. “It’s not like I won’t be back in it.”

I stopped Nathaniel from pressing closer with a hand on his shoulder, and stared at Jason. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He fought to control his face, and failed, and finally looked pleased with himself. “You can’t feed on Nathaniel, it’s too soon. Jean-Claude won’t wake for awhile yet. And if Jean-Claude won’t wake, then Asher is out, too.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “So?”

“If there’s another shapeshifter here that you’d rather feed on than me, I’ll get them for you. Graham is just down the hall.” The look on his face said, plainly, he didn’t expect me to take him up on it.

“You arrogant little—”

“Uh-uh-uh,” he said, “now is that anyway to talk to someone who’s going to let you feed on the very essence of his body?”

I scowled at him, then looked at Nathaniel. His face was utterly peaceful. “And you’re okay with this?”

“Honestly?”

“Yeah, honestly?”

“As long as I’m first, yes.”

“I could stay and help with the foreplay,” Jason said.

Before I could answer, Nathaniel answered, “Not the first time, Jason. I want this to be just the two of us.”

Jason grinned more for me than Nathaniel, because he could see the expression on my face caused by Nathaniel’s casual attitude toward making it a threesome later. “I’m going to go hide in the bathroom now.” He shut the door behind him, and we were left with the bedside lamp.

I looked at him, sort of outraged. “Thanks for volunteering me for a threesome.”

He looked puzzled. “I sleep with you and Micah almost every night.”

“But we’re not having sex all at the same time.”

He looked at me, and the look said that I was protesting too much.

“We don’t,” I said.

“Anita, you wake up, you need to feed, and whoever you didn’t feed on the day before you touch, but the other man doesn’t always crawl out of bed. I’ve watched you have sex with Micah more than once, and he’s watched you feed off of me.”

The headache was begining to pulse behind my eye. I was having trouble swallowing, and it had the familiar taste of panic.

“I know that you and Jean-Claude are with Asher together. I know that that’s a true threesome.”

“Not all the time,” I said, and even to me it sounded weak.

He frowned at me. “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying being with two men at the same time, Anita.”

My pulse was threatening to choke me. “Yes, there is,” and my voice was breathy.

“Why, why is it wrong?” He leaned into me as if he’d kiss me, but I leaned away, and it was one of those stupid moments, because leaning away put me on the bed, so that I was looking up at him. There was no logic to pulling away from a kiss and putting myself flat on the bed. Of course, there was no logic to the screaming panic inside my head either.

He propped himself up on his arms and looked down at me with that smile that said I was being silly. I understood in that moment that I’d been wrong to think of him as a child. That one look let me know that in his own way, he’d been as careful of me as I’d been of him. That he thought of me as sheltered, innocent. That in many ways, I was a child in the face of his experience. It was one of those moments when a relationship changes, when the way you look at the world suddenly expands or explodes, and the world that was, isn’t the one that is there a heartbeat later.

We stared at each other, and I don’t know if it showed on my face, or if it just occurred to him, too, or what, but he hesitated and smiled down at me. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

The question seemed so ridiculous that I laughed. “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve almost killed Damian twice. I thought controlling the ardeur would make things easier, and it hasn’t. I had intercourse with Byron, Byron, of all people. I almost raised the entire cemetery tonight. I could feel it, like some army of the dead just waiting for me to wake it. I could feel it, Nathaniel, feel the power of it.” I was crying and hadn’t meant to be. “So much went wrong today.”

He kissed my tears as they slipped from my eyes, gently, so gently. “Let’s make something go right.” He kissed me, and the salt of my tears lay on his lips.

“But . . .”

He kissed me again, a little more forcibly. “Anita, please stop talking.”

I frowned up at him. “Why?”

“So we can fuck,” he said.

I opened my mouth, and don’t know what I would have said, because he spoke first, “Make love to me,” and he leaned over me, “consumate me,” I thought he was going to kiss me, but his lips moved lower, and he kissed the front of my neck, then moved a little lower, “screw me,” and he kissed the mound of my breast through the T-shirt, “suck me.” He raised the short shirt up, spilling my breasts free. I started to protest, but the look in his eyes, on his face, stopped me. He put his lips over my nipple, just below the bandage that covered Jean-Claude’s bite. He licked a long solid line over my breast and rolled his eyes to meet mine. “Fuck me.”

I’d like to say that I had something equally salacious to say, or something sauve, but for the life of me, the only thing I could think to say, was, “Okay.” It wasn’t sauve and debonair, but when you love someone, you don’t always have to be sauve and debonair, sometimes you can just be yourself, and okay said at the right moment is sweeter than any poetry and can mean more to someone than all the pillow talk in the world.

50

THE T-SHIRT AND undies went in the first rush of hands, but I’d never tried to touch him when it wasn’t a metaphysical necessity. I’d never just turned to Nathaniel because I wanted him. It wasn’t that I didn’t find him attractive. God knows I did, but I hadn’t realized until those first few moments how much I’d come to rely on the ardeur. I’d thought of it as only a curse, but I appreciated for the first time that it greased the wheels for me. It got me over the embarrassment, the awkwardness, the good-girls-don’t-do-this attitude. Without the ardeur, it was just me, and the inside of my head was ugly.

Nathaniel noticed, because he notices everything. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at me. “What’s wrong?”

I wasn’t sure how to say it, and that must have shown on my face, because he said, “Just say it, Anita, whatever it is.”

I looked up at him and fought the urge to gaze down the length of his body. I had to close my eyes, and finally said, “Without the ardeur, it’s just me. It’s just me, and I’m . . .” I sat up. “I’m not comfortable.”

“With me?”

I started to nod, then stopped, and said the real truth. “With myself.”

He moved forward on the bed so that he rested his face against the small of my back. He was so warm. “What does that mean, exactly?”

How did I explain something to someone else, that I didn’t really understand myself? “I don’t know if I can explain it,” I said.

The bathroom door opened, and we both looked up. Jason was there with a towel around his waist. He wasn’t wet, but he was wearing a towel. I’d been around the shapeshifters long enough to think that was odd.

“I can’t stand it,” he said, “I just can’t stand it.”

“What?” I said.

“You’re going to fuck this up.”

I looked at him, and it wasn’t a friendly look.

“Don’t glare at me.” He came to stand at the end of the bed, hands on hips. “I’ve told you that I’d give almost anything to have someone look at me the way Nathaniel looks at you.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“But nothing,” he said, “I thought you were growing, changing, but what you just said blames it all on the ardeur. You didn’t do any of it. Not your fault. If you fuck everything that moves while under the sway of the ardeur, you’re still blameless.”

I started to argue with him, but couldn’t think how to do it. I finally said, “I sort of agree with what you said, what of it?”

“God, Anita, it’s not about blame. You act like it’s a sin.”

Something must have shown on my face, because he made a sound in his throat that was part growl, and part exasperation. I had to look away from the expression in his eyes, the anger in them. “I was taught that it was a sin.”

“They also taught you that Santa Claus was real, and you don’t believe that anymore, do you?”

I crossed my arms across my body, which lost some of its intended sullenness, because I was naked, and it’s never easy to be sullen when you’re nude. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He went down on his knees by the bed. “It means, look at him.”

I looked stubbornly at Jason, and not at Nathaniel.

“Turn around and look at him, or I’ll turn you around.”

“You’ll try,” I said.

“Fine, you want to wrestle, we can wrestle, but wouldn’t it be less embarrassing, and less childish, if you just turned around?”

I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and turned around.

Nathaniel was lying there on his stomach, propped up on his elbows. His face was what you noticed first. Those amazing lavender eyes with the remants of the eye makeup still there, making them look darker, larger, as if they needed any help to be amazing. His eyes held such patience, a calm surety that I’d fix this. That it would be alright. I didn’t like anyone looking at me like that, because life had taught me that it usually wasn’t alright. That I couldn’t save everyone. That I couldn’t fix anything. His lips held a slight smile. There was no anxiety in him. No fear that I’d run. He looked at me with the calm face of a saint staring into the face of God. Secure in his faith, safe in his knowledge, trusting in a way that I had lost so long ago. How could he look at me like that? Didn’t he know better? He’d lived with me for four months. Didn’t he know by now that I was screwed six ways to Sunday, and he shouldn’t depend on me?

He ducked his head, almost a bashful movement, but it drew my gaze across the sweep of his shoulder, down the curve of his back. I’d only allowed myself to touch him below the waist once. When the ardeur was very new. I’d covered his back and buttocks with bites, and he’d loved it, and I had fed, and I’d never let myself touch him that much again, until the last two days. That first time had been about feeding, and I hadn’t taken time to really see him, really enjoy him, because I’d looked at it as an evil necessity. Looking at him now, I felt guilty for ever thinking of him like that. He deserved better.

I’d made him put clothes on for months, at least shorts, even in bed. But he was entirely too comfortable nude for me not to have caught glimpses of him. Even last night, at the club, I hadn’t really let myself look at him, not really. Because if I’d allowed myself to linger on his body, I’d have lingered on the part that seemed to fascinate me most, and, no, it wasn’t what you think. His back had a slight sway to it, a curve that spilled to a lovely ass, but at the farthest line of his back, before it became not his back, were dimples. Maybe dimple wasn’t the right word for them, but I had no other word to use. I stared at him now, let my eyes linger, rather than glance and look hurriedly away. I let myself see not that he was nude, but see his body.

I reached out to him and let myself do something that I’d wanted to do for months. I traced my hand down the curve of his back and came to rest just there, just at the end of his back, before the swell of his ass.

He shivered just a little under the touch of my hand, even though all I had done was lay my hand flat against his skin. Let the weight of my hand rest between those two dimples so low on his body. It was as if when the clay had been wet, God had placed his thumbs just above the swell of Nathaniel’s rump, as an extra sweetness, like the idea that a dimple near the mouth is the kiss of an angel before the baby is born, so those dimples on his body were like some extra grace.

I kissed, ever so gently, each of those smooth hollows, like tiny shallow cups in his skin. Each mark was the size of my lips, as if they were meant for me to kiss them. I laid my head in the curve of his back, rested my cheek on those marks of grace, so that my face was slightly uptilted with the swell of his body, leading my eyes down the curve of his rump and his distant legs and feet, but for the moment I was content where I was.

I used his body as my pillow, and just as my mouth fit to those kissable dimples, so my head fit neatly in the curve of his body, as if I were meant to rest there. Nathaniel’s breath went out in a long sigh, and his body seemed to settle into the bed, as if some tension that I hadn’t even seen had run out of him and left him able to rest.

I trailed my hand across the curve of his ass, and he made a small sound for me. I trailed my fingers lower, tracing the line of his thigh. It wasn’t that his legs were off-limits in the way that other areas had been, but I realized that I’d divided his body along a line at his waist, like some boundary in a war. Above the line was us, below the line was forbidden. His thigh was lush and smooth-skinned, and firm with muscle.

I brought my hand back up his leg and allowed my fingers to trace circles on his derriere. Those small movements drew small, quick, sounds from him, almost sounds of protest.

I asked, and my voice was as lazy and soft as my touch, “You’re almost making pain noises, does it hurt?”

“No,” he said, and his voice showed a strain that his body didn’t even hint at. “It’s just that I’ve wanted you to touch me for so long. It feels . . . amazing to have your head resting on me, your hands on me. God, it feels so good.”

I let my hand trace, very delicately, along the crack of his ass, so that if there had been any little hairs I could have played with them, but he was smooth, utterly smooth. It made me wonder if other things were as smooth.

I brushed my fingers down the line of his ass again, tracing the separation between the cheeks, until I found that first line of warm flesh that was neither ass nor more, but a line of soft, silken skin.

I put a finger on either side of that skin, the softest of pinches, and slid my fingers up and down. Nathaniel writhed under the touch. His hands struggling against the sheets as if he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

I raised my head from his back and kissed my way up his cheeks until I could lay my head one side of him, like a pillow. I caressed my hand down his thigh again, and this time I made circles behind his knees, and kept going, until my fingertips could play with his ankles.

He laughed and struggled against the bed again, like he had when I touched much more traditionally intimate places. There are so many more erotic areas on the body than the small list that most people make. I raised up from the pillow of his body, so that I could pay more attention to his ankles, drawing my nails lightly across that apparently sensitive skin. He writhed for me, his upper body coming off the bed, and his breath shaking out in something between a sigh and a laugh. I sat up so I could run my fingers across the bottoms of his feet, and he sighed, “Oh, God.” I touched the front of his feet, very lightly, and he kicked his feet, as if it were almost too much. Not everyone’s feet are that sensitive for foreplay, but when someone’s feet are, they really are.

I gazed up the line of his body, while he lay gasping against the sheets. I’d barely started. So many choices. I bent over his ankles and licked along the round bone, tracing the skin with my tongue, in thick, wet, circles.

He made protesting noises and started to kick his feet, but I grabbed his foot with both my hands and held him against my mouth. He made a sound that was almost a scream and gazed down at me, along the length of his body. There was something in his eyes that was wild, and tender, and amazed.

I bit down on that shallow flesh, not hard, just a graze of teeth, but it rolled his eyes into his head and folded his shoulders onto the bed, as if he’d swooned.

I moved back up the bed, so that I could lay my head, not on one cheek, but across that part of his body, so that it was indeed my pillow. The feel of his cheeks spreading under the side of my face made me close my eyes, and have to relearn how to breathe for a moment. I spilled my hand down the line of his body, until I found that silken skin again. But this time I used it like a line to trace to something else. I found what I wanted, and the skin was so soft, softer than anything else I’d touched on his body. His testicles were trapped underneath his body, thick, and round, and delicate. Only part of them were trapped where I could touch them, and the combination of his body weight and the excitement had made them swell, so that the skin wasn’t as loose as it would have been otherwise. I’d wanted to play with all that fragile loose skin, but it was already pressed tight around him. To pull on it now might be more pain than pleasure. No matter what Nathaniel liked in that area, I wasn’t ready for it.

I slipped my body over his legs and pushed them farther apart, so that I lay between them. I laid my mouth against the inside of his thigh, but stopped before I could decide whether I was going to kiss him, lick him, or bite him. I stopped because I could see Jason over the slope of Nathaniel’s thigh.

Truth was, I’d forgotten he was there. Was that a bad thing to say, or a good thing? Did it mean I was getting more comfortable with myself, or that I was falling into the pit of whoredom? Whatever, but I was suddenly frozen, gazing over Nathaniel’s body into those pale, blue eyes. It was what I saw in them, that made me freeze. Lust would have been embarrassing, but logical. But that wasn’t what I saw. Jason watched us with something in his face that was close to sorrow, and his eyes held a longing, a sense of loss. I didn’t know what to do with that look, so I stopped, and raised my face up from Nathaniel’s body.

Jason realized I saw him, and he ducked his head. When he looked back, he had his face under control. He almost pulled the joke off, when he said, “Don’t stop on my account. I’m enjoying the show.” His voice was fine, but his eyes, the lightness never quite reached his eyes.

“Liar,” I said.

He gave me an unhappy smile. “I thought you were too busy to notice me. I should know that without the ardeur you pay better attention.”

“What’s wrong?” Nathaniel asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Jason said, “I’m not pining for you, Anita, or Nathaniel for that matter. But I am pining for someone to take that much time and attention with me.”

I frowned at him.

“You can have sex, and it can be good, but I’d give almost anything to have someone touch me the way you touch Nathaniel. We’ll probably have sex later, and it will be great, but you won’t look at me like that.”

I sighed. “I think I remember us having this conversation before. You want to be consumed by love, and my goal in life is never to be consumed at all.”

“Ironic, isn’t it,” he said, “I want just once for someone to look at me the way you look at Nathaniel, and you’ve been scared to death of it. You keep saying that the ardeur is a curse, but if the ardeur had never come along, you wouldn’t have Nathaniel, or Micah. I’m not even a hundred percent sure you’d be double dating with Asher and Jean-Claude.”

I laid my arms across Nathaniel’s cheeks and rested my face on my arms and looked at Jason. I looked at him and tried to hear what he was saying. “Maybe, about Asher, I mean. Once you’ve crossed enough lines, one more doesn’t seem that big a deal.”

“Exactly,” Jason said.

“So the ardeur is what, a blessing?”

“Look at what you’re propped up on, and tell me it isn’t? I heard you earlier, Anita. If the ardeur hadn’t come to you, you’d still be stuck where you had been. You’d still be fighting what you want, and what you think you’re supposed to want.”

I looked at him, while I rested against Nathaniel’s body. Nathaniel had propped himself up on his elbows and was looking at Jason. We both seemed utterly comfortable with him there. Was that wrong? It didn’t feel wrong.

I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t, well, I could, but I would have sounded silly. If the ardeur hadn’t come, where would I be? I thought, I’d still be with Richard, but as soon as I thought, I knew better. Richard had used the ardeur as another excuse to run from me, but he hadn’t liked any of my life. He hadn’t liked the police work, the zombie raising, my comfort with the vampires and shapeshifters. Strangely, the thing he’d liked less was that I seemed willing to accept him and his beast. I’d seen too far into his head in that one moment in my own bathroom. Damian had said it best; Richard loved his shame more than he loved anything else.

So, where would I be without the ardeur? No Micah, no Nathaniel, no Asher. My life still nothing but murder cases, zombie raisings, and vampire slayings. Hell, without the ardeur would I have stayed with Jean-Claude, or would I have found another reason to run from him, too? Maybe. It sounded like something I’d do.

I looked at Jason and settled more solidly against Nathaniel’s body. He sighed, and laid his head down on the bed.

“So what, the ardeur is the universe’s way of getting me where I needed to go?”

“Maybe,” he said, then grinned, “I can’t speak for whole universe. All I know is that I envy you, and I don’t envy many people.”

I frowned.

“Are you jealous?” Nathaniel asked.

Jason looked surprised, either at the question, or at who had asked it. He finally shook his head. “Not jealous of you or Anita, like in love with you jealous, no. Jealous of what you have together, hell yes. Jealous of not having that many people in love with me, hell, yes, again.” He smiled, and then grinned, and it reached his eyes this time. “Besides, I’m not Anita’s type for a relationship.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“I’m not submissive enough, or dominant enough for you. I’m certainly not domestic enough. I’m also not willing to take on all the responsibilities that Micah seems to embrace so easily. You’ve found another person who thrives on his job and taking care of other people’s crises. Not my idea of fun.” He spread his hands wide. “You and Jean-Claude, well, that’s something else. I know I can’t compete with it.”

“It’s not a competition,” Nathaniel said.

“You don’t see it that way,” Jason said, “but I’m just dominant enough, and guy enough, to see it that way.”

“If anyone of them saw it as a competition, it wouldn’t work,” I said.

“I know,” Jason said. He shook his head. “I’m going into the bathroom again, and this time I’m staying there until I’m called, or until I feel the ardeur rise. You guys have fun. Sorry, if I flattened the mood.”

“My mood’s fine,” I said.

“Mine, too,” Nathaniel said.

Jason stared at us both. “No ardeur, and I’ve made you talk and think too hard, and you’re still okay with this?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because a very wise and dear friend told me I was going to fuck this up, and I don’t want to do that.”

He smiled and his face softened. “If you do ever pick one of them to actually marry, and it’s Nathaniel, I get dibs on being best man.”

“I don’t think that’s going to come up,” I said, “but if it does, you’d be our first pick.”

“You didn’t ask Nathaniel,” he said.

“She didn’t have to,” Nathaniel said.

Jason walked toward the bathroom, shaking his head. “Too dominant by half.”

I called after him. “You know I have to be the better man in any relationship, Jason.” I meant it to be a joke.

He turned at the bathroom door, and said, “Fuck, Anita, you are the better man. Just because you don’t have the right equipment, doesn’t change what you are.” He closed the door behind him, firmly, until it clicked.

We were left alone in the bedroom. Nathaniel raised up and looked down at me. “You don’t have to finish tonight, Anita. Jason’s right, the way you touched me. I know if not this time, then next. The sooner you feed the ardeur the better you’ll feel.”

I smiled at him, then unfolded my arms and slid my face down, until I was as far between his legs as I could get. He wasn’t as excited now, and the skin was loose. I licked that most delicate of skin and heard his breath go out in a long sigh. I drew the loose skin into my mouth, pulling it gently out and away from his body. The skin didn’t stay loose for long, and when it was tight and I could lick the balls inside that skin, I told him, “On all fours.”

He did it without being asked twice.

I drew his balls into my mouth, one at a time, carefully, so carefully. I rolled them in my mouth with tongue and lips, until they were wet and slick. I caught glimpses of the rest of him, just in front, but not all, and not well. I’d only seen him nude from the front three times. Once when I first met him, once when I made the triumverate between him and Damian, and earlier in my office.

“Roll over,” I said, and he spilled himself over onto his back. He lay thick and quivering against his stomach, pointing like an exclamation mark against his own body. “I don’t remember you being this big the first time I saw you nude.”

“I was in a hospital. Someone had almost killed me. I wasn’t at my best.”

I gazed down at him, and said, “I can see that.” I reached for him, slowly, and laid my hand against the warmth of him. But I was losing my patience. Another time I’d be slower, but now I wrapped my hand around him, let the thick round hardness of him fill my hand. His upper body spasmed, raising a little off the bed. I slid one hand to his balls and massaged them, while I stroked the thick velvet warmth of him. “So soft, and so hard, all at the same time.”

I stroked him, until his eyes lost focus and his neck spasmed, so that he was closed eyed, and didn’t see me bend down. I slid my mouth over the tip of him while he wasn’t looking, and he cried out, as I worked my mouth down the length of him. I knew what I wanted. I wanted all of him inside my mouth, down to his balls, at least once. Next time I’d start with him smaller, now I had to fight for it. I’d gotten better at deep-throating, because sharing a bed with Micah, it was either get better at taking more, or stop doing one of my favorite things. Practice paid off, I sealed Nathaniel inside my mouth in one hard, clean line, until my lips touched the top of his testicles. I could only stay for a moment, then I had to come up. Up to breathe, up to let the wetness from my mouth trail down the shaft of his body.

I raised up on my knees, between his thighs, and the look on his face was worth all the effort. In fact, worth so much, that I had to do it one more time. Then I came up more shallow on him, so I could move better, thrusting him in and out of my mouth. Licking him, rolling him, sucking him, and when he was making enough noise, very lightly, I used teeth.

“Oh, God, yes, yes, please.”

I moved off him enough to ask, “Please, what?”

“More teeth, please.”

I frowned at him. “Most men think that hurts.”

“I’m not most men,” he said, and there was something about the way he said it that made me press my mouth back over him. I sucked him, pulling hard and firm, then forced my mouth down on the shaft, not as far as before, and bit him, not too hard, but harder than I’d bitten any other man I’d done this with. I kept my eyes on his face, so I could see if it hurt him. The look on his face had nothing to do with pain. His eyes were wild, and he said, “Harder.”

I looked at him.

“Please, Anita, please, you don’t know how long I’ve wanted this.”

It wasn’t my bits being bitten, but I was reminded that Nathaniel had once had no stopping point, no danger-do-not-cross sign. I could do what he wanted, but it was up to me to make sure it didn’t go too far. I was finally doing what he’d always wanted. I was topping him.

I went down on him fast and hard, and this time I bit him hard enough that my teeth closed around that thick, meaty flesh. I had a momentary flash of not the ardeur, but of the beast, and its craving for flesh between teeth. I pushed it away, but I also came off of him and didn’t do it again. But I’d done enough, because his eyes were rolled to whites, and he was writhing on the bed. His hands had grabbed mounds of the sheet, and his body strained, and bucked against the bed.

I waited for him to lie still, though his eyes stayed like butterflies, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. When I caught a glimpse of lavender eyes between the fluttering, I stroked him gently. I stroked him with my hands, until I had his eyes looking at me instead of the inside of his own eyelids.

He looked up at me, his lavender eyes lazy, and his smile was like the cat who got the cream. I wrapped my hand around that warm, thick, length. Wrapped my hand and squeezed. “I want this inside me.”

When his eyes opened, he said, “You haven’t had any foreplay.”

I squeezed him again, watched his spine bow, and his head throw back, sliding the long braid of his hair off the bed, like something escaping off the edge. “Trust me, Nathaniel, I’ve had foreplay.”

When he recovered enough, he said, “You’re not the only one who hasn’t gotten to touch someone below the waist.”

I closed my eyes. “Please, Nathaniel, please, just make love to me. I want you to finish what you started in the office, please.”

He looked at me, and there was something in that look that was very male and very grown-up. “You liked that, did you?”

I gave him a look, then said, “You were there, what do you think?”

He sat up, and I was suddenly surrounded by his legs, his arms. He kissed me, and the kiss was gentle, but not chaste. He explored my mouth the way I’d explored his legs, and ass, lightly, delicately, savoring it. But one hand was sliding down the front of my body, until his fingers slid over me. My body reacted to that light touch, but his hand didn’t stop. He traced a finger around the opening to my body. “You are wet.”

“I told you so.”

He slid the finger inside of me and stole my breath. Then he pushed two fingers inside of me, and with the tips of his fingers found that spot. He flicked the tips of his fingers, just the tips, flexing them fast, and firm against that spot. And it was as if that part of my body had been waiting for him, as if all the work he’d done earlier, was still there, because those quick, firm touches, brought me. Brought me screaming, nails digging into his shoulders, and back.

He caught me with his other arm around my waist, or I would have fallen back to the bed. He slid his fingers out from inside me, and said, “Now, you’re ready.”

Since all I was seeing was the inside of my eyeballs, and speech was not an option, I tried to nod, but I really don’t think I needed to. As they say, actions speak louder than words.

51

I WATCHED HIS face above me, as his body worked in and out of mine. He stayed propped on his arms, his legs were bent toward me, so that he acted as a frame for his own body. Seeing him sliding inside me threw my head back, spasmed my body, but I fought for control. Fought to see him. To watch him, this first time. This first time after so many false starts. I fought my body, fought the amazing sensations that were filling me, fought, because I wanted to see his face.

Propped up like he was, it was shallow, and usually I liked it deep, but something about the angle, or the depth, or lack of it, or the rhythm, which was quick, so quick, began to bring me. I could feel it starting. I remembered in time to gasp, “When I go, you go.”

His voice was strangely controlled, as if he were concentrating very hard on what he was doing. “You can go more than once, I may not be able to.”

I touched his face, held it light between my hands. “When I go, you go, no more near misses.”

His eyes smiled down at me. “Agreed.”

And suddenly there was no time for words, no time for debate. The orgasm tightened my body, then spread outward, blowing through my body, my skin. I rode that wave after wave of pleasure. His eyes went wide, as if they were surprised, and his breathing quickened, his body hesitated, paused almost, then he thrust himself deep inside me, and if I hadn’t held his face he’d have thrown his head back, but I wanted to watch his eyes. They were almost frantic. His body spasmed again, and this time the orgasm caught me unprepared and my hands lost his face, my eyes rolled back into my head, and I screamed.

He collapsed on top of me and thrust as hard and sudden as he could. I shrieked under him and clawed at his back. His skin gave under my nails. He writhed on top of me. Writhing with his body still thrust deep inside mine, caused my nails to dig deeper, and I set my teeth in his shoulder, screaming into his skin. Making a gag of his flesh between my teeth.

Nathaniel’s body liked the pain. It was as if, as long as I hurt him he wasn’t done. The more that my nails and teeth dug into him, the more his hips pumped into me. It was like we were caught in an endless loop of pain and pleasure, and the line from one to the other blurred.

His breathing changed again, and when his body threw itself backward, in orgasm, I still had my teeth in his shoulder. He tore himself out of my mouth. I released him in time to not take a bite out of him or lose a tooth, but not in time to keep from drawing blood. I was suddenly drowning in the taste of his blood. Sweet and salty and metalic, and underneath that, something else, something more. I’d bitten his neck only hours before, and I had not been as aware then of the taste of his blood. It was like the difference between gulping water because you were thirsty and sipping wine to enjoy the bouquet. I let Nathaniel’s blood rest on my tongue, licked it against the roof of my mouth, played with the taste, the texture, the warmth of it.

I let it slide down my throat. I made it last, as if it were the last sip of liquid I would ever have. I’d craved blood before, but as with the beast, I’d thought that one part was all of it. In that one sweet taste I knew better. I’d tasted blood before, but I’d never enjoyed it or known that it could taste like this.

Power trailed over Nathaniel’s skin, and trapped under his body, that power marched over me in a skin-tingling, breath-stealing rush. It made me shiver, and my beast stirred, like something furred and half-asleep, disturbed from its nap.

Nathaniel bowed down toward me again, his eyes were pale gray with a hint of almost blue. I stared into his leopard’s eyes and felt his beast stretch inside his body, like it was rubbing against the bones of its cage.

My beast stretched inside my body, I’d had the sensation before, but I’d never been able to feel it as if my body were somehow hollow and this long shape stretched the length of me. It made me shiver, and it was hard to breathe for a moment, as if something truly was inside me and had reached up high enough to compromise my lungs. The pressure lasted for a moment, then it was gone, but I hadn’t liked the sensation of it.

“You smell of blood,” Nathaniel said, and there was an edge of growl to his voice.

“It’s your blood,” I whispered, and my heart was already beating faster.

“But it’s in your mouth,” he growled, just above my lips. His mouth was suddenly on mine, his tongue pushing between my lips. He kissed me, hard and long and deep, pushing his tongue so far into my mouth that it was almost like deep-throating. But his tongue was neither as long or wide as he was. But this had teeth that almost cut at my lips, a bruising force, that no amount of oral sex could equal. His tongue licked along the roof of my mouth, the inside of my cheeks. He was licking the taste of his own blood from my mouth.

The leopard screamed through my brain, he’s eating us! I knew better, but something moved inside me, in places that nothing was supposed to move. I felt it, not like some liquid amorphous shape, but as if something very solid and very real was sitting in the center of my body and moving around. It stirred, and this time I felt something like a hand stretch upward, and something else stretch down. It hurt, and I was suddenly choking on Nathaniel’s kiss.

He drew back, and the smile on his face was fierce and joyous, a savage beauty, as if the thoughts behind his face weren’t very human anymore. “You taste good,” he said, and his voice was painfully low. It didn’t sound like Nathaniel’s voice at all.

The leopard didn’t react to that growl, it was gone from my head. But that thing in the center of my body stretched, stretched legs and arms inside my body. I could feel it touching things that should never have been touched. I screamed and stared up into his eyes and wondered if there was enough of Nathaniel in there to help me.

“Anita, what’s wrong?” With leopard eyes and a voice of a stranger, but his face was all Nathaniel, all concern and worry.

“It hurts.”

“What? Did I hurt you?”

I shook my head, and claws tickled along my ribs, and made me struggle underneath his body. “Help me!”

He rolled off of me and yelled, “Jason!” He had to yell twice, before Jason came out, dripping from the shower, a towel in his hand. He looked at us, and the smile was gone instantly.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Nathaniel said, still in that low voice, “she says something hurts.”

The thing stretched again, stretched and stretched and my body stretched with it, as if it fit inside my arms and legs. It didn’t hurt, exactly. It was as if my body were a glove and it was seeing how much room it had.

“Did you feel that?” Jason asked. His body had broken out in goosebumps.

Nathaniel nodded. “It’s her beast.”

Jason knelt by the end of the bed. “Yeah, but it’s never felt like this before.”

My beast stretched to the limits of my body, then found that there was nowhere else to go. I’d gotten a tiny piece of Richard’s beast years ago, and somehow Belle’s line had given me an animal to call—the leopards. Through that I was Nimir-Ra to Micah’s Nimir-Raj. Nathaniel had been my pomme de sang, but now he was my animal to call, as Richard was to Jean-Claude. Now that part of me that was beast, cat, stretched inside my human body. I’d felt it as power before, more metaphore than physical, but this was very, very physical. I could feel it. Feel it struggling inside me, looking for a way out. It was as if I was a lycanthrope, except I lacked that last bit of the puzzle, that one last bit that would allow the beast to slip out of my skin and be real.

It shrank back into that small center of my body, where it stayed most of the time. But now it was like one of those leopards at the zoo in a small metal cage. It paced, paced, paced, and finally rushed the bars, slashing and clawing. But these bars were my body, and I screamed. I reached out, trying to grab something, anything that would help me. How do you fight something that’s inside your body? How do you destroy something that is in the very meat of you?

Jason grabbed my hand, and I was suddenly breathing in the sweet musk of wolf. But it was as if touching Jason’s hand acted like a conduit, and suddenly I could see Richard. He was in the bright sunlight of his kitchen, cooking something in a pan. He wore nothing but jeans, with a dish towel stuck into the waistband of his pants. His back was covered in claw marks, or really serious nail marks. It looked more like the result of good sex than an attack. His head came up, and he sniffed the air, and only then did he turn and stare behind him, as if he could see me. He said, “Anita, is that you?”

“Help me.”

“What’s wrong now?”

I squeezed Jason’s hand, and it was like that extra bit of contact took me closer to Richard. It was like I hovered just in front of him. He reached out, and his hand brushed through me.

My beast reacted to it, screaming and clawing, going wild. It didn’t want the wolf inside us, there wasn’t room for it. There certainly wasn’t room for both.

Richard drew his hand back, and said, “Anita, Anita can you hear me?”

I screamed his name, because screaming was all I could do. It felt like the leopard was cutting me up, trying to dig its way out, and it couldn’t get out.

“Give your beast to someone else, Anita. Someone who’s body can let it out.”

I didn’t understand what he meant. I started to tell him so, but he seemed to feel my puzzlement. Because he shared a memory with me. They say a picture is worth a thousand words; a memory with complete sensory surround sound is worth so much more. Saves so much time, shares the pain faster.

We were in the center ring of the Circus of the Damned. I reached out to Richard’s beast, his rage, because if we couldn’t control it, the council would kill him. I reached out to that rage. That power that he called his beast came at my touch. I smelled like home to it, somehow, and it poured into me, over me, through me, like a blinding storm of heat and power. It was similar to the times I’d raised power with Richard and Jean-Claude, but this time there was no spell to use the power on. Nowhere for the beast to run. It tried to crawl out of my skin, tried to expand inside my body, but there was no beast to call. I was empty for it, and it raged inside me. I felt it growing until I thought I would burst apart in bloody fragments. The pressure built and built and had nowhere to go.

Richard had crawled to me on hands and knees, bleeding. He’d laid his lips against mine in a trembling kiss. A sound came from low in his throat, and he was suddenly pressing his mouth against mine, until it either bruised or I opened my mouth to him. I opened, and his tongue plunged inside me, his lips feeding on mine. The cut inside his mouth filled my mouth with the taste of him, salty, sweet. I held his face in my hands, my mouth searching his, and it wasn’t enough.

We moved to our knees, mouths still pressed together. My hands slid over his chest, his back, and something deep inside me clicked and relaxed. His power tried to spill outward, but I held it back . . . Richard’s hands slid up my legs, finding the lace top of the black panties. His fingers traced my naked spine, and I was undone.

The power spilled upward, outward, filling us both. It flared over us in a rushing wave of heat and light, until my vision swam in pieces, and we both cried out with one voice. His beast slid inside of him. I felt it crawl out of me, pulled like a large, thick string, spilling inside of Richard, coiling into his body. I expected to feel the last bit of it spill between us, like draining the last drop of wine from a cup, but that drop remained.

The memory rolled back and left me gasping on the bed. Nathaniel was leaning over me. “Anita, Anita, are you alright?” His eyes had bled back to lavender.

Jason was nuzzling my hair. “You smell like pack.”

Richard was standing in his kitchen, one hand on the edge of the cabinets as if he were steadying himself. “Now, do you remember?”

“I remember,” I whispered.

“What do you remember?” Nathaniel asked.

“Can’t you smell it?” Jason asked. He was rubbing his lips against the side of my face.

Nathaniel leaned over me, his face very close to mine. “Wolf,” he sniffed my skin, “Richard,” he whispered the name against my skin.

The feel of their lips against me made me close my eyes for a moment. But once sight was gone, the scent of them covered me like a blanket. The sweet musk of wolf and the acrid sweetness of leopard were everywhere, like invisible water, and I was drowning in it. I expected my cat to complain, but it didn’t. It was strangely calmed by both scents.

“You’re still pack, Anita, as much as you’re pard. Give your beast to them.” Richard stared up at me, and I noticed for the first time that he had scratches low on his right cheek. Not usually a place you mark in the heat of passion.

I stopped seeing Richard’s scratched face in his sunny kitchen. I opened my eyes to a wisp of auburn hair across my eyes. Nathaniel was pressed against the side of my face, his mouth just under the line of my jaw. His body was back on top of mine, laying his weight along me. He was so warm.

Jason still had my hand, and his mouth was rubbing along the side of my neck on the side opposite from Nathaniel.

I was warm and safe, and I realized that Richard had given me some of his control. He’d given me breathing space. I needed to use it before my beast shook free of this warm, comfortable lassitude.

I thought back over the memory of giving Richard’s beast back to him. How had it worked? A kiss, why did everything take a kiss, or a touch? Jean-Claude had answered that question last night. Because we could only use the tools we had available. Most of our tools came from Belle Morte’s line, and that meant that our tools, our skills, were going to have a certain theme. I waited to be tired of that theme, and part of me was, part of me thought we really needed some new skill sets, but most of me was warm and safe, and covered in the scent of pard and pack.

Their lips worked gently at each side of my neck, soft kisses. Nathaniel’s body was so warm pressed the length of mine, warmer than any blanket, better than simply being held in someone’s arms. Jason’s hand smoothed along the edge of my hip, and I couldn’t help but cuddle into the feel of his touch. That one small writhing movement seemed to affect Nathaniel’s body. He was suddenly heavier than he had been, heavy in the way Richard’s kiss had been in the memory. Nathaniel’s hips pressed in against me, and as with the remembered kiss, he pushed against me, and I had a choice of opening to him, or keeping him outside my body.

Richard’s beast had left through a kiss. I could only kiss one of them at a time. The thought came that I could do other things, and still kiss. But I’d had enough of threesomes and more. My battered morals had had about all the multiples they could handle for awhile. That little voice whispered, but it feels so good. And the voice that I’d learned at my grandmother’s hand yelled, Slut! You work so long and so hard to listen to your inner voice, but sometimes guilt or habit makes you listen to those other voices—the ones that beat you down. Sometimes you just can’t shake them.

“I need to give my beast to my cat,” I said, and my voice was thick, slow. I tried to draw my hand out of Jason’s, but he held on. He whispered into the bend of my neck, “I’ll be your cat.”

Nathaniel whispered against my other cheek, “I’m her cat.”

Jason’s voice against my skin, “I’ll be your doggy then.” He licked along my neck, and it made me writhe, but I shook my head, just a little, turning my head so I could see the side of his face.

“Not tonight, Jason.” This time when I pulled my hand, he let me go.

His blue eyes came into my vision, and he kissed me, long and deep, and my beast lay quiet. “You taste like blood and other men’s kisses,” he whispered, as he pulled away.

My beast woke inside me, as if it had only been napping. It woke and tried to spill upward. It filled my body like someone trying on a coat that was far too small. I could feel it stretching out inside me, feel it filling me, like hot water spilling up and up inside me until it filled every inch of me, and still there was more to come. It poured and poured, if water could have bones and muscle and anger. Because when it found that there were limits, that my skin did not burst, my bones did not bend, my body did not give, the beast began to rage inside me. It slashed with claws and fought with muscles that should have been metaphoric but felt all too real. It was trying to tear its way free of the cage, and the cage was my body.

I screamed, screamed and struggled, but you can’t fight something that you can’t touch. Nathaniel was still on top of me, eyes wide and frightened. He started to slide off of me, but I grabbed his arms, and managed to say, “Kiss me.”

If it had been almost anyone else, they would have argued, but he didn’t. He put his mouth against mine, and the next scream was muffled into his mouth. I willed the thing inside me into him. I tried to force it, but it was panicked, and could not hear me. It was like a wild animal, cornered, it heard nothing, but its own fear.

I tore my mouth from Nathaniel’s and simply screamed. Jason was there, a hand on either side of my face, and the moment he touched me, the beast hesitated. The cat paused long enough to sniff the air, as if wondering what he was.

I looked up at Nathaniel with Jason’s hands still holding my head. “Try again, kiss me.”

He kissed me, and this time I was able to kiss him back, but the beast didn’t rise. It sat inside me, sniffing, puzzling, but it did not rise. I broke the kiss and screamed not from pain, but frustration. “Richard said to share my beast with someone who can give it release, but it won’t go. It won’t leave.”

“Are you still fighting for control of the ardeur?” Nathaniel asked.

I blinked at him and thought about it. Was I? Not consciously, but controlling it had become automatic. Now that I didn’t have to control it, but had to, instead, call it into being, was I still quashing it? Was I still shielding? The answer was, yes.

“Yeah.”

“Stop fighting,” Nathaniel said, “just let everything go.”

“No,” I started, but he touched my lips with his fingers.

“Hush, Anita, you can feed off of both of us, and it won’t drain me that badly. It’s not a good idea, but it’s not a disaster. Stop fighting, and maybe the beast will stop fighting, too.”

I opened my mouth with his fingers still touching me. He slid his fingertips just inside my mouth, playing along the edge of my lips. The movement stopped me from talking more effectively than anything else could have done. I just lay there and let his fingers play around the edge of my mouth, delicate, sensual. “Let go, Anita, just let go. We’ll catch you.”

Jason leaned in against my face. “I’m here, Anita. I won’t let anything bad happen to Nathaniel. I promise.” He laid his face against my forehead. “We can do this, Anita, but you have to let go. You have to let us catch you.”

Let go. It sounded so simple. But letting go of anything was so not my best thing. I wasn’t even sure I knew how to do it. How do you let go? How do you open your hand and let yourself fall, and trust that other people will catch you? That they’ll catch you and not let you hurt them, or yourself. Did I trust Nathaniel and Jason that much? Sort of.

Did I trust anyone that much? Maybe. Okay, not really. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and I let go. I let go, and trusted. Trusted, even as a small voice inside me whispered, stupid, stupid, stupid.

52

HELL IS CLAWS and teeth, and bodies fighting. I sank my teeth into someone’s chest, took in as much meat as my mouth would hold, and began to bite down. I wanted meat. I wanted to feed, and the leopard was screaming that if we didn’t kill them, they’d kill us. Let go, they’d said, I’d let go, and now instead of the beast being something struggling to get out, it was me that was small and trapped and couldn’t get out.

That part that wanted meat and blood and found struggling somewhere between sex and food was in the front of my head. I’d always thought being an animal must be peaceful, but it wasn’t peaceful. It was simpler, but it wasn’t peaceful.

I remembered only pieces. The taste of blood in my mouth. The feel of my teeth sinking into flesh. My nails cutting through someone’s body. I was on my stomach, and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t move. Someone was on my back, and someone had my hands, and I couldn’t move. Teeth on the back of my neck. A moment of mind-numbing panic, then it was peaceful. Like what had happened earlier in my office, when Nathaniel bit me there. Peaceful.

Jason was kneeling in front of me, off the edge of the bed, holding my wrists. The left side of his face was a bloody mess, and distantly, I knew that my nails had done that. His eye blinked out painfully from the bloody furrows. His arms were traced with bites and scratches, so it looked like he was wearing red gloves all the way up to his shoulders. His chest and stomach were bloody, too.

Nathaniel’s teeth on my neck bit down a little harder, and my eyes fluttered up, and when he growled against my skin, my body writhed under him, not struggling, but offering. Jason spoke, and a trickle of blood trailed from his mouth, as he did it. “Next time we do this, you get tied up.”

Nathaniel growled, but I didn’t think it was meant for me.

Jason looked past me, to meet the other man’s eyes, and said, “Okay, okay. Give me your beast, Anita. Let me swallow it down.” He leaned into me, and the blood that trembled on the edge of his mouth fascinated me. I tried to strain toward that trembling drop of red, and Nathaniel’s teeth made me stop, forced me to wait for Jason’s mouth to come to me.

His mouth stopped just out of reach. I tried to raise my hands and touch him, but his hands forced my wrists down tighter on the side of the bed. He laid his mouth against mine, and I didn’t kiss him, I licked the blood from the edge of his lip.

He drew back, laughing. “You’d rather eat me right now, than kiss me.” But he leaned in toward me, his mouth half-parted, and I could smell the blood inside his mouth. I’d bitten him. I remembered the feel of his lip between my teeth. I made a sound low in my throat, and he laughed again, a purely masculine sound with his lips so close to mine that my tongue could touch them. His voice held that masculine laughter, and an edge of growl, “God, she’s eager.”

Nathaniel growled again, with his teeth still tight on the back of my neck. The growl was low and deep and vibrated down my spine like my body was a tuning fork. It made me push my body against his. My mouth reached for Jason, but my body was offering itself to the hard weight against the back of my body.

“Alright, but if she bites my tongue off, I’m going to be pissed.” And he pressed his lips against mine, but I didn’t try to bite him, because his mouth was full of blood and tasted of meat. I’d already started this meal, all I wanted to do was finish it.

My beast was right there, under my skin, only Nathaniel’s hold kept it peaceful. The taste of fresh blood, of meat, and the feel of Jason’s mouth on mine, brought the beast like heat against my skin. I could feel my body cooking with the heat of it, as if my skin was a container for something so much hotter than human flesh. Something that was almost there, almost ready, almost . . .

Nathaniel raised his mouth, and only his weight and Jason’s hands held me down. He whispered something against the wound in my neck, I think he said, “Now.” But I would never be sure, because in that moment my beast rose.

It rose up the line of my spine like heat. It spilled out my mouth and into Jason’s, in a scalding, burning wave of power. It tore his mouth off of mine, forced his head back in a scream, and Nathaniel’s body bowed on top of mine, and he screamed, too. My beast was like a sword thrust through both of them. I poured my energy into their bodies, until their bodies burst with it.

I saw Jason’s skin split, and I felt Nathaniel tremble above me. One moment they were there, and the next I was drenched in liquid, warm, so warm, like being dipped in fresh blood, but it wasn’t blood. It was clear and viscous—that fluid that the shapeshifters leave behind when they pull their bodies from one shape to another.

I was covered in it, dripping with it, and because Jason’s claws were still pinning my wrists, I couldn’t wipe it away from my face. I blinked at the wolfman kneeling in front of me. His fur was dry, like it always is, like magic. I stared into wolf eyes the color of early spring grass. His fur was thick and shades of pale gray. He opened a jaw that was longer than a human’s, and full of teeth that any wolf would envy. He ran an impossibly long tongue over those teeth and stared at me with eyes that held things that I’d only begun to guess at.

A claw curled into the wet sheets on one side, and that claw was a black-furred hand. I turned back and did that slow, horror-movie take, where you know what’s behind you, but you just can’t keep from looking. You have to look, even with the feel and press of fur against your naked body. I knew what I’d see, and still I turned and looked.

Nathaniel’s face was a strangely graceful mix of human and leopard. The face shape was closer to human than the werewolf’s, but when I met those gray-blue eyes, there was no one home to talk to.

I’d gotten rid of my beast by bringing theirs, and now I was suddenly covered in warm liquid that mimicked blood, with two freshly turned lycanthropes holding me down. Nathaniel put his furred hands against the bed on either side of me, and he flexed those hands, and claws like white knives sprang out from his fingertips. Just seeing them, lying there, unused, made my pulse speed just a little.

I knew they wouldn’t hurt me. I trusted them. But part of me trusted Jason and Nathaniel more than I trusted their beasts. I tried not to be afraid, because fear is like spice for their meat. Fear excites a lycanthrope, it just does. So I lay very still and tried to calm my heartbeat, tried to think how to ask them to let me go, without sounding like a victim.

Nathaniel moved his hands so that they lay on either side of my body, with the fur of his thumbs caressing my skin. My heartbeat didn’t like it. Neither did I. He flexed his hands again, and the claws vanished into the fur. He caressed that fur down the sides of my body, and that brush of warm, warm fur brought my breath in a shuddering line.

His voice was more growl than anything else, when he said, “I’ve never had hands before when I shifted.” He put those “hands” back on either side of my body, so close that the edge of the fur touched the sides of my breasts. He pointed the claws downward, and I felt his muscles flex against the side of my body. His hands were right next to my breasts, and I felt his claws grip into the bed. He began to pull those claws downward. The sheet ripped, but it was the sound of the mattress tearing that brought a sound like a whimper from my throat. The mattress made a meaty sound, as his claws tore through it, easily. He moved his body so that he could trace the outline of my body against the mattress and sheets. He carved the outline of me with his claws. And I couldn’t not be afraid.

Jason laughed, and strangely that masculine chuckle translated just fine through the wolf’s throat. The sound made me look at him. He flashed fangs as he said, “Don’t be afraid, Anita.”

“Then let me go,” I said, and my voice was nicely calm, barely a tremor. If they’d been human they wouldn’t have been able to taste my speeding pulse, or smell my fear. But they weren’t human.

Nathaniel collapsed his body on top of mine, and he was taller, broader, more muscled, or muscled in places he hadn’t been before. It was like a different body pressed against mine, one I’d never touched. The fur was thinner on his chest, stomach, groin, but the skin was warmer, almost hot against my naked body, as if in this form his blood ran hotter.

He licked my shoulder, and a sound very like a small squeal came out of my mouth. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing, just my breathing. Not on the feel of his body, or of Jason’s hands with their not-so-retractable claws tickling my wrists. I breathed, breathed while a tongue that was rougher than Nathaniel’s licked in long, thick sweeps across my shoulders and upper back.

When I opened my eyes again, my pulse was normal, and I realized that Nathaniel was cleaning off the clear goop that he and Jason had gotten on me. He growled next to my ear, “We got you messy.”

“Yeah,” I said, and my voice was a whisper.

He settled his hips against my thighs and did a small, powerful movement, somewhere between a wiggle and a push. He was suddenly resting against my ass, and I could feel that he was different there, too. Bigger, it felt like, but I might just have been scared. Everything seems bigger when you feel threatened.

He made a sound by my face, sort of a snuff, not like he was sniffing me, but like it was a noise that I should have understood. “You’re hungry. Hungry like we are. I can feel it.”

I fought to keep my pulse nice and normal, my breathing even. I wasn’t going to do anything to escalate this, not if I had a choice. “I’m not hungry,” I said.

He leaned harder against me, sliding lower between my legs, not inside, but moving that way. The thought sped my pulse, I couldn’t help it. He rubbed his furred cheek against the side of my face. “You need a shower.”

“Okay,” I said. At that point I’d have agreed to anything that would get me on my feet and out from under the two of them.

“We’re not going to eat you, Anita,” Jason said. “If that was really an option Jean-Claude wouldn’t have trusted me with you, you should know that.”

I raised my face and met those wolfish eyes. “Sorry, but you guys going all tooth and claw on me, makes me wonder.”

“We won’t hurt you,” Jason said.

“Then let me go,” I said, and my voice was even, normal, my pulse slowing down.

“Not yet,” Nathaniel said, with his face still pressed against my face.

Jason looked at him. “Why not?” he asked, before I could.

“Because she still needs to feed the ardeur.”

I wouldn’t have thought that a wolf face could show that much incredulity, but Jason’s did. “Anita doesn’t do furry.”

The leopardman on my back moved his hips another fraction of an inch down. He pushed against me, not inside, but knocking at that most intimate of doors. “You are empty inside, I can feel it. I couldn’t feel it before.”

Saying it once, was wishful thinking, twice, and I tried to look inside myself. Tried to see the ardeur without raising it. I needed some kind of metaphysical gas gauge, but all I could find was an emptiness in the center of me. A place where something should have been, and there was nothing.

“I feel it,” I said.

“I don’t feel tired, now, Anita. I feel new.” He moved gently against me. “Say yes.”

“Let me go, and maybe,” I said.

“I like holding you down. I like us both holding you down,” he growled against my skin.

“I thought you didn’t like to be in charge,” I said.

“I don’t usually, but today I do. Today I love the feel of your body under mine. I love feeling you fight not to struggle, not to panic. I can taste your self-control on my tongue. I want to lick it away.”

“Nathaniel,” I said.

“Say yes, Anita, just say yes. Feed the ardeur, then you can shower, while we go looking for other things to eat.”

“What other things?” I asked.

“There are supplies deeper in the underground,” Jason said, “we’ve got too many wereanimals in here now not to be stocked up.”

“Stocked up on what?” I asked.

He leaned in, hands still on my wrists. “Nothing human, nothing illegal, promise.” He licked my face, a quick flick of the tongue, and then he laughed, and it wasn’t masculine, it was just Jason making a joke. Jason who would make a joke on the way to hell, even if it meant extra time and a worse punishment. No matter what form he was in, he was still Jason.

That thought made a tension go out of my shoulders, out of my body, that I hadn’t even realized was there. It was still Jason under all that fur and claws. It was still Nathaniel rubbing his cheek against me.

Once upon a time I’d begged Richard to show me his beast. But when he did it, I hadn’t been able to deal. It took me a long time to realize that Richard had shown me his beast in the worst light possible, because part of him didn’t want me to be able to accept the beast, because he couldn’t. I’d run from him after seeing him eat Marcus. I’d run from him to Jean-Claude, because the vampire had seemed less the monster that night.

Was I still the same person who hadn’t been able to deal? Was I still the person who could deal with the handsome prince, but not the beast? Was it beauty, more than love, that moved me?

Nathaniel pushed gently against me. “If you don’t feed now, who will you feed from?”

“Graham really is just down the hall,” Jason said. “He’ll be in human form because Meng Die won’t do him furry. She won’t even sleep with him furry.”

I didn’t want Graham. Was it just the human form I was in love with? Was it some anthropomorphic idea that I loved? Shit. These were just not the kind of relationship questions that the magazines gave you answers to. Did Miss Manners have an answer for being freaked by your boyfriend’s animal form? I doubted it.

Jason drew his claws delicately away from my wrists. “I’ll get Graham and send him down.”

“No,” I said, and reached for his furred forearm. The fur was so soft, and his arm was so real. “No, I don’t want Graham.”

Jason gave me another of those looks, that said, you’re joking. “You don’t do furry, Anita.”

“But I do Nathaniel, and I do you, on occasion.”

He grinned, though it wasn’t exactly the same coming from the wolf muzzle. “On occasion.” He sank back down in front of me. “You want me to be your puppy tonight?”

“I was thinking more that we’d just fuck,” I said.

His face was either more expressive than any wolfman I’d met, or it was still enough Jason that I could read his face. He was still under there, somewhere. I’d surprised him, not in a bad way, but I’d truly surprised him.

Nathaniel pushed against me, and he whispered against my cheek. “Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” I said.

He made a sound that was half-growl, and half pure eagerness. He raised up just a little, and then plunged himself between my legs. I was screaming before he’d finished, and not in pain. He was bigger, thicker, more, and all those extra bits were plunging inside me.

53

HE BROUGHT ME with the size of his body, the rhythm of his hips, and the flash of white claws like small knives against the tenderest parts of my body. The thought of what those claws could do to me if they wanted to, brought me struggling under him. Everything that I’d fought not to do, I now let myself do. I struggled, I screamed, I fought, and he held me carefully, delicately, but with no doubt that he could have torn me to pieces if he’d wanted to. It was both the most delicate of lovemaking, and the most dangerous. Not because of what he did, but because of what he could have done.

He raised me to my knees, cradling me against his body with his arms, and I caressed my hands over those arms, those muscles, that fur, so soft, and so different from the wolf. I pet him, not like you’d pet a dog, but like you’d pet a lover. I felt his rhythm change, knew he was close, felt his body strain not to claw me to pieces. Felt the dainty press of the tip of each of those claws, as he held them against my flesh. I came watching the pinpoints of those blades begin to crease my skin, almost, almost cutting, almost, almost piercing, almost, almost killing. At the last moment, he retracted the claws and held me hard and fast against his body, with the fur and padding of those hands lost somewhere between leopard and man.

The ardeur fed. Fed on the strength of his body, the heat of his skin, and the spill of his seed, which spilled hotter inside me than anything I’d ever felt from a man.

A thought cut through my mind, He isn’t a man. The words weren’t angry, but the emotion that came with them felt like it would burn a hole through my skin. Rage, such rage, and I knew who it was before the door opened.

54

RICHARD STRODE THROUGH the door, and his energy flung across the room like hot sparks from a fire. It hurt where it touched my skin, like small biting insects. What do you say when you find your ex-fiancée fucking a leopardman? Richard knew just what to say. “The last time I saw anything this sick was in one of Raina’s porno movies.”

Jason rolled off the bed and faced him. I think he was trying to give Nathaniel time to stand up without me attached to him. Or maybe he was trying to give me time. Whatever his motive, he stood between me and his Ulfric, and that wasn’t the wisest thing he’d ever done. Brave, even gallant, but not wise.

Richard’s power filled the room like scalding water. Nathaniel rolled off the bed, and I wondered if the air was as heavy and hard for him to breathe as it was for me. The thought was enough. I knew that he felt Richard’s power like something you had to fight to walk through, like Richard’s power was some sort of storm, a blizzard, or a sandstorm. Something that would blind you and take your life, unless you found shelter.

My shelter was crouching between the bed and the door. The wolfman was tall and broad and dangerous. Richard in his human form should have looked frail, but he didn’t. He could have been a foot shorter, and with that much power rolling off of him, he would have seemed huge.

“Get out of my way, Jason. I won’t ask again.”

“Tell me you’re not going to hurt her, or Nathaniel, and I’ll move,” he said it in a deep growling voice that would have given any red-blooded human pause, but Richard wasn’t human.

Nathaniel was off the bed and moving toward them. Richard would hurt Jason enough to get him out of the way, but he’d hurt Nathaniel for other reasons. Reasons he might never admit out loud, but I didn’t want to see it. I called Nathaniel back to me.

I had a gun under my pillow, but I didn’t want to shoot Richard, and unless you’re willing to shoot, a gun is just a rock made of metal. I was still trying to think of something to do that would make this less awful, when Richard backhanded Jason.

Blood flew in a little arc, sparkling in the lights, but Jason stood his ground. He didn’t offer to fight back, but he didn’t get out of the way, either.

I yelled, “Richard, no!”

He picked Jason up like he was a dumbbell. Clean, jerk, Richard’s arms bulged with effort as he lifted the werewolf over his head and held him there for a heartbeat.

We had one of those frozen moments, where everything slows down and you know bad stuff is about to happen, and you can’t stop it. You can make choices and change what gets damaged, but you can’t save it all. I was drowning in Richard’s rage, his power boiling like a sea. I’d touched his rage before, his beast, and this wasn’t it, not exactly. I had a second to realize that his rage tasted like an old friend. It was my rage, or tasted more like mine. I only had time for my aha moment, then he threw Jason, not across the room, but at the bed. Maybe he meant to hit me, but I rolled off the bed, and when Jason landed hard enough in the middle of it to collapse the frame, no one was on the bed but him.

I was on the far side of the broken bed, and Nathaniel was with me. He’d put himself a little in front of me. He hadn’t pushed me behind him like I was a damsel in distress, but it was close. I was his Nimir-Ra, and supposedly his dominant. Shouldn’t I be in front?

Jason lay on the collapsed bed, stunned. He’d been thrown from less than eight feet onto a bed, and he was breathless, frozen while he recovered. I didn’t have the recovery power that Jason and Nathaniel had. Maybe me being in front wasn’t bright, but shit. I didn’t know what to do. Like so often with Richard, I didn’t know what to do.

“Why don’t you all get back on the bed? I’m sure it’s a hell of a show. Raina and Gabriel would have loved it.” Since I’d had to kill both of them so they wouldn’t star me in a rape/snuff film, it was a truly vicious cut. But the time when that kind of shit from Richard could make me angry was passed. I was afraid to add my anger to his.

His power was everywhere, as if the very air stung and burned. But it wasn’t just his rage I could feel. Disgust, horror, and under that the thing that fueled the rage . . . envy. Why envy? And he was too wide open, he was hardly shielding at all. I got my answer.

It was as if someone threw a puzzle into the air, and I saw pieces. Clair and Richard in bed. Richard doing his usual vigorous job of it. Clair shifting in the middle of it. Her claws cutting up his back and shoulders. Clair in human form, screaming.

Richard shoved his anger at me, and I stumbled as if he’d actually pushed me. “Stay out of my head.”

“Then stop projecting so hard that I can’t help but hear it.”

He screamed, a full-throated cry of rage. It echoed in the big room, and I heard running out in the hallway. I knew who this was, too, or at least what.

Three people spilled into the room. One woman, two men, all with guns. They pointed them at Richard. Claudia, who was almost as tall as Dolph, and had broader, more muscular shoulders than most of the men in my life, did quick eye flicks around the room, taking in everything. Her tight ponytail flicked as she moved, because it was high on her head. A girl ponytail to offset the lack of makeup and those amazing arms. I didn’t recognize the men with her, except that they held guns like they knew how, but I’d come to expect nothing less than professionalism from Raphael’s people. The wererats didn’t recruit amateurs.

“What is happening here, Anita?” Claudia asked. Her voice was even, just a little tight, as if she were gearing up to do her job, and she’d have less qualms than I would about that job.

“A difference of opinion,” I said.

She laughed, not like it was funny. “A difference of opinion, well, hell.”

“This is not Rodere business,” Richard said, “it concerns the pack and the pard, not the rats.”

Claudia’s gaze went around the room again, took in the bleeding werewolf and the collapsed bed, my hand on Nathaniel’s arm to keep him with me and away from Richard. She came back to Richard and smiled, again not like it made her happy. “This doesn’t smell like pack or pard business, it smells personal.”

“That’s not your call,” he said, and his voice was lower, not growling, but lower.

She smiled again, and this time it was just a baring of teeth. “It is when we we’re being paid to guard the Circus and everyone in it. You’ve already bloodied one of the people in our care, Ulfric, we really can’t let you harm anyone else.”

“He defied me. No one gets to defy the king. Raphael would agree with that.” He’d turned to face her, and I realized that he was one of the men in my life that didn’t look frail next to Claudia.

“What our king would agree with and what he wouldn’t is not in question.” She sighed and lowered the gun to point at the floor. The two men followed her lead.

Richard turned back to stare at the bed and the rest of us. He even took a step toward the bed.

“No, Ulfric, you don’t just go back to abusing them. We may not be able to shoot you without political problems, but we also will not stand by and let you abuse those we have contracted to protect.”

He looked at her, and all that burning power seemed to draw away from the rest of the room, to concentrate like some great weapon. I wasn’t close enough to feel it, but I was betting that all that power was now focused on Claudia.

She shook her head, like she’d been slapped. The two men with her moved back from Richard, as if they wanted more room to maneuver if things went wrong.

Claudia answered him, her voice warm with the beginnings of her own anger. “No one disputes your power, Ulfric, it is great. It is your self-control that I question.”

Richard was mad, so mad, and he was looking for a fight. I’d rather it not be me, but I didn’t think things would escalate as far with us as it would with the wererats. Someone could get seriously injured, or worse. Richard being in a pissy mood wasn’t worth someone dying over. I know, I know, it probably wouldn’t go that far, but the wererats were usually ex-mercenaries, or ex-military. They fought for keeps when they fought. Richard wasn’t either of those things. He got mad, but he didn’t really like going for the kill. It could all go so badly, so fast.

“Everybody ease down,” I said. “It’s not worth dying over.”

Richard looked at me. “No one’s talked about killing anyone, except you.”

“Richard, all three of the guards that are looking at you wondered about killing you the moment they hit the door. Ask them, go ahead, ask them.”

He glanced at the wererats, still with their guns pointed at the floor. “Is she right?”

The three of them exchanged glances, then Claudia answered, “Yes.”

“You thought about killing me, just like that?”

“We didn’t know it was you doing the damage, Ulfric. But we are allowed to use any means necessary to do our jobs. We cannot allow you to harm anyone under our care.”

“You’re not allowed to interfere with me disciplining one of my wolves, either.”

She nodded. “You are right. It is not allowed for one animal to interfere in the internal disputes of another. If you can prove that this is pack business, and not personal, we can leave, and you can finish this, but you must prove it is business.”

One of the other men, who was small and dark, and looked like he’d spent a little too much time in rat form, said, “Smells like jealousy to me.”

“Roberto, you are not helping,” Claudia said, her eyes still on Richard.

Jason rolled over and started to sit up. He moved like it hurt.

“He defied me,” Richard said, pointing at Jason.

“How?” Claudia asked.

“He refused to get out of my way.”

“What would you have done if I’d moved?” Jason said, and his voice held something thicker than normal, as if he was still bleeding inside his mouth. “If you didn’t throw me around, who would it have been? Nathaniel, Anita? She doesn’t heal like we do, Richard.”

“I wouldn’t . . .”

“When you hit the door, you were going to hurt someone,” Jason said, and let blood trickle from his mouth, because he couldn’t spit in wolfish form. “I thought it was better it was me.”

Some of that burning power began to fade. Richard’s shoulders slumped, and he screamed again. A full-throated, all-out scream, as long and as loud as he had breath for. He dropped to his knees and smashed his hands into the floor. Apparently, he liked doing it, because he kept smashing his hands into the carpeted floor, over and over. Only when the stone floor underneath began to buckle visibly, did he stop.

The sides of his hands were bloody where he’d scrapped them on the carpet, like really bad rug burns. He raised those bloody hands up and just knelt there staring at his hands. He didn’t cry, didn’t swear, didn’t do anything.

We all froze, waiting for him to do or say something. At least a full minute passed, and he hadn’t moved. Claudia looked across the room at me. I shrugged. I’d been engaged to him once, and I’d been his lover, but I had no clue what to do. That was one of the problems with Richard and me, we so often didn’t know what to do with each other.

I started to walk around the bed, but Jason grabbed my wrist. “Close enough.”

I didn’t argue. I just stopped and looked down at him. He was still staring at his scraped-up hands. “Richard, Richard, are you in there?”

He laughed then, but it wasn’t a good laugh. It was one of those laughs that held more bitterness than humor. Everyone in the room, except me, jumped when he laughed, as if they’d expected anything but that. I’d learned not to try to guess what he’d do.

“I want to lick the blood off my hands,” he said in a strangled voice.

“Then do it,” I said.

He looked up at me. “What?”

“It’s your blood. It’s your hands. If you want to lick your own wounds, then do it.”

“Won’t you be disgusted?”

I sighed. “Richard, it doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what you think.”

“You’d think it was disgusting,” he said.

I sighed, again. “No, Richard, actually, no. The licking will make the scrapes feel better, and you’ll enjoy the taste of blood.”

He frowned up at me. “You wouldn’t have said that a year ago.” It was almost a whisper.

“I might not have said it six months ago, but I’m saying it now. Lick your wounds, Richard, just don’t live in them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, and his anger flared, like a small hot whip against my skin.

“Don’t get pissy, Richard. I’m trying to live the life I’ve got, not some dream of a life that I’m never going to have.”

“And you think I am.”

“You’re Ulfric of the Thronnos Rokke Clan, and you’re afraid to lick your bloody hands because someone else might think it’s not very human. So, yeah, I think you’re still pretending that you’re going get another shot at a life. This is it, Richard. This is who and what we are. This is it. You need to embrace that.”

He shook his head, and his eyes glittered in the lights, as if there might be tears in those perfectly brown eyes. His voice when it came was even, no hint of those glittering eyes. “I tried.”

I was shielding as hard as I could. I didn’t want anymore peeks into his and Clair’s love life, but I could guess. “With Clair?”

He looked up, and the anger was winning over the tears. I’d never seen him this out of control of his emotions. I’d seen him angry, bitter, sad, but never this see-saw. It was like angry and sad were the only emotions he had left. “You saw it, then.”

“I’m shielding like a son of a bitch right now. I saw that you had a fight, a bad one. But that’s about all I saw.”

He opened his mouth, then glanced behind him. “I won’t hurt anyone, but this isn’t a conversation for a crowd.”

The wererats looked at me. I sighed and wondered if I was being stupid. Maybe, but I was going to do it anyway. “You guys can go.”

Claudia gave me a look. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Anita.”

“Neither do I,” I said, “but do it anyway.”

She shook her head but motioned the two men through the door. She turned with the door halfway closed. She looked at me, and said, “We’ll be right outside. You yell, if you need us.”

I nodded. “I will, I promise.”

She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me, but she went and closed the door behind her.

“Get out, Jason,” Richard said.

“It’s his room, Richard,” I said.

“He doesn’t get to hear this,” Richard said.

Jason got off the bed, slowly, like he still hurt. “If I leave and you hurt her, neither you nor I will ever forgive you.”

Richard stared up at the tall wolfman. They had a moment of simply staring at each other, and whatever they saw in each other’s faces seemed to satisfy them both. Richard said, “You’re right. I won’t hurt her.”

“What about Nathaniel?”

Richard looked past him to the tall, dark form of Nathaniel. “He needs to leave, too.”

“Only Anita can order me to leave,” Nathaniel said.

Richard looked at me, then down. “Two requests, clothes for you, and everyone leaves. Please.”

The clothes were hard, because I was still covered in goop. What few clothes I had, I didn’t want to get messy. What I needed was a robe, but I didn’t have one in this room. I hesitated too long for Richard’s mood, because he said, “Don’t make me have this talk with you naked, Anita. Please.” He said the please like he had the first time, like it was its own sentence, not an afterthought, but as if the please was more important than normal, and needed to be set apart.

“I’d love to get dressed, Richard, but I’m still covered in that clear goop. I’d rather not get it all over my clothes.”

“I’ve got a robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door,” Jason said, “it should fit.”

“Since when do you wear a robe?” I asked.

“It was a present.”

I looked at him.

“Jean-Claude thought I looked cold.” I think he tried to grin at me, but the wolf muzzle just wasn’t made for it.

“Let me guess, black silk?”

“Blue, to match my eyes.” He started toward the bathroom, not exactly limping, but close.

“I’ll get it. Everybody stay put, and be nice, until I get back.” I went for the bathroom, though search me if I could remember a robe on the back of the bathroom door. But it was there, hanging exactly where Jason had said. It was a lovely blue, sort of soft and bright all at the same time. I’d been more tired than I’d known to miss it last night.

I put the robe on and caught sight of myself in the mirror. The remnants of yesterday’s makeup still outlined my eyes, though it had smeared a little so it looked a little more Goth than my usual. The lipstick was gone. The clear goop had dried one side of my hair into a case of bed head that only a shower would cure. My body was covered in more of the drying goop, so that it was beginning to flake as I moved. If you have sex with condoms, you forget that what goes in eventually comes out, and I took the time to clean up just a little, because it was too embarrassing not to.

The blue was too pale for my coloring, and too big through the shoulders. It was one of those moments that I wondered why anyone wanted me. I just didn’t see it. Of course, feeling this bad about myself might have had something to do with dreading Richard’s little talk. Maybe.

I took in a lot of air, let it out slowly, and opened the door. It was one of the braver things I’d done in awhile. I’d much rather have dealt with bad guys than with Richard. Bad guys were simple, kill them before they kill you. Richard was a lot of things, but simple was so not one of them.

55

JASON LEFT WITHOUT a word, but Nathaniel said he’d wait outside with the wererats. No one liked leaving us alone, not even me. Hell, I wasn’t sure Richard liked being left alone with me, but he’d asked for it, and I hadn’t.

Richard stayed on the floor, as if he’d never move again. Since there was no chair, I stripped the stained sheets from the bed and sat on the edge of it. I sat sort of half-cross-legged, with one leg dangling off the bed, but I made sure the robe covered as much of me as it could.

We sat that way in total silence for at least a minute, though it felt like longer. I broke first, because just watching him kneel there, head bowed, made me want to comfort him, and that would go badly. Richard didn’t take comfort from me anymore, or at least he didn’t without making me pay for it later. That was a game I was no longer willing to play.

“What’s up, Richard? You wanted privacy for a talk. We’ve got the privacy, now talk.”

He moved just his eyes up at me, and that one look was enough. Angry. It didn’t spill out into his power, or fill the room, but I think that was because he was shielding, probably as hard as I was. “You make it sound easy.”

“I didn’t say it was easy. I just said, you wanted to talk, so talk.”

“Just like that.”

“Hell, Richard, you’re the one who asked for this talk. I didn’t invite you into a private conversation.”

“You asked about the fight with Clair. I don’t want to share that with everyone.”

“You don’t have to share it with me.”

“I think I need to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He swallowed hard enough for me to hear it, then shook his head. “Let’s start over. I’ll try not to be mad, if you try not to pick at me.”

“I’m not picking at you, Richard. I’m trying to get you to talk to me.”

He looked up at me, full face, not so much angry anymore, but not happy. “If a friend had something hard to tell you, would you say, ‘so talk’?”

I took a deep breath and let it out. “No, no I wouldn’t. Okay, how’s this. I’m sorry, you feel like you have to tell me something that is so obviously painful for you. But what I said before is still true, you don’t owe me an explanation about a fight you had with your girlfriend, Richard. You really don’t.”

“I know that, but it’s the quickest way I can think to explain everything.”

I wanted to say, “explain what?” but fought the urge. He was obviously hurting, and I tried not to rub salt into anyone’s wounds. But the call for privacy, and the big buildup was making me nervous. As far as I knew, Richard and I didn’t have anything this important to say to each other. The fact that he thought differently made me downright uneasy.

I sat on the corner of the bed, one hand going to the top of the robe, because even with it belted tight it was gaping. Too big through the shoulders, so it just didn’t fit quite right. I kept one hand on the top and the other hand in my lap, so I didn’t accidentally flash him. I’d been buck naked in front of him for minutes, but suddenly I was all worried about him catching a glimpse. I think it was his comment, that he couldn’t have this talk with me naked. Would I find it hard to talk seriously if he was naked in front of me? I wanted to answer no, but truthfully in my own head, the answer was yes. Shit, I did not need this.

He was back to staring at the floor. I couldn’t stand it. I had to prompt him, but I tried to prompt him more kindly than before. I tried to think of him as my friend and not as the ex who always seemed to rain all over my parade.

“What do you want to tell me about the fight with Clair?” I even managed to keep my voice neutral. Points for me.

He took in a lot of air and let it out, then raised a pair of sad brown eyes to me. “Maybe that’s not where to start.”

“Okay,” I said, voice careful, “start somewhere else then.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know how to do this.”

I wanted to yell, “do what?” but I resisted. But my patience had never been limitless, and I knew that if he continued to be obtuse, I’d blow it. Or my temper would. That gave me an idea: Maybe if I started talking, he’d just jump in.

“It’s been a while since I felt your rage,” I said.

“I’m sorry about that. I lost control, I don’t . . .”

“It’s not a complaint, Richard. What I meant to say was that it felt different than the first time I touched it.”

He looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“It felt, no, it tasted like my anger, like me, almost more than you.”

I had his attention now. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do either, but follow my thought. Asher once told me that Jean-Claude had become more ruthless because I was his human servant. But with Damian being my vampire servant, I gained some of his emotional control. You can only gain what your partner has to share.”

He was looking at me, and the sadness was fading under him thinking. There was a good mind in there somewhere, he just didn’t always seem to use it. “Alright, I understand that.”

“If Jean-Claude gained some of my practicality, making him more ruthless, then what did you gain? I mean I got some of your beast and your hunger for flesh. I got Jean-Claude’s blood lust and the ardeur. What did you gain from us?”

He seemed to think about that. “I gained some of Jean-Claude’s blood lust. Blood is as attractive as flesh to me, almost. It wasn’t before.” He moved so he was sitting Indian fashion on the floor. “It’s easier to talk mind-to-mind with you lately, and last night, I interfered with you controlling that zombie.” He shivered just a little, like something about that scared him. Guess I couldn’t blame him.

“But the mind-to-mind thing being this easy and the zombie stuff is recent, Richard. What did you gain the first time?”

He frowned at the floor. “I don’t see . . .”

“What if you gained some of my anger?”

He looked up then. “Your anger can’t be worse than the rage of the beast.”

I laughed, and it was closer to humor than his earlier laugh had been, but not by much. “Oh, Richard, you haven’t spent enough time in my head if you believe that.”

He shook his head, stubbornly. “A human isn’t capable of the kind of mindless rage that the beast is.”

“You haven’t researched many human serial killers, have you?”

“You know I haven’t,” he said, and he sounded grumpy.

“Don’t go all grumpy on me, Richard, I’m trying to make a point here.”

“Then make it,” he said.

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That sounds more like me, than you. You’ve been quicker to anger for the last bit, and I’ve been less quick to anger, why? What if you got some of my anger, and I got some of your calmness?”

He shook his head again. “You’re saying that your human anger is worse than my beast’s rage. That’s not possible.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “Richard, you seem to think that human is better than lycanthrope. I don’t know where you get that idea.”

“Humans don’t eat each other.”

“Shit, Richard, yes, they do.”

“I don’t mean cultures that have ritual cannibalism.”

“Neither do I.”

“Comparing lycanthropes to serial killers isn’t going to make me feel better about being a lycanthrope.”

“My point is that humans can be just as rage filled, just as destructive. The difference is that a werewolf is better equipped for mayhem than a mere human. If human beings had the fangs and the claws that you guys do, then we’d, they’d, be just as destructive. It isn’t lack of wanting to do it, it’s lack of the right tools that make humans less scary.”

“If this is your rage, Anita, it’s awful. It’s worse than almost anything I’ve ever felt. It’s like being crazy. So angry, almost all the time. I can’t believe it’s something that was in you.”

“Not past tense, Richard, trust me. I had to embrace what I operate on a long time ago.”

“What you operate on, what does that mean?”

“It means that at the heart of me, is this deep, seething, bottomless, pit of pure rage. Maybe I came with it. I know my mother’s death helped fill it up. But as far back as I can remember, it’s been there.”

He shook his head. “You’re just saying this to make me feel better.”

“Why would I say something that wasn’t true just to make you feel better?”

Anger filled his eyes, like magic. One moment trustworthy brown, the next moment serial killer dark. “Thank you, thank you very much, for reminding me that I don’t mean shit to you anymore.”

I shook my head, and let my hands fall into my lap. “If you meant nothing to me, Richard, nothing at all, we wouldn’t be in this room alone.”

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. I just get so angry, so angry.” He tried to rub his arms, but the bloody scrapes hurt.

“You said you wanted to lick the wounds, go ahead. It won’t bother me.”

“It will bother me,” he said.

“No, Richard, licking your wounds would make you feel better. You’d enjoy it, and that’s what bothers you. Not the wanting to do it, but how good it feels when you give in to it.”

He nodded, staring at his hands. “I tried to embrace my beast, Anita. I really tried.”

“I felt you feeding on a deer. I felt how happy you were in wolf form. It felt like you had embraced it.”

“When I’m in animal form, yes. But it’s being human on the outside, and not human on the inside that gets me confused.”

“Does it get you confused, or Clair?”

He gave me a look that wasn’t exactly angry. “I thought you didn’t hear the fight.”

“I got one word when she was screaming at you—animal. Am I wrong? Was she complaining about herself and her beast?”

“No, you got it exactly right.” He laid his hands in his own lap, and his eyes were back to being sad, like someone had hit a switch. Angry, sad, angry, sad. It was like some sort of demonic baby hormones. “She accused me of raping her.” His voice was soft when he said it.

I gave him very wide eyes and let just how impossible I thought the idea was to show in my face.

He gave a very small smile. “Just the look on your face now is worth something. You don’t believe it, just like that, you don’t believe I could do that to her.”

“I don’t believe you would do that to any woman, but that’s beside the point.”

“No,” he said, and his voice sounded more relaxed than it had since he entered the room, “that’s not beside the point, not for me. After what a bastard I’ve been to you, that you still believe in me, that means a lot.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. If I agreed that he’d been a bastard would that start a fight? If he thought I believed in him, was that going to give him the wrong idea? I mean, not believing that Richard would rape someone didn’t mean that much to me. He was a decent person, that’s all.

“I’m glad it makes you feel better, but remember, I saw the beginning of the lovemaking session. You can’t rape the willing, Richard.”

His eyes looked haunted, as if there was something I’d missed. “She said that I always make love like it’s rape.”

That made my eyebrows go up again. “Excuse me? Tell that to me slowly, because it made no sense fast.”

He looked up at me, and there was something in his eyes, some demand, something he wanted me to say, or do, but I didn’t know what. “Do you mean that?”

“I mean, explain what she meant by it.”

“She said, I’m always so rough, that it’s like rape. That I don’t know how to make love, that I only know how to fuck.” His eyes looked raw, as if the pain in them had been skinned naked to shine out of his face. It hurt me to see it, but I didn’t look away. I gave him my eyes and let him see what I thought of what Clair had said.

“Is she still your girlfriend?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good, because I’d hate to say she’s crazy if you were still going to date her.”

“Why is she crazy?” he asked.

“What kind of head job has she done on you, Richard? Rape isn’t a word that anyone should use lightly.”

“She didn’t use it lightly,” Richard said, and the small smile was bitter. “She meant it.”

“How?”

He looked at me, and the pain was still raw. “Did I ever hurt you when we were together?”

I started to ask, “emotionally, or physically?” then decided to just ask, “You mean physically?”

“I mean did I hurt you when we made love?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry to ask you this. I don’t have a right to ask, but I didn’t know who else to ask. I knew you wouldn’t lie, because I was your Ulfric, or because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I knew that if I asked, you would give me a real answer.”

I looked at him and hoped I didn’t look as amazed as I was feeling. After everything we’d done to each other, all the fights, the hurts, and he still trusted me. He trusted me not to lie, not to make it worse than it was, or better than it was, but to tell the truth. I wasn’t sure if I was flattered or insulted. I decided to be flattered, because anything else would have pissed me off. But the amount of trust he was putting in me scared me, not for me personally, because he was right, I’d give him the truth. But a lot of people wouldn’t. A lot of people would have used it as an excuse to twist the knife a little deeper. He was damned lucky I wasn’t one of those people.

I opened my mouth, closed it, stroked my hands down the silk of the robe, and finally had to look away from those pain-filled eyes while I tried to think how to answer. Not truth or lie, but how to say it.

He stood up, suddenly, abruptly. “That’s alright, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Sit back down, Richard. I’m just trying to think how to say it, so it doesn’t sound stupid.”

He stood there, his face all set to be angry, as if he didn’t believe me.

“Fine, stay standing, but you asked if you’d ever hurt me when we made love, right?”

He nodded.

“Yes, and no.”

The scowl turned into a frown. “What does that mean, ‘yes and no’?”

“It means that Mother Nature has made it almost impossible for you to be anything but rough, unless you’re very careful.”

He frowned harder. “I don’t understand.”

Of course he didn’t, of course he would make this as embarrassing as possible. “Richard, you are aware that you’re well-endowed, right?” I felt the blush start creeping up my neck, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I’d always blushed fairly easily, but I’d seldom hated it as much as I did in that moment.

“Raina said I was. It was one of the reasons she wanted me for the movies.”

“You didn’t know you were large before Raina?”

It was his turn to blush. “I was a virgin before Raina.”

I shivered, and the look on his face was so raw, that I said out loud, “The thought of a virgin with Raina is just frightening. She was one very sick puppy.”

He nodded. “I know that, now.”

“Did you know it at the beginning with her?” I asked.

“I didn’t have anything to compare it to,” he said.

I had an idea. Raina had been his first lover, and Raina had been into sadomasochism on a scale that made a joke out of safe, sane, and consensual. She’d done porn, hell, snuff films. She’d been one of the scariest and most twisted people I’d ever met, and I’d met a lot. Richard had nothing to compare it to, what exactly did that mean?

I tried to lead up to it, obliquely, my version of subtle. I went back to my orignial point. “You’re big, Richard, which means when you’re making love, unless you’re careful it can hurt.”

“I did hurt you,” he said, and he sounded desolate.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Richard, listen to what I’m actually saying, don’t editorialize in your own head, okay?” I stood, so I could pace. This was not a conversation for sitting still.

“I’ll try,” he said.

“Good enough.” I came to stand in front of him and tried again. “A lot of women don’t like their cervix bumped during sex.”

He gave me that puzzled frown again. How did I end up giving my ex-fiancé sex education? How does anyone end up in these kinds of conversations? Just unlucky, I guess.

“If you go too deep, you reach the end of most women. You bump into the end of the vagina, you hit their cervix.”

He nodded, then said, “I always come to the end.”

I made a violà gesture. “That’s my point.”

“What’s your point?”

I put hands on hips because either he was being deliberately obtuse, or he really wasn’t getting it. “You’re big enough that you always bump someone’s cervix if you’re in a position that allows all of your . . . penis to go inside her. I can’t be any plainer, Richard, so please make the connection here.”

“You mean it hurts them,” he said.

“Yes.”

“It hurt you,” he said.

“No. I like having my cervix bumped. I have a whole different kind of orgasm from it, so I don’t mind.”

He was frowning again, but more like he was thinking. “You’re saying that if you didn’t like it, that it would hurt.”

“It would just hurt,” I said, “because in some positions, with someone as well-endowed as you are, it is a sort of pain. But for me, and I’m betting for Raina, it was more pleasure than pain.” I hated putting myself in any category that contained Raina, but I would have bet good money that I was right.

“I hurt you, but I didn’t?”

I sighed. “Look, this is an area that I’ve only recently embraced myself. Sometimes my pain and pleasure centers get confused. What would hurt most people feels good to me, at least during sex.” It was my confession, so I didn’t have to meet his eyes, since it was my pain and not his.

“Me, too,” he said.

I looked at him. “Well, that would explain a lot.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The sex was always great, Richard. Even when everything else was going to hell, the sex never stopped being great.”

“You mean that?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

He smiled, and it was almost a real smile, except for that flinching in his eyes. “So you think I was too rough for Clair, because of my size?”

“And your technique is vigorous.”

He gave that frown again.

“Richard, haven’t you ever been with anyone where you weren’t as . . . vigorous?”

He gave me a look that said more clearly than any words that the answer was no.

“Okay, a friend of mine told me that men are ducklings, they tend to imprint on their first lovers. Which means they tend to make love the way they are first trained to make love. You were trained by a woman who was a sexual sadist and made porn movies, violent porn movies.”

He looked shocked, then horrified. “You’re saying Clair is right. I was too rough. I did hurt her.”

I shook my head. “Did she ask you not to be so vigorous during the lovemaking?”

“She never asked about my . . . technique at all. She just blew up and said I was too rough. That I enjoyed making her beast come. That I enjoyed her clawing me up. That I enjoyed making her a monster. That I always made love like an animal no matter what shape I was in.”

Eeeah. I said what I was thinking, “Did Clair mean to hurt you as much as possible, or was it just an accidental hit?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that if I were trying to hurt you as much as possible, I couldn’t do better than that.”

“I think she just meant it. I mean if I’m having sex rough enough for Raina, then how can it be anything but rape to anyone else?”

I shook my head and waved a hand in front of his face, so he’d look up and at me. “Don’t ever use the word rape to me again, Richard, because you don’t do that. If you’re with someone who likes sex the same way you do, then it’s just good sex.”

“But rough,” he said.

I shrugged. “You don’t start out rough, but yeah, you usually end up there, but it was never anything I didn’t want to do. All Clair had to do was ask for what she wanted, but she treated you like so many women treat men, like you should be able to read her mind. You aren’t a mind reader, Richard, just a man, and men are usually less able to read a woman’s mind than another woman is.”

“I’m not a man, Anita, I’m a werewolf. I’m an animal.”

I grabbed his upper arms. “Don’t let me hear you say that, ever again. You say animal like it’s a dirty word, Richard, it’s not. But until you own that it’s not, don’t let anyone make you feel that bad about yourself.”

He smiled then, a little sad around the edges, but it was a real smile. He touched my arms with his hands, and I pulled away. I was so not going to hug and make up. I would help him through this, if I could, but we were not a couple anymore.

“If I didn’t hurt you, then why did you pull away just now?”

I hugged my arms tight and paced a little farther away from him. “You came here for truth, fine, here’s truth. We’re not a couple anymore, Richard, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel . . . oh, hell, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“And what would that be?” His voice was back to being guarded.

“You were very clear at my house yesterday. I was in your head, Richard. I know what you were thinking, what you were feeling. I was there inside your head.”

“Then you saw what I wanted to do to you.” He turned away, so that all I could see was the back of him in jeans, and the jean jacket that was a few shades bluer than the jeans. His hair was beginning to have waves, but it still looked shorn to me. “It was sick, Anita. I wanted you afraid of me. Having you afraid while I fucked you, would have been . . . would have—”

“Just flat done it for you,” I finished for him.

He turned and looked at me. His eyes were desolate, as if something in them had died. “Yes, yes, exactly.”

“Richard, every lycanthrope I know is a little confused about the fear response, food, and sex.”

He shook his head, and it must have been too vigorous, because he winced. “But no lycanthrope I’ve met, except for Raina and Gabriel, thought fear was an aphrodisiac.”

“Since I’ve met some of the same lycanthropes that you’ve met, I know that’s not true. What is true, is that Gabriel and Raina were the only ones willing to admit it to anyone and everyone.”

“No, no,” he said and stalked toward me, his anger starting to rise in a warm prickling wash. “No one else wanted what they wanted, not like that. Not the real thing.”

“Aha,” I said, then apologized for saying aha, “but the point is, you said not the real thing. I’ve met a lot of shapeshifters who are into the bondage and submission scene, but it’s a game with rules. Safe, sane, consensual. There are safe words, and once that agreed-upon word is uttered, then it stops, it’s over.”

“There was no word that would keep you safe from Raina and Gabriel.”

“Exactly, Richard, exactly. But you can enjoy the game without doing what they did.”

He grabbed for me, and I tried to be out of reach, but in the end, I had only a shadow of his speed, not the real thing. He got one wrist instead of two, but he still got one. He jerked me a little toward him, not hard, but enough that I planted my feet and set up for not being pulled any closer. Just principle, instinct, nothing personal.

“What if it’s the reality I want, Anita? What if the reason Raina liked me so much was that I’m just like her?” He didn’t hurt me, didn’t do anything but keep holding my wrist, keep me, so that I knew I couldn’t get away, easily, if at all. I was stronger than a normal human, but I wasn’t as strong as a real lycanthrope.

I let out a breath that was even, and my voice sounded normal, but I couldn’t help it. I started with, “Let go of me, Richard.”

“You’re afraid of me,” he said.

“No, but you aren’t my boyfriend anymore. You don’t have the right to touch me without permission.”

“The fact that you’re trying to pull away, and I know you can’t, excites me.”

There was a time in my life that I would have argued, but we’d argue about it later, if we needed to. I didn’t repeat my request, because I wasn’t sure what would happen if I upped the physical stuff. I knew I didn’t want to find out, so I talked. “All you need is a submissive of your very own who likes to play these games, and you’re all set, but I am not your anything, so let go of my wrist.” Okay, I couldn’t not ask again.

He let go of me, so abruptly I stumbled a little. I guess I’d been pulling harder away from him than I thought. Fancy that. I resisted the urge to rub my wrist. Never let them see that they’ve hurt you. It’s a rule. “You’re nothing like Raina, Richard.”

“Yes,” he said, “I am.”

“I carry her munin, remember, I’ve had her in full technicolor glory in my head, and I’ve been in your head, too. Trust me, you don’t think like she did.”

“Sometimes I fantasize about horrible things, Anita.”

What I wanted to say was, I wasn’t his mother confessor, but I didn’t, because I didn’t know who else to send him to for this talk. Who else would I trust? No one. Damn it.

“So don’t we all, Richard, the difference isn’t what you think, it’s what you do about it. Most of us know the difference between fantasy and reality. We know that what works as pretend doesn’t work in the real world.”

“What if I want things that would hurt other people?”

I so didn’t want to be having this talk, but looking into his face, I knew that this was part of the demon that had driven him to nearly destroy himself, and us. “If it’s going to permanently maim, scar, or kill someone, you don’t do it. Outside of those parameters you talk to your lover and see what they want to do. What they’re willing to do.”

He was frowning at me. “No maiming, scarring, or killing, and everything else is okay? Just like that.”

I shook my head, “No, everything else that your partner says ‘yes’ to, is okay. If you’re on top, dominant, then you have to hold it together and make sure it’s all safe and not too scary.”

“I want it to be scary,” he said.

I shrugged. “I said, ‘not too scary.’ Through . . . friends, I’m beginning to understand that a little fear goes a long way as foreplay.”

“You don’t mean friends, you mean Nathaniel.”

“If I’d meant just Nathaniel, I’d have said just Nathaniel. He can’t teach me how to be a good top. To learn to be dominant you’ve got to talk to a dominant, not a submissive.”

“You sound like you’ve researched it.”

“Most of the wereleopards in my pard are into bondage and submission. I can’t be a good Nimir-Ra for them if I don’t understand them.”

He looked at me, considering something. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was thinking, but at least it wasn’t sad or angry. At this point I’d take almost any emotion that wasn’t one of them. “I know that before today you weren’t fucking Nathaniel. I was in your mind, and I know. You really did research to try to understand your leopards, not just for your lover.”

“You sound surprised,” I said.

“Because Raina was our lupa for so long a lot of the werewolves are into BDSM, too, but I learned everything I ever wanted to know about it from Raina and Gabriel, and their accomplices.”

I almost didn’t say it, but he said he’d come to me for the truth. I’d see if he really wanted truth, or just some of it. “Richard, you say you like fear with your sex. You like the game of fear, and you like your sex rough.”

He was looking at me, the look was a warning. Those dark brown eyes were willing me not to finish, but if I didn’t tell him, who would?

“You enjoy the scene, too, Richard.”

“I don’t—”

I held up a hand. “You don’t do what Raina and Gabriel and some others did, but you can be a little in without being a sexual sadist. Some people think just enjoying teeth and nails during sex is sadistic.”

He was shaking his head over and over. If it hurt the scratches on his face, he didn’t show it this time. “Just because I like teeth and nails doesn’t mean I’m like that. I’m not like them.”

“If you mean Raina and Gabriel, no, you’re not. But you didn’t run from me just because you thought I was bloodthirsty. You ran because with me you couldn’t keep pretending.”

“Pretending what? I’m not pretending anything.”

“It’s not just you that’s been pretending, Richard.”

“Pretending what?” His anger started to fill the room, hot and close, like a storm that hadn’t broken yet.

“I like teeth and nails during sex. Hell, I like biting alone without much sex. I like the feel of flesh between my teeth.”

He looked away. “That’s my fault, and Jean-Claude’s. It’s our hungers in you.”

“Maybe, but they’re still in me, and it’s still something I enjoy. I may never be as comfortable around the scene as Nathaniel is, and that worries me, because if he’s mine, then I want him to be happy. But I’ve had to stop pretending that I don’t like rough sex. Jason said that I like dominant men, because they sort of take charge, and I don’t have a choice. The reason I was able to avoid Nathaniel for so long was he tried to get me to do all the moves. I need a little dominance play, or I don’t play. I thought he was crazy, but it’s been a busy twenty-four hours, and I’m tired of running.”

He looked back at me. “Running, running from what?”

“Same thing you are, myself.”

“You’re not—”

I stopped him with a hand again. “Yeah, I was. Maybe I still am. There are parts of my life that I don’t want to look at. Someone told me that it’s okay that I like two men in bed with me. I argued with them, Richard. I argued that, no I didn’t.” I took two steps closer to him. “But arguing is pretty silly, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m dating Jean-Claude and Asher. I was dating you and Jean-Claude.”

“Not at the same time in the same date,” he said.

I waved it away. “Fine, I’ll leave you out of it. But I’m still dating Jean-Claude and Asher. I’m living and sharing a bed with Micah and Nathaniel. Yes, it was sort of accidental. I didn’t try to get into either situation on purpose, but I’m there. And now with Damian and Nathaniel, I’ve got another threesome where I’m the only girl. Not on purpose, but after awhile, Richard, arguing that I don’t enjoy two men together with me just sounds silly.”

“Do you?” he asked.

I didn’t owe him the answer, but maybe I owed myself one. I’d only admitted it to myself seconds ago. “Yes, being in the middle of two men just flat does it for me. Just the feel of them on either side just flat does it for me.” I waited for the blush to start, or at least the embarrassment, but it didn’t. It was true, and it was okay. I was okay. I had men in my life that thought it was okay.

Richard looked at the floor, as if whatever he saw in my face he didn’t want to see. Or maybe there was something in his face he didn’t want me to see. “I could never do that.”

“No one’s asked you to.”

He looked up then, and his anger lashed out, almost like he’d laid a hot whip across my skin. I jumped from the feel of it. “Ow,” I said.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, but the hell you say, no one’s asked me.”

“Alright, to my knowledge no one’s asked you.”

“Everyone, everyone in the preternatural community, whatever animal, or thing they are, thinks that I was doing Jean-Claude and you. That we were some happy little ménage à trois.”

“I’ve run into that rumor,” I said. “You know what you were doing, and who, so what does it matter?”

He let out a shadow of that inarticulate scream he’d done before. “Anita, how do you think I feel when almost every leader in this town that I have to do business with thinks I’m shagging the Master of the City?”

“Are you saying that people thinking you’re bisexual hurts your standing as a leader?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t seem to hurt Jean-Claude’s,” I said.

“That’s different.”

“I don’t think so.”

He made fists, and that hurt, and he made that sound again. “You don’t understand, Anita. You’re a girl, and you don’t understand.”

“I’m a girl, and I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

“It means it’s still more socially acceptable for a girl to be bisexual than it is for a man.”

“Who says?” I asked.

“Everyone!” His anger flared outward like hot water, and it was about waist high, and rising.

“You’re homophobic,” I said.

“I am not.”

“Yeah, you are. If it didn’t bother you so much that people thought you were bisexual, then you wouldn’t care what they said. You’d know the truth, and it would be enough.” I moved closer to him, pushing through the heat of his power, his anger, his frustration. “Besides, what’s wrong with being bisexual, or homosexual, or whatever? What does it matter, Richard, as long as you’re happy and no one is getting hurt?”

“You don’t understand,” he said.

I was standing close enough to touch. Standing so close that his power bit and sizzled almost against my skin, as if the robe wasn’t there. God, he was so powerful, more than the last time I’d touched his power. He’d gained from Jean-Claude and me, just like Jean-Claude had, like I had. If we could get our triumverate to truly work the way it was meant to, no one would touch us, no one would dare.

That one thought wasn’t my thought, not exactly. Jean-Claude wasn’t awake yet, I’d have felt it, but the thought was more his than mine. I remembered last night at the club, and how we’d been joined tighter, closer, than ever before. I’d done things last night that hadn’t been possible before. I’d reached new levels of power both with Jean-Claude and with my own abilities. I’d also had sex with a vampire I’d known less than two weeks, and only Requiem’s gentlemanly ways had kept it to one. That wasn’t like me, and standing this close to Richard’s pain, I was thinking about the power and not the cost to him. That wasn’t like me either. But they were both very like Jean-Claude.

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked. “You’ve thought of something.”

“Just wondering what other parts of Jean-Claude I’m carrying around inside myself.”

“You told me, the ardeur, the blood lust.”

I shook my head. “I’ve never been very practical with relationships, or sex, and lately, like the last twenty-four hours, or so, I have been. At least a lot more practical than I’ve ever been before.”

“Is it true that you had sex with two of the new British vampires at Guilty Pleasures last night?”

“My, my, the rumor mill does grind fast.”

He relaxed, some tension going out of him. “Then it was just a rumor.”

I sighed, and was getting tired of doing that, but it seemed like Richard just brought it out in me. “Half true.”

“Which half?” he asked.

I didn’t like the look on his face. It wasn’t angry exactly, which should have been an improvement, but it wasn’t neutral either. “One vampire, not two.” I shook my head. “But you know what? I don’t think I owe you an explanation, Richard. I don’t keep track of the swath you’re cutting through your own pack, and Verne’s pack when you’re in Tennessee.”

He was looking at me, studying my face, as if he was trying to figure out what I was hiding. “If you weren’t ashamed of it, then you’d just tell me.”

“Richard, you aren’t my dad, or my boyfriend. I don’t owe you an explanation about who I do, or don’t, sleep with.”

“You slept with Nathaniel for four months before you had sex with him. What changed? Why these two vampires, why now? I heard it was a hell of a show last night, what the hell happened?”

“Are you asking from some macho possessiveness?”

“No, as the third of your triumverate. Or should I say, one of your triumverates?”

As the third of our triumverate he had a right to know how close we’d come to losing control of Primo and some other choice bits. He had helped me last night, even if it had gone wrong, he’d tried. He’d really tried.

I sat down on the edge of the bed, and he sat on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest, while I gave him a thumbnail sketch of the near disaster and an edited version of what I’d done to help Jean-Claude feed. I didn’t leave much out, I just didn’t elaborate.

“I can’t believe you fucked Byron. I didn’t even think he liked girls.”

“He took one for the team,” I said, and tried to keep the irony in my voice to a minimum.

He actually blushed. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, if I was shopping for men for you among the new vampires, he wouldn’t have been high on my list.”

“Truthfully, he’s not high on mine. I mean he’s a nice enough guy, but as a friend, not as more.”

“Then, why?”

“He was the person that was there, Richard. If I accidentally sucked someone’s soul out through their mouth, Jean-Claude thought I’d be less cut up if it was Byron and not Nathaniel.”

“Is Primo like some kind of Trojan horse?” he asked, and him asking that made me think better of him, lots better. It was a very good question.

“You mean did the Dragon let Jean-Claude have Primo so she could try and take over here?”

“Or just cause enough destruction that Jean-Claude got up on charges. Or his business was ruined, something. From what Jean-Claude’s been hearing from Europe, the council isn’t too happy with him.”

It must have shown on my face, because Richard said, out loud, “I have been paying attention Anita.”

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I didn’t think you had.”

“I admit I wasn’t before, maybe like a month before, but I am now. I told you, I’ve decided to live and not die by inches. That means I’ve got to pay attention to business, and I may not like it. I may hate it, but being part of this triumverate is business.”

“I don’t know about Primo. He might be, as you so aptly put it, a Trojan horse. I left one of the wererats on guard outside his coffin. I gave orders that if Primo breaks out, he’s to be killed. No third chances, because he’s already on his second.”

“Why would Jean-Claude bring in something that dangerous?”

“I saw Primo fight, and I saw him heal more damage than any vampire I’ve ever seen heal. It was impressive. We’ve got a lot of powerful vamps, but most of them are Belle’s line, and that runs high to beauty, seduction, which is great for the clubs. I mean we have some really choice people to strip and to dance with the tourists at Danse Macabre, but if we had a war, a real war, then we have almost no soldiers.”

“You have the wolves,” he said, “and through two treaties, the wererats.”

“Yeah, but it’s unusual to have such close ties with other groups. Vamps scouting us for takeover won’t count beyond the wolves. It won’t occur to most of them that a treaty with an animal that isn’t the master’s to call will come through when the going gets tough.”

“So you approve of Primo being here?”

“No, definitely not, not after last night. I think we should shoot his ass, but I understand why Jean-Claude took the chance. We need some vamps that can fight, not just look pretty.” As if on cue, the door opened, and it was my favorite pretty vampire.

56

WE BOTH TURNED to look at the door, though my turn was less turny than Richard’s. Jean-Claude was in the doorway wearing the black robe I was so fond of. The one that was edged with real black fur at the lapels, and framed his pale chest so nicely. His long black curls had been combed out, so that he looked fresh and lovely. I still needed a shower. Oh, well.

“I didn’t feel you wake. I always feel you wake.”

“You are both shielding very, very hard,” he said, as he strode into the room. His bare feet were very pale against the dark carpet. “I heard your last comment, ma petite, should I take it as an insult?”

“Sorry, but we need soldiers not seducers. We’ve got plenty of those.”

He gave that wonderful Gallic shrug that meant everything and nothing. It was a graceful movement. Sometimes I wondered if shrug was the right word. If what American’s do is a shrug, whatever Jean-Claude did wasn’t the same.

“I told your Nathaniel to go and feed his new and surprising form. He will be even more popular when the ladies see this new shape of his.” He was being very pleasant, very casual. His face held a smile, and his movements were graceful and a little flamboyant. He was hiding something. I’d learned long ago that this wasn’t the real Jean-Claude. This was one of his many faces that he used when reality would be too harsh, or too shocking, or too something.

“What’s up, Jean-Claude?”

“Whatever do you mean, ma petite?” he asked, and came to sit down on part of the bed near me. Part that I’d removed the sheets from, so we were sitting on the relatively clean mattress. The bed bobbed unevenly as he settled on it. He looked at Richard, as the bed moved oddly. “I think you are going to owe my pomme de sang a bed frame, Richard.”

Richard actually had the grace to look embarrassed. “I lost my temper, I am sorry for that. I’ll replace the frame.”

“Good,” he crossed his legs, one a little higher than it needed to be, so he could lace his hands around the knee, and expose a line of pale leg. Was he flirting. No, that wasn’t it.

It wasn’t me who said the next part, but it was like my thoughts came out Richard’s mouth—scary. “Cut the act, Jean-Claude, just tell us what’s happened now?”

The face he gave us was way too innocent. “Whatever do you mean, mon ami?”

Richard and I exchanged glances that said worlds. Richard spoke for us. “No games, Jean-Claude, remember.”

“You are beginning to sound painfully like ma petite.”

“Thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

That earned him a smile and a nod from me.

Richard smiled at me, and it was the first real smile I’d seen on him since he stepped into the room. It was good to see it, and I found that I had one of my own to give back. There, we were all being friendly.

“You’re doing your flamboyant, happy, casual act,” I said. “Cut the act, and tell us what’s up.”

“You do realize, ma petite, that Richard has become almost as blunt at times as you are.”

“And I’m starting to have moments when I sound like you, Jean-Claude. Let me guess, the closer binding last night has had some interesting side effects.”

“Not just us being closer, ma petite, but you’re binding of a new triumverate to you. That has upped the side effects, I believe.” His face was still lovely, but the nearly pretentious movements were fading, changing to a seriousness that I didn’t like seeing. He wasn’t happy about something. I didn’t know what it was, but it had to be something that he either thought both, or at least one of us, really wouldn’t like.

He started by confessing that my being willing to do Byron and feed Requiem was probably his less-finicky tastes coming out through me. I stopped him before he got through it. “If I hadn’t fed on Byron and Requiem, you wouldn’t have had enough energy to control Primo. He would have slaughtered the audience. My virtue versus the lives of dozens of people, hmm, let me think.” I shrugged. “It’s okay, though I’d rather not make a habit of it.”

“You surprise me, ma petite.” But he relaxed against the bed. His posture was still perfect, a lot of the old vamps had good posture, but it was more relaxed all the same.

“I’ve learned that a little sex isn’t a fate worse than death, Jean-Claude.”

“Is that all?” Richard said. “Or is there more that you’d rather we don’t know, but feel that we need to know?”

“See, see, he is like you now. Two of you, I do not know if I can—”

“Just tell us,” I said.

He gave me a small frown. “You seem to have figured out that we are mixing and mingling our abilities in more than just a metaphysical way. I do not know all we will gain, or lose, depending on how one looks at it, only that it is happening.”

“I think that Nathaniel and I traded a little dominance and submission.” I saw the look on Richard’s face, and added, “I mean that ever since we became a triumverate, Nathaniel seems a little more dominant, and I seem to enjoy being a little more submissive. Admittedly, Nathaniel was trying to be more dominant before, but he really seems to be taking to it.” Saying it made me want to squirm with discomfort, but I fought it off. I’d be damned if I’d apologize even by a gesture. I’m nothing if not defiant, especially if I’m uncomfortable.

“Then, apparently, we can expect a mingling of our basic personalities, as well,” Jean-Claude said, and he tried for casual and failed.

“This could get really strange,” I said, and it was my turn to draw my knees up to my chest, though for Richard, I think it had been comfortable, for me it was comforting myself.

“Is that all the bad news?” Richard asked, and looked directly at him.

“I do not see it as bad news, mon ami, but the two of you might.”

“Spill it,” I said, knees hugged to my chest.

“You have turned my pomme de sang into his animal form, one of them anyway. I, like you until recently, prefer my food without fur.”

I did my best not to look at Richard. “Who did you have in mind?”

“Requiem told me of the amount of blood you lost last night, ma petite. I think it is wiser if you do not donate more quite so soon.”

I heard Richard’s sigh from where I was sitting, and he wasn’t sitting that close to me. “I would say it’s always me, but it’s usually not. I know that Anita isn’t your regular feed, but I know she lets you feed.” He put his face against his knees and sighed again. “Fine, but only if Anita is here, too. No just you and me.”

“Define Anita being with us?”

“That’s not what I said,” Richard said.

“Is that not what you meant?” Jean-Claude asked.

Richard seemed to think about it for a second, then gave a small nod. “I guess it is, but hearing you say it, it seems—”

“I’ll second Jean-Claude’s question, define me being with you guys.”

Richard blushed. He didn’t blush often, and this was two in one conversation. “I don’t mean it the way you make it sound.”

“Then tell us how you do mean it, mon ami.”

“I don’t want. I mean . . .” he made that sound again, wordless, frustrated. “Why is it that every time I do anything that includes both of you, I always end up feeling like I’m wrong?”

I made one of those mental leaps, because I was remembering Richard’s problem with everyone thinking he was, or had been, doing Jean-Claude. I decided to rescue him. He was, afterall, going to open a vein for Jean-Claude. That deserved some consideration, considering that his rules about feeding vamps used to be the same as mine. Richard was still trying to explain, and failing.

“Look, I understand what Richard is trying to say.”

They both looked at me. Richard doubtful, and Jean-Claude amused, as if he, too, understood Richard’s discomfort, but couldn’t afford to let the other man see that he saw it. Or maybe something else amused him, you never can tell with Jean-Claude.

“You don’t want it to be just the two of you when Jean-Claude feeds,” I said.

Richard looked relieved, and nodded.

I did not say out loud, no you’re not homophobic, because if Richard wasn’t as comfortable with having another man touch him, then he was entitled. I’d never fed a female vamp voluntarily, so who was I to bitch?

Jean-Claude’s smile deepened just a touch. “And why is it such a problem for it to be just the two of us?”

I gave Jean-Claude a dirty look, and Richard was back to not knowing how to explain. “Jean-Claude, you know the old American saying, about not looking a gift horse in the mouth?”

“Oui.”

“You’re checking this one’s teeth.”

He laughed, that touchable laugh, which, even through the hardest shielding I had, made me shiver, and not from fear. I caught Richard’s movement out of the corner of my eye. He’d shivered, too. For the first time, I wondered how much of Jean-Claude’s abilities worked on Richard. I was terribly heterosexual, and sometimes I just didn’t think outside that box. Richard didn’t like boys, so Jean-Claude didn’t affect him the way he did me. That’s what I’d believed, now I wondered if Richard had more problems with Jean-Claude than I’d thought. If you were terribly hetero, but Jean-Claude’s powers could affect you, you had a problem if you were a man. The fact that it had never occurred to me before, proved beyond a doubt that sometimes I just wasn’t bright about the men around me.

“But before we get up close, I’ve got to get this stuff off of me. It’s flaking, and I just don’t feel clean.”

“That would give us time to have the sheets changed, perhaps,” Jean-Claude said. He touched the drying, caked sheets. “I have never seen a bed where more than one lycanthrope has shifted. It is, how do you say, a mess.”

His English was better than that, even for slang. He was back to being pleased with himself, and I didn’t know why. If I dropped shields enough for him to talk inside my head, I’d also have more of Richard in my head. I didn’t want that, so I’d have to ask him later, or I’d figure it out. Whatever.

“I’ll make the shower quick,” I said, and started for the far door.

“If it was him going into the shower,” Richard jerked a thumb at Jean-Claude, “I wouldn’t believe quick, but you I’ll believe.”

That one comment made me wonder how much time Richard had spent with Jean-Claude when I wasn’t around. I didn’t say it out loud, though, I am getting smarter. Richard was uncomfortable enough with Jean-Claude. I didn’t need to add to it.

“We will be here when you are finished, ma petite. Hopefully with the bed in better order.” He was standing looking down at it, as if he wasn’t sure it could really be fixed.

“Why not use your room?” Richard asked.

“Asher is in my bed. Now he is dead, and ma petite finds that disturbing. If he woke in the middle of the feeding, I think you, Richard, would find it disturbing.”

Richard stood and just huddled in his jean jacket. “Disturbing. You could call it that.” He didn’t sound happy, and I wondered if there was some incident between him and Asher I should know about. Probably not. None of my business.

I had to walk back to the bed and hunt for my holstered gun underneath the pillows. I sort of waved it at them both. “I wouldn’t want this thrown down the laundry chute.”

Jean-Claude waved me toward the bathroom. “Go, shower, ma petite, we will be ready if you are not too quick.”

“We” will be ready, he’d said. Didn’t I have enough “wes” in my life? I went for the shower and left them debating on whether the bed would hold, or whether it would be safer to simply remove the frame entirely. It wasn’t until I closed the door behind me that I thought to wonder why we needed the bed. Jean-Claude could feed on Richard kneeling on the floor, couldn’t he? If this was my first chance to touch both men at the same time in months, then I preferred not to be covered in drying goop. But once I was clean, we could still all do it on the floor. We didn’t need the bed.

I thought about going back out and telling them that, but didn’t. No matter what else, they were both still men, and men feel better when they have something to do. They could straighten the bed and sheets and get everything all neat and tidy. It would keep them from having any more of those awkward silences. Or, that was the hope.

57

WHEN I STEPPED out of the shower, my black robe was hanging on the back of the door. How had I not seen that, or heard it? If Jean-Claude could do that while I was in the shower, and me have no hint, then I was shielding too tight. In shielding this hard, I was losing some of my awareness of my surroundings. Not good.

I dried off, wrapped a towel around my hair, and put the robe on. I’d have given a great deal for clean underwear, but hell, if I tied the sash tight and the little string tighter, the robe didn’t gap. I checked that nothing showed in the mirror but a little upper chest, very proper. I’d washed away all the makeup. I looked pale and clean, and, with my hair up in a pale blue towel, I looked sort of too pale, almost sickly. I started to take the towel down, because I knew I looked good in the robe with my hair down, wet, or not. But I resisted the urge. First, my hair was too wet, and silk doesn’t like being wet. Second, I had only one boyfriend in the other room, not two. I wasn’t trying to look my best, just help Richard not have a fit about letting Jean-Claude touch him.

I looked at my face, my eyes so dark, and wondered if I could admit, even to myself, that I still cared that Richard thought I was attractive. Yeah, to myself, I could say it, but I left the towel on.

They were arguing about candles when I came out. Jean-Claude had had some brought in for the bedside tables, and Richard was saying, “We don’t need candles, Jean-Claude. You’re just feeding. That’s it.”

“I vote with Richard. We don’t need candles.”

“The two of you are not romantics.”

“This isn’t about romance, it’s about food,” I said.

Richard motioned to me. “See, Anita agrees with me.”

“Of course, she does, mon ami.” Jean-Claude didn’t sound too put out, he still had that cat-who-ate-the-cream sound to his voice.

The mattress and box springs sat on the floor, covered in new, bloodred sheets. Even the pillowcases had been changed, so that the bed shimmered scarlet in the subdued light. The bed frame being gone probably explained why Richard had removed his jean jacket and was just in an olive green T-shirt.

“I had not realized how dark Jason’s room is,” Jean-Claude was saying. “I have no extra places to put lamps, but we could have more light with candles. I would prefer a romantic reason, but in truth, it is simple practicality. I would like more light.”

“You’re a vampire,” Richard said, “you see in the dark better than I do.”

“True, but if you were allowed to touch someone who rarely allows you to touch them in any intimate fashion, would you not wish light to see what you are doing?” He gave Richard a look, then his eyes slid past him to me. It was a quick look, but Richard followed it, and suddenly he didn’t seem to know what to do with his face, so he turned it back toward the other man.

“Have I missed something here?” I asked, “or am I about to miss something?”

“You miss very little, ma petite.”

“Candles are fine,” Richard said, still not looking at me.

I was shaking my head, but I felt a small touch against my skin. I knew that touch. I dropped the tiniest edge of my shields. Jean-Claude’s voice blew through me like a caressing wind. “Does it mean nothing to you, ma petite, that the mere sight of you in your robe has changed Richard’s mind?”

I shook my head and tried to answer back as silently as he did. I still wasn’t great at it. What I tried to think back was, “Me in this robe with this towel, is not worth him changing his mind.”

“You still do not value yourself, as we value you, ma petite.”

There was that “we” again. I started to open my mouth, to add something out loud, when a warm rush of energy danced through my body. It stopped me in midstep. “Talking in someone’s head, when the other person isn’t allowed into the conversation is rude,” Richard said. “It’s like whispering and pointing.”

I couldn’t argue it, but wanted to. “Trust me, Richard, it’s not worth repeating.”

“I’d like a chance to be the judge of that,” he said.

I sighed, for what felt like the thousandth time today. What had I been thinking? I should have told Jean-Claude that we didn’t need the bed, that Richard could kneel down and he could just feed. Voilà, and we’d be done with it.

Richard took off his T-shirt. “It’s too pale, if you get blood on it, it looks like blood.” He explained it out loud, and it made sense, but I was glad he wasn’t looking at me when he pulled the shirt off, because seeing him shirtless had its usual effect. I’d said before that the day I could walk into a room and not have my body react to Richard, I knew it was over between us. But hormones are traitorous little bastards. They don’t care how broken your heart is, only that there’s an attractive man in the room. Shit.

Jean-Claude was moving from candle to candle with one of those long battery-operated lighters. I could never get them to light. He moved effortlessly, from candle to candle, the other hand holding the draping sleeve of his robe back out of reach of the flame.

Richard sat down on the corner of the bed. His blue jeans and the solid line of his black belt looked fine against the red sheets. His tanned upper body looked better, and as if he’d heard me think it, he lay back against the sheets, not flat, but propped on his elbows, so that the shimmering scarlet framed his muscular upper body. There were tiny folds in his stomach, like there are on real people, unless they have washboard abs, and Richard had better things to do with his time than do that many sit-ups. His stomach was flat and perfect, but perfect doesn’t mean perfectly flat. Lines are flat, people had curves and bumps and places to explore.

Richard turned his head and looked at me. His face wasn’t neutral anymore. His dark eyes held heat, and it wasn’t his beast, or at least not just that. It was a look I’d seen before, a look that said he knew exactly the effect he had on me, and enjoyed it. Of late, that look had been to tell me, I know you think I’m gorgeous, and you don’t get to touch this anymore. Now, I wasn’t sure what the look meant, but I didn’t like it.

Jean-Claude moved to the other side of the bed, his tall, black-robed figure breaking Richard’s and my stare. When Jean-Claude cleared the way, though, Richard had pulled himself farther onto the bed, so that his legs were no longer touching the floor. So that all six feet one of him was on the bed, framed by sheets the color of fresh blood, and the flickering light of candles.

My mouth was dry. Not good. “I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “You guys don’t need me, not really.” My voice sounded breathy.

Jean-Claude turned from lighting the last candle. He smoothed the sleeves of his robe down around his long-fingered hands, and stood looking at me. His eyes glittered like dark sapphires, catching the flickering light in a way that human eyes just didn’t. “Ah, but we do, ma petite. We most certainly do. You are the bridge between us. You are the third of our power. Does that sound like someone we do not really need?”

“I don’t mean like forever, just not now, not here. I mean, you can feed without me here. You can . . .” I was having trouble concentrating.

Richard rolled over onto his stomach, and he did a little head movement that showed me that his hair had grown out just enough to fall a little forward around his face. Not long, but thicker than I’d thought. The candlelight didn’t dance on his jeans, but Richard’s body in tight jeans didn’t need anything else, it was sort of self-explanatory.

“I’m going now. I’m leaving now. Yep, that’s what I’m doing.” I was babbling, and I couldn’t stop it. But I did start for the door, so many points for me that I can’t count that high.

Jean-Claude called, “Ma petite, do not go, please.”

I turned back, and I don’t know what I would have said, because he’d sat down on the bed, but he’d done something to the top of his robe, so that it gapped, and I could see almost his entire chest framed by the black fur of the lapels. The burn scar looked very black against the white of his skin and the shimmering black of the fur. His nipples were palest pink, and from that alone, I’d have known he hadn’t fed. His hand touched his chest, as if he knew where I was looking. The hand moved down, and so did my gaze, so that I looked at the flat line of his stomach, the line of dark hair that started just below his navel, and swept down to vanish into the shadow of the robe. I had an almost irresistible urge to go over there and rip open the sash and see his body pale and perfect against the dark of the robe and the crimson sheets. I knew just how he’d look against it all, because I’d seen it before. That thought moved my gaze to Richard, because I’d never seen him against red silk. I’d never seen him by candlelight.

He rolled onto his side as I watched, propped up on one elbow, one arm slung low across his hips, as if to bring my attention to his jeans and what I knew was in them. But no, Richard wasn’t that aware of his body, at least not for seduction. It was something Jean-Claude would have done, not Richard. Then I had one of those horrible thoughts. What if one of the things that Richard had gained with the tighter binding of the marks was some of Jean-Claude’s skill at seduction. Oh, that just wouldn’t be fair.

I closed my eyes and started for the door again. It was better if I couldn’t see either of them. Jean-Claude called, “Ma petite, you are going to hit the wall.”

I stopped abruptly and opened my eyes, and was inches away from the wall. The door was about two feet to my left. Great, just great.

“Ma petite, do not leave us.” His voice crawled through the tiny hole I’d made in my shields for him. It crawled inside and played along my skin, made me shiver, and God help me, I turned back and looked. Stupid me.

Jean-Claude had crawled up on the bed, near the pillows. He was lying full length across the red silk, with the robe gaping open, barely covering anything. His white, white shoulder was framed at the top with scarlet silk. His long legs spilled half in the black robe and half on the scarlet of the sheets. Only the barest fringe of fur covered his hips.

Richard was still on his side. They were lying in almost identical positions, except that Richard’s head was pointing away from the door, and Jean-Claude was angled toward it.

“This isn’t fair,” I said. “Not both of you, not at the same time.”

“Whatever do you mean, ma petite?” But he looked entirely too pleased with himself to really need to ask.

“You bastard, you knew.”

“I knew nothing, but one lives in hope.”

I was having trouble breathing, or rather breathing nice even breaths. I was shaking my head, and the towel started coming unwound. I caught it, and stood there with it in my hands. The cloth was wet and cold. I was shivering, but it was only partly from the wet hair sliding down my neck.

“Richard, you are getting your shoes on the silk sheets. Has no one taught you that you do not wear hiking boots on silk?” He didn’t even try to make it sound real, it was teasing, but it wasn’t Richard he was teasing.

Richard just sat up, bunching his stomach muscles nicely, and put one foot on his jeans and began to unlace the short boots. He didn’t look at me while he did it, but he knew I was watching.

I needed to leave now. I really did. I knew that, but somehow I was still standing there when Richard threw his first boot onto the floor. The sound made me jump.

He watched me while he took off the other boot, or watched me, watch him. I felt like one of those little birds that they say are fascinated with the snake’s movements. So pretty, so sinuous, so dangerous. He was just taking off his shoes, damn it. It shouldn’t have meant this much to me, hell, to anyone.

When both boots had been thrown to the floor, he took off his thick socks without any prompting from anyone. He lay back on the bed on his stomach with his feet naked against the sheets. He watched me over his shoulder with that wave of hair barely curling around his eye. The look managed to be both coy and knowledgeable. Like a fallen angel, innocence and the promise of sin, all in one look. It was a very good look.

It was not a look I’d ever thought to see on Richard’s face. It didn’t seem very much like him. “How much of this is you, Richard, and how much of it is him?”

He lay flat on the silk and rolled over onto his back in a movement that was doglike and catlike at the same time. Or maybe I’m just prejudiced that dogs don’t move with that same liquid grace when they writhe on their backs. He stretched his arms over his head, stretched his whole, long body out from toes to fingertips, stretched until his body shook with the effort, then he relaxed against the bed. He laid his hands across his stomach and smiled at me with that same mix of innocent sin.

“I’m not sure,” he said in a voice that was thicker than it should have been this early in.

“Doesn’t that scare you?” I asked, and my voice was breathy for a different reason now.

Richard frowned, just a little between those dark, dark brown eyes. Then he shook his head. “I’m not scared, in fact I feel calmer than I’ve felt in days.”

I looked past him to Jean-Claude, who had laid back against the mound of pillows so that the crimson of the sheets framed his black curls perfectly.

“Oh, stop being so damned picturesque. You’re messing with his mind.”

“Not really.”

“What does ‘not really’ mean?”

“I mean that I did not mean to do it. I am still adapting to this new power level, too, ma petite. I was worried for you earlier today. I was afraid what would happen with Nathaniel and Damian. I thought, I wish she was not so afraid of Nathaniel and what he wants from her. I swear to you that is all I thought, nothing more, but today I find that you have crossed several lines with him that you swore never to cross.”

“Are you saying you made me do it?”

“Non, ma petite. I am saying I wished you to be less afraid of what you wanted, and you were. I did not realize that it could possibly have had an effect upon you, until just moments ago, when I simply thought, I wish Richard was not so afraid of what he wants, and now he is not.”

“Did you hear all that, Richard? He’s using vamp powers on you.”

Richard gave me a lazy smile. “I feel calmer, less afraid, less conflicted. I hadn’t realized how bad I was still feeling until now.”

“Fine, I’m afraid enough for both of us, if you really did mess with me earlier today, then why am I about to walk out of this room?”

“I thought merely that I wished you would be less afraid of what you wanted from Nathaniel, and what Nathaniel wanted from you. I was not so specific with our Richard.”

“You wondered if it worked the first time, so you tried it again, and violà, you have your empirical evidence, because it worked twice.”

“Perhaps, or perhaps it is merely coincidence. It will take us weeks, or months, to decipher what is true power and what is simply all of us coming to terms with ourselves.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, at all. “I can’t do this.”

“Why ever not?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Because, once I would have given nearly anything to have you both like this. I need to know what this means.”

Richard sat up enough to prop himself on his elbows. “You said it yourself, Anita, you’re already dating Jean-Claude and Asher, and living with Micah and Nathaniel. You said that the thought of a man on either side of you ‘just flat does it’ for you. What’s one more pair?”

I glared at Jean-Claude. “Do you have like some metaphysical fist up his ass, like he’s some kind of ventriloquist dummy, because that doesn’t sound like him. That sounds like you.”

“Don’t talk to him, when you want to talk to me,” Richard said. He sat up, and the sleepy smile was gone. “Does it bother me that you’re with Micah and Nathaniel and Jean-Claude and Asher? Hell, yes. Does it bother you that I’m with Clair and half a dozen women in my pack?” He looked at me when he said it. I looked back. He finally said, “That was a question, Anita, can I have an answer?”

“Yeah, it bothered me to see Clair, and to meet your girlfriend for the first time, while I was nude. Yes, that was a special treat. I try to know as little about your personal life with the ladies of your pack as possible, so the rest, I didn’t know about.”

“I felt how much you wanted me earlier at your house, and you know how I felt about you. So let’s not pretend anymore about that.”

I hadn’t known we were pretending, but I didn’t say it out loud. “I don’t know what you mean by that, Richard.”

“It means we both want to be able to touch each other again. You fucked Byron for God’s sake. Why are you okay with doing him, and not about this—us?” He motioned as if taking in the whole bed. I didn’t think the “us” meant him and me. For the first time from Richard, I was pretty sure that he was talking about him and Jean-Claude.

I clutched the cold towel and tried to say out loud something that made sense. “I’m not”—change that—“Byron was emergency food. Once upon a time, I thought you and I were going to be it for each other. When you dumped me, it broke me up. Touching you is still not like touching other people for me.”

“I feel the same way. You know I do,” he said.

“I know you want me, but I also know that you’ll be ashamed later. When Jean-Claude isn’t there to calm your fears, you’ll start to drown in them again.” I laughed. “God, for the first time I understand what Asher was saying about me and the ardeur. I don’t want this to be a good time now, then we go back to cutting each other up. I couldn’t bear it.” There, that was the truth. I had a glimmer for the first time why some people do casual sex with people they don’t care about. If you don’t care, and it goes horribly wrong, it’s not that important.

“I don’t want us to keep cutting each other up, either, Anita. I really don’t.” He rolled to the edge of the bed and stood up. The dozen or more candles painted his upper body in shadow and light. I missed the thick fall of his hair around his shoulders, but it was still Richard. Still the man who had come closest to making me try for the picket fence, and the two-point-five kids. “You still need at least one more daytime feed.”

The topic change was too quick for me. I pressed myself against the door, so that the doorknob was in reach. If I had to run for it, I wanted to hit the door, not the wall. “Yes, though I found out that I can feed on human form, then feed again on the animal form, and it’s like two different feeds.”

Jean-Claude crawled closer to the end of the bed, the robe more framing his body like lingerie than hiding anything. “So in effect, you now have four daytime feeds, yes?”

“Sort of, right now Nathaniel and I are estimating I need to feed the ardeur about every six hours, or I start draining Damian’s life energy. Since I can’t feed on the same person everyday, that still leaves me short.”

“It may leave us, as you say, short, at night even. You’d fought to push your feedings to every twelve hours.”

“I don’t know, Jean-Claude, but I seem to need to feed more often.”

“You are the energy for your new trimuverate. It takes energy to maintain it.”

Richard turned and looked at the other man. “Are you saying that Anita and I drain energy from you?” He turned back to me before he got his answer, and the look on his face said he wasn’t happy with the show Jean-Claude was putting on.

“Not precisely, but in a way, oui. All power comes with a price, Richard, and that price can be high.”

“I think until I understand how to distribute the power among the three of us, that it’s every six hours. I hadn’t thought about the fact that only you and Asher feed me at night. Shit.” I said the last with feeling.

“You have Damian now,” Richard said. “Won’t three be enough?”

I looked at him, tried to see jealousy, or anger, but he seemed to have offered it as simply a fact. “I don’t know, maybe.”

“I trust ma petite to control what she can,” Jean-Claude said, nearly from the end of the bed, the robe sliding over his upper body until almost everything above the still-tied sash was naked to light. There was something about the way his body caught the flames, shining and pale, almost unreal, as if he were some kind of living work of art, that you would touch and he would fade, too beautiful to be real.

Richard snapped his fingers, and the sharp noise brought my attention back to him. He was frowning. “Are you actually turning me down?”

This was too hard a question for me. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see either of them. “Not exactly, but I need to know what to expect, Richard. I need to know what this changes.”

“Every third day or so, I come to your house, and you feed the ardeur.”

I opened my eyes then. “Just a little sex, and that’s it.”

“What do you want from me, Anita?”

I pushed away from the door, because now I was getting angry. “Not dating, just fuck-buddies, is that it?”

“You’re living with two men now, I don’t think there’s room for me in your life.”

What I wanted to say was, if you can just fuck me and nothing else, then we were never really in love. What I said out loud was, “It’s not just the sex I miss, Richard. I miss weekend movie marathons. I miss going places with you. I miss you, not just your body, Richard.” I almost kept the next part to myself, but I had to know. It was time. “Do you miss me, Richard, or just my body?”

I managed to make it neutral, very neutral. Brownie points for me.

He looked down, and emotions fought across his face. His power flared like a warm wind, then died down. When he looked at me, there was pain and anger in his eyes. “You’re the one who said it first, Anita. We don’t work as each other’s one and only. I’m working hard to accept my life as it is, but I can’t live like you do. I still want one woman to be my forever person. I still want marriage, and maybe kids. I want a life, Anita. I know now that I can’t have what I want with you.” He reached out toward me, then his hands curled into fists. “But I miss you. Not just the sex. I miss the smell of you on my pillow, on my skin. I owe you an apology. When everything happened in Tennessee, I blamed my beast first, then I blamed you. It took six weeks of therapy to get me to see that I was pissed at you for saving my mother and brother when I couldn’t do it.”

“You would have given your life to save them,” I said.

“Yes, but then we’d all be dead.” It wasn’t just pain in his eyes, it was anguish. The kind of emotion that eats you up and spits you back out. “You did horrible things, Anita, horrible things to find out where they were in time. You tortured a man, cut him up to get the information. I couldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have let anyone do it in front of me. It wasn’t just that you saved them and I didn’t, it was when I heard all that happened, I realized that even if I’d been there with you, they would have died. My mother and Daniel would have died because I wouldn’t have let you do what was necessary to save them.”

I just looked at him, because I couldn’t think of anything good to say. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done in Tennessee, not all of it anyway, but I didn’t regret any of it, because to save Charlotte and Daniel, I would have done worse. My only true regret had been that I didn’t get there before they were raped and tortured. I would go to my grave regretting that part, because I’d seen Charlotte break into tears in her kitchen. She would say, “I don’t know why I’m crying. So silly.” It wasn’t silly, and I’d recommended a good therapist I knew. The one I usually recommended to people wanting to join the Church of Eternal life, as a forever member.

“You’re the Bolverk for my pack. The evildoer, the one who does what the Ulfric won’t, or can’t do. Raina was Bolverk for Marcus.”

“Yeah,” I said. See, I could still talk, but I still didn’t have anything good to say.

“I want the white picket fence, Anita, and I know you don’t.”

“It’s not that I don’t want it, Richard, it’s that it’s too late for me. My life won’t fit in that picture.”

He nodded. “I know, and maybe mine won’t either, but I still want to try. There are Ulfrics that have a wife and family separate from the pack. I’ve been trying to find a new lupa for the pack, and no one measures up. No one is you.”

I was back to not knowing what to say, so I said nothing. I rarely got in trouble keeping my mouth shut.

“I think the reason your beast got out of control today is that you’ve been spending too much time with just one animal. I think if you have personal contact with something besides leopards that your beast will go back to being just amorphous, more metaphysics than physical. I want your permission to send some of the wolves over to bunk with you.”

“Richard—”

“I don’t mean fuck them, but sleep with them. Or take some wererats home, pick an animal, but if your power only touches leopards, it’s going to think it’s a leopard.”

“And you’re one of the wolves that will be stopping by?” I couldn’t keep the irony and the unhappiness out of my voice.

“I don’t mean it to be casual, Anita. I mean, be our lupa. Bring the leopards with you, and they can hunt with us on the full moon.”

“I’ll be your lupa, which means, what? What changes?”

“We’re a couple within the lycanthrope community. You’ll have more contact with my wolves outside of just crisis situations. Micah has really been working his tail off helping everybody out. We need at least one other person full time on the hotline. He’s running himself ragged.”

“I didn’t know you were keeping track.”

“I’m trying to pay attention, Anita. I’m trying to see what’s there, not what I want to be there. I couldn’t share you the way Micah shares you with Nathaniel, not everyday, every night. I don’t think I could tolerate you dating Jean-Claude and Asher. I certainly wouldn’t be able to play blood donor on as regular a basis as Micah and Nathaniel do.”

I just blinked at him, because this was a talk I never thought I’d have with Richard. It was way too logical. “I agree with everything you said in that last bit. But it doesn’t change anything, does it?”

“I felt the power of your triumverate with Damian and Nathaniel. Damian’s not a master, and Nathaniel is no Nimir-Raj, but the three of you together are an amazing amount of power. What would we be, the three of us, if we did this right? If we did this the way it was meant to be done?”

“That so doesn’t sound like you,” I said.

“Tell me you haven’t thought about it since you did the other triumverate?”

I couldn’t in all honesty, so I didn’t try. “I felt what Jean-Claude and I could do at his club when Primo got out of control. I felt what Jean-Claude could do when I let him feed the ardeur in a way that was closer to a full feeding with other women. So, yeah, I thought about it, sort of.”

“You said it yourself, Anita, we don’t have enough soldiers. We need to look strong and not just for the vampires that might want this terriotory. Our pack has a bad rep, thanks to me, and Raina and Marcus before me. My reputation is shit among the other Ulfrics. They think I’m weak, and I’ve had some scouts from other territories that have too many dominants and not enough land. So far our pack is so screwed up that they leave without a challenge. No one wants the mess I’ve made of it. But as I get a better handle on my wolves, that may change. If we all joined together the way you and Jean-Claude did last night, if we were really a triumverate of power, no one would touch us, Anita, no one would dare.”

It was almost a direct quote from something I’d thought earlier. I looked past him to Jean-Claude. “We’re parroting what you’ve been thinking for months, aren’t we?”

He shrugged those lovely bare shoulders. “Oui, but I did not put the thoughts there, ma petite. I believe that both of you have come to the same conclusion at the same time. Is that so hard to believe?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I was tired. Tired of the games, tired of hurting, tired of being scared.

Richard lay back on the bed, one knee up, the other down, so that he looked winsome as hell against the red sheets. “I’m scared again, Anita. I don’t want everything we’re building to go down in flames, because we’re mad at each other. Let Jean-Claude take the edge off my fear. It felt great.”

I looked past him to the vampire who was still draped against the pillows. “Did you pull back from his mind?”

“Non, ma petite, he simply fought, a little, and I was cast out. Both of you have the power to thwart me if you wish to.”

“I don’t wish to,” Richard said, and that smile came back. It was lazy, and sleepy, and filled his eyes with that knowledgeable innocence again. I realized in that moment that it wasn’t Jean-Claude’s look, it was Richard if he wasn’t afraid, or angry, or conflicted. It was what he might be if he didn’t get in his own way all the time.

“Ma petite.” Jean-Claude raised his hand toward me. “Join us.”

I was shaking my head.

Richard reached out toward me, too. “You want to, you know you want to.”

“My life is as close to working as it ever has been, I don’t want that to go to wrack and ruin, either.”

“I’m not offering to go back to what we had, Anita. I understand that that won’t work for us. You are harder and more ruthless than I will ever be, and I can let you be that, but not if you’re my only sweetie. I need a little distance from the worst of it, so I can pretend a little. Not much, but just enough so I don’t lose my mind.” He snuggled back until his head was resting against Jean-Claude’s side. Jean-Claude was all black fur and velvet against white skin. His hair spilled around his naked upper body like a dark dream. He turned his head so he could look at Richard lying there. Richard was all tan and jeans, and seemed to burn with how very alive he was. They looked like they’d stepped out of two very different porno movies.

Jean-Claude looked up at me, and there was a pleading in his eyes. Without a word, he asked, “Please, ma petite, please do not spoil this.”

“No fourth mark,” I said.

“Agreed,” Jean-Claude said.

“For now,” Richard said.

I looked at him.

“Right now a lot of things seem like a good idea. No, don’t frown, Anita, if a little vampire magic can take the edge off my anxiety, I’m all for it. It works better than the pills the doctor gave me.”

“Lycanthropes’ bodies work too fast for most medicines to stay in the body long enough to help,” I said.

“I know,” Richard said, and he raised his head up just enough that he was resting directly on Jean-Claude’s bare back. It was probably just as well that he couldn’t see Jean-Claude’s face when that thick hair touched his skin. He probably wouldn’t have liked any man looking like that because of him.

“Come, ma petite, let us be a true triumverate at last. Be lupa in more than just name for Richard and his pack. Keep your living arrangements as they are, but allow Richard to visit.”

“While he keeps searching for Ms. Right among the human population.”

“You will have your men, and he will have his woman. It is fair, ma petite.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fairness of it. “I don’t know how I feel about all of this, some great, but others, I don’t know if I’ll be able to live like that.”

“We can but try,” Jean-Claude said.

Richard held his hand out to me. “Anita, please, please, if you leave, you know I won’t stay. You were able to let Jean-Claude get closer without me being there to buffer it, but I need you to help me.” He pushed up to his knees and held out his hand. “Please, Anita, I promise not to run, no matter how dark my fantasies get.”

“Just feeding for Jean-Claude and some slap and tickle?” I asked, and couldn’t help but sound suspicious.

Richard glanced back, and he and Jean-Claude had one of those rare guy moments. The looks they exchanged said plainly that that hadn’t been what they had in mind. Jean-Claude said, voice mild, “If that is all you wish from us, we can restrain ourselves.”

I closed my eyes. Was that all I wished from them? No. Was that all I could stand right now? Maybe. It was a wonderful offer. It seemed to fix most of the problems that we’d raised with the new power, so why was I still hesitant? “You know, finding a wife that would be okay with you sleeping with another woman isn’t going to be easy.”

“Nothing worth doing is easy,” Richard said, “and maybe I’ll find that the white picket fence isn’t for me, after all. All I know is that right now, right this moment, I know what I want, and what I want is you.”

A lot of women would have run to him, thrown their arms around him, and said something like, “Oh, Richard.” But that just wasn’t me. What I was thinking was that if Clair had been his little fuck-buddy, he wouldn’t be here now. He wouldn’t want me, now. I dropped the towel on the floor and was shaking my head. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

Richard was still holding his hand out to me. “Neither am I.”

“Then why are we doing it again?”

“Because we want to.”

“Doesn’t seem like a good enough reason.” But I moved, slowly, toward the bed.

“Because when I’m near you, all I can think about is the smell of your skin, and the way your hair spreads like black foam on my pillows. Because when I’m near you, all I can remember is how your body feels against mine. I have to be a bastard to you, so that I don’t fall down at your feet and beg you to take me back. Tell you that it wasn’t you I hated. It was me, and I’m sorry that I took that out on you. Sorrier than I can say. That you had the courage to make a life that worked for you, regardless of how far that life was from where you wanted it to be. Help me have the courage to do the same, Anita. Help me be who I am.” He moved his hands just a little closer to mine. His fingers brushed mine. I think I would have jerked away like you do when your skin brushes something so hot it will burn. But he grabbed my hands, wrapped them in the warmth of his hands. His hands that were so much bigger than mine, so that he could hide my hands in his, as if I were a child. I’d never really liked that about Richard. He was so much bigger than me, that sometimes I felt overwhelmed. Like now.

I’d learned a long time ago that if something sounds too good to be true, it is. If someone promises you everything your heart desires, they lie.

He drew me into the circle of his arms, so that the front of my body was pressed against his. He buried his face against my chest, still covered by silk, but the weight of his face against me made me close my eyes, and when I opened them, I was looking at Jean-Claude. He looked not at Richard’s bare back, but at me, at my face. I watched him be afraid. Be afraid that I’d say, no.

Richard rubbed his face against the silk, and his breath came through the cloth like something that should have burned, but it didn’t. It made me shiver as if I were cold, but held in the circle of his arms with his breath hot on my skin, I felt as if I would never be cold again. I couldn’t stop my hands from stroking his hair. Still woefully short, but thick and heavy, and just . . . Richard’s.

Jean-Claude was on his knees. He didn’t raise his hands, but he put the word please into his face, those eyes. His voice whispered through my head, “Ma petite, we endanger everyone that depends on us by this hesitation. Everything we have worked so hard to build hangs upon the next challenge to my power, or to Richard’s. If we do not embrace our power as a triumverate, there will come a night when someone sweeps over us and we will not prevail. The worst that could happen is not that Richard may come to your bed, then come no more, or that you may grow discontent with Micah and Nathaniel. The worst is that we are dead, and our people will be at the mercy of others that do not love them.” He held his hand out to me. “Come to us, ma petite, come to us, and let us build a fortress behind which our people, all of our people, may be safe.” That last he said out loud.

Richard raised his face enough to gaze up the line of my body. “Please, Anita, don’t punish everyone because I’ve been a bastard.”

Jean-Claude was close enough that I could have taken his hand, while Richard still held me in his arms. “Please, ma petite, if there is word or deed that would move you, I would say it, or do it. Tell me only what to say, or what to do, and it is yours.”

I took in a lot of air, and let it out slow. I reached out and let his fingers brush mine. He came that fraction closer so he could take my hand, and that was the deed. He took my hand, and I knew that nothing he’d whispered in my head had been a lie. What would I do to keep my leopards safe? Anything. What would I do to undo the damage that Richard had done to his wolves? Almost anything. What would I do to keep Jean-Claude’s vampires from being at the mercy of masters like Belle Morte? Anything.

A night of metaphysical, or not so metaphysical, sex, with one man that I loved and another man that kept breaking my heart, so I must love him, too, or he couldn’t keep doing that, seemed a small enough price. Or maybe I just wanted to be with them both in a bed for the first time. Yes, the first time, contrary to all the rumors. Maybe I feared the chance would never come again, and I simply didn’t want to be the one who said no. Maybe.

58

WE STAYED ON the corner of the bed, as if there was no more bed to use. I was still not sure it was a good idea. I think Richard was uncomfortable with Jean-Claude being in the bed. Jean-Claude was just being patient, biding his time, because he knew if he pushed, one of us would bolt. When Richard’s mouth first found mine, and I drank in the taste of him like some almost forgotten addiction, I thought I’d be the one to run screaming for the hills. But the third time Richard winced when Jean-Claude brushed his bare back, I began to think it wouldn’t be me that screwed this up.

He cursed in French, then said in English, “I put my hand on your shoulder to steady myself, nothing more. You are acting as if I am after your virtue. I assure you that I am after ma petite’s virtue, not yours.”

Richard sighed and looked down so that even sitting in his lap I couldn’t see his face. “You keep touching me.”

Jean-Claude made a sound low in his throat. “How am I to touch her, if she is in your lap, your arms, kissing you, without at the very least brushing your body with mine? I am not such a magician that I can share a woman with another man and never once touch the other man’s body.”

“Trust me, he hasn’t been doing much more than holding me,” I said. I touched Richard’s chin, and he let me raise his face up to me. I looked into those solid brown eyes, and all I saw was pain, confusion. “What’s wrong? You were the one who was all hot for this. You talked me into it, remember?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He pressed his forehead to my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

Jean-Claude and I stared at each other over his bent head. I asked the question with my expression, what the hell is going on? “Tell us what is wrong, mon ami, and we will try to help.”

“The last time I was in a bed with another man and a woman, it was Raina and Gabriel.”

I’d known that Raina had been his first lover, but that he’d ever let Gabriel touch him, that I had not known. I was so astounded that I was glad he couldn’t see my face. Raina had been bad enough, but both of them, at the same time. Uckies, uckies, uckies.

Raina’s munin was usually quiet behind its metaphysical cage bars, but my reaction gave her a tiny opening. Raina had behaved herself for so long, that it caught me off guard. Made me a little less quick to squash her back down, and protect us all. Or maybe it was the fact that I was touching one of her pack, one that she knew in every way.

I saw Gabriel like a technicolor ghost, with his black curls just long enough to touch his pale gray leopard eyes. The silver ring through his nipple glinted in the lamplight. I was lying back in the middle of a big bed, and Gabriel crawled from one side, and Richard crawled from the other, both moving in that graceful stalk as if they had muscles in places that humans did not. It was a younger Richard, less muscled, face a little less sure of itself, his hair cut neat and clean. Richard when he was twenty, before I ever met him. His face so open, eager, laughing. We’d told him it was a game. Raina wanted to have two men ravage her. A little rape fantasy among friends.

He pinned my wrists, her wrists, and as requested, there was no foreplay. It was supposed to be rough. I could see through her eyes, as she watched Gabriel come in behind Richard’s back. It was a rape fantasy, alright, but Raina wasn’t the victim.

Richard screamed, and stood up, dumping me to the floor. He took two shaking steps, and collapsed to his knees. Something about what Raina’s munin had done, had torn down his shields. I wasn’t getting the memory, just his reaction to it. Shame, anger, rage. I got glimpses of Gabriel and him fighting. Not struggling, but beating the hell out of each other. Both of them nude, slick with each other’s blood. Raina watching from the bed, her mouth wet, her tongue playing along her lips, enjoying the show.

Richard tried to shield, but he couldn’t. It was as if the emotions had stripped him of his shields. It was Jean-Claude’s cool touch in my head that shut it down. He shielded Richard from me, and I think from himself. He gave him back his metaphysical clothes, so that he wasn’t raw before us.

“I, too, have my memory of Gabriel,” Jean-Claude said, his voice was soft.

We both looked at him. Richard said, “You, and Gabriel?” The look on his face showed his disgust.

“Not by choice. It was her price for convincing Marcus that he should continue to ally with me.”

“A night with both of them?” I asked.

Jean-Claude nodded.

“Did you know?” Richard asked, “before, did you know what they wanted you for?”

He nodded again. “I negotiated that night as completely as any night I have ever bargained for.”

Richard was still on his knees on the floor. He looked back at Jean-Claude. “And you knew, you knew that she wanted to watch Gabriel . . . have you?”

“She wanted many things, but that was one she was most adamant about.”

“How could you let him do that to you?” A strange look came over Richard’s face. “Oh, but you don’t mind. You like men.”

Jean-Claude’s face went blank, him hiding away. “Actually, yes, I did mind. I minded very much, but it was one of the points that Raina would not give up. She wanted certain things, and that was one of them.” He raised his robe around his shoulders as if he was cold, and would not look at either of us. “I talked her out of a great many things that would have hurt a great deal more.”

“You didn’t enjoy it,” Richard said.

Jean-Claude gave him a look, such a look. It sent the vampire’s power like cool water through the room. “Rape is rape, Richard. Is a woman less raped because she likes men? That’s a question, Richard.”

“No, of course not,” he said.

“Then why is it less rape for a man who likes men to be raped by another man?”

Richard looked away at that.

I was left sitting on the floor not knowing what to say, or who to comfort, or even how to start comforting. “I didn’t know any of this.”

“My bargain with Raina was based on it not being known. It would have undermined my authority, which would have defeated the purpose of the bargain.”

I got up off the ground and went to Jean-Claude. I reached out to him, half-afraid he’d move away. No one’s good with this kind of pain, but men seem especially bad at it. I think it’s because they have a hard time thinking of themselves as potential victims. Women are raised with the possibility. Most of us understand from an early age that we are not the biggest or strongest. It’s why when women fight, they fight dirty; something’s got to make up for the lack of upper body strength.

I touched his face, and he gave me that blank beautiful look. As if he were a painting that held color and line, and beauty, but not life, as if telling the secret sucked something precious away from him. “I’m sorry,” I said, softly.

He smiled, and some tension left him, and something of him began to seep back into his eyes. “I thought you might be upset, find me sullied goods.”

I raised eyebrows at that. “You never blame the victim, Jean-Claude. Don’t you know that by now?”

He smiled a little wider and laid his face against my hand. “I have never thanked you for killing them both.”

“They were trying to kill me at the time, and film it for a snuff flick. Trust me, it was my pleasure to whack them both.”

Richard got to his feet and came to stand near us, just out of comfortable reach. “That night was why I broke up with Raina.” He laughed, and it sounded bitter, as if he would choke on it. “Broke up, God, that sounds so high school. Gabriel and I nearly beat each other to death, while she watched.” He was shaking his head, and even with his hair barely grown out, it was already longer than it had been in the memory. I wondered if that was one of the reasons that he grew it long, so it would help him feel different.

“I can find other food,” Jean-Claude said. “You do not have to do anything you are not comfortable with.”

Richard looked at us, my hand still on Jean-Claude’s face. “What I said earlier is still true. We need the three of us to be as close as the two of you are.”

“I do not believe you are ready to do what is necessary for such a binding,” Jean-Claude said.

“What is necessary, exactly?” he asked.

Jean-Claude licked his lips. “This is magic, not science. In truth I am not sure. We could do the fourth mark, that I know how to do, but what happened at the club last night was not the fourth mark. It was as if ma petite slipped into me. We were joined as never before, and it made us unbelievably powerful.”

“How did it work?”

“We touched.”

“We were in the middle of a crisis of police proportions,” I said.

“Oui, but I think it will work with touching. We are of Belle’s line, and most of her magic can be reached through physical closeness.”

“Physical closeness,” Richard said, and he shook his head. “Define physical closeness.”

Jean-Claude smiled. “Tell me what you would have of me, Richard. What rules and restrictions would make you feel safe?”

“If I said, don’t touch me?”

“Then I say we are wasting our time. Ma petite and I were touching when it happened, not intimately, but the contact was important. Physical contact makes most of my powers easier.”

“Define not intimate.”

“I think he was holding my hand,” I said.

Richard smiled, a quick flash in his tanned face, “Hand-holding I can manage.”

Jean-Claude smiled, and it was nice to see them smiling at each other for once. “I would ask that if I need to touch you for balance that that be allowed.”

Richard narrowed his eyes a little. “Depends on where you’re touching me, but okay.”

Jean-Claude shook his head. “That is not Richard’s look, that is your look, ma petite. Your look from our Richard’s face.”

“Well, you know what they say, couples start looking like each other after awhile.”

Richard looked at me. “Couple?”

I shrugged. “If I’m going to be lupa to your Ulfric, then yeah. That’s how your pack will see it.”

He nodded, then smiled again. “Just like that, you agree to it all.”

I reached out my hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, he took it. There was no flash of munin or Raina, it was just his hand so warm in mine. “We’ll try it, see if it works, depends on what I have to do as your lupa. I just want you to know that you can walk out the door right now, and I’ll still try to play lupanar with you.”

He squeezed my hand. “You won’t force me?”

“Not my kick.”

“Nor mine,” Jean-Claude said. “I have been victim too many times over the centuries. It has given me no taste for it.”

Richard took in a big breath, which moved his chest and shoulders, and raised his stomach up and down, as if he’d drawn air all the way down to his toes. He let it out slowly, then nodded. “Let’s try. If I can’t do it, then I can’t do it, but I’ll try.”

I kept my hand in Jean-Claude’s, but stepped away from him, until I was standing in front of Richard. I went up on tiptoes, and he bent down so I could kiss him, gently, on the mouth. “Have I told you recently that I think you are very brave?”

His eyes filled with something warm and good. “Never.”

“Then I’m saying it now.”

“Thank you,” he said, and his arm slid around my waist, the warmth of his skin pulsing even through the silk. No, not his warmth, his power.

Jean-Claude stood up, and I drew him into the back of my body. Richard tensed when Jean-Claude’s body pinned his arm, but he fought it. Fought to relax. He wasn’t entirely successful, but he tried. A for effort.

“Now, let’s get naked,” I said.

I actually made them both choke and laugh at the same time. “Ma petite, what has made you so bold?”

“It takes the three of us forever to do anything. We discuss it, we argue it, we fight, we make up, we fight. I don’t want to discuss anymore. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it.”

“Just like that,” Richard said, “off with the clothes, no sweet talk first.”

I leaned into the circle of his arm, and the weight of Jean-Claude behind my back. I looked up Richard’s face, and said, “I want to see if I can deep throat you.”

He blinked at me, then started to laugh, then stopped, and finally said in a strained voice, “You couldn’t before. It was great, but you never quite—”

“I’ve been practicing,” I said. I smiled up at him.

“That smile,” he said.

“What smile?” I said.

Jean-Claude answered, “The knowing smile.”

“The one that says you’re thinking dirty thoughts, and you want to do them all with me. You’re the only woman I know that can put innocence and evil into the same look.”

“Evil,” I said. “Am I supposed to be offended?”

“I just never expected to see that smile directed at me again.” He kissed me on the forehead. “For that smile, I’d do a lot.”

“I still don’t get the idea of innocence and evil in the same smile.”

“You have the look of a fallen angel, ma petite. An angel does not stop being an angel merely because they fall from grace; their wings are not so easily taken.”

I remembered thinking almost the same thing about Richard earlier. Like a fallen angel. Should it have bothered me that Jean-Claude and I were using the same analogy? Yeah, but out loud all I said was, “I thought you were the dark angel here?” I turned so I could see his face.

He smiled and whispered, “Nothing I could have offered would have gotten him out of his pants.”

“I heard that,” Richard said.

Jean-Claude laughed. “And will you refuse her offer?”

He looked from Jean-Claude to me, then back to Jean-Claude. Richard laughed, a very masculine laugh. “No.”

I was suddenly very aware of the two of them pressed on either side of me. Enough foreplay, off with the clothes.

59

THE CLOTHES CAME off, then Richard argued with me on what position I’d be better able to deep throat him. Like I said, the three of us together have to argue about everything. Jean-Claude settled the argument by simply saying, “Let ma petite try her way, and if it does not work, we can try yours.” I began to realize that Richard and I as a couple was truly impossible, but as a threesome, if the third was our diplomat, it might work. What does it say when you need another adult in the bed to referee? Nothing I wanted to think about too deeply, not at that moment. At that moment, I let all the doubts go, all of them. I knew Richard and I too well not to suspect that we would wreck this later. But for now, right now, we had this moment. I tried to get out of my way and enjoy it, and had to trust the men to do the same.

I’d seen Richard nude, and recently, but it had been a long time since I’d seen him stretched nude on a bed, on his back, with the long length of his body spilled out in front of me. I made him spread his legs so I could lie down between them, rest my head against the muscled swell of his thigh, and gaze up the length of him. It was a form of teasing myself, almost. So close to his groin, but not touching. But it wasn’t that I just wanted to look, it was the whole package. And it wasn’t just that he was lovely to look at, it was that after I’d looked at the groin, only partially erect, and still impressive, the flat plain of his stomach with its perfect dimple of belly button, the swell of his chest with his nipples like dark brown punctuation to all that permanently tanned muscle; the swell of his shoulders, and finally his face. His face gazing down at me. The pure brown of his eyes like chocolate, the look in them already a little unfocused, when all I’d done was lay my cheek against his thigh and breathed out along his testicles. A feather of a touch, and already his face was showing the effect, as were other parts of his body.

It wasn’t just the body, it was Richard looking down at me. The weight of him in his eyes. Him staring down the line of his own body, while I lay between his thighs. I used to think that only death would take someone away from me. But I had learned that so many lesser things can steal someone away, just as completely, just as forever. They live, they breathe, but you never get to touch them, you never see them nude, you never wake to their smile, the smell of their skin on your sheets. There are things so much less dramatic than death that are just as permanent. If I never got to be here like this with Richard again, I wanted it to last. I wanted to take my time.

Where was Jean-Claude? Sitting in the far corner of the bed opposite us. He was nude, but sitting with his back against the wall, one knee drawn up so that he was covered, for the most part, even if you looked directly at him. He looked like a great pale cat curled on the pillows. Once I would have said he looked utterly relaxed, but I knew him too well now. I saw the way he held his shoulders, the tension in one leg. He was holding himself in check, being oh, so careful.

I settled my cheek against Richard’s thigh, the way a cat will scent mark you, rubbing back and forth. Just that, nothing more, but it made him writhe. His legs tensing around me, so that his legs flexed on either side of my body. The feel of even that much made me close my eyes and rest my cheek between his legs, so that my face was cradled, oh, so gently against the soft warmth of his testicles. I nestled my mouth against that silky skin. The tiny stiff hairs tickled along my face as I licked that soft, moveable skin. More hair to tickle along my lips. I preferred smoother skin, a little less fuzzy. But of course, I could have that by simply moving up.

I went up on my knees and licked along the front of his shaft, licked it like it was a big piece of candy, and I didn’t want it to melt. Licked it back and forth, up and down, just on the front of the shaft, until he cried out, and his hands convulsed on the red sheets.

“Anita, please, no more teasing.”

I raised up so I was kneeling between his legs. “Teasing, that’s not teasing, that’s foreplay.”

He swallowed, and it looked like it was an effort, or maybe his throat was dry. “Then less foreplay, at least for me. I don’t need it.”

I looked down at him, the eagerness in his eyes, his face, his whole body. I could feel what he wanted, feel it almost like he was yelling it in my head. I looked at Jean-Claude. “Some men like a lot of foreplay.”

Jean-Claude gave that Gallic shrug. “But it is not me that you are pleasing now.”

“I thought you said we had to all three be touching for this to work?”

“I thought I would give you and Richard a chance to reacquaint yourselves before I joined you.”

I climbed over Richard’s thigh, so I could kneel beside his hip. “Sometime during all this sex, the boundaries between us will come crashing down. If we aren’t all three touching when it happens, we may miss our window to bind ourselves closer.”

“Perhaps,” Jean-Claude said, “what do you propose?”

“Come hold Richard’s hand.”

“Anita,” Richard began.

I wrapped my hand around the base of him, and found that he wasn’t quite as hard as he had been a moment before. The thought of Jean-Claude joining us did not do it for him. I was sorry that it bothered him, but I hadn’t crawled into this bed for just sex. It was an all-or-nothing deal. Sex and more metaphysical muscle, not just sex.

I squeezed him, one quick pulse, and it stole his words, made his breath shudder from between his lips. “Richard’s going to need something to hold on to soon, and there’s no headboard.”

Richard found his voice. “That was oversharing,” and he sounded a little angry.

“You know you like to hold on to something solid while I do this.”

He gave me sullen eyes. It was not a look I wanted to see today, not from him. “Hold his hand, Richard, that’s all I’m asking right now. Just hold his hand, or let him hold yours. Is that so much to ask?”

I turned so that I was facing away from him, but facing directly another part of his anatomy, which also had a head. I kept my hand on the base of him and slid my mouth over him. He wasn’t completely hard yet, and I fought to take as much of him in as I could before he stiffened. It was easier a little softer, less hard to swallow past a certain point. Even soft, there came that moment where my body said, no, we’re choking, that nothing this big should be coming down this far in one piece. It was as if I was swallowing him down, but because he was still attached and so big, it was more like I walked my throat over him, up him. I’d found that if I didn’t struggle, that I could breathe with this much down my throat. I could breathe, if I didn’t struggle. I could fight my way down the long, thick shaft of him, if I relaxed while I fought for it. It was a struggle to get all the way down, but at the same time, the trick was not to fight. Only I could make oral sex into a zen moment.

When my lip felt the solid touch of the front of his body, then, and only then, did I let myself begin to slide back up. It was always so much easier going up than coming down. I came up off of him, breathless, but pleased. I’d only recently been able to do that with Micah, after some very embarrassing failed attempts. Like in throwing up embarrassing. It’s one of the reasons you should never try this stuff with people unless you love them. People who love you don’t point and laugh.

I didn’t give him time to catch his breath, only for me to catch mine. I slid my mouth back over him, swallowed him down, until the back of my throat convulsed around the end of him, and I could feel my throat close around the end of him, so deep, so terribly deep. I slid back up the long, thick, shaft of him, then forced myself down, down, until I met his body with my lips, and there was nowhere else to go, no more of him to take inside me. Then it wasn’t that I tried to squeeze him in my mouth, but that my throat convulsed on its own, tightening down around him, my body trying to get rid of something so big, so impossible to swallow. I swallowed my own saliva, so I didn’t choke on it. Only when I knew I couldn’t take anymore, that one more time shoving him so deep in my throat would hurt, did I let myself stop swallowing. I let the wetness of my own mouth trail behind my lips, slide down the thickness of him, trail in thick, wet, lines down the shaft of him, until he was as wet from my mouth as he would have been between my legs.

Richard’s voice, “God, Anita, God.”

I raised my mouth off of him, my own saliva trailing in thick lines from my mouth to his body. I raised up and turned carefully, slowly, so he’d get the full visual.

He was staring down his body at me, his eyes too wide, face almost frantic. “Anita,” and then, he saw me, and the visual threw his head back, spasmed his hands out, searching for something to hold on to. He’d already thrown off every pillow near him. Richard’s hands searching for a headboard that wasn’t there, searching for something to hold on to. His hand hit Jean-Claude’s hand with a sharp smack of flesh on flesh.

Richard stopped his frantic flailing, looked at the other man, who had been so quiet, so still, pressed against the wall and the top of the bed. They had a moment when they were meeting each other’s eyes. I don’t know what Richard would have said, or done, because I rolled my hands up and over his groin, used the thick liquid to smooth over him, to glide over the head of him. It closed his eyes, and bowed his spine.

I turned, so that I was facing them. I wanted to watch their faces. I wrapped my hand around him, about halfway down, then bent my face back over him and slid him into my mouth, until I came to my hand. It was easier to take him in, faster, harder. With all of him it had been a fight, and no matter how good it felt having him in my mouth, down my throat, I was still fighting my body to keep him down, to breathe, to swallow, so that saliva didn’t build up and make me choke. There was so much to concentrate on that I didn’t have time to enjoy it as much as I wanted to. With only about half of him to work with, it was just fun. It wasn’t just the feel of him, so ripe and hard in my mouth, but the skin was so soft, softer than any other skin on the body. It was like rolling muscled silk on my tongue, pounding it inside my mouth.

I watched Richard’s body while I did it. His whole body writhed, his frantic breathing making everything from his stomach to his shoulders move. Both his hands were clasped in Jean-Claude’s hands now. Richard’s hands convulsed, until the muscles in his arms bulged, and he came up off the bed, crying a sound that was both a moan and scream that ended with my name. He settled back to the bed, his eyes closed, and I had a moment to look into Jean-Claude’s face without Richard watching. For an instant Jean-Claude let me see how much this meant to him. The feel of all that strength in his hands, that Richard’s struggles had pressed more of his body up against Jean-Claude’s legs, that he was able to be here while Richard gave himself over to such abandon. For an instant it shone in his eyes, and I knew in that moment that as patient and careful as he’d been with me, it was nothing to how careful he had been with Richard.

“Stop,” Richard said, “stop, or I’ll go. Oh, God, stop.” He raised his head up, laughing, breathless, and the look on his face was joyous, free in a way that he seldom looked these days.

I slid him out of my mouth, while I watched his face. He let his head fall back to the bed, his arms, shoulders beginning to relax, beginning to slide away from Jean-Claude’s hands. I licked the head of him, and he convulsed again, muscles cording in his arms and chest, his hands crushing around Jean-Claude’s. If there’d been a headboard, it might not have survived. But vampires are made of sterner stuff than wood, or metal.

“Please, Anita, please, stop. Let me catch my breath, or I won’t last.”

I stroked my hand up the wet, thickness of him.

He shuddered, and said, “Hand, too, God, just stop, please!”

The last please did it, an element of franticness. I took my hand away and knelt beside his body, my hands in my lap. It’s hard to be demure when you’re naked in a bed with two men, but I did my best.

Richard let himself relax into the bed, let the tension of pleasure slide away. His head rested against Jean-Claude’s thigh, his hands still loose in the other man’s hands. Either he was too high on sex to think about it, or he didn’t mind. As a shapeshifter he shouldn’t have minded mere physical contact with someone. Hell, the shapeshifters slept in big naked puppy piles, but Richard had always made a very clear line between vampires and shapeshifters. Vampires didn’t get the up-close and personal stuff, period.

He turned his head, found that he needed a better angle, and used Jean-Claude’s thigh like a pillow, to raise his face up enough to look at me comfortably. He moved his hands out of the other man’s, but he kept his head propped there, and the two of them were framed against the dark of the wall and the crimson of the sheets, both nude, both so terribly right. It was as if I’d waited a long time to see them like this. If we hadn’t been shielding so tight, I’d have wondered if it was my thought, or someone else’s.

“Give me a few minutes, or the next thing we do will be the last thing we do, and it won’t last long. God, you were good before, but not like that.” He rolled his head back so he could look up the line of Jean-Claude’s body to his face. “Did you teach her that?”

“Why is it that all men assume that only men can teach a woman how to have good sex?” I said.

Richard turned back to me and smiled—a smile more relaxed than any I’d seen in so long from him. “Are you saying you learned this from another woman?” He was teasing and let it show in his voice.

The teasing tone made me smile. “No, I figured it out on my own, thank you very much. Like I said, I’ve been practicing.”

He rolled his head back to look at Jean-Claude, who obliged him by looking down to meet Richard’s gaze. “On you?”

Jean-Claude smiled, “Non, mon ami, I am well-endowed, but not so blessed as to help ma petite learn such technique.”

Richard looked back down toward me. There was a look on his face that I’d seen all too often lately, a not-happy look. “Who?”

“I’ll make you a deal, Richard. You don’t ask me about my lovers, and I won’t ask you about yours.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means if you weren’t a lycanthrope, I would never have gone down on you like this until you proved you were disease free. You can get AIDS, gonorrhea, hepatitis, all just from oral sex. But lucky for you, you can’t get anything. The lycanthropy destroys everything but itself, so you’re disease free. Do you even know how many of the women in your pack and Verne’s you’ve slept with?”

“Yes,” he said, and the anger was still there.

“Do I want to know the number?”

“No,” he said.

“But I’ll bet I’ve never even come close to a number that large in my bed.”

“I thought you said you hadn’t kept track of what I was doing.”

“I’ve heard a little, enough to know you’ve cleared three digits, or close to it. So let’s agree not to get too possessive, or too self-righteous. Neither of us has the room for it.”

He covered his face with his hands and made a sound, almost a growl.

Jean-Claude looked at me, his face was fighting for neutral, but not quite making it. We were closer than we’d ever been to being a true triumverate, and Richard and I were blowing it.

“Fine, you’re right, you’re right. If this is going to work, you’re right,” Richard said.

I was the only one who saw the relief and surprise on Jean-Claude’s face. By the time Richard lowered his hands and sat up, Jean-Claude’s face was back to pleasant and unreadable.

I guess my face was surprised enough for both of us.

Richard smiled at me, though his eyes were still not happy.

“I wanted you in this bed. I’m not going to throw it away being stupid.” His smile brightened and finally filled his eyes. “Alright, I’ll try not to be too pigheaded, but lately I can’t seem to help it,”

“Welcome to my world,” I said.

The smile got warmer. “Trade me places,” he said.

I frowned. “What?”

“Trade me places.” He scooted away from Jean-Claude and patted the bed next to the other man.

“You here.”

I was still frowning, but not unhappy. I was more puzzled than anything. “Why?”

“I want to return the favor.”

“The favor?”

“Lay down,” he said, and patted the bed again. “Let Jean-Claude hold your hands.”

I couldn’t help frowning harder. “I’m not a headboard rider. He doesn’t need to hold my hands.”

“I felt how strong he is. Stong enough that when he holds your hands down you won’t be able to get free.”

I looked at his face.

“I am to be your ropes,” Jean-Claude said.

Richard nodded, but kept looking at me.

“And what will you be doing while Jean-Claude holds me down?”

“Whatever I want to do.”

I frowned harder. “Uh-unh, I need more of a clue than that.”

“Don’t you trust me?” And just the way he said it, the look in his face made me want to say no. If we’d been alone I don’t think I’d have let him tie me up without a detailed list of planned activities. But Jean-Claude I trusted to referee. This new, more reasonable, more seductive Richard, I wasn’t sure of yet.

“Anyone who’s said ‘trust me’ or ‘don’t you trust me’ to me couldn’t be trusted.”

“So you don’t trust me,” he said, and the smile faded at the corners.

“I didn’t say that.”

“What did you say, ma petite?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Yes.”

Richard frowned at me. Jean-Claude made a small line in his forehead, for him a frown, when he was trying not to show anything.

“Yes,” I said.

Jean-Claude smiled. It took Richard a moment longer to get it. “Yes,” he said.

I nodded.

“Yes,” he said again.

I nodded, again.

He smiled, and the smile was that wonderful smile. The one that made him look younger, more relaxed, more . . . himself, somehow.

I felt a smile spread across my face, a smile that I couldn’t stop and didn’t want to.

“Yes,” he said, still smiling.

“Yes,” I said.

“At last,” Jean-Claude said, and he was smiling, too.

60

JEAN-CLAUDE’S HANDS ON mine, his body spilled out along the head of the bed. The pillows had all been thrown to the floor, so there was nothing but the silk sheets and the three of us. “Trade places,” Richard had said. It had seemed so simple. I should have known nothing about Richard was ever simple.

He put his hands on my arms, just under where Jean-Claude held me. He wrapped those big hands around my arms, then began to slide his hands down my arms. He was only touching my arms, such an innocent place to touch, but he made the movement slow, and sensuous, trailing an edge of fingernail like the tiny press of something harder, and so much more dangerous against my skin. His hands reached under my arm, the trail of nails tickled, and made me writhe and giggle. Half because it tickled, and half because of the slow, sure movements of his hands. I’d forgotten what it was like to have all of Richard’s attention in a bed. When you think you’ll never be able to touch someone again, you try to forget.

I waited for him to curve his hands over my breasts, but he didn’t. He moved his hands just a little lower on my sides, so that his hands barely brushed the edges of my breasts and kept moving down my body. That one small brush against the edges of my breasts caught my breath in my throat, and closed my eyes, to shudder under his hands.

His hands, so large they cupped my ribs, and nearly met at my waist, his thumbs pressing over my belly button, my lower stomach. I waited for his hands to go lower, and just as he had above, he moved his hands to the sides of my hips. Swept that sure, heavy, glide of skin and nails away from even the beginning of my pubic bone, so that he was only touching my hips, my thighs, but nothing more. His hands kept sliding downward, but he’d skipped the parts I most wanted him to touch. It left me making small noises, low in my throat, not from what he was doing, but from what he hadn’t done. From what I wanted him to do.

It made me raise my arms, or try to, but Jean-Claude’s hands were there. He kept my hands pressed to the bed. I put more effort into it, and found that I could raise my hands off the bed an inch or so, but Jean-Claude pressed me back to the bed, going up on his knees to get the leverage he needed. I’d made him change positions, made him work a little harder, but that was all. I put more effort into raising my wrists, freeing my arms. I don’t know why, maybe because I hadn’t really thought about not being able to get away. Being trapped in theory is one thing, knowing it for a fact, is different. Or different for me.

“Why struggle?” Richard asked, in a voice that held a tone I’d never heard from him. “You know that Jean-Claude won’t let anything bad happen.” His big hands finished their glide down my body, to end with his fingers wrapping around my ankles. He didn’t press them to the bed, just held them, held my ankles in his hands.

I tried to get away from him. I couldn’t help it. It was just one of those things. Tell me I can’t, or show me I can’t, and I have to try. I wasn’t trying as hard as I could, but I was trying. Trying enough to feel the strength in his hands, a strength that could bend steel. I couldn’t get away.

He spread my legs, using his hands on my ankles. He spread my legs, wide and wider, while I tried to stop him. It was a game, because we’d all agreed to this. I wanted him to make love to me, but game or not, there was something about the way he spread my legs with the strength in his hands, while Jean-Claude pinned my arms, that sped my pulse, and made the struggles go from halfhearted to not so halfhearted. It was stupid, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to try to stop him from spreading my legs, from exposing me, and the fact that I couldn’t both scared me and excited me. The two feelings should have been mutually exclusive, but they weren’t.

“Tell me to stop,” Richard said, and his voice had grown deeper.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Then why are you struggling?” he asked, and there was a look in his face, eager, dark, happy, all at once. He pushed my legs farther apart, until it was just this side of hurting. Until the muscles in my thighs began to ache with the stretch. “Why are you struggling, if you don’t want me to stop?”

I said the only thing I could think of, “I don’t know.” My voice was breathier than I thought it would be, as if my pulse was interfering. I realized then, that he’d spread my legs so far apart that I really couldn’t struggle, not unless I wanted it to hurt. It made me push harder against Jean-Claude’s hands. I raised up a few inches, so that he actually had to come to his knees, and press down, to hold me secure. Him coming to his knees meant that suddenly his body was exposed just above my head. He hung loose and soft just above me, and until he fed he would stay soft. I loved the sensation of him in my mouth when he was like this, because it didn’t last, except when he had not fed. Now, I could explore the softness of him as long as I wanted, and it wouldn’t change. I strained back for him, neck bowing, mouth reaching, and he was out of reach. Dangling just above me, but his hands held me down, and I couldn’t get to him. Jean-Claude had to know what I was trying to do, but he kept his weight on my wrists, and his body arched above me, out of reach.

My voice came out strained, breathless, “Please.”

“Please, what?” Richard’s voice from the other end of the bed.

“Ma petite has a penchant for men when they are soft. Until I feed, she could indulge this . . . desire.”

“And you’re keeping it just out of her reach,” Richard said, his voice dropped an octave lower so that it was almost painfully low, his voice just before it began to growl.

“Oui.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Is that not the game that you wish to play?”

A thin line of growl trickled from Richard’s throat. “Yes, yes, it is.” He was up on all fours, too, but unlike Jean-Claude he was thick and heavy against the front of his body. “But I don’t want it to be you she’s begging for, I want it to be me.”

“Why can it not be both of us?” Jean-Claude asked.

The two men stared at each other, and I had a moment to feel their, not power, but almost as if their wills were suddenly power. I could feel the strength of their wills aimed at each other. “You chose not to let me feed,” Jean-Claude said, “deliberately. You thought she would not have a use for me until I could be erect.” He smiled. “You underestimate ma petite’s love of the male body. She loves us in all our many forms.” That last held some note, some jab, that I didn’t understand. I should have, but the feel of their hands on my body, and the view of both of them nude had me distracted. I never seemed to think as clearly around them when they were naked, embarrassing, but true.

Richard’s face darkened with anger, and the first trickle of his power slipped past his so tight shielding. It danced along my legs like a breeze off the plains of hell. Hot, so hot. It raised goosebumps in a shivering line down my body. Me, shivering brought their attention back to me. Jean-Claude’s face was pleasantly neutral, hiding. Richard looked down at me, and the anger was still there, but underneath that was something else. It held sex, but it also held something darker. Something that promised things beyond sex, beyond anything safe and sane. A moment to glimpse in his eyes things he probably didn’t want to see in any mirror, before he turned away, so I couldn’t see his face. As if he knew what I’d seen.

“If you’re going to fight, get off of me,” I said. It was a little tough to put much authority in my voice when I was naked and they were holding me down, but I managed. My voice was suddenly mine again, not breathy, not sexy, just mine.

“That is not up to me, ma petite,” Jean-Claude said. “Are we going to fight, Richard?”

That hot, hot wind eased out from his body again. A line of heat to trail like something solid and reaching across my skin. It was like fingers, fingers made of heat climbing up my skin, touching places Richard had very deliberately avoided. When that seeking heat caressed between my legs, I gasped, and managed to say, “Stop it, whatever it is, stop it.” The heat climbed higher, using my body like a fleshy ladder.

“Does it hurt?” Richard asked, but he was looking at Jean-Claude, not me.

“No,” and the power caressed my breasts as if some great monster had breathed their breath hot across them. I shuddered under that touch, eyes closing, neck bowing.

I opened my eyes staring up into Jean-Claude’s face. His face was still pleasant, unreadable, hidden. “Are you well, ma petite?”

I nodded. I might have said something else, but Richard’s power caressed my throat, flowed over my lips, so that my mouth felt hot, as if some hot, thick liquid lay on my tongue. I looked up into Jean-Claude’s midnight blue eyes, and whispered, “Richard.”

Jean-Claude lowered his face over mine, more of his weight pressing in his hands, against my wrists, so even as he came closer, I was held more tightly. I opened my mouth for him, but he paused just short of a kiss. He licked the air above my mouth. I thought at first he’d missed, but he raised up enough to look down my body to Richard. “What game is this?”

“You and she aren’t the only ones who gained power when she bound herself to Damian and Nathaniel.” His voice wasn’t happy when he said it, in fact the anger was back. The anger fed directly into his power so that a line of scalding heat flashed up my body and tore a scream from my throat.

Jean-Claude put his mouth to mine, and his power was in his kiss. A blessed coolness to glide over my tongue, down my throat, to spill in a chilling line through my body and quiet all that heat. And as if Richard’s power had been waiting for that very thing, it surged forward, and I was suddenly covered in their power. It was as if my body was the wick for Richard’s candle and the spout for Jean-Claude’s cool water to flow down. But you can’t be both flame and water. You can’t burn and drown, not at the same time. My body tried, it tried to be cold and hot, flame and water, life and death. But wait, that last, that last we understood, my power and me. Life and death, especially death.

My power didn’t simply rise, it burst my shields, like a dam smashed, and the power of that torrent, so long contained, poured over us all. It swept us not away, but together. We were on our knees on the bed with Richard pressed to the front of me, and Jean-Claude against my back. They say there is no light without dark, no good without evil, no male without female, no right without wrong. That nothing can exist if its direct opposite does not also exist. I don’t know if that’s true, but in that moment I understood that though each opposite needs the other, they also can’t exist simultaneously. They are two sides to a coin, but what of the coin? What is the coin that separates good from evil, light from dark, what is it that binds them together, yet keeps them eternally apart? Good and evil, light and dark, I don’t know, but with Richard and Jean-Claude, it was me.

I was the metal that both separated them and bound them together. I was their coin, and they were my different sides. Always apart, always together, different, but all of one piece. Richard pressed to the front of my body, and it was as if he burned, as if his body was so hot, it should have burst into flames, as if the sun itself lay within his skin. Jean-Claude pressed at my back like water, cool, cold water, that had risen from the very depths of the sea, where it runs cold and black, and slow, and strange things glide there. If you look at the sun too long you go blind; if you swim too deep into the sea you drown.

I screamed, screamed because I didn’t know what to do with the power. I was their coin, but I didn’t know how to forge us into one piece. It was like trying to fit three people into one body. How do you start? Who gets shoved in where?

But I wasn’t master here, it wasn’t my job to find a way to fit three such huge pieces into one. Jean-Claude’s cool power flowed over me, soothed the burning, touched the edge of Richard’s power, and brought us all back up to the surface of our metaphysical sea. He said almost exactly what I was thinking, “I can only hold it back for a moment, when next we drown, we must not fight it. We must embrace it, and each other.”

“Define embrace,” Richard said, and his voice was thick with effort, as if he were holding back his side of some huge weight, and maybe he was.

“You into Anita’s body, and I will feed upon yours.”

We didn’t have time to say yes or no or anything. The power was just suddenly back, as if we’d opened a door and found the building falling down around us. We were out of time. We either rode the power, or it would bury us. Bury us along with everyone we loved, everyone we’d vowed to protect. Distantly, I had the thought, if we would but take the fourth mark, it would be easier to ride, but the thought vanished under the press of Richard’s body. His body was ripe and thick and ready, and he’d made certain that Jean-Claude’s wouldn’t be. There might have been other ways to bind us, but Richard had taken some of Jean-Claude’s choices, and mine, by simply not allowing the other man to feed. Funny how you try to avoid one evil, and fall headlong into another.

Richard pushed himself inside me. I was tight, and he was thick, but the moment he began to push inside me, the terrible weight of power eased. It was as if Richard’s body broke the plane of some barrier, as if my body were a door, and we’d pushed inside.

Richard’s voice came strained, “Tight, so tight. I don’t want to hurt you.” He was above me in a sort of push-up, and the view between our bodies was perfect. Perfect for watching him push his way inside me.

I grabbed his arms, and said, “Don’t stop, God, don’t stop.”

“You’re too tight.”

“Not for long,” I said.

“Is she wet?” Jean-Claude asked.

Richard gave him a look, and it wasn’t friendly. “Yes.”

“Then you will not hurt her.”

“You said it yourself, Jean-Claude, you aren’t this well-endowed, you don’t know how you can hurt a woman without meaning to.”

I slapped Richard’s shoulder, because I couldn’t reach his face. He looked down at me, anger so ready in his eyes. “I am not Clair. I want you, Richard. I want you inside me, please, Richard, please. Don’t stop, please, don’t stop.”

He looked down at me, and the look on his face was very male, and very Richard all at the same time. I watched him, felt how much he wanted to shove himself inside me, but that part of him that was still Richard, still thinking so hard, was afraid. Not afraid that he’d hurt me, but afraid to see the same look on my face he’d seen on Clair’s. I tasted the fear of that on my own tongue. Felt the pulse in my neck speed, not with lust, but fear. Fear that Clair was right. That he was an animal. If I could have slapped her around in that moment, I might have. The last thing Richard needed was more emotional shit to shovel.

“If you will not do it, mon ami, then let me feed, so that we may finish this.”

“I am not your friend,” Richard said, and his anger spread like hot oil on my skin. It didn’t hurt like earlier, and I knew that was Jean-Claude’s doing. He was dulling the edge of Richard’s power, or rather turning it from burning pain, to something more fun. Heated oil rolling down my skin instead of biting bits of fire; how could I argue?

“Be my enemy then,” Jean-Claude said, “but one of us must do this. If you will not, then you must help me do it.”

I sat up, and he wasn’t far enough in for it, so that he slipped back out. That pressure came crashing back. Jean-Claude grabbed a handful of my hair, pulled my head back, and kissed me. Hard, deep, tongue searching my mouth. I melted into that kiss, gave my mouth to his, my face to his hand, my head to the hand still wrapped in my hair. His other hand slid from my face down my neck, my shoulder, to caress the front of my breast. He bent me back against his body, and I understood. As we’d discussed, his power lay in seduction. He was literally building a deeper binding on the foundation of sex. Each touch, each caress, each penetration, another stone to keep us safe. I’d have argued with his choice of building materials, but I wasn’t master here. This was his ball game, not mine. Of course, there was more than one way to play ball.

Jean-Claude’s hands slid over the front of my body, until he held my breasts. He squeezed them between his hands, squeezed them hard and sharp. I came away from his mouth with a gasp, and a sound low in my throat. “You will not hurt her, Richard.”

Richard hadn’t moved back. He was still sitting where my body had left him, his body between my knees, close enough that he could have joined Jean-Claude in the foreplay, but he just knelt there.

I stroked my hand over him, found him not as hard as he had been. I wrapped my hand around him, tight and hard. Brought a small sound from him. “I want this,” and I squeezed him again, watched his eyes lose focus, “this inside me.”

I could feel that he wanted to, but his fears held him closer than any lover’s arms ever would. I let go of him and turned with a cry to Jean-Claude. I felt suddenly half-crazed with need. A need to have someone inside me. Jean-Claude hadn’t fed yet, but there was still something I could do for my own pleasure. I turned my back on Richard, and laid a light kiss on Jean-Claude’s mouth, but that wasn’t what I wanted. He rose up on his knees as if he knew where I was headed.

I licked my way down his body, and his hand on the back of mine, guided me to him. I drew him into my mouth, and the texture of him so small, so loose, was wonderful. I sucked him, rolled him with my tongue. Small, I could have my way with him, and not have to fight for it. I sucked him as hard and fast as I could, in and out, in and out, until he cried out above me. I used my hand to lift the loose tenderness of his balls up, so I could draw them gently into my mouth. It was hard having all of him in my mouth at once, even this small, there was barely room. I had to be so careful of him, so careful, not to hurt him, not to crush such delicate pieces. Like rolling some precious priceless work of art between your teeth. When I didn’t trust myself not to bite down on those tender bits, I spilled them out of my mouth. But I kept that soft, flexible, givable, forgiveable bit to roll and coax, until he cried out above me, and his body thrust forward, but he couldn’t complete it. I could have teased him all night, and he couldn’t have finished it. I was ready to offer to open a vein myself, when I felt hands on my hips.

I felt Richard push himself against my body. He wasn’t soft now, he was oh, so hard. He kept one hand on my hip, and used the other to guide himself in. He pushed against the opening in my body.

I started to raise up, but Jean-Claude’s hand pushed on my head, kept me where I was, kept my mouth wrapped around his body, sucking him deep into my mouth, as Richard pushed his way into my body. I was wetter now, more open, but Richard still had to work his way in, push, and shove, for each tight, wet, inch. The feel of him inside me forced small sounds from my throat, made me whimper and moan, all of it with Jean-Claude still in my mouth.

Richard pushed his way in, until there was no more. Until he hit the end of me, and had nowhere to go but to draw himself back out of me, slowly, so slowly. I didn’t want slowly. I wanted fast. I wanted hard. I wanted Richard at his best, not this careful dance.

I raised my head up off of Jean-Claude, and this time he let me, but he kept his hand against my hair. I raised up enough to gaze back over my body and see Richard there on his knees. Seeing him with his body inside of me, rolled my eyes shut for a moment, but the feel of all that thick potential being so carefully used, made me want to scream at him.

“Fuck me, Richard.”

He looked at me, and the control on his face in his body, stopped for a moment. He looked at me, and said, “Anita.”

“Fuck me,” I said, “fuck me, God, fuck me, just fuck me. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, please, please, please just fuck me.”

“I am.”

I shook my head, hard enough to send my hair flying around my face. Jean-Claude moved his hand enough for me to do it. “No, no, no, no!” Freed of Jean-Claude’s hands I could move. I shoved myself onto him. I shoved myself down hard and fast until the sound of our bodies hitting slapped together. Having him shoved that hard, fast, deep, inside me, made me cry out, but not in pain.

I leaned my upper body forward, and angled my hips, and I fucked him, as hard and as fast, as I could. It wasn’t quite as good as he could have done on his own, but it was still good. Still so good.

Richard caught the rhythm of my hips and started shoving himself inside me, as hard and fast as he could. Harder and faster than I’d been able to manage on my own. So hard, so fast, so deep, hitting that spot deep, deep inside my body, until I cried out around him.

Jean-Claude’s hand pushed me back down, and helped my mouth find him again. Helped me feed on his soft, soft flesh while Richard pounded himself inside me. Jean-Claude moved up high on his knees, and his hand helped me stay where he wanted me.

It wasn’t until I heard Richard’s voice, “Jean-Claude,” and felt Richard’s rhythm falter, that I suspected what Jean-Claude was doing up there, behind my back.

Jean-Claude was suddenly not soft, or limp. He grew in my mouth like ripened fruit, like something sweet and tender that had waited a very long time to spread and grow thick and heavy. He filled my mouth. I drew back to breathe, and he forced my head farther down, forced himself deeper into my throat.

I suddenly had both of them as deep inside me as my body could hold. Richard pounded himself between my legs, and Jean-Claude thrust himself between my lips. They found a rhythm together, so that they mirrored each other. I fought to open my mouth wide enough, to keep teeth out of the way, while Jean-Claude mouth-fucked me. I’d never let anyone do that before, not like this, not so that what was happening at my mouth was almost exactly what was happening between my legs.

Richard had taken me at my word. He pounded into me so fast and so hard, until the sound of it was like a continuous thud of flesh on flesh, and though it felt wonderful, if Jean-Claude hadn’t been in my mouth I might have begged him to go. It was almost too much, almost pain. Jean-Claude was more careful up front, because he had to be, but he still forced me to hold the same rhythm, fast, hard, thudding, swallowing almost continuously, barely time to breathe between one thrust and the next. One minute I was fighting to breathe, fighting not to start begging, the next, orgasm hit me, and I was screaming, but it wouldn’t stop. I screamed my orgasm around Jean-Claude’s body still shoved deep in my mouth. I screamed, and my body spasmed around them both. I sucked hard and harder, I drove my hips into Richard. A moment before I’d been ready to stop, and now I helped them fuck me. I drove my body into them both, as hard and fast as I could, while my body danced between them. The orgasm grew, grew until it wasn’t enough to just scream, and I raked my nails down Jean-Claude’s thighs.

I felt their bodies tighten at the same time. Richard spasmed at my back, driving himself so deep inside me that I screamed for real this time, but Jean-Claude drove himself down at the same moment, and my scream was lost to the sensation of him spasming inside my throat. He wasn’t as long as Richard, but he was far enough down, that it wasn’t a matter of swallowing. It was simply a matter of not choking it back up. Of letting that hot thickness go down my throat, and not struggling against it. I let them have my body in that instant. I let their pleasure fill me and pour down me, through me.

It was at that moment when our bodies were joined, sharing things as intimate as blood, that it clicked into place. That we’d done enough to bind us without bleeding Jean-Claude. Maybe it was what it needed to work, or maybe we just all three had to let down our guard enough to stop fighting.

We collapsed in a breathless, panting heap. Jean-Claude drew himself out of me, gently, and lay on his back with me on top of him, pinning his legs. Richard was still on top of me, still inside me, but now he was almost dead weight, and I was short enough, and he was tall enough, that he was lying partially on Jean-Claude. I was just pinned between them.

Richard got to his knees, just enough to pull himself out of me, then collapsed onto his side, half-spooning me, but not quite touching Jean-Claude. In a voice that was still breathless, he asked, “Did I hurt you?”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed. I laughed, even though my jaw was beginning to ache as the endorphins faded. I laughed, as I began to feel the ache of him between my legs. I laughed, not because it hurt, but because it felt so good.

Jean-Claude started to laugh, too.

“What?” Richard said.

Jean-Claude and I lay on top of each other, too tired to move, and laughed. It took Richard a few minutes, but finally, a deep chuckle escaped him. He moved his body enough to throw an arm across mine, and laughed. The three of us lay unable or unwilling to move, and we laughed. We laughed until we could move, then we moved up on the bed and lay quiet, in a big, warm, naked, puppy pile. Me in the middle, but when Jean-Claude’s head touched Richard’s arm, neither of them moved away. It wasn’t perfect, but damn, it was close.

61

I’D TRIED TO call my friendly neighborhood vampire hunter in New Orleans to see what I could learn about the vamps we were after, but Denis-Luc St. John, vamp hunter and federal marshal, was in the hospital, still in intensive care. They’d damn near killed him before they left town. Worse and worse.

The sun was a bloody strip of red against the western sky when Zerbrowski and I got out of his car to question the first witness. I always felt like I should have to wash my jeans when I got out of his car. The backseat was so full of paper and old fast food bags that it looked like a landfill. The front seat wasn’t actually dirty, but the rest of the car was so messy that it just felt like the entire car was icky.

“Do Katie and the kids ever ride in this thing?” I asked as we started up the steps to the first apartment on the list.

“Naw, she and the kids take the minivan.”

I shook my head. “Has she seen the inside of it recently?”

“You’ve seen our house, it’s perfect, everything in its place. Even our bedroom is immaculate. The car is the one place that’s mine. It gets to be as messy as I want it to be.”

Strangely, it made more sense to me now than it would have a few months ago. I understood the fine art of compromise between a couple in a way that I never had before. I’m not saying I was good at it, just that I understood it more.

Zerbrowski read off the number of the apartment, and it was on the second floor, in a line of concrete walkway and metal railing. The doors were all identical. I wondered if the neighbors knew that they had a vamp living next door. You’d be amazed at the number of people that don’t figure it out. Vampires hit my radar hard, so they don’t pass unnoticed for me. More humans than I’m comfortable with get fooled. I don’t know if it’s because they want to be fooled, or if it really is harder for them to spot a vamp. I don’t know which would bother me more, that normal humans can’t spot them, thus implying that I am even more outside the norm, or that people want to be fooled that badly.

Since we were looking for vampires that had killed at least two people, I stretched out that part of me that sensed the dead. It wasn’t the same part that raised zombies. Though explaining the difference was like explaining the difference between sky blue and turquoise. They were both blue, but they weren’t the same color.

Zerbrowski reached for the doorbell, and I touched his hand. “Not yet.”

“Why not?” he asked. His hand swept back his wrinkled trench coat and suit jacket, to touch the butt of his gun on his hip. “You hear something?”

“Ease down, it’s okay. He’s just not awake yet.”

Zerbrowski looked puzzled at me. “What does that mean?”

“I can feel vampires, Zerbrowksi, if I concentrate, or they’re doing something powerful. He’s not awake yet. I was hoping he would be, he’s supposed to be the oldest one of the three, longest dead. Longest dead usually wakes up first, unless one of them is a master. Masters wake up first.”

“I knew the part about longest dead,” he said. “So a master vampire that is two years dead can wake up before a vampire that is five years dead, but not a master?”

“Yeah, though some vamps don’t accumulate enough power in five hundred years to rival masters I’ve met that were under five years.”

“That’d be a bummer. A flunkie for all eternity.”

I nodded. “Yeah.” I felt that instant spark inside the room. It hit me almost like a punch to the stomach, or lower. Once I could only sense vamps that I had a connection to, to this degree, and once it was just a small quiver of recognition. Apparently, I’d gone up a power level or two.

“You okay?” Zerbrowski asked.

“Yeah, just, yeah. Now you can use the doorbell.”

He gave me a look.

“I was concentrating too hard when he woke up, okay? My bad.”

I don’t know if he really understood the comment, or was just used to me being weird, but whatever, he pushed the button. We heard the strident sound inside the room beyond. So many people think that being a vampire automatically gets you the big house on the hill, or a coffin in a dungeon somewhere, but most of the vamps I knew had apartments, houses, and lived pretty much like everyone else. Vampires living in a central location surrounding their master, the way Jean-Claude had it, was becoming a thing of the past.

I missed it. Not nostalgia. If I had to kill a bunch of vamps, having them spread miles apart made my job harder. But we weren’t here to kill anybody, not yet. Of course, that could change. All we needed was proof, or, depending on the judge, strong suspicion. Once I’d been okay with that. Now, it bothered me. To my knowledge, I’d never killed vamps that hadn’t done the crime, but I had to admit that at the beginning of my career, I hadn’t checked as carefully as I did now. They were just walking corpses to me once, and making them lie down and be still hadn’t felt like murder to me. My job had been easier then, fewer conflicts. Nothing helps you sleep at night so much as being absolutely certain that you’re right, and everyone else is evil.

The door opened, and the vampire stood blinking at us. His blond hair was tousled from sleep, and he’d thrown jeans over his boxers, or maybe slept in both. They were wrinkled enough. He squinted at us, and it took me a second to realize the squint was permanent, like someone who’d worked outdoors all their life, and not worn sunglasses. His eyes were pale and washed almost colorless. He looked tanned, but he was five years dead, and it couldn’t be a tan. Artificial tan was starting to be big business among the recently dead. The ones who hadn’t gotten accustomed to that paler than pale look. His looked better than most, a professional job, not homegrown.

“Jack Benchely?” Zerbrowski made it a question.

“Who wants to know?”

He flashed his badge, and I flashed mine. “Sergeant Zerbrowski of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team.”

“Federal Marshal Anita Blake.”

Jack Benchely blinked harder, like he was really trying to wake up. “Shit, what did I do to get the Spook Squad and the excecutioner at my door just after sundown?”

“Let’s go inside and talk about that,” Zerbrowski said with a smile.

The vampire seemed to think about that for a second. “You got a warrant?”

“We don’t want to search your place, Mr. Benchely. We want to ask you some questions, that’s all.” Zerbrowski was still smiling. The smile didn’t even look strained.

I wasn’t trying to smile, I didn’t feel like it.

“What kind of questions?” he asked.

I said, “The kind about you being across the river at a strip club, when I know for a damned fact that Malcolm has ordered you all to stay away from shit like that.” Now I was smiling, but it was a smile the way a flash of teeth is a smile. Sometimes it’s a smile and sometimes it’s not. Put your hand close to the dog’s mouth and find out.

Benchely didn’t look like he wanted to find out. He looked awake now, awake and almost scared. He licked his thin lips and said, “Are you going to tell Malcolm?”

“That depends on how cooperative you are,” I said.

“What Marshal Blake means, is if we get enough information from you, there won’t be a need to trouble the head of the Church of Eternal Life.” Zerbrowski was still smiling and pleasant. I guess I was bad cop for the day. That worked for me.

“I know what she meant,” the vampire said. He moved to one side of the open door and was careful to keep his hands where we could see them. Jack Benchely, human, had a record. Minor stuff. A few drunk and disorderlies, an assault charge that started out as a domestic disturbance call. Nothing too serious, and all of it involving too many drinks and not enough common sense.

When we were inside, he shut the door and went to the couch. From a coffee table that had almost as much crap on it as the backseat of Zerbrowski’s car, he fished out a cigarette and a lighter. He lit up without asking if we minded. How rude.

There were no other chairs in the room, so we stayed standing. Again, rude. Though the place was so messy that I wasn’t sure I’d have taken a seat if it had been offered. There was so much clutter that you expected it to smell stale, but it didn’t. It did smell like the inside of an ashtray, but that’s not the same thing as dirty. I’ve been in houses that looked spotless, but still reeked of cigarettes. Being a nonsmoker, my nose isn’t dulled to it.

He took in a big drag on the cig and made the tip glow bright. He let the smoke trickle out through his nose and the corners of his mouth. “What do you want to know?”

“Why’d you leave the Sapphire early last night?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It was after eleven. I don’t call that early.”

“Okay, why’d you leave when you did?”

He looked up at me, eyes narrowed as smoke oozed past them. “It was boring. The same girls, same acts.” He shrugged. “I swear that strippers were more fun when I could drink.”

“I bet,” I said.

Zerbrowski said, “What time did you leave exactly?”

Benchely answered. We asked the usual questions. What time? Why? With whom? Was there anyone in the parking lot that could verify that he got in his truck and didn’t linger in the parking lot?

“Linger,” Benchely said, and he laughed. Laughed hard enough to flash fangs. The fangs were as yellowed from nicotine as the rest of his teeth. “I didn’t linger, officer. I just left.”

I debated on whether I could tell him to put out his cigarette in his own house, and if he’d do it if I asked. If I ordered him and he didn’t, we’d look weak. If I grabbed the cig and smushed it out, I’d be a bully. I tried to hold my breath and hoped he’d finish it soon.

He took another healthy pull on the cig and spoke with the smoke coming out of his mouth. “What did I miss? One of the other vamps get out of hand with a dancer? One of the other upstanding church members trying to frame me for it?”

“Something like that,” I said softly.

He fished an ashtray out of the mess. It was an older one, pale green ceramic, with upturned sides and a tray of cig holders in the middle, like dull teeth. He stubbed out his cig and didn’t try to hide that he was angry. Or maybe five years dead wasn’t enough time to learn to hide that well. Maybe.

“Hell, it was Charles, wasn’t it?”

I shrugged. Zerbrowski smiled. We hadn’t said yes, we hadn’t said no. Noncomittal, that was us.

“He’s a member of their damn club, did he tell you that?”

“He didn’t volunteer it,” I said.

“I’ll bet he didn’t. Damned hypocrites, all of them.” He ran his hands through his hair, made the thickness of it stand up even more. “Did he tell you that he’s the one that recruited me for the damn church?”

I fought the urge to share a glance with Zerbrowski. “He didn’t mention that,” Zerbrowski said.

“I’d tried to quit drinking. I tried just quitting, twelve steps, you name it, I tried it. Nothing worked. I’d lost two wives, more jobs than I could count. I’ve got a son who’s nearly twelve. There’s a court order against me seeing him. Isn’t that a hell of a thing, my own son?”

Zerbrowski agreed it was a hell of a thing.

“Moffat was at the club one night. He made it sound so easy. I would have to stop drinking, because I couldn’t drink anymore. Simple.” He reached for another cigarette.

“Can you wait until we’re gone for that?” I asked.

“It’s the last vice I got,” he said. But he stuffed the cig back in its pack. He kept the lighter in his hands, playing with it, as if even that was a comfort. “I’m what my counselor calls an addictive personality. Do you know what that means, officers?”

“It means that if you can’t drink, you’ve got to be addicted to something,” I said.

He smiled, and really looked at me for the first time. Not just like I was a cop come to hassle him, but like I was a person. “Yeah, yeah, my counselor wouldn’t like that definition, no siree she would not. But yeah, that’s the truth. Some people are lucky, and it’s just they’re addicted to drinking, or smoking, or whatever, but for those of us who are just addicted to being addicted, anything’ll do.”

“The blood lust,” I said.

He laughed again, and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I can’t drink liquor but I can still drink. I still like to drink.” He slapped the lighter down on the table, and both Zerbrowski and I jumped. Benchely didn’t seem to notice. “Everyone thinks you get to be pretty when you’re made over. That you get to be sauve and good with the ladies just because you got a pair of fangs.”

“You get the gaze with the fangs,” I said.

“Yeah, I can trick ’em with my eyes, but legally that’s not a willing feed.” He looked at Zerbrowski as if he represented all the laws that had held him down all his life. “If I use vampire tricks, and she comes out of it yelling force, I’m dead.” He looked at me, and it wasn’t exactly an unfriendly look. “It’s considered sexual assault, as if I slipped her a date rape drug. But I’m a vampire, and I won’t see trial. They’ll give me to you, and you’ll kill me.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was true, though they’d amended the law so that you had to have more than one count of gaze-induced blood taking to execute someone. That’s what they called it, gaze-induced blood taking. The far right was crying that it was letting sexual predators loose on our communities. The far left just didn’t want to agree with the far right, so they’d help push for the change in the laws. Those of us in the middle just didn’t like the idea of a death warrant being issued on the say-so of one date who woke up the next morning with a bad case of buyer’s remorse.

“I don’t have the money to throw around that the church deacons do,” Benchely was saying, “I’ve got to get a woman to donate her blood through charm.” He said the last word like it was curse. “I know drink ruined my life, but I am a hell of a lot more charming when I’ve had just a few drinks.”

“That’s not usually true,” I said.

He looked at me. “What isn’t true?”

“A lot of drunks think they’re charming drunk, but they aren’t. Trust me, I’ve been the only teetotaler at a lot of parties. There is nothing charming about a drunk, except maybe to another drunk.”

He was shaking his head. “Maybe, but all I know is that I’m reduced to feeding off the church. The church makes taking blood as tame as it can. Something that should be better than sex, and they make you feel like you’re at one of those places where you only get your food after you’ve listened to the sermon. It makes the food taste bad.” He picked up his lighter again turning it over and over in his hands, until the gold of it swirled in the dim light, shining. “Nothing tastes good when you have to swallow your pride with it.”

“Are you saying that Moffat, a deacon of the church, misrepresented what life would be like after you became a vampire?” I tried for as casual a question as I could make it.

“Misrepresented, not exactly. More like he let me come in believing all the stuff in the books and movies, and when I talked about it like it would be that way, he didn’t tell me different. But it is different, real different.”

If you were Belle Morte’s line you spent eternity with people lining up to donate. If you were from some of the bloodlines that gave power, but not beauty or sex appeal, then in a country where using vampire tricks was illegal, you were screwed. The only vamp I knew well that was descended from a line like that was Willie McCoy. I had never wondered what Willie, with his ugly suits and uglier ties and slicked back hair, did for food. Maybe I should have.

The Church of Eternal Life didn’t promise much more than most churches promised, but you could join the Lutherans, and if you didn’t like it, you could quit. Joining the Church of Eternal Life as a full member meant never being able to do anything about regrets you might have.

Zerbrowski got us back on track. “You didn’t see anyone in the parking lot who could confirm when you left the Sapphire?”

He shook his head.

“Did you smell anything?”

Those washed out eyes flicked up to me. He frowned. “What?”

“You didn’t see anything, or anyone, but sight isn’t the only sensory input you’ve got.”

He frowned harder.

I bent down so I could meet him eye-to-eye. I would have knelt, but I didn’t want to touch the carpet with anything but my shoes. “You’re a vampire, Benchely, a bloodsucker, a predator. If you were human I’d just say what did you see, or hear, but you’re not human. If you didn’t see or hear anything, what did you smell? What did you sense?”

He was looking positively perplexed. “What do you mean?”

I shook my head. “What did they do, make you a vampire, then not teach you anything about what you are?”

“We’re the eternal children of God,” he said.

“Bullshit, bull-fucking-shit! You don’t know what you are, or what you could be.” I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. He was five years dead. I didn’t think he was involved, but he’d walked through that parking lot damn close to the time of the killing. If he hadn’t been such a pititful excuse for the undead, he might have been able to help us catch the bad guys.

“I don’t understand,” he said, and I believed him.

I shook my head. “I need air.” I went for the door, leaving Zerbrowski to mutter, “Thanks for your help, Mr. Benchely, and if you think of anything, call us. I was on the cement walkway, breathing in all the night air I could, when Zerbrowski came to find me.

“What the hell was that?” he asked. “You just decide we stop questioning a suspect?”

“He didn’t do it, Zerbrowski. He’s too damn pitiful to have done it.”

“Anita, listen to yourself. That doesn’t even make sense. You know as well I do that murderers can make you feel sorry for them. Some of them specialize in pity.”

“I don’t mean I felt pity for him, I mean he’s too damn pitiful a vampire to have pulled it off.”

Zerbrowski frowned at me. “You’ve lost me.”

I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but I tried. “It’s bad enough that they let him believe that becoming a vampire would fix everything that was wrong with his miserable life, but then they killed him. They took his mortal life, but they’ve done everything they can to cripple him as a vampire.”

“Cripple him, how?”

“Any vampire that I know would have noticed things, Zerbrowski. They’re like this hyperfocus predator. Predators notice things. Benchely may have fangs, but he still thinks like he’s a sheep, not a wolf.”

“Would you really want every member of the church to be a good predator?”

I leaned my back against the railing. “It’s not that. It’s that they took his life and didn’t give him another one. He’s not better off than he was before.”

“He’s not getting arrested for drunk and disorderlies anymore.”

“And how long will it be before he can’t take it anymore and he uses his gaze on somebody, drinks their blood, and blows it? They wake up and decide they were abused. He’s not a good enough vampire for them not to wake up and regret it.”

“What do you mean he’s not a good enough vampire? Anita, you’re not making sense.”

“I don’t know if it’ll make sense to you, Zerbrowski, but I’ve seen the real deal. They’re terrible, or can be, but they’re like watching a tiger at the zoo. They’re dangerous, but they have a beauty to them, even the ones that aren’t from a bloodline that makes them prettier after death, even those have a sort of power to them. A certain mystique, or an aura of confidence, or something. They have something that every member of the church that we’ve talked to since last night lacks.”

“I say, again, would we want them to be powerful and mysterious? Wouldn’t that be bad?”

“For stopping crime and keeping the peace, yes, but Zerbrowski, the church talked these people into letting themselves be killed. Killed for what? I’ve tried to talk people out of joining the church for years, but I’ve not really talked to many of the members once I can’t save them.”

He was looking at me funny. I guess I couldn’t blame him. “You still think that vamps are dead. You’re dating one, and you still think they’re dead.”

“Jean-Claude hasn’t made a new vampire since he became Master of the City, Zerbrowski.”

“Why not? I mean, it’s considered legal now, not murder.”

“I think he agrees with me, Zerbrowski.”

He frowned harder at me, took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, put them back on, and shook his head. “I am just a simple cop, and you are making my head hurt.”

“Simple my ass. Katie told me you double majored in law enforcement and philosophy. What kind of cop has a degree in philosophy?”

He looked at me kind of sideways. “If you tell anyone else I’ll deny it, say sleeping with the undead has made you hallucinate.”

“Trust me, Zerbrowski, if I hallucinated, it wouldn’t be about you.”

“That is a low blow, Blake, I wasn’t even picking on you.” His cell phone rang. He flipped it open, still smiling about my low blow. “Zerbrow—” He never even got to finish his name, before his smile vanished. “Say again, Arnet, slower. Shit. We’re on our way. Holy items out. They’ll glow if the vamp is close.” He started to run, as he flipped the phone closed. I ran with him.

“What happened?” I asked.

We clattered onto the stairs before he answered. “Woman dead at the scene. Vamp missing. Apartment appears empty.”

“Appears?” I said.

“Vampires are tricky bastards,” he said.

I would have argued, if I could have. But since I couldn’t, I saved my breath for running and beat Zerbrowski to his car. If we hadn’t both been afraid of what we’d find when we got to the scene, I would have teased him about it.

62

THE APARTMENT WAS so much nicer than the one we’d just come from. It was clean and neat enough to have pleased even my stepmother, Judith. Well, except for the dead woman on the carpet and the blood trail leading back to the bedroom. Other than that, the apartment looked freshly scrubbed.

I know by now that murder happens in the best of neighborhoods. I know for a fact that economics, or neatness, or niceness are not barriers to violence. I know that, because I’ve seen dead bodies in some of the nicest houses. Everyone wants to believe that violence only happens in horrible places, where even the rats fear to go, but it isn’t true. I didn’t think I had any illusions left about murder and murderers, but I was wrong. Because the first thing I thought when I saw that neat-as-a-pin, well-decorated apartment with the dead woman on the carpet was, the body would have fit in Jack Benchely’s apartment better. Hell, you could have hidden her body in the coffee table debris.

The body lay so close to the door that they’d had to move her arm just to open the door enough to let Arnet and Abrahams inside. Abrahams had transferred over from sex crimes. I glanced at him across the room, standing near the neat, sparkly kitchen. He was tall and thin with dark hair and an olive complexion. Brown seemed to be his favorite color, because I’d never seen him when he wasn’t wearing it. He was talking to Zerbrowski, who was taking notes.

So far I hadn’t learned enough to need to take notes. Maybe it was because the body was right at our feet. Arnet’s and mine. Dead bodies can be a real conversation stopper. The body was on its stomach, legs slightly spread, one hand reaching out toward the door, the other arm folded back where Arnet had moved it when she opened the door.

Arnet was standing beside me, looking down at the body. She looked a little pale around the edges. Maybe it was only the lack of makeup, but I didn’t think so. She was actually wearing a little eye makeup and pale lipstick. But her eyes were a little big, and her skin pale against her short dark hair. Not like pale with contrast, but pale like I was ready to grab her elbow in case she started to faint on the body.

I wanted to ask her if she was alright, but you don’t ask cops that, so I tried to get her talking. “How did you know she was in here?” I asked.

She jumped and turned startled eyes to me. She was seriously spooked.

“Why don’t we step outside and get some air?” I said.

She shook her head, and I knew stubborn when I saw it, so I didn’t argue. “I saw blood under the door, or what I was almost certain was blood.”

“Then what?”

“I called for backup, and we kicked the door open.”

“You and Abrahams,” I said.

She nodded.

“The door bounced into her arm, but we didn’t know it was her until we shoved the door again. I took low, and I was kneeling on the ground, so I saw her first. Saw that we were trying to shove the door through her.” Her voice shook a little at the end.

“Let’s move over there by the kitchen, okay?”

“I’m alright,” she said, and was angry suddenly. “Why is it that you think you’re the only woman that can handle this kind of shit?”

I lifted eyebrows, but didn’t say anything for a count of five. I wasn’t mad, I just wasn’t sure what to say. I finally tried the truth. “I’m not the one that’s pale and looks ready to faint.”

“I’m not going to faint,” she hissed at me. Angry whispers always sound so evil.

“Fine, then we’ll stay right here.”

“Fine,” she said, still angry.

I shrugged, strangely not angry. “Fine. You checked the woman, found she was dead, and then . . .”

“You know, I don’t have to report to you. You’re not my boss.”

That was it. “Look, Arnet, if you’ve got a personal beef with me, fine, have a personal beef with me, but not on her time.” I pointed down to the body.

“What do you mean, her time, she’s dead. She doesn’t have anymore time.”

“Bullshit. We’re on her dime right now. This is her murder, and catching the son of a bitch that did this to her is more important than anything else right now. You stonewalling me and acting like some damn rookie is just giving him more time to run. We don’t want him to run. We want him to be caught, right?”

She nodded. “I am not acting like a rookie.”

I sighed. “I apologize for that, and if you want to fight, we can fight, but later, when we’re not wasting valuable time, when we’re not wasting her time.”

Arnet looked down at the body again, mostly because I pointed again. Maybe it was overly dramatic, but I already spent time fighting with Dolph at crime scenes, I didn’t need another prima donna on my hands. Murder first, personal stuff later, that had to be the order of things, or you lost your way.

Zerbrowski was behind her. I noticed him walking up, but I don’t think Arnet did. “Go outside, Arnet, get some air,” he said, smiling, trying to take some of the sting out of it.

“I’m a detective on this team, she isn’t.” She pointed at me with her thumb.

“Outside, now,” Zerbrowski said, and his voice had lost all of its hail-fellow-well-met cheer.

Arnet stood there glaring at him.

“If I have to tell you to go outside again, Arnet, it won’t just be for air.”

“What’s that mean?” she asked, and her hands were starting to tremble. She was so angry she was shaking. What the hell had I done to make her this pissed about me? Was it about Nathaniel? Hell, she’d never dated him. She’d never met him before he was already living with me.

“Do you want to be off this case?” Zerbrowski asked, voice low and suddenly not at all like Zerbrowski’s voice.

“No,” she said, and she looked sullen, but surprised, as if she hadn’t known that he had a voice like that in him. Me, neither.

He looked at her, it was a look to match that new voice. “Then what should you be doing?”

She opened her mouth then closed it until her lips were a thin pink line. She turned on her sensible, two-inch heels and marched out.

Zerbrowski sighed loudly and frowned at me. “What did you do to Arnet?”

“Me? Nothing.”

He gave me a look.

“I swear, I didn’t do a damn thing to her.”

“Katie says Arnet was pretty pissed at something you said at the wedding.”

“How does Katie know she was pissed?”

His look got really narrow. “You did say something, didn’t you?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and glanced down at the body. “We’re wasting time with all this personal shit,” I said. Okay, I also hadn’t wanted to discuss my boyfriend situation with Zerbrowski, but we really did have a murderer to catch.

“True, but when this slows down, you fix this between you and Arnet.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because you’re not wicked pissed at her,” he said, and his face was as matter-of-fact as his words.

I wanted to argue with the logic, but as far as it went, it made sense. “I’ll do what I can. What did Abrahams tell you?”

“Arnet saw the blood under the door. They called backup and entered. Searched the place and didn’t find one Avery Seabrook. The bed was unmade, and the blood trail seems to start in the bed.”

“Not in the bedroom, but the bed,” I said.

He nodded.

“Do we have an ident on her?”

Funny, he didn’t ask who “her” referred to. “Purse is beside the bed with her neatly folded clothes. Sally Cook, age twenty-four, 5'3", and I never believe the weight on a woman’s driver’s license.”

“Yeah, women fudge the weight, but men will add an inch to their height.”

He grinned at me. “Most of us just aren’t smart enough to remember how tall we are.”

I smiled at him and resisted the urge to punch him on the shoulder. He can have that effect on me, even at murder scenes.

“I noticed you were doing fingertip push-ups looking at the body. You messed up our blood pattern.”

“I wasn’t doing push-ups, and I touched as little as I could. But I know why she bled out, at least partly why.”

“Talk,” he said, he was starting to sound like Dolph. Not a bad a thing, just a little unnerving.

“She’s got a partial bite mark on her very inner thigh. Looks like it punctured her femoral.”

“Why did you say ‘partial’ bite mark? Either he bit her, or he didn’t.”

I shrugged. “He bit her, but it looks almost like he started, then either she jerked away, or he wasn’t able to finish. For lack of a better analogy, it’s like being bitten by a snake. If it’s not poisonous, you’re better off not jerking away. Vampire fangs are recurved not as much as most snake teeth, but still, if you pull away abruptly, you’re going to tear yourself up worse than if you just let it chew on you and try to pry it off, sort of gently.”

“It’s instinct to pull away from something that’s biting you, Anita.”

“I’m not arguing that, Zerbrowski, I’m only saying that it’s not a good idea. You will tear yourself up.”

“So he bit her, and she pulled away, and that tore her femoral open. Are you saying he didn’t mean to kill her?”

I shrugged. “I’m saying that you can bleed out from your femoral in about twenty minutes, maybe less. Most people don’t understand that.”

“Anita, don’t do this to me.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“I saved the best for last. She’s got a little case in there with what sure as hell looks like a stripper outfit to me. All fringes and not much else. If she’s a stripper, then we’ve got one of our vampires. But you’re standing here telling me that he didn’t mean to kill her. If that’s true, then he isn’t one of our guys. I’m in the process of getting you a warrant of execution for his ass. I’d hate to have you killing the wrong guy.”

I shook my head. “He was responsible for her death, Zerbrowski. The way the law is written, he’s dead either way. If he’s part of our serial killer team, he’s dead. If he accidentally nicked her femoral and either didn’t know enough to call 911, or panicked, or maybe dawn caught him before he could finish. It doesn’t matter which it was, by accident or by design. The law says it’s murder when a vampire kills a human being using its bite. There is no charge of manslaughter, if you’re a vampire.”

Zerbrowski looked at me, and his eyes were very serious behind his wire rimmed glasses. “You think it was an accident, don’t you?”

I shrugged again. “If he meant to rip her femoral open, I think the bite would be different, more vicious. I’ve seen a lot of vamp kills, Zerbrowski, a lot. This looks like a new vamp, a really new one, that doesn’t know how to use its fangs yet. Someone who’s two years dead shouldn’t make mistakes like this.”

“So he did it on purpose.”

I sighed. “I’m beginning to wonder what kind of education the little vampires at the Church of Eternal Life are getting.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that I thought their mentoring system was like most of the wereanimals that I know. You teach the rookies how to hunt, how to kill, clean, and efficiently.”

“You confessing to something for your furry friends?” he asked, and he wasn’t smiling enough for the comment, not for my peace of mind.

“Animals, Zerbrowski, animals. Jean-Claude hasn’t brought over any new vamps since I’ve been hanging with him, but I’ve seen other vamps that were around two years dead, and they aren’t rookies. They aren’t experts, but this is a rookie mistake. Remember when Jack Benchely said that they’ll give the vamps victims, but they make it clean and neat, and not fun?”

“Yeah.”

“What if feeding on the femoral, the inner thigh, is considered too taboo, too sexual for the church to teach its members?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know the theory that if we don’t tell teenagers about sex that they won’t think of it on their own.”

“Yeah,” he said and smiled and shook his head, “speaking as someone who was once a teenage boy, and who will one day have a two teenagers on my hands, it’s a nice theory, but it doesn’t work that way.”

“Yeah, I know that, but what if the church is like the right-wingers? If you don’t talk about it, or tell the new little vamps about the dirty stuff, they won’t do it, or think of it on their own.”

“Feeding from the inner thigh is too much like oral sex for the church,” he said, and there was no teasing in his voice when he said it. He was working, thinking.

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“But Avery, our newish vampire, did think of it, and did try it, but didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Yes, and because he’d had no information, he didn’t know how dangerous it could be. It’s like the kids who came up pregnant in junior high, because they used candy bar wrappers for condoms.”

Zerbrowski looked at me. “You’re joking.”

“My hand to God, I am not making that up. The point is that if you don’t educate the newly emerging vampire, just like the newly emerging teenager, you end up with them doing stupid shit. Dangerous things that get them or others, killed, or hurt. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to basic sex ed, or beginning blood donations for vampires. Ignorance will get you killed in both.”

He looked down at the body. “She fits the physical profile of the first vic. If you ignore the difference in height, she’s even blond, which fits all three vics.”

“But this one’s not a natural blond.”

Zerbrowski frowned at me.

“I don’t mean that, I mean her roots are showing. I didn’t really check that closely, but it looks like she either shaved everything, or had very little body hair to begin with. A lot of strippers shave.”

“Like your new boyfriend,” he said, his voice was mild, but his eyes weren’t.

I shook my head. “None of your damn business, Zerbrowski.”

“You guys were getting pretty cozy on the dance floor, but then he’s living with you now, isn’t he?”

“Somebody talks too much.”

“Hey, I’m a trained detective, I detected that you’re shacking up with a stripper who’s what, seven years younger than you?”

“As the detective in charge at the scene, shouldn’t you be solving this murder?”

“I’m thinking. Teasing you always helps me think.”

“Glad to hear I inspire you. What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking that I want to talk to Avery Seabrook before he gets executed. If he’s part of the other murders, then I want the names of his friends. If he did this by accident, then I think we need to know that, too. If you’re right, and the church isn’t teaching basic vampire 101 safety to its members, then we’ve got hundreds of potential accidental deaths walking around out there tonight. That ain’t good.”

“Legally, we can’t do anything to force the church to change its teaching methods. Separation of church and state, and all that.”

He nodded. “I can’t, and Federal Marshal Blake can’t, but Anita Blake, sweetie to the Master of the City, might.”

“Are you encouraging me to encourage someone else to put undue pressure on an upstanding member of the community?”

“Would I do that?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“My head’s sore,” he said, “I give up. How the hell do we catch a vampire and hold him for questioning without getting anyone else killed?”

“He’s only two years dead, Zerbrowski. He’s not that big and bad.”

He glanced down at the body. “Tell that to her.”

He had a point.

“If this was an accident, then he might, just might, run to the church for sanctuary or absolution, or whatever.”

“What if it wasn’t an accident?”

“Then he’s off joining up with his killer friends, and I have no idea where to start looking for him. We know his hunting ground is across the river in the clubs.”

Zerbrowski nodded. “Sheriff Christopher, who you met, is putting all his men on alert. The Staties are helping out, trying to keep it low profile.”

“You’re not going to keep it out of the media much longer.”

He shrugged. “I know.”

“So if extra people are patrolling the clubs, then we can check out the other theory.”

“The church,” he said.

I nodded.

“I’ll talk to Abrahams, let him know what’s up. You go outside and make nice with Arnet.”

“Zerbrowski . . .”

“Do it, Anita, I don’t have time to baby-sit any more feuds. You’ve got less than five minutes to fix this. I’d go outside and get started if I were you.” He had that strange un-Zerbrowski-like tone to his voice again. Not hostile, but no room to debate. It was a voice that expected to be obeyed, and strangely, I did. At least I went outside. I had no idea how to fix things with Arnet. You can’t fix something until you know what’s broke. I couldn’t believe she was that pissed about not being able to date Nathaniel, and if it wasn’t that, I was clueless. Yet another interpersonal relationship that I had no clue about. Was it just me, or are people really this confusing?

63

A GLANCE OUT the partially open door didn’t show Arnet. There was a forest of uniformed officers, plain clothes, and the coroner’s wagon complete with coroner waiting to take the body away. We were still waiting for the crime lab, CSU. It was rare for me to arrive on the scene this soon. I peeled off my bloody gloves at the door, but no one had set up a trash bag for debris. I ended up holding the gloves between two fingertips by a clean edge. Awkward, but I couldn’t just drop them.

The newest dectective on the RPIT payroll came around the door frame with an open, but empty trash bag in his gloved hands. His name was Smith and I’d met him once at a crime scene long ago when he was in uniform. It had actually been one of the very first times I’d met Nathaniel. Smith had been comfortable enough around the lycanthropes that I’d remembered it. Remembered it enough to tell Dolph. Apparently, Dolph had remembered it, too. Seeing Smith in plain clothes had been a reminder that Dolph didn’t really think I was evil, and might even still value my opinion.

He smiled at me. “Looks like I’m just in time.” He held the bag open so I could drop the gloves in.

I smiled back. “The nick of time.”

Zerbrowski yelled, “Smith!”

Smith moved toward Zerbrowski with the bag still in his hands. He was the newest detective on the squad, and that meant he was their version of a grunt. It wasn’t as bad as being a uniformed rookie, but it was still low man on the totem pole. I walked outside without waiting to see what Zerbrowski wanted Smith for. Not my problem. No, my problem was waiting outside.

I actually expected Arnet to be somewhere in the hallway with all the extra personel, but she wasn’t. I went down the stairs and out the glass doors of the little entryway. She had taken Zerbrowski literally, or maybe she really needed the air. The October night was soft, warmer than last night, but still cool enough to feel like autumn. The air tasted like it was time to go somewhere and pick apples.

Arnet was sitting on the curb. The halogen light was bright enough that her pantsuit still looked the same shade of brownish burgundy that it had in the apartment. I would have looked sickly in the color, but it brought out highlights in her short hair that you didn’t see when she wore black or navy. She had her arms around her knees, not exactly clutching them, but obviously not happy even from a distance.

I took a deep breath, let it out, and kept walking toward her. I so didn’t want to do this. I stopped short of her, and said, “Is this seat taken?”

She jumped and glanced back at me. She scrubbed at her face, trying to hide tears. “Oh, great,” she said, “just great. You catch me crying. Now you must think I really am a loser.”

She hadn’t said I could sit down, but she hadn’t said I couldn’t either. I decided to take it, and sat down. Close enough to talk privately without being overheard, but not so close that I invaded her personal space more than I could help it. Sitting down on the curb, I was happy that I was wearing jeans, jogging shoes, and a T-shirt. They were perfect curb-sitting clothes.

“What’s wrong, Arnet?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Okay, why are you mad at me?”

She glanced sort of sideways at me. “Why do you care?”

“Because we have to work together.”

“You know, almost any other woman would have led into this conversation. Chatted a little.”

“Zerbrowski said I had less than five minutes. I don’t have time to chat.”

“Why less than five minutes?”

“We’re going on a road trip.”

“Do you know where Avery Seabrook is?”

“No, but I thought of people to ask.”

She looked away from me and shook her head. “And how did you come up with people to ask? Not through police work.”

I frowned, but she couldn’t see it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She licked her lips, hesitated, then said, “I could work for years as a cop on this kind of crime, and I wouldn’t have your insight into the monsters.” She looked at me sideways again, but this time she held the look. “Do I have to fuck the monsters to be as good at this as you are?”

I gave her wide eyes. “Please tell me that you are not this pissed just because I’m dating Nathaniel and you don’t get to.”

“I saw you at the club last night.”

There was a time in my life where I would have said, Guilty Pleasures, but the time when I would volunteer information was past. “What club?” I asked.

Her eyes were suddenly cop eyes, maybe a little more hostile than they needed to be, but cold and looking at me as if she could see into my head. It was part lie and part truth. She didn’t know as much as that look seemed to say, but she probably knew more than I wanted her to.

“Don’t play games, Anita.”

Oh, goody we were going to have a fight on a first-name basis. “I’m not very good at games, Jessica, so I don’t play them much.”

Her hands gripped her knees tighter. I think to keep from gripping me. “Fine, Guilty Pleasures. I saw you at Guilty Pleasures last night.”

My face showed nothing, because she’d given me plenty of time to brace for it. I just blinked at her and had a slight smile on my face. Pleasant, empty, on the outside. Inside I was thinking hard. How much had she seen at the club? How much did she remember? Had she been there for Primo’s part of the show?

I almost said, I didn’t see you, but stopped myself. I wasn’t going to help her fill in any blanks. “So, you saw me at Guilty Pleasures. I’m dating the owner.”

She looked away then, off toward the parked cars and beyond that a news van. The uniform that was still putting up yellow crime scene tape to help block off the parking area paused and looked at the van. Would someone warn Zerbrowski?

Arnet turned and yelled, “Marconi, go tell Zerbrowski we’ve got a news van.”

Marconi said, “Shiiit,” with real feeling to it, and went for the entryway.

Great, it was like all I had to do was think and someone else did it for me. Cool. I would try to use this power only for good.

She looked back at me. “How can you be dating him and Nathaniel at the same time?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

If looks could have hurt me, that one would have. “That’s not an answer, that’s an evasion.”

I sighed. “Look, Jessica, I don’t owe you an answer to that particuliar question. Who I date, and why, or how, is none of your business.”

Her hazel eyes got dark, almost solid brown. I realized it was her eyes’ version of going black with rage. “I thought I’d go down and see Nathaniel without you there. I thought maybe if you weren’t there to interfere . . .” She looked away then, stared out at the parked cars and the gawkers being kept back by the uniforms. Stared at them as if she were really seeing them, which I doubted. It was just somewhere for her eyes to go, while she talked.

“But you were there. Oh, my God, were you there.” Her voice broke, not with tears, but with emotion. I didn’t understand this depth of emotion from her.

“You’re acting like I stole Nathaniel from you. You never dated him. Hell, when you met him, he was already living with me.”

She looked at me then, and it was unnerving to see the anger, because I didn’t understand it. “But I didn’t know that. You let me believe that he was just your friend. He let me believe it.”

“Nathaniel likes to be nice to people.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Look, Arnet, sometimes Nathaniel flirts without really meaning to. I think it’s like an occupational hazard.”

“You mean because he’s a stripper.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t know what he did for a living until the wedding reception. I should have known he was some kind of hustler.”

That pissed me off. “He isn’t a hustler.”

“The hell he’s not. I’ve got a friend in juvie. He was picked up for prostitution twice before he hit fifteen. Male prostitution,” she said the last like it made it all somehow worse.

I hadn’t actually known he’d been picked up for it, but I didn’t give her that. “I know what Nathaniel was doing before he got off the streets.” Which was sort of true and sort of not true, but not completely a lie.

“Did you save him? Did you see him and take him home? Are you his sugar mama?”

“Sugar mama. You made that up. That’s not really a word.”

She had the grace to look embarrassed. I almost got a smile out of her, but she fought it off. “Whatever you want to call it. Are you? Is he your . . .”

I didn’t help her. If she was going to say it, I wanted her to say it. “My what?” I asked, and my voice was a few octaves lower, cold, clear. It was a voice that, if you knew me, you might worry when you heard it.

If Arnet was worried, it didn’t show. “Gigolo,” she said. She threw the word in my face like it was something solid and hurtful, as if she’d thrown a fist at me.

I laughed, and she didn’t like it.

“What’s so damned funny? I saw you on stage with him, Blake. I saw what you did to him. You and that vampire of yours.”

I gave her wide eyes then, because I finally thought I had a glimmer of why she was so pissed at me. “Are you under the impression that I whisked Nathaniel off the streets as a child and made him my boy-whore?”

She looked away then. “When you say it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She turned back to me, still angry. “I saw what you did to him last night. You chained him up. You hurt him. You humiliated him in front of all those people.”

It was my turn to look off into the distance, because I was trying to think how to explain without explaining too much. I was also wondering if I even owed Jessica Arnet an explanation. If we didn’t need to work together, and I hadn’t been afraid she’d share what she’d seen with the rest of RPIT, I might not have explained anything, but we did work together, and I didn’t want her version getting around the squad room. Not that my version was going to be that much better if it got spread around. At their core, most policemen are closet, or not so closet, conservatives.

How do you explain color to the blind? How to explain that pain can be pleasure to someone who isn’t wired that way? You can’t, not really, but I tried anyway.

“It took me a long time to understand what Nathaniel wanted from me.”

She looked at me, horrified. “You’re going to blame him? You’re going to blame the victim?”

This was not going to go well. “Have you ever met someone who’s been blind from birth?”

She frowned at me. “What?”

“Someone who’s never seen color, ever.”

“No,” she said, “but what does that have to do with Nathaniel?”

“You’re blind, Jessica, how do I explain to you what blue looks like?”

“What are you babbling about?” she asked.

“How do I explain to you that Nathaniel enjoyed being on stage, that he sort of forced the situation on me?”

“You’re the victim, please, you weren’t chained up.”

I shrugged. “I’m saying there was no victim on stage last night, just a bunch of consenting adults.”

She was shaking her head. “No, I know what I saw.”

“You know what you would have felt if it had been you chained on stage and treated like that, and you’re assuming that because that’s how you would feel, that that’s how everyone would feel. Not everyone feels the same way about things.”

“I know that. I’m not a child.”

“Then stop acting like one.”

She stood up then and stared down at me, her hands in fists at her sides. “I am not acting like a child.”

“You’re right, you’re being way too judgmental to be a child.”

Zerbrowski called, “Anita, we need to roll.”

I stood up, brushed off the back of my jeans, and yelled, “I’m coming.” I looked at Arnet and tried to think of anything that would make this better. Nothing came to mind. “Nathaniel is my sweetie, Jessica, I would never hurt him.”

“I saw you hurt him,” she said, and she sort of threw the words at me like she had the word gigolo.

“He doesn’t see it that way.”

“He doesn’t know any better,” she said.

I smiled and fought the urge to give one of those laughs that is half nerves and half exasperation. “You want to save him. You want to ride in and save him from a life of degradation.”

She didn’t say anything, just glared at me.

“Anita, we need to go, now,” Zerbrowski yelled. He was standing in the open door of his car.

I glanced back at Arnet. “I thought Nathaniel needed saving once, too, needed me to fix him. What I didn’t understand is that he isn’t broken, well, not more broken than the rest of us.” And that was probably more truth than I owed Detective Jessica Arnet. I left it at that, and jogged for Zerbrowski’s car. He asked me how it had gone with Arnet. I told him it could have gone better.

“How better?” He asked as we eased past the news van and a crowd of gawkers.

“Oh, like the Valentine’s Day Massacre could have been a better party.”

He gave me a look. “Jesus, Anita, it isn’t enough that you and Dolph are pissed at each other, you’ve got pick a fight with Arnet?”

“I didn’t pick a fight with either of them. You know I didn’t pick one with Dolph.” We were easing past the tape and barriers that the uniforms had moved for us. The television crew had the camera pointed straight at us. Great. I resisted the urge to give them the finger, or something else equally childish.

“I shouldn’t have said that about Dolph. I know you didn’t start that.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s eating Arnet?”

“If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you.”

“You’re not going to tell your version first?”

“No one ever believes my version, Zerbrowski. I’m fucking coffin bait. If you’ll fuck vampires, you’ll do anything, right?” And just like that, I started to cry. Not loud, but tears, real tears. I turned away and stared out the window. I had no idea why I was crying. Stupid, so stupid.

Did I really care what Arnet thought of me? No. Did I care if she trashed my reputation to the rest of the squad? Yeah, I guess I did. Shit.

Zerbrowski was either so astounded that I was crying that he didn’t know what to say, or he was treating me like he’d treat any other cop. If they don’t want you to see them cry, you don’t see it. Zerbrowski drove to the Church of Eternal Life, concentrating on the road like a son of a bitch. I stared out the window the entire time, and cried.

64

THE PARKING LOT was full, and I mean full. So full that Zerbrowski parked in front of the church in the fire only zone. We had Marconi and Smith in a car behind us, along with two marked cars. Apparently, Zerbrowski had been planning our strategy while I was trying to fix things with Arnet. Apparently, Abrahams or Arnet had been left in charge of the murder scene. I was betting on Abrahams. I wouldn’t have left Arnet in charge of a little league team tonight. Of course, I might have been a little prejudiced right that moment.

He had two uniforms station themselves at the doors, and he told them to get their holy items out. “Nobody leaves, unless you clear it with me, is that clear?” It was clear. I suggested that there was another door at the parish hall entrance, and since we had enough manpower to cover it, Zerbrowski just nodded and said, “Do it.” It was like he was channeling Dolph, but it worked. Everyone just did what he said.

Marconi shook his head and said what I’d been thinking. “Commanding presence tonight, Zerbrowski.”

“You’re just jealous that he’s better at channeling Dolph than you are,” I said.

Marconi smiled at me and gave a nod. But his hand was at his belt, and he was moving his gun a little more forward. Sometimes the more jokes you do, the more nervous you are.

Smith was new enough that his eyes were all sparkly, and he was almost vibrating with eagerness, like a dog straining at a leash. He hadn’t been a detective for a month yet, and that can make you eager to prove yourself. I hoped not too eager, since I’d recommended him.

Zerbrowski noticed and gave me a nod, like he’d keep an eye on him. He asked my advice about only one thing. “Do we go in bold, or quiet?”

I thought about it for a second, then shrugged. “They know we’re here, Zerbrowski, at least the ones near the back.”

“They can hear us?”

I nodded. “But let’s ask an usher near the back to get Malcolm’s attention. Being polite doesn’t cost a thing.”

He nodded, then went to the big, polished, wood doors. Before he could push them open, a man opened them from inside. He was young with short brown hair and glasses. I’d seen him before on another case. His name began with a B, like Brandon, or Brian, or Bruce, or something. Bruce, I thought. He eased the door shut behind him, before we had more than a glimpse of people turning to stare. His brown eyes were still lovely behind his glasses, and there was still healing bite marks on his neck. It was as if no time had passed, but it was nice to know that he was still among the living.

“You are interrupting our worship service?” His voice was soft, measured.

“You’re Bruce, right?”

His eyes widened just a little. “I’m surprised you remembered me, Ms. Blake.”

“Marshal Blake, actually,” I smiled when I said it.

His eyes did that little widening act again. “Do I say congratulations?”

“Is he stalling?” Zerbrowski asked.

“Not in the way you mean,” I said. “He doesn’t want us to interrupt the services, but I don’t think he’d deliberately hide a murderer.”

That got me another eye widening. “Murderer? What are you talking about, Ms. Marshal Blake? We of the church do not advocate violence in any aspect of our lives.”

“There’s a dead woman in the home of one of your members who would argue that, if she could,” Zerbrowski said.

A pained expression crossed Bruce’s face. “Are you certain that it is the home of one of our members?”

We both nodded.

Bruce looked down at the ground, then nodded, as if he’d decided something. “If you will remain near the back of the church, I will tell Malcolm what has happened.”

Zerbrowski looked at me as if to ask if that was okay. I shrugged and nodded. “Sure.”

Bruce smiled, obviously relieved. “Good, good, please keep your voices low. This is a church, and we are having services.” He led the way through those highly polished doors. The uniforms stayed outside, but Marconi and Smith followed us in.

There was no vestibule inside the doors. The doors led directly into the nave, so we were just suddenly facing pews packed full of congregation members. The vamps close to the doors were already glancing our way.

Bruce motioned for us to stay where we were, then walked wide around the pews up the side underneath the red and blue abstract stained glass windows. Where there should have been saints or the stations of the cross, or at a least a cross or two, there was nothing but the bare white walls. I think that was why the church always looked unfinished to me, naked like the walls needed clothes.

It’s never comfortable for me to be standing in front of a group of people unexpectedly. To be on display, especially when it’s a potentially hostile group. Zerbrowski had his smile in place, the good-to-meet-you smile. The one that I’d finally realized was his version of a blank face. Marconi looked bored. A lot of cops perfect that I’ve-seen-worse boredom after a few years on the force. Smith’s face was all shiny with excitement like a kid on Christmas morning. He was looking around at everything and totally not bothered by the staring crowd. I guess most cops don’t get to see inside the Church of Eternal Life much, or see hundreds of vampires in one place at one time. Hell, even I didn’t usually see that many at one time in one place.

The first few pews had had their look-see at us, but the glances spread upward from there. Quick glances with whispers, so it was like a wind moved through the room. A wind that turned faces toward us, widened eyes, sent more furious whispers spreading through the room, until it crashed against the pulpit and the strangely empty altar area at the front of the church.

Malcolm was standing at the white altar, but had already stepped out from behind it and moved to one side so he could meet Bruce, as the young man came up to one side of the raised area. Even the steps leading up to it were white. The only color was a strip of blue cloth that hung in the back of the sanctuary. A brilliant royal blue that moved slightly in the central air, as if the cloth didn’t sit flat to the wall. I wondered what was behind the cloth. It was the only thing that was different since I’d last been inside the building, some three years ago. About two years ago, the building had been fire-bombed by right-wing extremists. The attack hadn’t stopped the church. The attack had gotten the Church of Eternal Life some of its best national and international coverage ever, and donations had flooded in from people that were not so much for vampires as against violence. I’d seen what had been left when the fire department had gotten through with the building. Standing here now, I would never have known there had ever been even a small fire in this white, white space, let alone a bomb.

Malcolm spoke with Bruce at the side of the altar area. I wasn’t at all surprised when he came down the wide main aisle between the pews. Bruce trailed after him. The first thing you notice about Malcolm is that his short blond curls are the bright yellow of goldfinch feathers. Three hundred plus years in the dark will do that to bright blond hair. The next thing is, he’s tall, and almost painfully thin, so that he looks even taller than he truly is. He was wearing a black suit tonight, modest cut, but thanks to Jean-Claude’s fashion sense, I knew that that simple-seeming suit was tailored to that lean body, and probably cost more than most people make in a month. The shirt was a blue that helped point out that his eyes were the blue of a robin’s eggs. His tie was narrow and black with a silver tie bar, unadorned. Up close once you can look past the hair and the eyes, Malcolm has a very angular face, almost a homely face, as if the angles needed smoothing out to make them work together.

The first time I’d ever set eyes on Malcolm I’d thought him beautiful, but with even one vampire mark on me, I’d known differently. He prided himself on not using his vampire powers on us mere mortals, but he wasted enough to make himself seem handsome. That bit of mind-fucking he allowed himself. Vanity, all is vanity.

I’d also thought him one of the most powerful vampires in St. Louis once; now as he moved toward me, he seemed somehow diminished. Or maybe I was just shielding too well now for his power to creep over me. Maybe.

He held out one of his big hands, which always seemed like they should belong on a beefier body. He held it out sort of in between Zerbrowski and me, as if he wasn’t sure who was in charge and didn’t want to offend anyone. The last time I’d seen Malcolm he hadn’t offered to shake hands. He’d known I wouldn’t take it.

Tonight, I took his hand, because Zerbrowski was only human, and whatever I was, only human didn’t cover it.

Malcolm hesitated in the middle of the handshake, as if I’d surprised him, but he recovered, smiling, his blue eyes glowing with pleasure at the opportunity to help the police. It was a lie. He didn’t want us here. He certainly didn’t want a murder involving his church. I felt nothing as our hands touched, except that he was cool, so he hadn’t fed recently. Other than that, I felt nothing, because I was shielding. I’d gotten really good at shielding lately. I realized that I’d been shielding almost as hard as I could since Jean-Claude, Richard, and I had bound ourselves together in that bed. It wasn’t just guilt that had made me afraid. So Malcolm’s hand was just a hand, cooler than human normal, but just a hand. Good.

I think we would have been fine if Malcolm hadn’t tried a little vampire power on me. Maybe I was shielding too much, hiding too much of what I was, or maybe he was simply that arrogant. Whatever, he pulsed a little power down his hand into mine.

I was dizzy for a second, and he got an image of the dead girl in the apartment before I pushed back. I was still a little fuzzy on the whole psychic thing. I tend to overcompensate when I feel attacked. Yeah, I know, of course I overcompensated. It was so terribly me.

Malcolm stumbled back, and only my grip on his hand kept him on his feet. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in a little O of surprise. If he had just been some powerful vamp that tried to mind-fuck me, then I’d have taught him his lesson, and we’d have gone on about our investigation, but he was their master. I learned something in those few seconds, something I hadn’t guessed. Every human in the church had a mentor, and I’d assumed their vampire mentors were the ones that would bring them over when the time came. I knew the mentors took blood from their human trainees, but when push came to shove, Malcolm did those last three bites. Malcolm had brought over most of those hundreds, personally. Which meant when I shoved my power into him, it went through him like some huge sword. Through him and into the rest.

It was as if I could suddenly touch them, as if my hand shot through Malcolm’s palm, through him, and into their bodies. I felt their pulses, some hearts, some wrists, some necks. I felt the pulse of all those vampires, felt it sluggish and oh, so slow. So long, so long since some of them had fed as they were meant to feed. He didn’t let them hunt. He didn’t even let them go to the clubs and take willing food there. I saw an endless stream of church members garbed in white, like virgin sacrifices, offering their necks. Only taking a little blood, just enough blood, never enough to be satisfied, just enough not to die.

I saw the thick viscous punch in the parish hall, and I knew that it contained just a little blood from at least three different vamps. Malcolm made sure of that. He didn’t want to accidentally blood oath them to someone else. But he never used his own blood, for fear of what it would mean.

Malcolm jerked away from me, but it was too late. I didn’t need him anymore.

I looked past him at a girl with long dark hair and glasses. It was the first vampire I’d ever seen with glasses. She grabbed her chest, and I knew why. Her heart was beating. But I saw other things. I saw that once she’d been human here, and she’d knelt and given herself over, but it was a thing of chaste hands on her covered shoulders. No one had ever held her close, gripped her against their bodies, fed so powerfully that her body bucked against them, and sex was a pale thing compared to it.

“Stop it,” Malcolm said, “stop it, let them go!”

I turned slowly to look at him, and whatever he saw in my face made him take a step back. “You gave them to me,” I said, and my voice had a slow, honeyed feel to it. Power, such power. I’d learned only last night that vampires could act as a sort of witch’s familiar to me. I’d thought it needed to be a vampire that I had some connection with, but I was wrong. I could feed on them all, use them like some kind of giant undead battery.

Zerbrowski came up close to me, though even he shivered when he was close enough to whisper, “Anita, what’s happening?”

“He tried to use vampire powers to find out what I knew,” I said in that same slow, luxurious voice. It was as if my voice was something you could hold in your mouth and suck, like candy. Jean-Claude’s trick, and the thought was enough. He was suddenly aware of me, and what was happening. But most of what was happening, he needed to know. He was the Master of the City, not Malcolm. He had tolerated the treaty that the old master had made before her death, but now . . . well, we’d see. But that was for another night. This night was about murder.

“Are you hurt?” Zerbrowski asked. He sounded like he didn’t think so, but knew something was wrong.

“No,” I said, “no, I’m not hurt.” I thought, if I can feel some of their emotions, if I can look into their faces and see memories, what else can I do?

I thought, Avery, Avery, where are you? I felt an answer, like a small play of wind against my face. I turned toward that wind, and the left-hand side of pews. “Avery, Avery, Avery.” I spoke his name, each time a little louder, not yelling, but with force in it.

A vampire stood up in the middle of a row. He was average height, with short brown hair, and a face that was handsome in a soft, unfinished way, as if he’d been barely legal when they killed him.

I held out my hand to him. “Avery, come to me, come to me, Avery, come to me.”

He started to push his way through the crowd of other people. A hand grabbed his wrist, a human woman shaking her head, saying, “Don’t go.”

He jerked away from her, and I heard his voice as if he’d been standing next to me. “I have to go, she’s calling me.” And he turned eyes to me that were lost in vampire light, burning like brown glass in the sun, but the look on his face was one I’d only seen on humans. Humans that were bespelled by vampires. Humans that couldn’t say, no.

Malcolm’s rich voice filled the room. “Children, stop him, stop him from answering her call. She’s is the Master of the City’s whore. She will corrupt our Avery.”

I have to say the whore comment pissed me off. I turned to Malcolm, and I let my anger fill my voice. “I’ll corrupt them? My God, you’ve ruined them all. You stole their mortal lives, for what, Malcolm? For what?” I yelled the last, and the words held heat like the wind from some great fire.

All those little vampires that were still held on the lines of my power cried out. I’d hurt them, and I hadn’t meant to. I tried to make it up to them, and the problem was that the anger was mine, but I wasn’t very good at comforting people. But Jean-Claude was, in a way. It was that old, old problem of his and his line of vampires. If the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails. If the only tools you have are seduction and terror, and you’re trying to be nice . . . well, there you go.

65

I COULD TASTE their pulses on my tongue. Not just one, but hundreds, as if I’d suddenly had a truckload of candy shoved in my mouth. Candy that was hard and sweet and melted slow across my tongue, but it wasn’t just cherry, or grape, or root beer. It was like a thousand different flavors filled my mouth, so that instead of being delicious, it was overwhelming.

I couldn’t pick one flavor, one pulse to follow. I literally couldn’t pick just one, because I couldn’t sort them out. I was choking on too many choices. Until I could choose one thread to follow, I couldn’t swallow any of them. I collapsed to my knees, drowning in a thousand different scents, different skins. I could smell their skin, that wonderful smell at the side of the neck where the skin smells sweetest when you’re in love. But it was a different scent for each neck: aftershave, perfume, cologne, soap, sweat. It was as if I’d walked up to each of them and put my face just above their skin—close enough to kiss—and breathed in the scent of them.

Zerbrowski was beside me, his gun out, but not pointed at anyone, sort of ceilingward. “Anita, what’s wrong? Did he hurt you?”

Who, I thought? Who was he? There were so many “hes.” Which one did he mean?

I tried to swallow past all those pulses in my mouth, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t get this bite down. It was too much.

Jean-Claude’s voice was in my head. “Ma petite, you must choose.”

I managed to think, “Can’t.”

“Who did you go there to find?” he asked.

Who did I go there to find? That was a good question. Who? It all went back to who.

Zerbrowski grabbed my arm, hard. “Anita! I need you here. What’s happening?”

He needed me. I saw Smith and Marconi both with weapons drawn. They needed me, because they couldn’t feel it. I had to function, to think, to speak, or things were going to get out of hand. I was a federal marshal tonight, I had to remember that. I remembered something else, something that had been washed away in all that scent.

Avery, I needed Avery. I thought the name, and just like that, it was his pulse on my tongue. His skin smelled like cologne, something expensive so that it was powdery and sweet, almost like good perfume, but underneath that was sweat. He hadn’t showered tonight. The thought made me wonder what else besides sweat he hadn’t washed away. It was as if I was close to him again, as if my face passed down his body just above his skin. My breath was warm against his skin and helped blow the scents back from his skin to my nose, my mouth. I didn’t simply smell the scents down his body, I tasted them. A faint taste, as if smell was the more important, but smell and taste were aligned differently than ever before. More intimately, somehow. That part wasn’t Jean-Claude’s power, but Richard’s and I fought not to think of him, not to open the links between us farther than they were already. I did not want Richard in my head right now.

Jean-Claude let me know without words, or if with words, it was too quick to register, like a kind of telepathic shorthand, that he would guard me from Richard. He would not let me drown in still more sensation. But it was thanks to closer ties with Richard that I could smell and taste my way down Avery’s body and enjoy it, or rather not be disgusted by it. Wolves, like dogs, do not think of scent and taste as a human does. They like it when we smell like live things. Avery had had sex and hadn’t cleaned up afterward. I wasn’t disturbed by that, more curious, because, thanks to Jean-Claude’s marks and my own power, I knew Avery was as neat and meticulous in his person as he was in his housekeeping.

Zerbrowski squeezed my arm hard enough to bruise. “Anita, damn it, we can’t shoot him. The warrant doesn’t have our name on it. We’re not executioners. Anita, wake up!”

I blinked at him and saw Avery standing just on the other side of him. Marconi had stepped up and had his gun pressed against Avery’s chest. Avery wasn’t doing anything threatening, just standing and trying to walk forward against the press of the gun. He was trying to come to me. His face wasn’t empty like a zombie’s, in fact he was smiling, and so very present in his skin, but I’d called him, and even a gun barrel against his heart hadn’t stopped that order.

“Stop,” I said.

Avery stopped trying to move forward and just stood there, waiting. He stared down at me with a look that only your best boyfriend should have given you, but I didn’t mind. I wanted to pull his shirt out of his pants and rub his skin along mine. It was sexual, true, but it was also that urge that makes dogs roll in smelly stuff. It just smelled so good, and I could carry the scent with me and explore it at my leisure. I knew in that moment that wolves and dogs collect scents the way people collect rocks or houseplants—just because they like them, and they think they’re pretty. Some smells just make you happy like a favorite color; the fact that sweat and stale sex was “pretty” to that part of me that was Richard was a puzzle for another day. Now, I just tried not to question it too closely and not to do physically what I’d already done metaphysically.

“I’m alright, Zerbrowski.” But my voice was distant and lazy with power. That I couldn’t help, but when he pulled me to my feet, I was able to stand. Yea for me. I took a step forward and said, “It’s okay, Marconi, I told him to come to me.”

Marconi had a funny look on his face. “Not out loud you didn’t.”

I shrugged. “Sorry about that.” But I wasn’t looking at Marconi, I was looking at Avery. I was looking at him like you’d gaze on a lover, but it was all tied up with food, and smell, and things that were so nonhuman that I was having trouble processing them. I wanted to scent mark him. He was mine. I wanted to wrap his scent on my body and think about those smells and what they meant. It was as if scent was like a photograph of a murder scene. I could carry it around and “look” at it over and over again, think about it. The sense of smell had jumped from somewhere near the bottom of my sensory list to just behind visual, and the only thing that kept it lower than sight was that I was too much a primate to trust my nose that much.

“Put up your guns,” Zerbrowski said, “welcome to the wide world of weird vampire shit.” He didn’t sound happy, but I didn’t look to see what face went with the tone, because that would have meant looking away from Avery, and I didn’t want to do that.

He was a little clean-cut for my taste. His hair was a soft, medium brown, cut short the way a father or grandfather would cut it. The male hairstyle that has never really gone out of style for fifty years. His eyes matched his hair—a soft brown. His eyebrows were darker than his hair and arched in that way that men’s eyebrows will, perfectly, while most women have to pluck for that line above the eye. He didn’t have enough eyelashes, but they seemed thicker than they were because they were dark. His face was a soft oval, only the dark scattering of beard stubble saving him from looking even younger than he was. He was almost six feet, but seemed shorter, though I wasn’t sure why. Everything about him said that here was someone who’d never had anything too bad happen to him. It wasn’t just his face and coloring that was soft and undramatic; it was him. He had that flavor in my head of someone who’d never really been tested. How did you get to be a vampire and not lose that soft edge?

I got sadness from him, but he didn’t feel like someone who had just killed a woman, on purpose, or by accident. Was I wrong? Or had he not been the only vampire in that spotless apartment?

Avery stood in front of me with a look that was sad, so sad. Did he know? Had he done it?

There was a knock on the church doors. The sound startled all of us, I think. You just didn’t knock on the doors of a church. You came in, or you didn’t, but you didn’t knock. A voice called, “Sergeant Zerbrowski?”

Zerbrowski went to the door and peeked out. When he came back through the door, he had a piece of paper in his hand. It was thicker than it used to be, but most of the additions were things that would keep me out of jail and wouldn’t do a damn thing for Avery’s health.

Zerbrowski came toward me holding out the paper. I opened it up and read it, though I already knew what it was. It was my warrant of execution. The days when any vampire hunter would kill someone without seeing the warrant first were past, but I’d gotten cautious sooner than some. I’d also never been successfully sued. One of our fellow hunters was still in prison for doing his job before the paperwork came through. Everyone who worked with me knew that without this little piece of paper, there was no vampire hunt. With it, I had almost carte blanche.

I scanned it. It was pretty standard. I could legally hunt down and execute the vampire, or vampires, responsible for—I read the names of the victims. It helped me focus. Helped me remember why I was doing this kind of work—and any other murder victims that might follow. I was empowered to use any force necessary to find and stop the murderers of these people. I was further empowered to do anything within my abilities to execute this warrant with all due haste. The bearer of this warrant is allowed to enter any and all buildings in pursuit of the suspects. Any person, or persons, human or otherwise that stand in the way of the lawful execution of my duty, forfeit their rights under the Constitution of these United States and the State of Missouri. There was other legalese, but what it all boiled down to was that I could have turned back to Avery, put a gun to his head, pulled the trigger, and not only would the police not stop me, but legally, they had to help me carry out my duty.

The entire idea of warrants of execution was drafted when vampires had first gotten legal rights, and you couldn’t kill them on sight just for being vampires. The warrant had seemed like a step up once, now I looked at it, and thought, Huh. What if Avery hadn’t done it? What if he was innocent?

I looked at Zerbrowski, and he knew me well enough to frown. “I don’t the like that look. It always means you’re about to complicate my job.”

I smiled at him and nodded. “Sorry, but I’d like to make sure that I’m serving the warrant on the right vampires.”

Malcolm came forward. “I would like to see that warrant, if it concerns my church and my followers.”

I fished it out, flung it open, but held on to it.

His eyes flicked down the page, and he shook his head. “And you call us monsters.”

“Don’t take it personally, Malcolm, some of my best friends are monsters.” I folded the warrant up and tucked it away.

“How can you make jokes, when you have come here to kill one of us?”

The congregation stirred and started to stand. There were hundreds of them and only a handful of us. This could get out of hand, and I didn’t want that. Legally, if anyone interfered, then I could kill them, too. The last thing I wanted on my hands was a church full of martyrs.

It was as if Malcolm read my mind, or I read his, because he moved toward the door. Marconi stopped him with a hand up, not quite touching.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Zerbrowski said, “and you don’t either, Malcolm.”

“Am I supposed to simply let you escort one of my congregation out of here, knowing that you could make him kneel in the parking lot and execute him? What kind of person would I be to simply stand by and let that happen?”

Shit, I thought.

“Who are you here for?” Avery said, and his voice was like the rest of him—soft, uncertain. Was it an act?

“You for starters,” I said.

His brown eyes went wide. “Why?”

“If you try to take him, we will stand in front of the door. You will have to climb over our bodies to take him with you.”

I glanced at Malcolm, and I knew that he didn’t mean it. He was gambling. Gambling that we wouldn’t be willing to climb over the bodies of church members to execute this warrant here and now. Gambling that we’d go away and get Avery some other time. Usually I like having the warrant fast, but tonight it would have worked better to get it later, and not in front of the undead Billy Graham and his flock.

Zerbrowski looked at me. “You’re the vampire hunter, Anita, it has to be your call.”

“Thanks,” I said, but I had an idea. I could still taste Avery. He hit my radar as innocent, could I find out? Malcolm had tried to pull specific knowledge from me, and I’d turned it back on him. I’d gained knowledge from his vampires. I’d gotten very specific images about how they fed, and lived. Could I concentrate and get something even more specific? It felt like I could. It felt like, if I touched Avery, I could know anything in his head, his body, his soul. That if I touched him, he’d be mine, mine in a way that until tonight I hadn’t wanted. Suddenly it wasn’t such a bad thought.

I leaned into Zerbrowski and whispered, “I can feel him in my head. I think I can find out what he saw last night.”

“How?”

I shrugged. “Weird necromancy stuff, metaphysics, magic, whatever you want to call it.”

“The warrant does not allow you to use magic on my people.”

I looked at Malcolm; it was beginning not to be a friendly look. “I am allowed to use whatever force or abilities I deem necessary. So, yeah, I can do magic, if it gets the job done.”

“I will not allow you to bespell him.”

“Has it occurred to you that I don’t want to kill him if he didn’t do it? If I take his heart and his head, then we find out he’s innocent tomorrow, what am I supposed to do, say, ‘Sorry, oops’?” I was getting angry again. I took a deep breath and counted slowly to five. I didn’t have the patience for ten. “I don’t want to kill him, Malcolm.” That last wasn’t angry, that last sounded almost like a plea.

Malcolm looked at me, and it was a look I hadn’t seen before. He was trying to decide if I was lying. “I feel your regret, Anita. You grow tired of the killing, just as I did.”

See, that’s the problem with vampires, you let them into your head an inch, and they take a metaphysical mile. I didn’t like that he could read me like that, especially not with my shields up. Of course, I wasn’t sure how far up my shields were. Had I dropped them to taste the vampires? I thought about my shields, and yeah, they’d dropped, or had been breached under a wave of smells and tastes and blood flowing in sluggish veins. I started to raise the shields back up, but I had something to do first.

I looked at Malcolm. “I’m going to touch Avery. I’m going to look inside him and see what I can see. I am not going to hurt him, not on purpose. I want the truth, Malcolm, that’s all. Give me your word that if he’s guilty, you’ll let me take him.”

“How will I know what you discover from him?”

I smiled, and again it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “When I tell you to, if I tell you to, touch me, and you’ll know what I know.”

He looked at me, and I looked at him. We had one of those moments of unspoken questions. I knew that he’d tried to get information about a vampire murder when he shook my hand. There were states where that alone would get him put on a short list, a list of vampires that were getting dangerous. I knew what he’d done, and I had a warrant that allowed me enough leeway that I could pretend he was trying to hide his own involvement with the killings. I mean, there’d never be a trial. I would never have to prove my suspicions in court.

Malcolm took a breath deep enough to make his shoulders rock up and down. He nodded, once, short, curt, and almost awkwardly, as if he wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but he was going to do it anyway. “You may touch Avery, if he wishes you to touch him. You may use your marks with Jean-Claude to try and find the truth.”

I didn’t correct him that it was my own necromancy more than Jean-Claude’s powers that I was about to use. Everyone needed a few illusions, even master vampires.

I turned to Avery. “Do you agree to what I’m about to do?”

He frowned and looked puzzled. I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t as bright as he looked, and wouldn’t that be a shame. “What do you want to do?”

“Touch you,” I said.

His lips curved upward, the barest of smiles, but it filled his eyes with more laughter than showed on his lips. “Yes,” he said, “yes, please.”

I held my hands out to him and smiled. “Come to me, Avery.” And just like that, he took those few steps forward. He went to his knees in front of me without being asked. He raised his face up to me, and there were two things in his face, eagerness, and a complete and utter trust. It wasn’t him who wasn’t bright, it was me. I’d rolled him. I’d rolled him the way a master vampire could roll a mortal. In that moment before I touched him, I wondered, if I’d drawn a gun and put it to his head would he have flinched or stared at me with those trusting eyes, while I pulled the trigger?

66

HIS SKIN WAS soft, even the beard stubble was softer than it looked, so black against this white skin. Just by touching the beard, I knew his hair would be soft, that nothing on his body would be harsh or wiry. He was . . . soft.

He smiled up at me, and it was beatific, as if he saw something wondrous. Since he was looking at me, I knew it wasn’t wondrous, because it was me. I was a lot of things, but wondrous wasn’t one of them. Movement made me look up away from Avery’s face. There were other vampires out of their seats. Some were standing in the pews looking confused, as if they weren’t sure why they were standing up. A handful of them were already in the main aisle, but they’d stopped, as if they’d known where they were going, but now they weren’t sure. But there were others, a dozen or so, that were in the main aisle who didn’t look confused. They looked at me the way that Avery looked at me, as if I was the answer to a prayer. It made me nervous to see that look on anyone’s face, but this many, all vampires, all strangers . . . Nervous didn’t describe how it felt. Scared maybe, yeah, scared about covered it.

“You have bespelled them,” Malcolm said. He sounded angry.

“Like you do humans?” I said.

“I do not use my powers on humans.”

“Are you saying you don’t use any power to make yourself prettier to the humans, or even the lesser vampires?”

He blinked the blue eyes at me, set into a face that was a good face, but it wasn’t the face that he’d shown me the first few times I’d met him. “That would be vanity,” he said, at last, in a very quiet voice.

He hadn’t denied it, but I let it go. My main concern about the “vanity” was if he was using vamp powers to look better, what else was he using them for? But that was a problem for another night.

Avery laid his cheek against my hand, not rubbing like the wereleopards did, but reminding me he was still there. I looked down at him, then up at the other vampires waiting in the aisle. It was almost a line, as if once I finished with Avery, it would be someone else’s turn. I hadn’t done this on purpose, and I didn’t know how to undo it.

I thought, Jean-Claude. His whisper ran through me, shivered along my skin, and that shiver ran through my hand and into the vampire at my feet. It made Avery close his eyes and almost sway.

I whispered, “That didn’t help, Jean-Claude. I want to stop this, not make it worse.”

“I have no talent for reading another’s thoughts and feelings, ma petite, not to this degree. It is not my power that you are borrowing.”

“Then whose?”

“My surmise is Malcolm. For he used it on you first.”

“And just like that, it’s mine for keeps?”

“Perhaps not for keeps, as you say, but for now. Use it quickly, ma petite, for it may fade.”

“What about the attraction thing?”

“Gain your information from this one, then I will help you tame that particular power. For now, I will withdraw, so I do not make it worse.” And he was as good as his word, he was just gone. Once his leaving would have cured the attraction problem, but not now. Now, I was still left with Avery at my feet and the others still staring at me, still waiting, still wanting. Wanting what? What in the name of God was I supposed to do with them? I took a deep breath and let it out slow. One problem at a time. One disaster at a time, or you get overwhelmed.

I looked down into Avery’s pale brown eyes, and thought, What happened in your apartment last night? I got a glimpse of a woman, the dead woman, but alive this time. I got a glimpse of another woman, but I couldn’t see her clearly. As if part of the image was misty.

Avery pressed his face against my hand, and the mist lifted a little, but I still couldn’t see the other woman. I was borrowing Malcolm’s power, but most of what was in me, was a much more intimate kind of magic. I put my other hand up and cradled Avery’s face between my hands, and the mist thinned even more, but it was like watching a movie where part of the screen was scratched. I was so busy trying to see the other part of the “screen” that I wasn’t really watching the rest. Avery and the very alive woman were getting up close and very personal. Either my ability to be embarrassed was lessening, or when I’m working, I’m working. I was working.

I knew vamps could make people forget hours, or even days, but I’d never known anyone that could make just their part of a memory fuzzy. That was a level of control on their power that was new to me. Scary new.

Touching his face more had helped, because, like it or hate it, Jean-Claude’s power and mine grew with physicality. I leaned over Avery’s face, leaned into him with my hands framing him. He didn’t close his eyes as I came in to kiss him, but I closed mine. I always closed mine. My lips touched his, and the woman on the other side of the bed had brown hair. The kiss grew into a press of mouths, and the woman’s hair was soft brown waves that filled Avery’s hand, softer even than it looked. Her face turned to his eyes, and that mist settled over his vision again. I couldn’t see her face. Fine, I thought, Her name, Avery, give me her name, but there was a roaring silence in his head, as if there, too, whatever she’d done to him kept her safe, or at least anonymous.

The memory wasn’t like a camera view, it was from Avery’s eyes. I had a glimpse down his body, that he was nude, that both women were nude, but still her face . . . I couldn’t see her face.

I slid to my knees, still kissing him. His hands wrapped around my body, and when he pressed us together, I let myself melt into the feel of his arms, his body. I gave myself to the kiss, the embrace, and it was like a stroke of lightning cut through the memory. The colors were brighter, I knew what Sally Cook’s mouth tasted like. I could smell perfume, one that was sharper, more alcohol content, and the other that powdery musk of something expensive. The vampire’s face was like crystal in my head, in his head. Her name was Nellie, and she was a master vampire, and she had met him at the strip clubs, not at the church. She’d brought the stripper, who Avery knew as Morgana.

It was like I suddenly had access to everything that Nellie had said to him, as if I’d unlocked a computer file, and suddenly the information poured in. She’d talked about her master, whom Avery had never met. Her master, who was a real master vampire, not like Malcolm. Someone who knew how to hunt, how to feed, how to be a true predator. Avery had tried to distance himself from her, but she’d pursued him hard. The thought led to a memory of Nellie and another woman vampire. The second vampire looked enough like Nellie to be her sister, almost twin. Her name was Nadine, and she was much younger, much weaker. But they looked alike, and the moment I saw that, I realized that they looked like Avery. They all had the same soft, brown hair, the same soft, oval faces, pale brown eyes. They could have been siblings. Nadine and Nellie had fought after they had had sex with him. Nadine didn’t want to share Nellie on a regular basis.

Avery had used that as an excuse to distance himself again, but then Nellie showed up that night at the club, and she had Morgana in tow, and they offered, and he didn’t say no. I tasted his guilt. It was real enough. He’d broken so many rules of the church. The club, the stripper, and Nellie was dangerous, he knew that, just not how dangerous.

He’d fed on the woman, fed at her neck, then had sex with Nellie. He thought the evening was over, but Nellie started to go down on the other woman. She wanted him to feed from her thigh. Feed in that most intimate of places, but something about it panicked him. Maybe it was the look in the other vampire’s eyes. Soft brown in color, but what we both saw in those eyes was hard, and he knew that if he didn’t get up and go, that she would talk him into anything, everything.

He grabbed his clothes, fled the bedroom, dressed in the living room, and left Morgana alive and happy in bed with Nellie. He went to the church and took one of the coffins they had in the basement for emergencies. He’d been working up to telling Malcolm about Nellie and her scary offer, about a master vampire who knew how to hunt. A master who was actively recruiting church members for his scary little group. But Avery had been waiting until after church services. Then I had come, and plans changed.

I broke the kiss, the way you’d break the surface of a pool, fast and hard, when you’ve been too long under water and you need to breathe. It brought me gasping away from his mouth, and left me inches from his face, so that we were left staring into each other’s wide eyes. If I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have tried to get the next question answered the same way I’d asked the rest, by touch and vampire trickery, or would that be necromancer trickery? Whatever, staring at his face from inches away, and seeing something close to devotion on a stranger’s face, threw me. Jean-Claude might have been used to it, but I wasn’t, and so I did what I always do when I’m scared by some new bit of metaphysics. I resorted to something human and ordinary. I spoke, out loud.

“Is there anyone in the church tonight that joined Nellie and her master?”

“Yes,” he said, in a voice that was still whispery from the kiss, “Jonah, Nellie said, Jonah had met her master and liked him. She offered a three-way with Jonah and me and her. I said no.” I was still hooked up enough to know that he said that last defensively. The idea being, of course, he wouldn’t go to bed with another man, not even with a woman in the same bed at the same time. If he thought that was going to win points with me, he was wrong. I liked men who were secure enough in their manhood to share me with another man, in fact, lately, it was damn near a prerequisite for dating me.

Avery was frowning at me, as if he’d gotten some of what I was thinking. But I didn’t have time to worry about it, because Zerbrowski was yelling, “He’s running for it!”

I was on my feet in time to see one of the vampires bounding over the backs of the pews. His feet barely touching the wood, using it to bounce himself farther away. Almost levitation, but not quite. He didn’t know how to fly yet. I like the young ones, they’re easier to catch.

He couldn’t fly, so he wouldn’t try for the tall windows. I didn’t chase him. I ran to the aisle against the far wall. There was a door that led into their parish hall. He couldn’t fly. He needed a door.

I had my gun out. I hit the safety with my thumb and chambered a round as I ran. The vampire leapt off the back of the last pew and landed light as air on the floor. He took one step toward the far door, and I yelled, “Stop, or I shoot.” I had the gun aimed at him two-handed. It’s hard to walk forward and keep a bead on someone, but I was farther away than I wanted to be in a crowded church. Yeah, the innocent people were nicely to one side, but bullets are determined little things, once you pull the trigger they will hit something. I wanted to be close enough to be secure enough to pull that trigger, and not endanger anyone else. Of course, once the guns came out, people panicked. Usually they panic sooner, but for some strange reason I was in the far aisle and had a clean shot, before the crowd started screaming and scattering. Some of them scattered the wrong damn way. I suddenly had civilians screaming and hesitating between me and the vampire I was chasing.

I yelled, “Get down, damn it, get down! Catch him, damn it!” He made the door, because I couldn’t risk the shot.

But there were two vampires just behind him. They were two of the ones that had been in the aisle. Had I done that when I said, catch him? Were they being good citizens, or was it my fault? Shit.

I started through the screaming crowd with Zerbrowski at my back, and Marconi and Smith just behind. My gun was pointed at the ceiling, as I tried to get through them. They screamed at the guns, they screamed at me. They screamed because they could.

I heard Zerbrowski behind me giving the uniforms at the back door a heads-up and a description of our bad vamp. We’d almost waded through the panicked civilians. I heard different yelling over the high-pitched screams. Men yelling, but not screaming. I brought my gun up as I cleared the side of the door, with as little of my body showing as possible. No, I did not stand in the fucking middle of the doorway and make myself a perfect target. That kind of shit is great for movies, but in real life, take cover, worry about looking like a hero later, after you’ve survived.

There was a fight at the end of the hallway. Our civies, one dark and one blond, had caught up with the bad guy. They seemed to be winning. They had him on the ground, though the dark-haired civie was on the ground, too. I cleared the door, gun in a two-handed grip, with Zerbrowski right behind me. He yelled, “Police, everybody freeze!”

The civilians hesitated in the fight, because they were upstanding citizens. Upstanding citizens tend to listen to the cops. It wasn’t much of a hesitation, they just stopped fighting as hard, and they glanced at us. That was it, then they turned right back to the bad guy, but he was a bad guy, and he hadn’t looked at us, or hesitated in the fight. After all, he had nothing to lose. I already had a warrant that let us kill his ass.

The two vampires had him down, but when they hesitated, one of them must have loosened their grip, just a fraction. I saw something silver glint in the bad guy’s hand. I yelled, “Knife!” but it was too late. The blade hit the dark one in the chest. Something about that blow seemed to stagger the blond, because he went to his knees beside his friend. Maybe he thought we had the bad guy covered. He knelt and reached for his fallen friend, and if the bad guy had done the usual and stood up and run through the door, we’d have had clean shots at him. But he didn’t, he pushed the door wide with his hand, and half-crawled, half-rolled through the door. The two civilians were blocking our shots completely.

I yelled, “Fuck!” and started to run.

67

WE CLEARED THE far door, me going low, Zerbrowski high. Marconi and Smith a weight at our backs waiting for a clear angle. We were in the parish hall, and in the middle of all those long tables was the vampire. He was using his leather jacket to shield his face from the white-hot glow of the two uniforms’ crosses. They had their guns in one hand, and the crosses in the other, almost like you’d hold flashlights, so that they were able to maintain a two-handed grip and still show the crosses. Training will tell.

I yelled, “He’s got a knife!”

I saw one of the men’s eyes flick to me, but only for a second. “We’ll cover him, you pat him down.”

“Don’t be a wussy, Roarke,” Smith said, from behind me.

“Call me a wussy when you’re standing this close to him.”

I kept my gun on the vampire and walked slowly toward him. I talked while I moved, “Slowly, drop the knife.”

The vampire didn’t move, except to cower behind his jacket.

I stopped moving and looked down the barrel of my gun at him. I felt myself going quiet inside, slipping away inside my head to that distant strangely peaceful place I went when I killed, and had time to rev up for it. “I’ll ask one more time, Jonah. Drop the knife, or I put a bullet in you. I won’t . . . ask . . . again.” All the air slid out of me, and my body went as still and peaceful as my head. I didn’t hear that white noise tonight, that static, it was just quiet. The world had narrowed down to the crouching figure and nothing else. I wasn’t really aware of the police, Zerbrowski behind me, even the glow of the crosses had pulled back, so that my vision was sharpened down to the man I was about to shoot.

Something dropped from that dark figure, something silver that glinted in the white glow, but it didn’t really register. I didn’t think knife. I had passed the point of no return. I was committed.

Zerbrowski’s voice brought me back. “Knife, Anita, he dropped the knife.” His voice was gentle, as if he understood that I was on the edge. The edge where a sharp voice might have pressed that trigger for me.

My breath came back in a sharp hiss of air. I pointed the gun at the ceiling, because I had to stop pointing it at the man. I had to point it elsewhere, or I was going to shoot him. Legally, I could have done it, but we needed him to talk to us. The dead, the true dead, aren’t a chatty bunch.

“I’ve got him,” Zerbrowski said. He had his gun nice and steady on the vampire.

I nodded and pressed the back of my gun to my forehead. It didn’t feel cool, it was warm. Warm from being tucked up under my arm, wedged next to my breast. If I wore the wrong bra I scraped the edge of my breast as I drew, so I’d learned that all those minimizer bras that spread the breast to the side are not my friend wearing a shoulder holster. Push-up bras actually keep your breasts up and out of the way. You just had to make sure that the bra actually covered the front of you, so you could run without falling out of it. Why was I thinking about bras when we had a double murdering vampire still to be subdued? Because I’d almost killed him. I’d almost shot into the mass of his body, not because it was time, but because that’s what I did. I rarely looked down the barrel of a gun without being able to pull the trigger.

I’d almost killed him before we tried to question him. I’d almost killed him, because my body and mind fell into it. Fall into this is what we do. We look down the barrel of a gun, and we pull the trigger, and we shoot to stop. Dead is stop.

“Anita, how you doing?” Zerbrowski asked.

I nodded and lowered the gun to point at the floor. I trusted Zerbrowski to get a shot off and slow the vamp down. I trusted me to get my gun up in time to finish it. I wasn’t sure in that moment that I trusted me to stand there with a bead on the vampire. Funny, but I didn’t.

“I’m fine, Zerbrowski.”

He kept his eyes on the vampire along with his gun. “Okay. It’s your warrant.”

“Yeah,” I said, “my dime.” I looked at the vampire, still hiding behind his leather jacket, and felt nothing. He was just something that I wanted information from. I couldn’t offer him a deal for it. The law didn’t allow deals with vampires who had murdered. But that was a problem for another hour.

“Slowly, put your hands on your head and lace your fingers. Now!”

His voice came strangely muffled. “Have them put the crosses up.”

“Do you want to die right this second?”

He was quiet for a moment, then his voice again, “No.”

“Then do what you’re told. Hands on head, fingers laced, right fucking now. Now!”

He tried to keep his face hidden in the jacket, eyes squeezed tight shut as his arms came up and he put his hands on top of his head.

“Lace the fingers.”

He did.

“Now, on your knees.”

“Can I use my hands?”

I had my gun back up and pointed. “You are beginning to get on my nerves. Drop to your fucking knees.”

He did it. Goodie.

“Cross your ankles.”

“What?”

“One ankle over the other, cross your ankles.”

He did it. Which meant it was time to actually pat him down. I hate patting down someone who’s alive, so much easier to search the dead for weapons. How can you tell when you’ve been killing maybe a little too much? When you think it’s a pain in the ass having to pat down someone who can still move.

I put the barrel of my gun against his head. “If you move, I shoot. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” he said in a strained voice.

The other nice thing about only touching them after they’re dead is that you don’t hear the fear in their voices, or feel that fine tremble in their hands and arms. You don’t have to know that what they’re afraid of is you. You don’t have to think about the fact that the person you’re touching is going to have to die, and that nothing they can do, or you can do will stop it. The law isn’t about justice or mercy. The law is about the law, and law didn’t give Jonah NoLastName, or me, options.

He had another knife, this one was at the small of his back in a sheath on the inside of his belt. He had a wrist sheath, empty, and a larger sheath at his neck, hidden by the jacket’s collar. I’d never known a vampire to carry that many weapons. When he dropped the knife, I thought I’d been wrong about seeing the knife in the other vamp’s chest, but no, the bastard had stabbed him and had plenty of knives left. I remembered the knife like an exclamation point in the vamp’s chest.

It made me wonder. I looked at one of the knives, hefted it, touched the flat of it with my thumb. “Shit, it’s silver.” I didn’t run back to the vampire. I waited and helped them get Jonah the vampire handcuffed, though I knew that they would only slow him down, if he really wanted free. We just hadn’t come up with anything that could hold up against a vampire’s strength. It was one of the reasons that they were killed instead of held over for trial. One state had tried cross-wrapped coffins, but it had been shot down as cruel and unusual. If I’d been asked, I would have asked the legislators that decided the coffins were too cruel, if they, themselves would rather be held in a small confined space until trial, or just killed. I’d have bet they’d have chosen the coffin, but then, no one asked me. I’d been invited to speak before a Senate subcommittee on undead rights, but the date kept being switched, or the committee chairperson kept changing, or . . . it was almost as if someone didn’t want the committee to finish its report. Probably political, but whatever, I hadn’t been called. I’d just been asked, a date to be specified later. Funny, but I think the committee would have liked my testimony better if they’d let me come talk when they first issued the invitation. Lately, I had nothing comforting to say.

“Sit him in a chair. If he tries anything funny, shoot him.”

“Where are you going?” Zerbrowski asked.

“The knives are silver.”

“So?”

“So, our good Samaritan vampire may be dead, or dying.” I was already moving for the door. “If he’s going to survive, we’ve got minutes to save him.”

“Save him how?” Zerbrowski asked.

I just shook my head and went for the door.

“Go with her, Smith.”

Smith just changed his grip on his gun so it was pointed two-handed at the floor. “I got your back.”

I didn’t argue with Smith coming along. Zerbrowski and I were partnering tonight. We trusted each other to watch the bad vamp, but I had to check on the wounded vamp, so Zerbrowski stayed on the suspect and gave me backup. Because neither of us trusted anyone else to cover Jonah the vampire. Zerbrowski got the murderer, and I got the hero. Life had been so much simpler when vampires didn’t come in hero-flavor.

68

I COULDN’T SEE our hero for the broad back of his friend. The blond was still kneeling there, holding his hand. The blond’s shoulders were slumped, and he turned a tear-stained face up to me. Faint reddish-pink tracks down his face where the blood in his own tears had marked him. The tears made me fear the worst, until I moved around the feet of the other vamp. The hero lay on his back, but he blinked wide gray eyes up at me. The eyes were the only thing pale about him. Longish dark hair, and the beginnings of a beard around a wide mouth. I almost said out loud what I was thinking, Oh, good, you’re not dead, but I managed not to. Point for me.

I knelt on the other side of him, across from his friend. The knife was sticking out of his chest like an exclamation point. I’d stabbed my share of vamps in my time, and I knew a heart blow when I saw one. Blood welled out around the blade, soaking into the dark-haired one’s clothing. It was bleeding a lot. Which meant either he’d fed tonight, or it was a bad injury, or both.

“I didn’t realize the knife was silver until we disarmed him. I’d have come back sooner.”

Smith said, “We got company.”

“Sooner or later,” a voice said behind us, “it matters not.” Malcolm was behind us. Other church members were behind him. You always get gawkers, I guess.

“It matters,” I said.

“He is dying, Anita, and nothing we can do will save him.”

I looked back at the hurt man and caught the look in his friend’s blue eyes. Blue eyes framed by the blue of his shirt collar. “I’ve seen vampires survive worse.”

“You have seen master vampires survive worse. He is not a master.”

“He gets power from his line, his master,” I said, “it isn’t always about personal power.”

“Truth and Wicked have no masters, do you?”

The blond looked at Malcolm, and there was such hopelessness in his face. I couldn’t even make remarks about the names. I mean, who gets named Truth and Wicked? But in the face of such raw pain, I couldn’t do anything but say, “If you have something important to say, Malcolm, say it.”

“They are masterless, Anita. The master that made them died, and the sourdre de sang that created their line was destroyed, too. They survived the destruction of their line, but it weakened them.”

I looked up at the blond’s face, Truth or Wicked, I didn’t know which he was. He was staring at Malcolm, but the look in his eyes said it was the truth. “If you had blood-oathed them, they’d have a master right now.”

“I allowed them into my church. Most masters would kill them.”

“Why?”

The vampire on the ground answered, “They fear us,” in a strangled voice.

The blond said, “Don’t talk, brother, I will talk for you. They fear that if other vampires knew we survived the slaying of our entire bloodline, then others might wonder if they could kill those that enslave them, too, and survive.”

“Brother?” I said.

The blond looked up at me, fresh tears giving his blue eyes a reddish cast. “Truth is my brother.”

Shit, I thought. “Is Malcolm right, if we remove the knife will . . . Truth not heal it?”

“Once, yes, but the death of our line did weaken us. When a silver weapon is used, we heal like a human.”

I looked down at the hilt sticking out of the vampire’s chest. “If he was human, he’d be dead already, he’s not.”

“He is dying, Anita, can you not feel it?” Malcolm said.

I put my hand on the vampire’s chest, near the blade, in the cooling blood in his clothes, and I concentrated. I felt his energy, for lack of a better word, fading.

He took a deep gasping breath and had trouble getting the next breath.

“Shit, he’s bleeding to death.” He was losing so much blood his body was beginning to shut down. Shit. I looked at the blond. “If we just sit here, he will die. If we pull the blade out, I may be able to save him.”

“How?” the blond asked. I just couldn’t think of anyone as Wicked, not as a name.

How? That was the question. If Jean-Claude were here, we could blood-oath him. Of course, now with the marks wide open between us, Truth could take my blood and be bound. Primo had found that out by accident, now it had possibilities.

“I’m going to contact my master, the Master of the City. If he agrees, I’ve got an idea.” I called in my head, “Jean-Claude.”

I had a sense of movement around him. He was in the club. “Oui, ma petite, you rang?”

I didn’t use words, I let him riffle through my head in a kind of shorthand. We ended with him feeling amazed. “The Wicked Truth here in America.”

“You know them?”

“They are the only vampires in our history to purposefully hunt down their line and murder them.”

That threw me. “What, why?”

“I knew their master, and his master, the sourdre de sang. They were warriors, ma petite, such warriors. They were to battle what Belle Morte is to sex.”

“So, are they too dangerous to bring on board?”

“Do you know what happens when the source of a line goes mad?”

It seemed like a trick question, but I said, “Something bad.”

He laughed inside my head, and it made me shiver. “All in their line suddenly began to slaughter people without pay, without politics, or motive of any kind. I was still with Belle at the courts. I know that the council was planning on sending assassins, but two of the vampires in the line took action. They saved us from coming to attention in England, and for that the council was grateful, but they slew their source of bloodline, their creator, and that is a death sentence among us.”

“So why aren’t they dead?”

“Because some on the council interceded. I do not know why, or even entirely who, only that Belle voted for them to live, but they were masterless and sent to roam as they would with the hand of any master that met them turned against them. If they could slay their fountain of blood and survive, then most considered them too dangerous to survive.”

“How do you feel?”

“What are you offering, ma petite?”

“Remember what happened with Primo?”

“You will feed Truth, and he will be bound to me and to you, is that it?”

“Yeah.”

“They are not the brutes of the Dragon’s line, but they are warriors that have survived centuries with every hand turned against them. I met them once when their master came to the courts. They were men of honor.”

“What does he say?” Wicked asked.

I held up a hand. “He’s thinking about it.”

“No one will risk it,” Truth said in that horribly strained voice.

Jean-Claude breathed through my mind, shivered over my skin. I moved my hand back from the wounded vampire, so the effect didn’t spread. I opened the marks between us wide, and he filled me. He spilled through my body, over my skin. His power hit mine, and it was like flame laid into some huge waiting bonfire. It spilled my head back, bowed my spine, and spilled out from my skin. It went out and out and out, and I could feel every vampire in the hallway. Feel them like individual lights in the dark, as if with closed eyes I would know them all.

“Back, my children,” Malcolm’s voice came distant, as if he were talking through the roaring in my head, “we must leave this place to her black magic.”

I opened my eyes and knew instantly that my eyes had bled to brown fire edged with black.

“What’s about to happen?” Smith asked.

I looked up at him, and he let out a surprised yelp. He licked his lips and stared at me, pale and frightened.

“If you don’t want to watch, then go back to Zerbrowski.”

Smith shook his head. “I’ll stay.”

“You won’t like it,” I said.

He was fighting not to hug himself, and I remembered that he could sense the energy of shapeshifters. Nothing like being a little psychic in the middle of a metaphysical event. “I don’t like it now, but I’ve got your back, at least against anything that a gun will stop.” That last made me think he might be more sensitive than I’d thought. He knew there were dangerous things in the hallway now, but nothing that guns could help with. That was almost too smart. I’d have to be careful around Smith with the metaphysics; he might figure out more than I wanted him to know.

I turned back to the two vampires. “I am Jean-Claude’s human servant. We truly are blood of my blood to each other.”

“What do you propose?” Wicked asked.

“The knife comes out, then I let Truth feed, and we blood-oath him to Jean-Claude.”

“He would truly take us?”

“He said yes.”

Wicked looked down at his brother. “Do you agree to this? To being bound to another master?”

“Felt her power, her call,” he had another of those gasping fits, “if this is servant, then the master must be more.”

“Is that a yes?” I asked.

Wicked nodded. “But if you take my brother, you have to take me, too.”

I simply knew that Jean-Claude was okay with that. There was no need to ask. “Agreed, though whether I can feed you both tonight is a different question.”

“We have fed already this night. For Truth it will need to be a true feeding, but for me a taste will do.”

“Okay,” I said. I thought, will this work, and Jean-Claude’s answer was almost certain. He was almost certain that it would work. “Would it work better to blood-oath him, then take the knife out?” I asked.

“Perhaps, ma petite, but the silver may also interfere with the process. We are hoping to bring him back to health, and this will not happen with the silver still in his body.”

I blinked and looked at Wicked. With the eyes gone all vampire, his bone structure was very clear, and I realized that he was very manly-man handsome. Very masculine, and when I looked at his brother, I could trace that same bone structure underneath all the facial hair. How had I not seen the resemblance before?

“We need to take the knife out first, then he feeds.” I looked down at my wrists. My left was still healing from Primo and the zombie last night. I was not offering up my right wrist. Never injure your gun hand if you can avoid it. I touched my neck. Requiem’s bite was still there, though almost healed. Damian’s bite was faintest. I wasn’t taking my top off, so breast was out. Neck it was. I was going to end up looking like a vampire junkie, always carrying a fresh bite mark. Oh, well.

“Sorry, I’m going over all the injuries. Right side of the neck for feeding.”

“He cannot sit up.”

“I’ll lay down.” I gave my gun to Smith.

His eyes widened. “What’s this for?”

“I’m going to let Truth feed on my neck. I’d rather not have to worry about whether he can touch my gun or not.”

“You don’t trust us,” Wicked said.

“I don’t trust anybody.” I started to lie down on top of Truth, but the knife was very much in the way.

Jean-Claude said inside my head, “The knife first, ma petite.”

I knelt back and looked at the brother. “Do you want to do it, or do I do it?”

He seemed to understand without extra talk—nice for a change. “I will do it.” He took his free hand, because the other was still wrapped around his brother’s hand. He gripped the hilt of the blade and hesitated.

“It’s time, brother,” Truth said.

I moved my hair to one side so the right side of my neck stretched clean. Once the knife was out, we had a minute, maybe, to make him live, or let him die. Wicked stayed immobile, hand on his brother and the hilt.

“Do you want me to do it?” I asked.

He shook his head, but still didn’t move.

“Either you do it, or I do it . . . Wicked. We’re running out of time.”

“Do it,” Truth whispered, “do it.”

Wicked’s arm tensed. “Forgive me, brother,” he said, and pulled the blade out in one harsh jerk.

Blood welled up from the wound, thick, red. His body spasmed. I did what I said I’d do. How do you lay your body on top of a wounded man? The same way you do any man, if you don’t want to roll off. I laid myself on top of him, legs on either side of his body, while he spasmed under me, and fought for his life.

I laid my neck in front of his face, and he couldn’t control his body enough to feed. “Oh, shit!” I looked up and met his brother’s eyes. “Help me.”

“How?”

“Hold him up enough so he can feed.”

Wicked didn’t argue, he just moved around behind his brother, and raised his head and shoulders just enough off the ground. The spasming was growing less, but that wasn’t good, that wasn’t good at all.

Jean-Claude breathed through my body, “Kiss him.”

“What?” I said out loud.

“What is it?” Wicked asked.

“Give him enough energy to feed.”

“How?”

He was just in my head, not words, not exactly images, I just suddenly understood, because he understood. The vampires had a kiss of life long before we humans had artificial respiration. Once I’d thought you had to be a sourdre de sang, or the person who made a vamp, to share energy like this, but I’d proven that it wasn’t true. If Jean-Claude hadn’t been so certain that it would work, I would have argued. I’d only done something similar to this once, and that had been with Asher, who was our sweetie, and who had fed on me before. This vampire was a stranger to me, and not one of our line, but Jean-Claude’s certainty filled me, as if it were my own.

I looked into Truth’s face, and his eyes were beginning to glaze, as his body went still. I called power, or maybe Jean-Claude did, or we both did. It was hard to tell where one magic ended and the other began. I leaned over the vampire’s face.

“What are you doing?” Wicked asked.

There was no time to explain. I pressed my lips to the other vampire’s mouth. His lips were so still against mine. I kissed him, and felt his death. Felt that spark flickering like a match in the wind. I breathed power into his mouth. I forced it inside him the way you force air into the dying. I breathed into his mouth and thought, Wake. Wake to us, Truth, wake to our magic. Jean-Claude used me to thrust power like a sword down the line of his body. It was sharp and painful even to me. It brought Truth gasping, sitting up off the floor, yelling. Yelling something in a language I’d never known.

“Feed,” I said, and it was Jean-Claude’s words. But it was my hand that swept my hair to the side and bared my neck to him.

He grabbed me, his hands digging into my shoulders. I saw his head coming forward, but the rest was lost to my sight. He bit me. Sudden, hard, fangs tearing my flesh. I yelled, because it hurt. There was no mind trick or sex to soften it. It just hurt.

I heard a startled male voice in the direction of the closest door. “Shit, another one!”

“She volunteered,” Smith said, “to save his life.”

“He’s a fucking corpse, you can’t save his life.”

“Marshal Blake made the decision, Roarke, go back to the others.”

“Shit,” he said again.

I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t help explain. My hands were on Truth’s arms. I think I was going to start struggling. It just fucking hurt.

Jean-Claude was there, harder in my head. “Relax, ma petite, do not fight him.”

“I’m not fighting,” I thought.

“Yes, you are. You are fighting his powers, you must lower your shields not just between yourself and me, but between him and yourself. Quickly, ma petite, quickly, or we will lose him.”

I dropped my shields, the ones that kept out all the other vamps. The ones that were so automatic that I didn’t usually notice them. The shields that I had naturally as a necromancer. They fell down, and suddenly . . . it didn’t hurt anymore.

It was like suddenly being thrown into that part of sex where pain is pleasure, where the bite that you’d have slugged someone for is just the best thing you’ve ever felt.

I’d let him feed on my neck, but I’d been straining away from him, now I relaxed into him. It was like melting into a kiss that caught you off-guard, and suddenly you give in to it. You stop thinking it to death, and just let it be.

I gave myself to the feel of his mouth on my neck, the strength of his hands on my back, the press of his body against mine. His hand slid lower, down to my lower back, and farther, so that he cupped my ass. He pressed us together, bowing his neck and shoulders to keep his mouth sealed to my neck, and pressed our lower bodies tight against one another. Tight enough that I could feel him hard and thick against the front of his body.

I’d lowered my shields, all my shields. The only miracle had been that the ardeur hadn’t tried to rise sooner. But it rose now, rose with the press of his body, the sucking of his mouth. Rose through my body, across my skin and into him.

He drew back from my neck with an exclamation, “Mother of Darkness save us, it’s Belle Morte!”

I met that wide-eyed gaze. His eyes were bluer now than they had been, or seemed so. “Not Belle, Truth, just me, just Jean-Claude, just us.” I whispered the last against his lips. The ardeur wanted me to kiss him, to press our mouths together and feed, energy for energy. I spoke with my mouth almost touching his, “Jean-Claude, help me, help me put the genie back in the bottle. Help me stop this.”

“If I help you shield, the ardeur may spread here in the club, where I am.”

“Then feed like you did last night. Feed on the willing, but let this cup pass me by tonight. I need to catch a murderer, not fuck everyone we bring over.”

“Help us,” Truth said, “help us, master.”

I felt Jean-Claude’s surprise thrill along my skin, as if curiosity was a touch. “Does he want to stop?” His question came out of my mouth, in my voice.

“Yes,” Truth breathed it against my lips, so that I could smell my blood on his breath, “yes, help us stop this.”

“Why?” Jean-Claude asked.

This question I stopped, because I’d had enough. “Satisfy your curosity about him later, Jean-Claude. I’ve got police waiting in the other room. I need this over with.”

“Very well, ma petite.” It wasn’t like he reached out to me, he was already in me almost as deep as he could go. But reaching was the only word I had for it. He didn’t shield me or Truth. He didn’t shield anything or anyone. He took the ardeur that was rising in us, and did two things at once. He swallowed the ardeur, and he shut down the link between him and me, tight and final, like slamming a door between us.

I was left alone pressed against Truth’s body, our faces still inches apart, but suddenly it was just us. We both let out a breath in shaking unison, as if we’d both been holding our breath.

He moved his arms away, so I could get out of his lap. There was no teasing, no sense of loss from him at the touch of the ardeur and its going away. He seemed as relieved as I did. If I’d had time and could have figured out a way to ask why he was relieved, without sounding like my pride was hurt, I would have. But I had work to do, so I stood up and swayed, and only Truth’s hand on my arm kept me from bumping a wall.

“Are you alright?” Smith and Wicked asked at the same time. Smith glared at the vampire, but Wicked’s face was neutrally handsome.

“Just been donating a little too much blood lately. I’m fine.” To prove it, I stepped back from Truth’s hand. I took a few deep breaths, and I was steady. But I was really going to have to see if I could go at least a night without opening a vein.

“I felt your master’s power,” Wicked said. “My brother is bound to him, but I am not. You promised you would take us both.”

“I will, Jean-Claude will, but not tonight. This blood bank is closed for the night.”

Wicked gave me a look that said he neither believed nor trusted me. His brother was simply standing beside him, as if he’d levitated to his feet. Maybe he had. He hugged Wicked one-armed across the shoulders. “She’ll do what she promised.” Truth was smiling.

“Why, because she helped you fight off the ardeur?”

“Partly.”

Wicked shook his head. “You must be even better than that felt, for Truth to trust you this much.”

“I saved his life, that tends to impress people.”

“Not him, not Truth.”

“Fine, but I’ve got to go question a murder suspect, right now.”

“We’ll go with you,” Truth said.

“Sorry, police business. Thanks for trying to catch the bad guy.”

“Your power called to us when you touched Avery,” Truth said.

“So when I said, catch him, you had to do it?”

They both nodded.

“Sorry about that.”

“I’m not,” Truth said.

Wicked gave me another cynical look. “I’ll let you know. I’m not sorry, yet.”

“Look, I give you my word that as soon as humanly possible I will give you to Jean-Claude.”

“Give me?”

I frowned. “I give my word that as soon as humanly possible I will see that you will be bound to our Master of the City, good enough?”

“Promise me that you will bind me as you bound my brother.”

“I just did.”

“No, you didn’t. For all I know you could pass me off to someone else in your master’s household. My brother and I go together. To go together, we must go in the same way.”

I wished I’d had Jean-Claude to ask, was there a problem with this promise, but he was busy making all the customers at Guilty Pleasures happy. I thought about what he’d asked, and I couldn’t see the problem with it, so, I said, “Okay, I promise that I’ll bind you like I did your brother. Happy now?”

He gave a small nod, with an even smaller smile.

“Then leave a card or number at one of Jean-Claude’s clubs, and we’ll arrange another meeting.”

“We’ll be there,” Wicked said.

“Yes,” Truth said, “yes, we will be there.”

I turned toward the door and the other room. Smith came at my back. I reached my hand out to him. “Gun,” I said.

He handed me my gun. I holstered it and kept walking toward the other room and the waiting bad guy and police. I had a vague feeling that I’d missed something just now with Wicked and Truth. “The Wicked Truth” Jean-Claude had called them, why? Just because they killed their bloodline? Or had I missed something. Something I’d regret missing later. I ran it over in my head, and all I had promised was to let Wicked take my blood and bind himself to Jean-Claude and me. That’s all I’d promised, so why did I feel like the brothers were going to expect more than I’d offered. I thought, Jean-Claude, what did I just do?

To my surprise, he answered carefully, as if he were shielding me. “We have our warriors, ma petite, just as you wished.”

“You can’t be done feeding the ardeur, yet.”

“Non, but I remember Wicked, of old, and I thought it foolish not to check on you one more time.”

“You’re holding the ardeur in check while you talk to me mind-to-mind, in a room full of lusty women?”

“Oui.”

“Nice to know our little three-way gained you something.”

“You make it sound as if you gained nothing, ma petite. It is you who called the Wicked Truth to us, to you, before they came to my hand. You said only last night that we needed people that could fight, not merely seduce, and less than forty-eight hours later, you have called two of our most legendary warriors to you. That, ma petite, is not just impressive, it is frightening.”

I ignored the frightening comment and concentrated on the other part. I didn’t remember wishing for fighters, or warriors. I remembered thinking we needed more muscle.

“Then we have more muscle, just as you wished.”

I couldn’t argue with him, but I’d have to be more careful what I wished for. Lately, it seemed I was getting it, no matter what I wished. Suddenly, the phrase be careful what you wish for had taken on a whole new meaning. I guess I’d just have to be damned careful what I wished for.

69

OF COURSE, WHAT I was wishing the second I entered the next room was that we could catch our serial killers before they killed again. I was pretty secure with that wish. It seemed like a wish we could all live with. They had sat the vampire in the chair with his hands cuffed through the rungs, again, just a delay, but if it went really wrong, a second delay could save lives. I stared at the vamp’s face. His hair was darker than Avery’s, a brunette that some would have said was black if I hadn’t been standing in the room. His eyes were brown and dark. He was good looking in a standard haven’t-I-seen-a-hundred-faces-just-like-that-way, but that wasn’t what made me stare. I knew him. At first it was just a niggling in the back of my head, that his face was familiar, then suddenly it came full blown.

“You’re Jonah Cooper. I got interviewed about how I felt that one of my fellow vampire hunters had been slain by the vampires. What was that, nearly two years ago now, three?”

His look, which had been neutral, went to hostile. “Four.” He said that last word like it was a bad one.

“They’re legal now, Cooper, why didn’t you come out of the closet and tell people you didn’t die in that fire?”

He looked down, then up, and his eyes had gone dark, sparkling with anger and vampire powers. I leaned into him with a smile. I knew what smile I was giving him, it was the cold one that left my eyes dead. My gun was pressed, not too hard to his chest, just over his heart. “Or is it that you let, what was it, six policemen die in the fire?”

“Anita, what’s going on?” Zerbrowski asked.

I told him. I didn’t have to look up to know that Zerbrowski’s face wouldn’t be friendly. Nothing pisses off the cops like someone who kills one of their own. “How’d you survive, Cooper?” I asked.

He glared up at me. “You know how.”

“You sold them to the vampires you were hunting, didn’t you?”

He just looked at me, but he didn’t deny it. That was enough.

“He took money to betray cops?” Marconi asked.

“No,” I said, “not money.”

“No,” Cooper said, “not money.”

“What then?” Smith asked.

“Immortality,” I said, “right, Cooper?”

“Not just that.”

“What then?” I said.

“You’re the Master of the City’s human servant, you know what else.”

I blinked at him, not sure what to say, but I leaned back enough so that I wasn’t pressing a gun into his chest. I knew what it was like to finally be seduced by the thing you hunted. Mine just happened to be a more traditional seduction. Okay, at least I was still among the living.

“What does he mean?” Smith asked.

Malcolm’s rich voice filled the parish hall with its tables and punch bowl. Everything was all set out for cookies and punch, though the punch looked a little red for my tastes, a little thick. “Power, Officer, power and sex, that is what Jean-Claude offers.”

“Be careful about the stones you throw, Malcolm, sometimes they get thrown back.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, just a friendly warning that only the pure of motive should cast stones.”

“Ask your friend there. Ask him, was it sex with one of us that lured him. I have watched mortals come to this life for centuries for the sake of sex.”

“First,” I said, “he’s not my friend. Second, it doesn’t matter why, only that he did it.” I’d touched Cooper while I searched him for weapons, and I’d gotten no flashes of information. No images. I hadn’t acquired Malcolm’s ability to see through touch, I’d only borrowed it. I wanted to borrow it again.

I guess I should at least pretend to try to do it the normal way. I turned to Cooper. “Where is your master? Where is he now?”

“Feeding, most likely.”

“Where is the daytime lair?”

He shook his head, with something like a smile on his face. “I won’t tell you anything, Anita Blake. I would no more betray my master than you would yours.”

“But see, my master doesn’t ask me to butcher helpless unarmed women, like yours does.”

He shook his head again. “I will not betray him.”

Now, technically the vampire had no more rights. I could have put a bullet in his brain now, legally. The warrant read that I could use the force I deemed necessary. No one talked about it much, but I knew, and the rest of us legal hunters knew, that some of us used that part of the warrant to justify torture. I didn’t like torture, not on either side of the chains. Besides, Cooper had had a reputation for being tough. We didn’t have the time for him to be tough. We needed to know where his master lived.

I walked over to Malcolm. He didn’t look happy to see me that close to him. “What do you want, Ms. Blake? You have your villain, take him and go.”

I lowered my voice so only we and the soon-to-be-dead Cooper would hear. “Try to read my mind by touch again.”

“I did not . . .”

“If you deny it, I’ll make sure that all those people that you’ve done negotiations with over the years know exactly how you outsmarted them. A shake of the hand, and you had them.”

“I did not bespell anyone.”

“No, but you read their minds, took knowledge from them, against their will. That’s illegal.”

“Is that a threat again, Ms. Blake?”

“Negotiation is simple with me, Malcolm. If you use your little clairvoyant powers on me now, it’s our little secret. If you don’t, then it won’t be our little secret. See? Very simple.”

“How can I trust you?”

“Maybe you can’t, but what choice do you have?”

I felt his power then, like water filling the room. Once, I’d worried I’d drown in his power. Now, I knew I could swim in it, or simply ignore it. “Grandstanding won’t win you any points with me.”

“I will do this, but not because you forced me. I want these killings stopped, and if we habored vipers among us, unbeknownst, then I want to know who they are. I will not have such things done in my church, or by my church members.”

“Fine.” I held my hand out to him. “Talk is cheap.”

He frowned at me, but he gave me his hand, and the moment his fingers touched mine, I felt him riffle through my head. I felt him get a second image of the dead woman. A more complete image. I thrust my power outward like a defending blade. He was prepared this time. He simply drew his hand away and stepped back. “May it give you all the joy it has given me over the centuries.”

It sounded like some kind of blessing turned curse, but I ignored it. Malcolm and I could squabble later. I had to use his gift while I still had it. I turned back to the vampire that was still cuffed to the chair.

He’d heard at least part of what Malcolm and I had said. His face was angry, defiant. “I won’t talk.”

“I won’t ask you to.”

“What’s happening, Anita?” Zerbrowski asked.

“I’m going to find out what we want to know.”

“How?” He looked positively suspicious.

It made me laugh. “God, Zerbrowski, what do you think I’m about to do?”

“I don’t know.”

That made the laughter fade, and the smile went with it. It’s always hard to see your friends look at you like they don’t trust you not to be monstrous. “I’m not going to do anything you haven’t seen me do already tonight.”

He widened eyes at me. “This guy doesn’t like you, the other one did.”

“It won’t matter.”

He made a small gesture as if to say, help yourself, but he looked like he’d believe it when he saw it. I guess I couldn’t blame him. I reached out toward Cooper’s face.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Would you rather I shoot you?”

He just glared at me.

“Then hold still.” If I hadn’t been afraid that he’d either try to hurt me with his hands or his teeth, I’d have touched him from behind, but he was a vampire, and you don’t cuddle one if you aren’t sure about your safety. I touched him from the side, so if he tried to bite me I’d feel it, and could move. I touched the side of his face. He was clean shaven, but he was also cold. He hadn’t fed tonight.

I thought, Who is your master?

He fought me. He tried to think random thoughts. I got chaotic images. I saw the second stripper, the one from last night. I saw her alive and dancing on the stage. I saw a cloaked figure huddled by her stage.

“No!” he jerked his head away from me.

I pressed my hip against his arm and put a hand on either side of his head. His hair was soft, but not as soft as Avery’s. Cooper’s hair had the texture of someone who, if they let it grow out at all, it would have body and wave to it.

“Don’t,” he said, but it wasn’t a shout this time. He tried to think of anything, everything. But somewhere in those confused images, I recognized a face. A woman’s face. I remembered her at a banquet table. I remembered her at Belle’s court. It wasn’t my memory.

I thought, Jean-Claude. He whispered through me, and this time I got a sense that he was busy, or about to be. “Do you need me to come to you, ma petite? I can put this off.”

I said it out loud, but for his ears, though more heard it. “Who is she?”

“Gwenyth, Vittorio’s lovely Gwennie.”

“Vittorio,” I said, and I had a face with the name. He was darkly handsome, and I doubted he’d started life with an Italian name. He looked very dark, Arabic maybe. “Vittorio.” I must have whispered it out loud, because Cooper screamed and stood up. He stood up still cuffed to the chair. He stood up, and the last thing I got from him was a very clear thought. I’ll make them kill me.

I was the closest, but I’d had to put my gun up to do my little hand trick. I did the first thing I thought of, I hit him. I hit him as hard and fast as I could. I hit him the way I’d been trained for years in martial arts. You don’t try to throw someone to the floor, you aim for three feet below the floor. My target wasn’t his cheek, it was the other side of his face. When I was merely human, it was just a way to concentrate, to get the maximum punch out of your body. Now, suddenly, aiming to punch a hole through someone had a whole new meaning.

Blood spattered, and his cheek gave under my fist. I thought I heard his jaw break. The blow spun him around, and he fell onto his side, chair and all. He fell on the floor and didn’t get back up.

“Jesus,” one of the uniforms said, “Jesus, you broke his neck.”

Had I? I stood there for a second with my right hand covered in blood, and I realized that my hand hurt. I’d cut myself on his teeth. “He’s not dead,” I said, and my voice was hoarse.

Everyone was staring at me, and not in a good way. More like I’d sprouted a second head, and it was a big, scary one. I looked at Malcolm. “Does this work while he’s unconscious?”

Malcolm just nodded.

I knelt beside the fallen vampire. I touched his hair and tried not to look at what I’d done to his face. I hadn’t literally punched a hole through him, but I’d split the skin away from his teeth, as if I’d used a dull blade. I closed my eyes, and thought, Daytime retreat, where is the daytime retreat?

He couldn’t fight me now. His thoughts came like smooth silk, and I knew in that moment that Malcolm could read people easier in their sleep. I let the thought go and followed Cooper’s thoughts, images. It was a big building, a condo. A fucking modern condo. I wanted to see the front of the building. I saw it. I had the address. Wait, number and name on the condo, and I was looking at the little boxes with all the names and numbers. I was looking at it from higher up than I would have seen it. Street, I thought, what street are we on?

I said the address out loud, street and name that the condo was under. “Got it,” Zerbrowski said.

I opened my eyes and took my hands off of Cooper. His eyes fluttered open. He made a sound, a low groan. The look he flashed up at me as I stood over him was one of surprise and fear. I was as surprised as anyone, but I couldn’t let anyone see that. I’d known that joining with Jean-Claude and Richard would up the metaphysics, but hadn’t thought what it would mean to the physical. If Cooper had been human, my punch would have snapped his neck. Shit.

Zerbrowski was already on his phone.

“Who are you calling?” I asked.

“Mobile Reserve. We’ll want the fire power.”

“Wait,” I said.

Zerbrowski hit the button on his phone, killed it. “Wait for what?”

“If we give them the address, they may go in tonight. We don’t want that.”

“We want to catch these bastards,” Smith said.

“Yeah, but they’re out hunting now. They won’t be home, or at least most of them won’t be. We’ll miss some of them, or all of them, and once we’ve got that many police around the place, they’ll know it. They’ll never come back to the place again, and we won’t know where to look for them.”

“We can’t withhold the address,” Roarke said, “not if we’re asked.”

“If the address leaves this room, more women are going to die. If the address leaves this room, maybe cops are going to die. His master is someone so powerful that no master vamp in this city sensed him. That means he’s really, really good. Mobile Reserve is who I want in a firefight, but they aren’t immune to vampire powers. They go in at night when he’s at his best, and they may all die.”

Everyone was looking at me, except Zerbrowski. He had already moved on and didn’t need convincing. Marconi would be cool, it was the uniforms and Smith I had to convince.

“Zerbrowski, call Mobile Reserve, get me Captain Parker.”

Zerbrowski raised an eyebrow at me. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

“No, but he knows me. And he’s the man in charge of Mobile Reserve. Get him for me.”

Zerbrowski made a face. “Your funeral.”

“Let’s hope not,” I said.

I looked down at Jonah Cooper, vampire, ex-vamp executioner. He blinked up at me. He’d have probably had something to say to me, but a broken jaw cuts down on the chit-chat.

Zerbrowski clicked his phone shut. “I’ve left a message. He’ll get back.”

I nodded. I looked down at Jonah again. I had everything he knew, all of it. I’d seen him helping murder women. I’d seen his own memory of it. I sighed.

“While we wait for the call back, help me move our prisoner outside.”

Zerbrowski gave me a look. I gave him one back. It was his turn to sigh. “Smith, take his other arm. We’re going to escort him outside.”

Smith was looking at us sort of funny, but he helped Zerbrowski lift the vampire to his feet. Cooper made small protesting noises and hissed curses under his breath. Maybe I hadn’t broken his jaw, or at least not badly.

Zerbrowski and Smith got him on his feet and started him for the door. I got my gun out and followed them. One of the uniforms said, “What are they going to do?”

“Go outside if you want to see the show,” Marconi said, “I’ve seen it.” He sounded tired.

Roarke and the other uniform, whose name I couldn’t remember, followed me. It was like a parade. I’ve got over eighty kills. Most of them actually legal. But I usually whack the bad guys when they’re dead to the world. I usually haven’t had to question them, touch them. I usually don’t know who they were in life, or if I do, I feel like I’m putting them out of their misery, or did once, when I believed vampires were truly dead. Jonah Cooper had been what I am, and he had betrayed everything he stood for. He’d sacrificed law enforcement officers that had gone in as his backup. He’d murdered innocent women for kicks. I knew all that, but I’d have liked it better if I didn’t know that his hair had nice texture, or that he’d gotten a hero’s funeral. There’s a reason that executioners through history usually only come in at the end when it’s time to kill. If he’d run for it or fought, then the other cops could have shot him, killed him for me. But he wasn’t going to run now, and no one else here had the legal authority to do what I was about to do.

We were outside in a small side area near the far parking lot. Cooper had figured out what was happening, because even with an injured jaw he was trying to talk to me. The words started out stiff, but got faster as he talked. Fear will override pain. “You’re Jean-Claude’s human servant. How is what I’m doing any different from that?”

“I haven’t killed innocent civilians because my master doesn’t like strippers.”

“I killed more people as a hunter than I’ve killed as a vampire,” he said. He tried to turn around and look at me, but apparently that hurt too much.

We were on a plot of grass, with flowers to one side and the parking lot to the other. “Good enough,” I said.

Zerbrowski turned, and Smith moved with him. They turned the vamp around so I could see his face. “I kill because the law says I can, not because I want to,” I said.

“Liar.”

“Knees,” I said.

He fought them, and I didn’t blame him. I shot him in the leg, and he collapsed to the ground. I hadn’t expected to have to shoot him so soon, or for wounding. The echo of the gun up my arm thrilled through my body, like the gun was where all the adrenaline came from, tingling up my arm.

Smith looked pale. Zerbrowski grim. But they still had his arms, even with him on the ground.

“I can make this quick, Cooper, or I can make it slow. Your choice.” My voice was empty. Nothing showed on my face. I just looked at him and knew that if he struggled I would shoot him by inches, until he was too wounded to get away, and I could let Zerbrowski and Smith move away without risking Cooper getting away.

He struggled, and I shot him again.

Smith let go of the arm. “I can’t do this. This isn’t right.”

“Then get the fuck away from him,” I said, and there was anger in my voice now, because I agreed with Smith. “Zerbrowski.”

“Yeah.” His voice was very careful.

I had the gun on Cooper, and my body had gone quiet, the anger sliding away on the nice white static in my head. “Move.”

He moved. Cooper tried to levitate. I figured he would. I put two shots into the center of his body, and he collapsed back to earth. He hadn’t been able to fly in the church when he was healthy, I hadn’t expected him to get better wounded. He didn’t.

I walked up to him, gun in a two-handed grip, aimed on the center of his forehead. “You’re enjoying this,” he said, and he made a sound in his throat. There was blood on his lips, his blood.

“No,” I said, “I’m really not.”

“Liar,” he said again, and tried to spit blood at my feet, but apparently his jaw hurt too much, and it made him writhe on his knees.

“I don’t want to kill you, Cooper, and I don’t enjoy it.”

He looked up at me, puzzled. “You feel empty inside. I enjoyed killing.”

“Bully for you,” I said, and I knew I should have pulled the trigger, should have ended it. Never let them talk.

“You really don’t enjoy this, do you?” he asked.

“No,” I said, looking into those brown eyes.

“Then how do you stay sane?”

I let all the air ease from my body, as the world narrowed down to the center of his forehead. But I could still see his eyes, so alive, so . . . real. I answered him, “I don’t know.” I squeezed the trigger, and the impact knocked him backward. He fell on his side, and I moved up on him, gun still held two-handed, because whether he was dead or whether he wasn’t, I wasn’t done.

He had a smallish hole in the middle of his forehead above his surprised eyes. I fired into his forehead until the top of his head exploded in brains and bone. Decapitation was nice, but spilling the brains all over the grass works, too. I switched my aim to his chest, and fired until my gun emptied. Then I got a second clip from my belt, reloaded and fired into his chest until I could see light through his body. Legally I could not carry my vamp executioner kit in the car unless I had a current warrant. I’d left home without a warrant, so my sawed-off shotgun was at home with my stakes and machete. Handguns will do the job, but it takes longer, and it wastes a hell of a lot of ammo.

The last gun shot echoed into the night. My ears were full of that ringing silence that happens when you’ve fired that many shots from that close a range without ear protection. I was standing over the body, one foot on its shoulder, pinning it to the ground. I must have kicked him over onto his back sometime during the chest shots. I didn’t remember doing it, but shooting into the ground was a hell of a lot safer than shooting out into the night. Not all the bullets would stop in his body, not when you were trying to punch a hole through the person.

The first sound that came back was the sound of my blood in my ears, the pulse of my own body. Then some sound made me turn. Malcolm had brought his flock to watch, or maybe they had come on their own, and he couldn’t stop them, so he’d come with them. Whatever, they were there held back by the uniforms. The vampires and the few humans among them stood staring at me. There was a little girl in front, and for a second I thought, what the fuck are her parents thinking, then I realized she was a vamp. I had trouble concentrating, but she was old. Older than the woman holding her hand and pretending to be her mommy.

I popped the clip in my gun and checked how much ammo I had left. I couldn’t remember how many shots I’d fired. I’d only brought two clips with me. Silly me. I needed to load up. I needed my Jeep, or home. I put the clip back in and slammed it home with my hand. Some of the vamps jumped at the small sound it made. Somehow with all of them standing there staring at me, I didn’t want to put the gun up. I didn’t think they’d really rush us, but it was definitely not a friendly crowd.

Zerbrowski came up to me. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said, and either he whispered, or my hearing wasn’t all the way back. But I didn’t argue. I let him take me to his car, and I let Smith and Marconi watch our backs.

I saw Avery in the crowd as we moved. He didn’t look happy to see me anymore. Guess the honeymoon was over. Zerbrowski got me into the passenger seat. Movement caught my eye. It was Wicked and Truth. They were by the entrance to the church. They didn’t look upset. Truth gave me a nod, and Wicked kissed the tip of one finger in my direction.

I buckled my seat belt, raised a hand in their direction.

“You made some new friends tonight,” Zerbrowski said, as he put the car in gear and drove us slowly forward. We had to ease close to the waiting group of vampires. They watched us with blank, empty faces.

“Yeah, I make friends wherever I go.”

He gave a small, dry laugh. “Jesus, Anita, did you have to blow a hole clean through his chest?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.” My voice wasn’t the least bit friendly.

“I’d stay away from the church for awhile, if I were you. They’re going to remember what you did tonight.”

I put my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. “Yeah, me, too.”

“You alright with this?”

“No. Did Parker call back yet?”

“Yeah. I told him you were blowing a hole through a vampire’s chest. He said you could call him back.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Is that really what you told him?”

He grinned at me. “Yeah.”

I shook my head. “Give me your damn phone.”

He handed it to me. “Just hit this button, it’ll ring him back.”

I hit the button, and the phone started to ring. I was numb. I felt nothing, but a vague shockiness. Parker answered on the second ring, and I started to talk about business. About solving murders, and saving lives. I concentrated on the fact that we were trying to save lives, but my mind kept jumping around. It kept jumping over a vision of Jonah Cooper’s eyes, and his question, how do you stay sane? The answer, the real answer, was, you don’t.

70

AN HOUR LATER, I was home. I had a date with Mobile Reserve for just after dawn. Captain Parker had told me to get some sleep, as if I sounded like I needed it. He’d even agreed to letting me go in with them. I was to their vampire raids what Haz-Mat was to their meth lab raids. An expert who could help them stay alive and not accidentally blow themselves to hell. Vampires wouldn’t blow up like some of the chemicals used in metham-phetamine labs, but lack of knowledge could make you just as dead. I would be their Johnny-on-the-spot expert, and no you don’t want to know how much arguing I had to do to get both the invitation to go in with them and to keep the address until I met them at dawn.

I sat at my kitchen table sipping coffee and staring off into space. The coffee was sloshing against the sides of my cup, like it was trying to escape. That shouldn’t be happening.

Micah was suddenly at my side. He put his hand on my coffee mug. “You’re going to drop it.”

I stared up at him and didn’t know what he meant. It must have shown on my face, because he explained, “Your hands are shaking. I’m afraid you’re going to drop the cup.” He eased it out of my hands and set it on the table.

I stared at my hands, and he was right. They were shaking. Not a fine tremble, but a full-blown quaking, as if from the wrist down I was having a fit. I stared at my hands like they belonged to someone else.

Micah knelt in front of me, he put his hands on mine, held them tight between his. “Anita, what happened?”

It felt good for him to hold my hands. It helped the shaking to slow, but it didn’t go away. What happened? What had happened? What made this one different? Everything, nothing. It took me two tries to talk. “I had to talk to him.”

“Him who?”

“The vampire I killed tonight.” The trembling was quieting under the press of his hands. My voice didn’t show the trembling at all, it was empty.

“Why did you have to talk to him?”

“Interrogation, had to interrogate him.”

Micah touched my face, and it startled me, but it made me look at him. His eyes were very green in the dimness of the kitchen, with that yellow around his pupils more like light gathering around a single point. “Did you learn what you needed to know?”

I nodded, still staring at his eyes.

“And why couldn’t you wait until dawn to kill him?”

I shook my head. “He was one of our serial killers. Couldn’t risk him getting away and warning them.”

“Then you had to kill him.” He put his hand on the side of my face, and that made me look at him more, not just fascinate on his eyes. I saw him now, all of him, saw Micah. I’d known he was there, but it was as if I was only getting pieces of things. I looked at that face that was at once so familiar to me that I knew every curve and line, and yet, I was still surprised sometimes to look at him and realize that he was mine. That this was my sweetie. It still caught me off-guard sometimes, like a really good surprise. As if he was too good to be real, and I kept expecting him not to be there. Why should he be different?

He reached up to me, and I slid off the chair and into his arms. I wrapped myself around his waist, his chest, his shoulders. I hugged him as tight and close as I could with legs and arms, and he got to his feet with me still wrapped around him. We were the same height and weighed within fourteen pounds of each other. If he’d been human, he might not have been able to do it, but he wasn’t human, and he stood up and began to walk through the darkened house. I knew where we were going, and I couldn’t think of anything better than crawling under the covers and letting him hold me.

The phone rang. Micah kept walking. The machine caught it, and Ronnie’s voice came on. “ ’Nita this is Ronnie. I need help.” Micah froze, because it didn’t sound like Ronnie.

I hopped down to the floor and was running for the phone while she was still slurring her words. “Ronnie, Ronnie, it’s me. What’s happened?”

“Anita, it’s you.”

“Ronnie, what’s happened?” My pulse was thudding in my throat again. Adrenaline had chased the shock and the numbness away.

“I’m drunk,” she said happily.

“What?”

“I’m at a club across the river. I am watching men take their clothes off.”

“What club?”

“Something Dreams.”

“Incubus Dreams,” I said.

“That’s it,” and she slurred her S.

“Why are you at a strip club getting drunk?” I asked. The adrenaline was easing away.

“Louie won’t live with me. He says marriage or nothin’, and I said nuthin’.”

“Oh, Ronnie.”

“I am drunk, and the bartender says I need a ride. Can I have a ride?”

Micah was standing close enough that he’d caught some of it. “I’ll go get her.”

“Anita, why are men such bastards?”

I wasn’t sure that men were such bastards, but I knew better than to argue. “I’ll come get you, just stay there, and don’t do anything you’ll regret when you wake up tomorrow.”

She giggled; Ronnie never giggled. “Oh, I want to do something that Louie will regret tomorrow.”

Shit. “Sit tight, don’t do anything stupid. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” She hung up, still laughing.

I filled Micah in on the parts he’d missed. “You need to rest, Anita. I’ll go get her.”

“First, she’s in the men-are-bastards mind-set, and she’s wanting to do something that Louie will regret tomorrow. I think you alone wouldn’t be a good idea, besides she’s my friend. But I’m letting you come with me.”

He was frowning at me.

I touched his arm. “Going to bed with you beside me is the best idea in the world right now, but going to bed without you is like the worst idea in the world. I think alone my head’s going to turn ugly. Maybe going out is exactly what I need.”

He frowned harder. “You can just call her a taxi.”

“Ronnie and I just made up from a fight that’s lasted for months. I don’t want to lose her again.”

“I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

“No.”

He smiled then, though his eyes still weren’t happy. “Then let’s go.”

I smiled at him. “Thank you.”

“What for, not arguing?”

“Yeah.”

“But I’m driving.”

I didn’t argue. I did get my vampire hunter kit and my equipment bag. The equipment bag was new, but it held more weapons. It carried lots of guns, lots of ammo, pointy weapons, and it all looked like a medium sized black duffel bag, luggage thing.

Micah didn’t argue about the extra firepower. He just held the door for me, since I had a bag in each hand. We met Nathaniel coming up the sidewalk. He grinned at me, until he saw my face and the bags. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

I looked at Micah, and he looked at me. “She’s got a warrant, so she can carry her entire kit with her.”

“You aren’t going to catch vampires with her, are you?”

I sighed. “Right now, we’re going to go rescue Ronnie. She’s drunk as a skunk over the river at Incubus Dreams. The bartender took her keys.”

Nathaniel’s eyebrows went up. “Why go to that dump?”

I laughed and dropped a bag so I could hug him. He hugged me back. “Come with us, and we’ll discuss it in the car. I want to get there before she does something stupid.”

“You mean like get drunk at a strip club where I know the dancers will do a lot more than just strip for money?”

I looked at him, and my eyes were wide. “Tell me you don’t mean . . .”

He shrugged. “That’s the rumor, and I believe the person who told me.”

“Oh, shit.” I started to run for the Jeep, because having sex with a prostitute stripper would qualify nicely as something Louie would regret in the morning. The trouble with that kind of revenge is that you regret it so much more than whoever you’re trying to hurt. I threw the bags in the back. Micah drove, and Nathaniel got in the back. We were off to try to save Ronnie from a fate worse than death, or something like that.

71

INCUBUS DREAMS SITS by itself in the middle of an open field, a distant stand of trees, and a gravel parking area. It sits by itself, partly by accident and partly because it is the only all-male show on this side of the river. Bright multicolored neon surrounded the entrace. There was a large printed sign on the door that read, “All-Male Dancers.” It was a last chance for the drunks to make sure that this was what they wanted to see, and they weren’t about to stumble into the wrong club.

The three of us stepped into the foyer, or whatever you call an open space with an empty display case and a little desklike area. There was no one behind it, no one to ask if we wanted to check our coats. I was actually the only one wearing a coat. It was mild for October, and lycanthropes tend to run warm. I had the short leather jacket on, mostly to hide the gun under my arm, more than to protect against the autumn chill. But whatever bouncer was supposed to check people out at the door wasn’t at the door. We entered the club unmolested and unchecked out. Bad security, no cookie.

Of course, maybe they were counting on you being deafened and stunned for a moment by the music. It was so loud you could feel the bass in your bones, and not in a good way. You literally stood a moment on the raised area inside the doors, just trying to adjust your senses to the damn music. Who needs security when the music is like a blow against the side of your head? A headache started almost instantly, faint, but promising to be a real bitch. I went over how much money I had on me, and how much it would cost to get them to turn the music down. Twenty dollars, it’d be cheap at twenty dollars. Of course, the DJ in his raised booth would probably be offended. I tried to ignore the music and looked around the room, trying to spot Ronnie. How many tall, leggy blond women could there be here? More than you’d think. The room was packed. Shit.

We must have hesitated too long, because the DJ leaned down over his booth wall, which happened to be above us and to the left. He yelled, “Pay at the bar.”

“What?” I yelled back.

He repeated himself, still yelling.

I took the opportunity to ask if he could turn the music down. He smiled, shook his head, and vanished behind his wall. I started to reach for my pocket, and Nathaniel touched my arm. He leaned in so that his face was almost touching my ear. “Don’t offer money for him to turn it down, you might offend him.”

I yelled back from an inch away, “Like I care.”

Nathaniel smiled and yelled, “He could turn it louder.”

I gave him wide eyes and let my hand fall back away from my jacket pocket. I didn’t really think the music could get any louder, but just in case, I wouldn’t tempt fate.

There was a dance floor to the right, and several small raised stages with shiny poles in their centers. A pool table to the left and little tables scattered around hither and yon. Bathrooms were strangely prominent against the far left wall. There seemed to be no door to the men’s room, and no doors on any of the stalls, so even standing at the door you could see directly into it. That seemed weird. The bar was, of course, at the far side of the room.

There seemed to be a large group of women clustered around the nearest stage, though the stage itself was empty at the moment. But other than that one group of women, the rest of the customers were men. There were three blondes who could have been Ronnie, but when they turned, I realized they were so not Ronnie. The last blond was a man, who either liked the way he looked, or nature had been cruel. He’d have made a lovely women, but junior high must have been hell for him.

Micah got us both moving down the little steps and into the crowd, a hand on either of our arms. We threaded our way through the happy, mostly drunken crowd, and finally made it all the way across the room to the bar. We paid our cover charge, mostly by pantomime, because the bar was too wide to get close enough to yell in the guy’s ear.

I tried to ask him where Ronnie was, but he just smiled, shook his head, and managed to hold an empty glass up, asking if we wanted a drink. Since I didn’t have a blonde to hold up to ask if he’d seen one of those, I just shook my head, and we moved far enough away from the bar so that we weren’t blocking those that did want a drink.

A man wearing only loose boxers and socks came out of a black-draped area to the side of the bar. That must be the dressing rooms.

We huddled, and I yelled, “Bathroom. I’ll check the bathroom.”

They both nodded, and we began to work our way around the bar toward the women’s bathroom, which had a large piece of cloth suspended from the ceiling, covering the door. Maybe it was to hide the fact that the women’s bathroom had a door, so the men wouldn’t feel cheated.

There was a commode in the middle of the room across from the sink. It was just sitting there, in the middle of the floor, no stall, no nothing. It held water, and seemed to work, but it was just sitting there. There were two stalls against the wall, one had an “out of order” sign. There was also a line. None of the women in there was Ronnie. The walls must have been thicker than they seemed, because I could hear myself, say, “Ronnie, are you in here?”

No answer. I finally turned to a tall brown-haired woman and said, “My friend called me for a ride home. Five feet eight, blond, gray eyes, attractive. Too drunk to talk right.”

The woman shook her head. A woman’s voice from inside the stall yelled, “Hell, that could be almost every blonde we’ve seen tonight.”

I explained that I’d seen the blondes in the bar, and they weren’t Ronnie and asked whether they’d seen her earlier. No one had. One of the women was using the commode in the middle of the floor as I left. Oh, well. I opened the door, and either the music had actually been turned down a notch, or I was getting used to it or going deaf.

Micah and Nathaniel were where I’d left them, but they’d been joined by a man I didn’t know. He was taller than either of them, but so thin all over that he looked smaller somehow. He had short, curly brown hair and was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and socks. No shoes. Interesting.

Nathaniel took my hand as soon as I got close enough to be touched. The stranger touched Micah’s shoulder and let his hand linger there, just a second too long. He was smiling and asked, “Do the two of you like dick?”

I kept Nathaniel’s hand and moved up in front of them both, so that it forced the man to step back from us. He actually reached around me and touched Micah’s shoulder again. I had to let go of Nathaniel’s hand, but I moved up two more steps. For a moment the man was almost pressed up against me. He started to smile at me, then saw my eyes, and the smile faltered, and he stepped back.

I don’t know what look was on my face, but he stumbled a little over his words, “They said they liked dick.”

“I said, I liked my own,” Micah said.

“If anyone else asks,” Nathaniel said, “just say no.”

I said, “We’ve had a misunderstanding here.”

The man nodded. “Sorry.” He started to move away.

I said, “We’re trying to find our friend. She called drunk, needs a ride home.” I described her.

He gave me nervous eyes. He knew something, and I’d been scary, so he didn’t want to tell me. I should really learn to tone down the whole silent threat thing, but damn, I’ve just gotten so good at it.

Nathaniel’s hand snaked acround my shoulder. The hand had a twenty dollar bill in it. He said, “Ask again.”

I took the twenty and creased it down the middle. The man watched me do it. He seemed less nervous, but I could tell he still didn’t like me or what was happening. Things hadn’t gone the way they were supposed to go, and it had thrown him.

“Do you know where our friend is?” I held the twenty up.

“Maybe,” he said, and his voice sounded rough.

Nathaniel leaned over my shoulder. His voice was low and calm. “We want to find her before she does something she’ll regret. She had a fight with her boyfriend, they’ll make up, but not if she crosses too many lines, do you understand me?”

“This will get you a lap dance, a good one. I have to do something for the money, or he’ll know I told on him. He wouldn’t like that, and he’d make sure I didn’t like it.”

“Who?” I asked.

Nathaniel was standing so close to me I felt him sigh. “Ronnie is already in the back, Anita.”

“The back?” I asked.

“Wherever they go, she’s already back there.”

Shit. “Take us to her,” I said.

“Dallas would kill me. We don’t get that many beautiful women in here.”

“We could just start asking where Dallas is,” I said.

Something close to real fear went through his eyes. “Don’t do that, please.”

I hate when I start feeling sorry for them. “What’s your name?”

“Owen,” Nathaniel said, “he said his name was Owen.”

“Alright, Owen, we don’t want to get you hurt, but if you keep us talking and something bad happens . . .”

Micah said, “Give him another twenty, then he can take us to the back.”

I looked at him.

“We can find her on our own, and he can pretend that he took us to the back for business.”

My look said it all.

He shrugged. “He won’t get hurt, and we’ll all get what we need.”

I wanted to argue, but Nathaniel’s hand had already appeared with another twenty in it. “I had a good night,” he said. What did that mean? A good night? Good tips? Or did Nathaniel do lap dances when he wasn’t on stage? I’d never asked. I hadn’t wanted to know, hell, I still didn’t want to know. I took the twenty and folded it together with the first one.

“Take us to the back, Owen.”

Another dancer appeared in what I finally realized was the outfit; loose shorts, T-shirt, and socks. This one had more meat on him and was cute in a boyish, unfinished sort of way. “Need another hand?”

It was Nathaniel who moved up, hugging me from behind, smiling, suddenly. “We’ve got all the men we need, don’t we, Owen?”

Owen nodded, and I watched his face remold itself, so that when he turned to his coworker, he was smiling and at ease. He took the forty dollars from my hand and tucked it into the top of his white socks. He made the movement strangely graceful and more feminine than it should have been, as if in his mind he was tucking a hundred dollars into the tops of silk stockings. It was a good moment and made me think better of him in the job he’d chosen. Before that one movement, I’d wondered what the hell he was doing here. Of course, with Guilty Pleasures as my measuring rod, everyone here looked too thin, too fragile, not muscular enough, not anything enough.

I didn’t manage a smile, but I kept my face pleasant and unreadable. “Yeah, we have enough men.”

“We don’t have women here,” the other dancer said. There was something in his eyes, something about the way he glanced at Owen, as if he didn’t believe us.

“We brought our own,” Nathaniel said, and moved up between Owen and me, so he could drape an arm around us both. He was smiling. His lavender eyes shown with eagerness. It was an Oscar-worthy performance, and the other dancer seemed to buy it.

He did glance back at Micah. “What’s he going to be doing?”

“Watching, silly,” Owen said, and began to guide us around the other man. We threaded our way through the tables, with Micah trailing behind. I swear, I could feel the other dancer’s eyes on us, as if he still didn’t buy it. Or maybe he was jealous, God alone knew, because I didn’t want to. Ronnie was so going to owe me for this one.

A dancer stepped out onto the bar as we passed it. He was so not in shape, not fragile, sort of like a computer geek, or accountant. He had glasses and short hair that didn’t flatter his face. He was ordinary and so didn’t look like anyone that should be stripping. I wondered what he was doing here, like this, then he grabbed a set of bright chrome bars that were suspended above the bar and proceeded to roll his entire body up and through his own arms, proving that he was every bit as double-jointed as Nathaniel. Okay.

The audience screamed behind us, and I couldn’t help it, I glanced in that direction. The dancer was tall, thin, and a brunette and wearing only the white socks. He grabbed the bar in the center of the stage and began to writhe around it. I turned away, fast, and found that the dancer at the bar was nude now, too. I came almost face-to-face with the other reason he was stripping here; he was well-endowed. I nearly tripped us all trying to get some room between us and the bar. Owen laughed, a high girlish laugh, and Nathaniel joined it with a masculine chuckle. Micah followed silent, and I waited to stop blushing. They did total nudity across the river, how could I have forgotten? What I wanted to do was run screaming, but instead I let Owen maneuver us toward the black-draped area across from the bar. Nathaniel was plastered between us, still smiling, still laughing. If Nathaniel could keep playing nice, so could I. I glanced back to check on Micah and saw the dancer at the bar proving that it wasn’t just his shoulders that could bend in amazing ways. A woman was holding up money. Micah was staring straight ahead, as if, if he didn’t look, it would all just go away. It wasn’t just me that Ronnie was going to owe.

Owen parted the black drapes, and in we went.

72

THERE WAS A small open area just inside the drapes. A man was leaning against the far wall. He straightened up as we came through the curtain. He was wearing a muscle shirt, exercise pants, and white socks. The clothes were slightly different, but the socks gave it away. He was another dancer. There was more muscle under the shirt, and he had a body closer to the kind I expected from a stripper. “Need a hand?” he asked. It was exactly what the other dancer had asked. Coincidence, or code for something? Didn’t know, wasn’t sure I cared.

“No, thanks, we got it covered,” Owen trilled. He clung to Nathaniel’s arm, and Nathaniel let him.

I tried to help. I said, “Sorry, but I think I’m at my limit for men for the night. After three, don’t they make you throw one back?”

The new guy laughed, shook his head, and motioned us toward a hallway that seemed to stretch the length of the club. Owen moved us all down that narrow corridor. There wasn’t actually room for us to walk three abreast, so Nathaniel dropped ahead, and kept his arm around Owen. Owen must have taken that for a good sign, because he was suddenly draped around Nathaniel like some kind of tall, thin fashion accessory. Micah caught up with me, his arm sliding around my waist like I was his new security blanket. I guess I couldn’t blame him, I wasn’t exactly comfy myself.

There were small booths on either side, with curtains that could be drawn in front of them, though not everyone seemed to be bothering to pull curtains. Most of it was perfectly legal, a private lap dance. Rules for a lap dance are: The customer keeps their hands to themselves. The dancer does the touching, and even then, there are rules about what kind of touching can be done. Funny how living with a stripper and dating someone who owned a strip club had made me pay attention to things I never thought I’d want, or need, to know. But once you go in private, it’s a negotiation between the dancer and customer. I don’t mean just sex. Jason had one woman who wanted to lick the back of his knees, and was willing to pay fifty dollars for the privilege. Not my idea of fun, but not sexual, not legally. Or by most people’s standards, at all.

I hadn’t really thought how to find Ronnie once we were back here. Most of the booths were closed. I couldn’t just start yelling her name without maybe getting Owen in trouble with this Dallas person. Shit.

But I didn’t have to find Ronnie, I damn near tripped over her leg when it shot out from underneath a drape. I thought I knew the leg, but I was sure of the voice. “I fell down, God, I’m drunk.” A man’s voice murmured, and I think he was helping her to her feet.

I fought the urge to knock and said, “Ronnie, is that you?” Though I knew it was, sometimes you just have to say the stupid shit. Giggling was the only answer she offered. I took a deep breath and pulled the drape aside.

Ronnie was on her knees in the back of the booth. There was a flash of pale breasts, her shirt was up, and there was no bra in sight. A man was leaning over her breasts like he owned them. The dancers are allowed to touch, but not that much. If the management found out, he’d be booted out, or at least that was the theory.

“I’ll wait down the hallway,” Micah said.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

Nathaniel took Owen by the arm and said, “I’ll look after Micah.” I was left alone with my friend and her friend.

Ronnie giggled and drew him up for a kiss. I don’t think she realized that the curtain was open. If she’d been sober, I’d have turned on my heel and left her to it. She’s over twenty-one, but she was drunk and depressed and confused and my friend. So I moved a little into the booth, close enough that she could see me over his shoulder.

She smiled up at me. “Anita, why are you here?”

“You called me to give you a ride home, remember?”

She frowned up at me, as if to say, no, she didn’t remember.

The man who was on his knees in front of her turned and looked up at me. “You want to join us? I won’t charge extra.”

“I’ll just bet you won’t. Come on, Ronnie, let’s go home.”

“I don’t want to go home. Not yet. I just found Dallas. We’re having a private dance.”

“I see that,” I said, “but if you’d planned on doing private dancing, you shouldn’t have called me. I need to get to bed, and so do you.”

“But isn’t he cute?” She put her hands on either side of his face and turned him to face me again. Truthfully, he was okay, but the face wasn’t the show. He had the first body I’d seen since we got to the place that looked like a man’s body and not that of a preadolescent boy. He had broad shoulders, nice waist, hips, muscles in his arms and legs that showed he lifted weights. The tattoo on his arm was a Marine tattoo. What was an ex marine doing in a place like this?

“Yeah, he’s cute, now let’s go.” I reached for her arm. Dallas didn’t touch me, or try to keep her by force, he was sneakier than that, and smarter, too. He buried his face in her chest and nibbled gently on the edge of her breast. Ronnie threw her head back and made a noise that I never wanted to hear my friend make while I was in the same room.

Micah called, not quite a yell, “Anita, what’s taking so long?”

“Ronnie doesn’t want to leave.”

“Then, let’s go.” Something in his voice made me want to see what was happening with him.

“I’ll be right back, don’t do anything that you can get arrested for.” Dallas gave me a look that said plainly he was going to try and do just the opposite, but it was the best I could do, unless I wanted to drag Ronnie out of the booth by her hair. I wanted to see why Micah’s voice sounded the way it did.

Micah was very politely, but firmly, saying to an older gentleman, “Thank you, but no, we’re waiting for a friend.”

“I’ll be your friend,” the man said. He flashed a wad of bills about waist height, so you wouldn’t see it from farther into the club. The bill that showed was a twenty, leaving the implication that it was a roll of twenties.

Micah shook his head.

The man peeled off two twenties.

“No,” Micah said.

I was almost up to them, when the man peeled off two more twenties—eighty bucks—and held it up to Micah. “No one else is going to offer you more tonight.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, “I’m throwing in room and board, and sex with a girl.” I put my arm around Micah’s waist, and he did the same to me.

The man’s eyes flicked to me, then back to Micah, then to me. “You’re his friend?”

I nodded.

“You really were waiting for a friend,” the man said.

“I did tell you that,” Micah said.

The man frowned and started folding his money away. “I didn’t think you meant this kind of friend.”

“He did,” I said, and gave him the smile that was bright and cheerful and never reached my eyes. I looked around for Nathaniel and found that I could barely see him around the backs of a couple that had him backed into a corner. He raised a hand, so I’d be sure to see him. Or maybe he was asking for help, like a drowning man.

I took Micah’s hand and brought him with me. I think safety in numbers was our best bet. “Excuse me, boys and girls,” I said.

The couple turned and looked at me. The man was tall and dark, the girl was a little taller than me and blond. She was wearing a halter dress that needed to be lined better. Her nipples were dark imprints against the pale fabric. I carefully kept my gaze above her waist, not even wanting to know if there were other dark imprints lower down. I don’t mean to give the idea that they were cheap looking, they weren’t. The girl was wearing a diamond in her engagement ring big enough to choke a puppy, and her bracelets were gold and more diamonds. Her makeup was artful, which meant she looked like she was wearing almost none but was actually wearing a lot. The man was dressed in a suit that had been tailored to his body and had probably come from the same shop that Micah and Nathaniel got theirs from. It had the look.

“I’m sorry, but we were talking to the gentleman first,” the man said.

I took in a lot of air through my nose and let it out slow. The woman’s perfume was powdery and expensive. “Actually, I was talking to him first, because I brought him here.”

They gave each other surprised looks.

Nathaniel started trying to ease past them. “Sorry,” he said, “I did tell you I came with somebody.” When he was safely beside me, and I was holding both Micah’s and Nathaniel’s hands, I figured we were safe from any more propositions. Silly me.

The woman went up on tiptoe, and the man bent down so she could whisper. I didn’t care anymore. I started trying to maneuver us back to Ronnie. The area was just a little narrow for three people to move easily.

“Wait,” the woman said.

I turned back, because that’s what you do when someone speaks to you.

“All three of you with us,” she said.

I blinked at her, the long blink that gave me time to process information when I just didn’t believe what I’d just heard. Once upon a time, I’d have asked her what she meant, but I’d grown up since then, and I knew the answer. “No,” I said, and sort of pushed Micah in front of me and pulled Nathaniel behind. We came to an abrupt halt, because Nathaniel stopped moving.

I knew what I was going to see before I turned back. I was half right, the man had grabbed Nathaniel’s arm. I’d thought it would be the woman. Again, silly me.

I moved up beside Nathaniel. “Let go of him, now,” and I put a lot of force in the “now.”

He dropped Nathaniel’s arm. “My wife really likes your friend.”

“I’m happy for her, but it’s not my problem. Don’t touch him again. Don’t touch any of us again, is that clear?”

“You’re here for the same thing we are,” he said, “let’s go back to our place. We’ve got a bathtub big enough for all of us.” He stepped a little closer to us. “I just know that you’ll look even better out of your clothes than you do in them.”

I gave him the look, the one that makes bad guys flinch at twenty paces and the weaker ones run for their mommies.

His wife was smarter than he was, she pulled on his arm, and said, “Honey, I don’t think they want to play.”

“Listen to your wife, she’s the smart one.” I thought that was a nice parting shot, and we turned to go, and again, Nathaniel stopped moving. I turned back and found that the man had grabbed Nathaniel’s braid. That was it, no more nice.

I brought my badge out and shoved it at his face. He had to back up to look at the badge, as if he should have been wearing glasses but wasn’t. But it made him let go of Nathaniel’s hair.

He laughed. “I’ve got one at home. If you want to play cops and robbers, we’re into that.”

I had the badge in my left hand, so I had to use just my fingertips of the same hand to spread my jacket wide enough that I showed him the gun in its shoulder holster. “You got one of these?” I asked.

The woman was pulling at his arm. “Don’t, honey, I think she’s for real.”

He glared down at me. “Who are you?”

“Federal Marshal Anita Blake, asshole, back it up and leave us alone.”

The look on his face said, clearly, he didn’t believe me. Maybe he was one of those men who just didn’t believe women in authority, or maybe he just wanted to see Nathaniel’s hair spread all over his bed so badly, that he didn’t want to believe it. I’d been willing to buy that it was his wife that liked Nathaniel, right up to the point where he’d been the one that grabbed his arm, touched his hair. His wife might like Nathaniel, who wouldn’t? But it wasn’t her who had a serious hard-on about it.

I let my jacket fall back into place and used my body to sort of push Nathaniel between Micah and me. No way was I leaving him at the end of the line by Mr. Touchie. I put the badge up and started moving us down the narrow hallway, but I moved sort of backward, so I could keep an eye on the couple. Alright, on one half of the couple.

The wife was pulling at his arm trying to get him to move away. He jerked away from her and just kept looking at me. It was not a friendly look. In fact, there was enough heat in his eyes to cross that line to hate. I hadn’t done anything to make him hate me, except tell him no. There are men that see no as the ultimate insult, but usually it takes more than a rejection during a bar pickup attempt to get this level of reaction. I kept my attention on him until we were swallowed by one of the curtains that hid the deeper rooms.

“That was just creepy,” I said.

“I know him,” Nathaniel said in a small voice.

I looked at him. “How?”

He licked his lips, and his eyes looked haunted. “When I was on the streets. He used to pick up the older boys, the ones that were almost too old for the trade.”

“Too old?” I asked.

“Most of the men that came down there weren’t looking for men, Anita. They wanted boys. Once you looked too grown-up you had to move where you worked. A different clientele.” He said the last with a bitter little twist of his mouth. “He’s older now, and he didn’t recognize me, but I remember him. I remember one of the older boys warned me about him.”

“Warned you?”

Nathaniel nodded. “Yeah.”

“Did he hurt them?”

“Not yet, but sometimes everyone gets a feeling about a customer. He can ask for really standard stuff, but after awhile everyone just gets creeped. It’s like you can smell the sickness on them, like you just know that it’s only a matter of time before they hurt someone.”

I touched his face, and he looked at me, and his eyes held that sadness that he’d come to me with. That look that said he’d seen it all, done it all, and it had destroyed something inside him. I put my hands on either side of his face and kissed him gently. It helped chase some of that lostness away, but not all of it. Some of it clung around the edges.

Micah made a sound. “Anita, she’s your friend, but . . .”

I turned and found that Dallas the dancer was on the floor with Ronnie on top of him. She was still dressed from the waist down, but he wasn’t. Her shirt was unbuttoned, and if she’d started the night with a bra, it was gone now.

I’d had enough. Enough of strangers pawing my boyfriends. Enough of Ronnie dragging our asses down here. Enough of her self-destructive indulgence. I got enough of that kind of shit from Richard, I didn’t need it from her.

“Veronica Marie Simms,” I said.

She blinked up at the voice and the sound of all three of her names. “Who are you, my mother?”

I grabbed the belt of her jeans and lifted her bodily off of the man. It startled her, and me, because I didn’t have to fight to lift her. She was bigger than I was, taller, just bigger, and I lifted her like she weighed nothing. I got her stumbling to her feet.

Dallas said, “Hey, we weren’t finished.”

I showed him my badge. “Yeah, you were.” I kept the badge in my left hand and threw Ronnie over my shoulder. I had to bounce her once up in the air to get her settled better, then we were fine. I walked down the hallway, Nathaniel got the curtain and followed us, Micah brought up the rear.

She didn’t struggle, but she argued, “Anita, put me down!”

The creepy couple was not waiting for us in the little area in front of the rooms. I was glad. I had my badge out, but I’d have to throw Ronnie on the floor to go for my gun. I scanned the room as we entered it, and the couple was nowhere in sight. Even better.

“Anita, I am not a fucking child. Put me down!”

The bouncer came our way, and I flashed my badge at him. He held his hands up, as if to say, no trouble here. We kept walking for the door. The music was still blaring loud enough that it hurt my skull, but the people noise died down as they watched us pass. I don’t know if it was the badge, the fact that a girl was carrying a girl, the fact that Ronnie was probably flashing breast to the entire room, or everybody was mourning the fact that I was taking the two best looking men in the room with me. Whatever, we walked in a strange well of stillness, as everyone stopped dancing, stopped talking, stopped drinking, stopped and watched us.

I had to use my badge hand to help steady Ronnie as I went up the steps to the platform in front of the door, but we made it just fine. Nathaniel went ahead and got the door that led into the cloakroom. Micah went through the door and hurried in front of me to get the outside door. We went out into the cool autumn air. The door shut behind us, and the silence left my ears ringing.

“Put me the fuck down.” This time she struggled, not well, not like she could have, but I’d lost patience. She wanted down, I put her down. I dumped her on the gravel on her ass.

I think she might have yelled at me, but a funny look crossed her face, and she was suddenly scrambling to her feet and running, stumbling toward the grassy field that edged the parking area. She fell onto all fours and started to wretch.

“Shit,” I said, softly and with feeling. I started walking toward her, and the men came at my back. I motioned them to stay by the last line of cars, as I waded out into the grass to Ronnie. The dry autumn grass made that whish-whish sound against my jeans.

Ronnie was still on all fours. The sour sweet smell of vomit reached me before I reached her. She had to be my friend, because I went to her, and I swept her hair back from her face and held it like you do a child. Only true friendship would have kept me there while she threw up everything she’d drunk that night.

I was trying to think of something else, anything else, while I stood there. I’m not good around people who are throwing up. Something about the sound of it and the smell of it leave me fighting not to throw up, too. I looked out across the field, trying to find something else to think about. Nothing was interesting enough, until I looked almost straight out from where I was standing. At first I thought it was a deadfall, a tree, but my eyes made more sense out of it, and I realized it was a person. A pale line of arm, one hand pointing skyward, as if it was propped on something I couldn’t see. It didn’t have to be a dead body. Someone could have come out here and passed out.

I looked back at Micah and Nathaniel, I motioned them over. Ronnie was starting to slow down. She’d reached the dry heaves, at least.

“Stay with her.” I knew that by walking up to it, I might be destroying evidence, but I also knew that it could be a mannequin, or someone passed out. I had to be sure before I called in the cavalry. What did it say about my life that I thought dead, murder, before anything else? That I’d worked on homicides too long.

I walked through the dry grass, and I was moving slower, watching where I put my feet. The grass didn’t make a sound against my jeans, because I was creeping along. If there was a weapon anywhere I didn’t want to step on it.

The more I saw of the body, the more I thought, dead. The skin had that paleness in the distant halogen lights and the cold light of the stars. It was a man, lying on his back, with that one arm propped up against a dead tree branch. If the hand hadn’t been propped up, I might not have seen it so quickly. Like the girl’s hair at the first scene, someone had taken a little extra effort to say, hey, look at me. Yeah, it was a man instead of a woman, but he was wearing a leopard skin thong that had been pulled aside so we wouldn’t miss the fact that he was shaved, very shaved. The chances of him not being a stripper that worked at Incubus Dreams were almost nil. Vegas wouldn’t take those odds.

The fang marks on his neck were black against his skin. More at the bend of his arm, his wrist. I didn’t touch him to move his head to see if he had matching marks on the other side of his neck. I didn’t move his legs and see if they’d marked him low. I just squatted down beside him, trying not to touch the ground anymore than I had to, and touched his arm. Yeah, I’d like to say I was searching for a pulse, but that wasn’t really it. He was cold to the touch, but his arm moved when I pressed, oh so gently. Rigor had either not set in, or it had come and gone. Different things can affect that, but I was betting that he’d died earlier tonight. That they’d been killing him while we questioned Jonah Cooper at the Church of Eternal Life. Looking at the dead man, boy almost, he looked so young, I didn’t feel so bad about killing Cooper. Funny.

I stood up and fished in my jacket pocket for my cell phone. I dialed a number I knew by heart.

“Zerbrowski here.”

“I hope you’re not at home,” I said.

“Why?” and he sounded positively suspicious.

“Because I’m over the river and through the strip clubs, looking at another damn body.”

“No one notified us.”

“I’m notifying you.”

“Are you telling me that you found the body?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“Tell me what happened.”

I told him a short version. I didn’t leave out that the bartender had told Ronnie to get a ride home, just that she was shit-faced about breaking up with Louie. I left out the creepy couple, but that was it.

“Shit,” he said, “I’ve got to call this in. The Staties or the local sheriff are going to get there before we do. The sheriff didn’t like you much.”

“I remember,” I said.

I could almost feel him thinking on his end of the phone. “I’d almost say send your people home, but we’ll need them to corroborate your story.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I do, but I won’t be first on the scene, Anita. Do you understand?”

“I think so, I’m going to need an alibi to explain how I just happened to find the next murder victim when they’ve got people patrolling all the clubs. They’re going to think that someone tipped me to it.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“You believe me, Zerbrowski.”

“Yeah, but I know you. If any woman could go out to a strip club trolling for guys and accidentally find a murder victim, it’s you.”

“I was not trolling for guys,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be sure and tell all the guys here at RPIT that you were just doing a favor for a friend.”

“You bastard, don’t tease me about this.”

“Would I do that?”

“Fuck you, Zerbrowski.”

“I’d say yes, but what would Katie say?” His voice got serious all of a sudden. “I’ll put the call in, tell them that one of our people is on the scene, but if the sheriff gets there first, be nice.”

“I’m always nice,” I said.

He laughed. “Yeah, and hell is cool in the summertime. Just try to behave until we can get there to back you up.”

“I’ll behave, if he does,” I said.

“Great. I’ll be there as soon as I can, Anita.”

“I know you will.”

“Long damn night,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

He hung up. I hung up and started walking. I heard sirens before I even made it back to the parking area. I had time to give Nathaniel and Micah a thumbnail sketch of what had happened and what was about to happen. Ronnie was sitting on the ground, moaning and holding her head. I’m not sure she would have heard me even if I’d tried to talk to her. Then cars squealed into the gravel parking lot, and in the lead car was Sheriff Melvin Christopher. There wasn’t a state cop in sight. Perfect.

73

THE EMTS, EMERGENCY medical techs, had given Ronnie a blanket. They seemed to think she was suffering from shock. That wasn’t it. She was sobering up. Sobering up in the middle of a murder investigation, when she’d drunk more in one night than she’d consumed in the entire six years I’d known her. They had her sitting in the open back of their ambulance. I think partly it gave them something to do. It’s good to keep busy.

Physically Ronnie felt the worst, but none of us were having a good time. Sheriff Melvin Christopher’s opening shot to me had been, “Almost didn’t recognize you with more clothes on, Miss Blake.”

I smiled sweetly and said, “That’s Marshal Blake to you, sheriff, and you are awfully interested in women’s clothing for a heterosexual man in a rural area.” It had gone downhill from there. I even admit that part of it was my fault. I shouldn’t have made the comment about women’s clothing, or questioned his sexual orientation, but, hey, his face got all the way to this awful maroon color before he started yelling at me. For a second, I thought I’d given him a stroke or something. Deputy Douglas had to separate us and take his boss for a little walk around the parking lot.

It gave me time to go check on Micah and Nathaniel. Micah was saying calmly, patiently, but in a tone that said it wasn’t the first time he’d said it, or the second, “I do not work at this club.”

The deputy who was questioning him was too tall for his body, as if his joints and hands and feet hadn’t had a chance to catch up yet. He was either well under twenty-five, or needed to eat more. “What club do you work at, then?”

Micah looked at me. The look said, help me.

I tried. “Deputy,” I said.

He looked at me. His eyes flicked to the badge in my hand, but since his boss hadn’t been too impressed with the badge, it was hard for him to be impressed, either. The boss sets the tone. He had pale bluish eyes. They weren’t friendly, almost mean. “I’m questioning a witness here.”

I smiled and tried to push it all the way up into my eyes, but probably didn’t manage it. “I see that, but, Deputy,” and I read his name tag, “Patterson, the witness has answered your question several times.”

“He won’t tell me where he works.”

“You never asked where I worked,” Micah said.

Deputy Patterson looked back at him, pale eyes narrowed in what he probably thought was a hard look. It wasn’t. “I did ask where you worked, and you won’t answer.”

“You asked what club I work for, I do not work at a club of any kind. I do not strip for a living, is that clear enough?” Micah asked. His voice had an edge of impatience. He was one of the most easygoing people I knew. What had Patterson been saying to put that tone in Micah’s voice?

Patterson’s face showed that he didn’t believe it. He was really going to have to work on the blank cop face, right now everything he thought spilled across his face. “Then what were you doing inside this place?” A look of near evil joy crossed his face. “Oh, I get it. You like to look at other people’s beans and weinies.”

“Beans and weinies,” I said, “what the fuck does that mean?”

“Dick and balls,” he said, with a tone that implied everyone knew that.

Micah looked at me, and even through the dark glasses, I could picture the look. I was beginning to see what had gotten on his nerves.

“Patterson, I allowed you to question my friends out of courtesy. This is my crime scene, not yours, and if you can’t ask a single question that could help us solve this crime, then you need to go somewhere else.”

I don’t know what he would have said, but I felt Sheriff Christopher coming up behind me, even before I saw the look of satisfaction on the deputy’s face. His look said clearly that the sheriff would sort me out, and he’d enjoy a ringside seat.

Patterson said, “He won’t tell me where he works, Sheriff. Says he’s not a stripper. Says he just came to watch a little fag wag.”

I made a small sound in my throat. “I’m going to say this just one more time. We got a call from my friend Veronica Simms that the bartender at this club told her she was too drunk to drive and she needed a ride home. Micah came along so that he could help me with her.”

“And what about the other one?” Patterson asked. “He says he’s a stripper at Guilty Pleasures.”

“Nathaniel came along to keep us company,” I said.

Sheriff Christopher gave me a flat cop look. It was a real look. He might be a prejudiced, woman-hating, good ol’ boy, but he was a cop, too. Underneath all the crap was someone who could be good at the job, when his personal agenda wasn’t getting in the way. It made me feel better, that look, but of course, his personal agenda was raining all over us.

“Why’d you need two friends,” and he stressed the friends, “to help pick up one drunk girlfriend?”

“Nathaniel had just gotten off work, and we hadn’t gotten to talk, so he came along, so we could visit.”

Sheriff Christopher frowned at me. “You said you were home.”

“I was.”

“I thought this one was your boyfriend.” He pointed at Micah.

“He is.”

“So what’s that one?” he asked, pointing a thumb in Nathaniel’s direction. Nathaniel was talking to the last deputy. He seemed to be having an easier time of it than Micah or me, maybe his deputy was smarter, or just less prejudiced.

“My boyfriend,” I said.

“They’re both your boyfriends?”

I took in air, let it out slow. “Yes.”

“Well, my, my,” he said.

I said a small prayer that Zerbrowski would get here soon. “We’ve got another victim, Sheriff, or don’t you care?”

“Yeah, that’s another thing,” he said, and he put those hard cop eyes on me. If he thought it was going to make me flinch, he was wrong, but it was still a good look. “You just accidentally found our serial killer’s next vic.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Bullshit, bullfuckingshit.”

“Believe what you want, Sheriff. I’ve told you and your people the absolute truth. I could make stuff up, if it would make you happier.”

He looked past me to Micah. “I like to see a man’s eyes when I talk to him, take off the glasses.”

Shit. Micah looked at me, and I looked at him. I shrugged. “Patterson has never actually asked what Micah does for a living. He’s been too busy trying to get Micah to admit that he’s a stripper, or a homosexual, to worry much about the facts.”

“Fine, I’m askin’ what do you do for a living, Mr. Callahan?”

“I am the coordinator for the Coalition for Better Understanding between Lycanthrope and Human Communities.”

“You’re the what?” Patterson said.

“Shut up, Patterson,” Christopher said. “So you’re one of the bleeding heart liberals that think the animals deserve equal rights.”

“Something like that, Sheriff.”

Christopher was giving Micah all his attention suddenly. “Take off the glasses, Mr. Coordinator.”

Micah took off the glasses.

Patterson backed up, and his hand actually touched his gun butt. Not good. The sheriff just stared into Micah’s kitty-cat eyes and shook his head. “Beastiality and coffin-bait, that is pretty damn low for a white woman.”

And the “white woman” comment took care of any worries I might have had about what other prejudices the sheriff happened to be carrying around. He was an equal opportunity bigot. He hated everybody that wasn’t male and white and straight. What a terribly stark and empty worldview.

“My mother was Hispanic, from Mexico, does that help?”

“Half spic,” he said.

I smiled, and it went all the way to my eyes. “Perfect,” I said, “just perfect.”

“You look awfully happy for someone who’s about to have a really bad night.”

“And how is this night supposed to get any worse, Sheriff?”

“You knew the body would be here, because your boyfriend and his people did it. That’s how you found it.”

“And why did I bring my boyfriends, and how did I arrange for my friend to be here getting drunk?”

“You were going to move the body, hide it. That’s why you needed this many people. There’s something about this one that will lead to your fag vampire friends.”

I wondered how Jean-Claude and Asher would like being referred to as my fag vampire friends. Better not to know. I shook my head. “How many lawsuits do you have against your department?”

“None,” he said.

I laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “I find that hard to believe.”

“I get the job done, and that’s all people care about.”

It wasn’t my business, but I had to wonder how many of his arrests were people not white, not straight, not like him. I would have bet almost any amount of money, most of his arrests fell into those categories. I hoped I was wrong, but I doubted I was.

“You know the line that if all you have is a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails?”

He frowned at me, not sure where I was going. “Yeah, I like Mr. Ayoob’s writings.”

“Yeah, so do I, but my point is this. If all you’re looking at is the monsters, then that’s all you’re going to see.”

He frowned harder. “I don’t follow.”

Why was I even trying? “You’re so busy hating me and everyone with me, that you’ve done almost no real police work, or don’t you care about this one? Is that it, sheriff? Is this just some little fag stripper that got himself killed, so it’s not as important as the white women earlier?”

Something flinched through his eyes, if I hadn’t been staring right at him, I’d have missed it. “You must really hate this club.”

His eyes were cool and unreadable when he said, “My experience has been that what goes around, comes around, Marshal. You engage in high-risk behavior, and it catches up with you, and payback’s a bitch.”

I shook my head. “No one so blind as those that will not see.”

“What?” he said.

“Nothing, Sheriff, just wasting my breath.”

The radios on the black and whites crackled to life, and what we heard was enough to stop the squabbling. “Officer down, officer down.”

Location was just down the road at the first strip bar that the vampires hit. Ambitious bastards. I yelled to Micah and Nathaniel, “Take Ronnie’s car and go home.” I was already opening the Jeep’s driver’s side door.

“Anita . . .” Micah started.

“I love you,” I said, and I slid behind the wheel. I backed up and had to wait for one of the other police cars to get out of my way. Nathaniel was still leaning against the car where the deputy had questioned him. I hit the button for my driver’s side window. I blew him a kiss. He smiled and blew one back. Then I was in line between two of the black and whites, and we were gone. Officer down, was it the vampires? Or had some drunk gotten lucky? No way to know until we got there. The only bright spot was that I wouldn’t be alone with just the sheriff and his men for long. Police would come from all over for this one. Officers that wouldn’t normally have any business or jurisdiction here would be driving up within minutes.

The ambulance was behind us, with its lights and sirens going. They could have been simply following the police’s lead, but I took it for a good sign. EMTs only do the full cherry, when they know there’s someone hurt but still alive. I said a quick prayer and concentrated on driving. The sheriff was a bigoted asshole, but he knew the roads, and I didn’t. Here’s hoping I didn’t end up in a ditch.

74

WE WERE THE first officers on the scene, because we’d been less than ten minutes away. The sound of sirens wailed off into the night. More help coming. There was an Illinois State Trooper car standing in the parking lot with one door open, and the officer slumped, sitting by the door. His face was just a white blur, one arm looked injured, and his gun was clasped awkwardly in his other hand. There was blood on the shoulder of his uniform.

The black and whites hit their doors, and they took cover behind the doors, or the engine block while they looked around. No one just ran straight at the injured trooper. We all took cover, we all had our weapons out, we all assessed the situation before we ran in. You never know about bad guys, sometimes they use bait. I hugged the front of my Jeep with my back, gun out, pointed skyward. I had the engine block at my back, so no matter what the bad guys were using I was okay, as long as I was on the right side of the Jeep. There were so many things to think about, and no time to think deep, you had to let training and experience do some of the thinking for you.

The sheriff did something with his arm, and suddenly all the sirens cut off. The silence was suddenly loud, just the strobing of the lights to let people know something was wrong.

We were all scanning the parking lot and the surrounding area. There was a privacy fence behind the dumpsters. There were other buildings within a few yards. The parking lot was packed. The bad guy could be hiding behind any of the cars, or they could have fled when they heard the sirens. No way to be sure.

Nothing moved, except the trooper who blinked at us. He was alive, and I wanted him to stay that way. We had to move up. As if Sheriff Christopher had read my mind, he moved up. He kept low, which with his stomach and his height was impressive. A lot more limber than he looked.

I pointed my gun not at anything in particular, but in the directions I could cover that might potentially have someone hiding who wanted to shoot at the sheriff. A white plastic bag rolled near the Dumpster, pushed by the wind. Nothing else moved.

Sheriff Christopher gave the all clear. His men all stood up, broke cover, and converged on him. I was more cautious, scanning the area as I moved to join them, my gun pointed at the ground, but held two-handed, ready to go back up. There was a crowd starting at the door to the club. Until I stood up, I couldn’t see the doors over the hood of my Jeep, but I was betting the crowd had been there all along. People have no sense. Or they knew something we didn’t. Naw.

I heard, “Get the EMTs up here.”

Patterson trotted off to let the medics know it was safe to come up. Sheriff Christopher glared up at me. “It was one of your vampire friends.”

“Looks like a knife wound to me, how do you know it was a vampire?”

The trooper spoke in a voice that was strained low with pain and shock, “Bastards flew off with her. Flew up like fucking birds, straight up.”

Okay. “Alright, vampires. Who did they take?”

“One of the dancers,” the trooper said. “I was making a drive-through, like we’re supposed to. Saw her come out, and saw them just come out of the shadows, one on either side of her. She started screaming. I got out, pulled my gun. But there was another one, I didn’t see him. I don’t know why, but it was like he just appeared behind me. He put the knife to my throat, told me to watch. Then the others just flew away with the girl. They fucking flew away.” He closed his eyes and looked like he was struggling with the pain.

The EMTs were there, pushing us all back.

The trooper opened his eyes, and he looked at the sheriff. “He had the knife at my throat, why didn’t he kill me? He swtiched the blade, drove it into my shoulder. Why? Why didn’t he kill me?”

I answered, while the medics went to work on him. “He wanted you alive, so you could tell us what you saw.”

“Why?” he asked, and he looked at me.

“It’s a message.”

“What message?”

I shook my head. “They want us to come and save her. They want to force us to move tonight, while they’re strong, not wait until dawn when the advantage is ours.”

Sheriff Christopher stood up and reached out for me, but seemed to think better of it, and just motioned for me to follow him. I followed him. “Last I knew we didn’t know where these bastards are hiding. You sound like you know.”

I blinked up at him and thought, What can I tell him that won’t get us all in trouble? “I’ve got a date with Mobile Reserve for just after dawn, but if they’ve got a hostage, we can’t wait until dawn.” I dug my cell phone out of my jacket pocket and dialed Zerbrowski’s cell. “Give me Captain Parker’s number, Zerbrowski.”

“Why?”

“The vamps took a stripper, alive. They even made sure we had a wounded but living state trooper to tell us about it.”

“Jesus, Anita, it’s a trap.”

“Probably, but give me the number anyway.”

He gave me the number, and I punched it in. Captain Parker came on the line with Sheriff Christopher watching me. I gave Parker the rundown.

“Is it a trap?” he asked.

“Maybe, or maybe they know we’re coming, and they’re just trying to rush us, so we will come in at night when they’ve got the upper hand. But yeah, it’s probably a trap.”

“I don’t want to send my men in to die, Blake.”

“I’m not wild about it either, but she was alive when they took her, and if we wait for dawn, she won’t be. Of course, she may already be dead, I don’t know.”

“It’s a trap, and the woman is bait,” Parker said.

“I know,” I said.

“You still demanding to go in with us?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

He gave a small dry chuckle. “You argued your way into this operation, I hope you don’t regret that.”

“I regret it now, but if you’re really going in at night, then you’re going to need me more than ever.”

“Are you really that much better with vamps than we are?”

“Yes, Captain, yes I am.”

“I hope you’re as good as advertised, Marshal Blake.”

“Better,” I said.

“Then get over here, we’re going to hit the target in less than thirty minutes, if you’re late, we go without you.” He hung up.

I cursed as I folded the phone shut. I started walking for my Jeep. “Where the hell are you going?”

“To take the bait,” I said.

He frowned. “The stripper.”

I nodded, and was still walking with him dogging me.

“Mobile Reserve is really taking you in with them.”

“If you don’t believe me, call Captain Parker yourself.” I was at the door to the Jeep.

He caught the door edge before I could close it. “Isn’t this a conflict of interest for you, shooting up your boyfriend’s vampires?”

“These are bad guys, Sheriff, they don’t belong to anybody.” I shut the door, and he let me. I didn’t exactly peel out, but close. I knew Parker, and I knew how Mobile Reserve operated, if I didn’t make the time schedule, they would leave without me. The vampires wanted us to go in tonight. They knew we had the address. They knew we were planning on hitting them. They assumed that we meant to hit them after sunrise, and they were forcing our hand. They wanted us in there on their terms. That meant tonight. But why not run? If they knew we had their location, why not just vacate it? Why not just run, and find another daytime retreat? Why take a hostage and go to such elaborate lengths to make sure we knew about it? It was a trap, but even knowing that’s what it was, we still had to go.

75

THE DRY ERASE board was covered with diagrams. Sergeants Hudson and Melbourne had done a recon of the area before the rest of us got set up in our nice, safe, block-away location. They’d covered the whiteboard with entries and exits, lights, windows, and all the minutiae that I would never have noticed, or rather I’d have seen it, but I wouldn’t have been able to make use of it. I could have reported what I’d seen, but one of them would have had to interpret it for everybody else. I simply hadn’t had the training. My way of doing it would have been to do a front entry and kill everything that moved. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to get a diagram of the condo’s interior, or have the landlord of the building there tell us what he knew of the woman who owned the apartment. They’d already evacuated the condos adjoining ours, and they had the nearest neighbor, again, give us information about the interior and the owner. It was useful to know that there was almost no furniture in the condo, because the owner, Jill Conroy, was waiting for a shipment that had been delayed twice. That she worked as a lawyer in a large downtown firm and had just made partner. Fascinating, but I didn’t see that it was useful. They were still trying to find someone who would answer the phone at her job, to find out when she was last at work. No one at work at nearly two in the morning, fucking slackers. It was all interesting, but our victim was in there, alone with vampires who had murdered at least ten people in three states. I wanted to get her out, and I was having trouble concentrating on the trivia. It must have shown, because Sergeant Hudson said, “We boring you, Blake?”

I blinked up at him, from where I’d finally curled up on the street. I was tired and didn’t see a reason not to sit down, some of the Mobile Reserve guys were kneeling. “A little,” I said.

The two men closest to me, Killian of the white, buzz cut, and Jung, who was the only green-eyed Asian American I’d ever met, both moved away from me, as if they didn’t want to be too close when the blood started to fly. I noticed that Melbourne stayed where he was next to Hudson, as if he expected the blood flow to be one-sided.

“There’s the street, Blake, start walking.”

“You asked the question, Sergeant. If you didn’t want an honest answer, you should have warned me.”

Someone laughed, low enough that I wasn’t sure who’d done it, and neither, apparently, was Hudson, because he didn’t try to find out who’d laughed, he just used it as an excuse to be more pissed at me.

Hudson took a step toward me. I stood up.

“If we’re boring you, Blake, then go home. We don’t need your attitude, we got enough of our own.” His voice was low and even, and every word was very carefully enunciated. I knew that oh-so-careful tone. It was the voice you used instead of screaming or hitting something.

“Dawn Morgan may still be alive in there,” I said. “But every minute we wait cuts her chances of survival. You can hate that your captain let me come, you can fucking hate me, I don’t care, but let’s get this done. I’d like to get to Dawn before it’s too late, Sergeant Hudson. Just once, I’d like not to be the cleanup crew and be there early enough to have something left to rescue.”

He blinked solid brown eyes at me that matched the mustache and close-cropped hair. My own hair was back in a ponytail. They had handed me a helmet, and hair nearly to your waist just didn’t fit in helmets without being pulled back in some fashion. I’d have cut my hair months ago, but Micah said if I cut mine, he’d cut his, the threat had left me with the longest hair of my life. I looked like a short, curvy hippie among the militaryesque haircuts and very masculine figures around me. Even stuffing me into one of their vests couldn’t hide that I so didn’t match everyone else. There are moments when I suddenly feel awkward again, not a cop, not a man, not part of this great brotherhood. Just a girl, just a voodoo dabbler, who no one trusts at their back. It had been years since I’d felt this bad about it. Maybe it was the borrowed equipment, which didn’t really fit, or maybe it was Arnet and Dolph being mad at me, or maybe it was just that I believed what was in Hudson’s eyes. I didn’t belong here. I wasn’t a tactical anything. I didn’t know how they did business. I wasn’t part of their team, and part of me understood that no matter how many friends I had that were cops, and no matter that I had a badge, that there would always be more cops that thought I didn’t belong than ones who did. I would always and forever be the outsider, no matter what I did. Part of it was gender, part of it was my day job, part of it was fucking the monsters, and part of it was just simply that I didn’t belong. I didn’t follow orders, or keep my mouth shut, or play the political game. I would have never survived as a real policeperson, I just couldn’t play the game by anyone else’s rules. Police, real police, understand and live by the rules. I spent most of my life going, rules, what rules? I stood there and looked at Hudson, held his gaze, his anger, and I just wasn’t angry. Too much of me agreed with his anger for me to get angry back.

“A badge doesn’t make you a cop, Blake. You have no discipline. If you get any of my people killed because you were hotdogging it, you will not like the next talk we have.”

I wasn’t really enjoying this talk very much, but I didn’t say that out loud either. I was getting smarter, or more tired, or maybe I just didn’t care enough anymore. Who the hell knew? I stood my ground, and I felt nothing. My voice was empty of all the emotion his was carrying when I said, “What if you get your people killed because you didn’t let me do my job to the best of my ability? Do I get to have a talk with you then?”

All the men around me just moved back, in unison, as if minimum safe distance was suddenly a real concern. He spoke through his teeth, and the anger turned his brown eyes nearly black. “And what exactly is your job, Blake?”

“I’m a vampire hunter.”

He came toward me slowly, and Melbourne actually touched his shoulder, as if it was getting out of hand. Hudson just looked at the hand, and the hand went away. Everyone was treating Hudson like he was a very scary guy. He wasn’t the biggest, or the most muscled, or anything, but he wore his authority like some sort of invisible coat; it was just there. If he hadn’t hated me, I’d have respected it, but he made it impossible for me to see him as anything but an obstacle. He spoke from inches in front of me, each word pushed into my face, careful as a blow, “You-are-a-fuck-ing-assassin.”

I looked up into his face, almost close enough to kiss, and said, “Yeah, sometimes, sometimes, I am.”

He blinked at me, puzzlement filling his eyes, chasing back the anger. “That was an insult, Blake.”

“I try never to get insulted by the truth, Sergeant.” I gave him mild eyes and willed myself to feel nothing, because if I let myself feel anything I was going to be sad, and if I teared up, or worse, cried, that would be it. They wouldn’t let me play, not if I cried. I’d cried because Jessica Arnet thought I was corrupting Nathaniel. I’d cried because of having to kill Jonah Cooper. What the fuck was wrong with me tonight? Usually the only thing that made me cry was Richard.

He shook his head. “You will just slow us down, Blake.”

“I’m immune to vampire powers,” I said.

“We will clear this entire structure in less than a minute. We know not to make eye contact, and we are cleared to treat all approaching vampires inside as hostiles. There won’t be time for them to do any tricks on us.”

I nodded, as if I really understood how they could possibly clear an entire condo, the size of a small house, in less than a minute. “Fine, you don’t think you need me to help with the vampires, fine.”

He blinked again, and he couldn’t hide the fact that I’d caught him off guard a second time in almost as many minutes. “You’ll wait outside?”

“What happens to your speed record, if you have to treat the vampires like human beings?” I asked.

“They’re legal citizens, that makes them human beings.”

“Yeah, but can you clear the place in less than a minute if you have to take the time to subdue maybe upwards of seven vampires, at least one a master? If you think I’ll slow you down, Hudson, trust me, they’ll slow you down a lot more than I will.”

Melbourne spoke over Hudson’s shoulder, “We’ve been green-lighted. Everything vampire in there is target.”

I shook my head and looked at Melbourne, as if Hudson wasn’t still looming over me. “When warrants of execution first came into existence, one of the main concerns was that they would turn the police of this country into nothing more than fucking assassins, so the warrants are worded very carefully. If the legal executioner is with you and we are in danger then you may use any and all means to execute this warrant, but if the legal executioner is not with you, then the warrant is not in effect.” I turned back to look at Hudson, and I was beginning to get a little angry, at last. Good, that was better than tears. “Which means if you go in without me and shoot any damn body, that you’ll be up on review, or leave, or some motherfucking shit. Hesitate against vampires, and you risk your life and the lives of your men. Don’t hesitate against the vampires, and you may lose your job, your pension, or even see jail time. Depends on the judge, the lawyer, the political climate of the city at the time of the incident.” I was almost smiling, because I was telling the absolute truth.

Hudson gave a smile that was more snarl than anything. “Or we can just sit this one out and let you take the order of execution all on your own little shoulders. How’d that be? You go in by yourself.”

I laughed, and it surprised him again, made him back up. “Killian,” I said, turning to look for him. He came up to me, sort of hesitating, glancing at his sergeant. Killian was only an inch or two taller than me, it was one of the main reasons that his extra gear had nearly fit me. “Help me out of this, I don’t want to mess up your gear. Thanks for the loan.”

“Why are you taking off the gear?” Hudson asked.

“If I go in without you, I don’t need the vest, or the helmet, or the damn radio that’s attached to it. I go in alone, like normal, I get to take the equipment I want to take, not that I’m ordered to take.” I started looking at the straps. “Help me out here, Killian, you helped me get into it.”

Hudson shook his head and Killian backed up. “Ms. Blake . . .”

“That’s Marshal Blake to you, Sergeant Hudson.”

He took in a deep breath, and let it out slow. “Marshal Blake, we can’t let you go in there alone.”

“This is my damn warrant, not yours. I shared my information with you guys, not the other way around. None of you would have even known where to look for this woman without me.”

“Do you know what they’re saying you did to get this information, Marshal?”

Just the way he said it, I knew I didn’t want to know, but I said, “No, what?”

“That you fucked the suspect. Fucked him in front of other officers, and he told you everything, then you blew his brains out with a gun. Defucking-capitated him, you shot him so many times.”

I laughed again. “Jesus, I’d love to know who made that one up.”

“You’re saying it’s a lie?”

“That I fucked him, yeah, wishful thinking on someone’s part, but I did vamp it out of him, as in vampire, not whore. And yeah, I did shoot him until his head wasn’t there anymore, because I didn’t have my vampire hunting kit with me. The handgun was all I had, so it’s what I used.”

I shook my head and felt that faint anger fade away. “This warrant is my damn party, Sergeant Hudson. I invited you to the dance, not the other way around. I would like you to try and remember that, when we’re dealing with each other.”

He looked at me, really looked at me. I don’t think he’d seen me until that moment. I’d been some woman, some zombie queen slut, forced on him by the upper brass. I’d been a civilian with a badge, but I hadn’t been real to him, not a person. Now he looked at me, and he saw me, and I watched that unreasoning anger fade.

“You really would go in there alone, wouldn’t you?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I’m a vampire executioner, Sergeant, I’m usually alone, just me and the bad guys.”

He gave a small smile, barely more than a flex of his mustache. “Not tonight, Marshal, tonight, you go in with us.”

I smiled at him, it was a good smile, not flirting, though some men take it that way, just a good, open, honest, happy to have you smile. He smiled back, he couldn’t seem to help it. “Good, great,” I said, “but can we move it along? We’re burning moonlight.”

He gave me a look like he wasn’t sure how to take me, then he laughed. The moment he laughed, all the other men relaxed, I could feel it, like a sort of psychic sigh of relief. “You are a pushy damn woman.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, I am.”

He gave a smaller laugh. “You’ll follow orders once we’re inside, yes?”

I sighed. “I’ll try.”

He shook his head.

“If I just say yes, it’ll be a lie, but I will do my utmost to do what I’m told. I promise.”

“That’s the best I’m going to get, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Yep, unless you want me to lie to you.”

“No, truth from a federal agent is downright refreshing.”

“Well, then I am just going to be a breath of fresh air.”

He looked at me, shook his head, and started back toward the dry erase board. “Now that I do believe Marshal, that I do believe.” They went back to their briefing, and I went back to counting the minutes and wondering if there was going to be anything alive in the condo by the time we hit the door.

76

AT MY SUGGESTION they put the sniper where he could see the windows, not at the front door. One, we didn’t know what they looked like, so the sniper couldn’t just drop the people coming out the front. There might be law-abiding vampire citizens in the building, so the sniper couldn’t even just shoot vampires. If he could tell for dead certain they were vamps. Even I wouldn’t want to say yes or no on the vamp question through a scope. I mean, what if you’re wrong? High silver content, there would be no apology. But anyone that flew out of the windows of our condo, they would be bad guys, and the sniper could drop them with impunity. Green-light city.

The rest of us were huddled around the van. In the movies the van is sleek and roomy. In real life, it’s narrow, cluttered, and looks like a cross between a plumber’s van and the Good Humor truck, if it sold guns instead of ice cream. There wasn’t room for us and the guns. Hell, as empty as it got, most of us wouldn’t have fit. It was an equipment van, not a transport vehicle. I was still in the vest, even though I’d pointed out that nothing we were about to go up against would be shooting at us, and vests were useless for stabbing or tearing. I’d run into this before with both military and law enforcement. They just couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that the body armor, their best defense, didn’t help against someone that could crush steel. It was like going up against Superman, and thinking Kevlar would keep you safe. Finally, Sergeant Melbourne said what few special tactical units will ever admit out loud, “We’re using bullets. Bullets can ricochet, and we’d just feel better if we knew you were safe from friendly fire.” The microphone was integral to the vest and attached to a little earpiece, like the Secret Service wear. They showed me the button for the mike in the center of the vest, near your gun when you were holding it. They made sure the mike worked, someone patted me on top of my helmet, and I was good to go. Or as good as it was going to get. Not going in would have been the good thing, but the vamps had kidnapped that option away from us.

The woman they’d taken was Dawn Morgan, twenty-two, and had only worked at the club about three weeks. They had a picture of her up on their Web site and we’d all seen it. It was a publicity shot for a stripper bar, so we tried to look at her face. Brown hair, about shoulder length, and enough makeup that it was hard to really see her face. She was all blue eyes and red pouting lips. I didn’t ask if the men had a harder time looking at her face than I did. She was covered by hands and a few well-placed pieces of cloth, but the illusion was that more skin was showing than really was. Distracting, and meant to be. I’m sure if Ms. Morgan had been told she’d be kidnapped by murderous vampires, she’d have left us a nice, less glamorous face shot. But you just don’t plan for these kinds of things. We memorized the face of the hostage so we wouldn’t accidentally shoot her during the action. Yeah, that would be bad.

I think that if I hadn’t had my own dangerous toys to play with they would have taken me in unarmed. Most of the tactical team seemed to think I was a civilian and treated me that way. They weren’t rude, just didn’t like the idea of me having a loaded gun at their backs. I guess I couldn’t blame them. I hadn’t had their training. They’d never seen me use a gun. They’d never seen me do this kind of work. They seemed to consider me almost more dangerous than the vampires.

My biggest problem with the vest was that it made it impossible for me to carry the Browning and the Firestar in their current holsters and have any hope of drawing them. Officer Derry had thrown me a thigh holster with velcro straps. “It’ll hold the Browning and an extra clip.” Derry looked as Irish as his name, except for his coloring, which was dark.

I had to take the vest off to thread the upper part of the thigh holster through my belt, then the other straps went around my leg. The thigh holster wasn’t bad actually, though I wouldn’t have wanted to try it unless I had pants on to protect my thighs. My thighs rub together when I walk, thank you very much. But with jeans it wasn’t bad. It was a different draw though, not just the angle, or where the gun was, but the actual hand movement was different. I wouldn’t be as quick, because I’d have to think about it. Of course, for tonight’s work, the handguns were secondary.

I had a new Mossberg 590A1 Bantam. Thirteen-inch length-of-pull, lighter weight overall. It meant more recoil, but, once you adjusted for it, it was the shotgun of my dreams. No more heavy barrel out there hanging while you tried to aim, leaving me feeling top heavy. I had a sawed-off that had started life as an Ithica 37, but now was just used for in-close vampire blasting. The Ithica had a strap fitted for it, so that it fitted across my body sort of like an awkward purse. To keep it from moving around until I wanted it for in-fighting, Edward, my friend and the only person I’d ever seen use a flamethrower, had helped me rig velcro to the thigh holster on my left thigh. That thigh holster was mine, but it was for extra ammo, not for holding guns. The velcro strap fit over the Ithica’s shortened barrel, so that it was held tight against my leg, but not at an angle where if something went terribly wrong I’d shoot my kneecap off. One quick, hard pull, and the sawed-off would be in my hands, and it would be time to be very, very close with the vamps. The Mossberg had an Urban Ops sling from U.S. Tactical Supply. It had become my preferred sling for the bigger guns. Unfortunately, you couldn’t carry two guns on two different Urban slings, because the sling was designed for switching hands, ease of movement. Which meant the gun would move around more. Edward, who was truly the assassin Hudson had accused me of being, wasn’t as fond of the Urban sling as I was, but then he didn’t do as much close in undercover work with the monsters. Most of the time he went in like a one-man demolition team. The sling also worked better if you had a heavier jacket over the sling to keep it from sliding off your shoulder. If I’d had broader shoulders, it would have stayed put better, and since most of the people who test this stuff are male, and thus have broader shoulders, I couldn’t really complain much. It was still a sweet piece of equipment.

I had a stock mag attached to the butt of the Mossberg. I’d started carrying extra ammo in a thigh holder, but the Browning was on that thigh. I’d found that if I wore the extra ammo on my left thigh, it was harder to get to. It cost me a second, or three. If I couldn’t have my right thigh for it, then the stock mag was the next best thing. I went ahead and put extra ammo in the left thigh holder. You know that old saying, I’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. That applied to ammo better than anything else I knew.

Derry said, “That’s almost the exact same thigh holder as I gave you for your Browning. If you had it already, you didn’t need to borrow ours.”

“I have two set up for ammo. I don’t have one for handguns. If it’s comfortable I might get one.”

“So glad Mobile Reserve could help you try out some new toys.” He smiled at me.

I smiled back.

“He gives you a lousy holster, and you flirt with him. I loan you my whole second rig and nothing,” Killian said.

“That wasn’t flirting, Killian. When I flirt, you’ll know it.”

“Ooh,” Derry said.

Hudson came up, in full gear. “You going to keep distracting my men, Marshal, or are you ready to execute that warrant of yours?”

“I’m through distracting, if you’re through planning.”

“I’m through,” he said.

“Then me, too. Let’s go kill some vampires.”

“Not hunt, just kill?” he asked.

“Hunting vampires isn’t a catch-and-release sport, Sergeant.”

He laughed, a short surprised sound. “Either you’re getting funnier, or it’s fucking late.”

“It’s fucking late,” I said. “There are dozens of people who’ll say that I’m not funny at all.” I made him laugh again, and when you’re about to risk your life together, there are worse ways to begin.

77

IT WAS ONE of those buildings downtown that had been rehabbed until outside it was an architectural wonder that had been saved from demolition, but inside it was ultramodern, ultrasleek, with carpet and almost empty halls, as if once they agreed on the two-tone paint job, they couldn’t agree on anything else. The building still had vacancies, but was mostly full. Good news for the investers, but bad news for us. If the building had been mostly empty the chances of having collateral damage would have been less. Collateral damage, isn’t that a nice phrase. It was why they’d had to evacuate so many people. There was no way the vamps didn’t know something was up.

We were outside the condo. It still belonged to Jill Conroy. It felt like we’d learned that hours ago, but actually only about an hour had passed from the first recon to us being here in the hallway. We’d finally gotten a number for one of her fellow lawyers. Jill had been AWOL from her job for five days. Three of those days she’d called in sick, but the fourth day she hadn’t answered the phone. Hmm, three days home sick, then no answer. I was betting that Jill Conroy had become the undead. The evil, wicked undead, not a member of the Church of Eternal Life, and I knew not Jean-Claude’s people. The fact that we had a third player in town and neither of the other sides had figured it out, was bad. It showed either the master of these guys was very powerful, or we’d become careless.

I would have liked to have pushed my power through their walls and checked out how many were in there. I was capable of doing that now, but if they were as good as I feared, they’d sense it. I feared they’d try more vampire tricks if they knew I, or someone with my skills, was with the cops. If they thought it was just cops, they might rely on speed and strength. If they did, my money was on us. So I had to go in blind, again, shit.

I’d done a lot of vampire lairs in my day, but never with Mobile Reserve or any police tactical unit. In some ways, it was very different, and in some ways, it was very the same. Difference one, I wasn’t in front. Hudson was the guy in charge once we hit the building. He’d been in charge before, as far as I was concerned, but he’d had to answer to his chain of command. Incident commander, negotiation commander, tactical commander, but none of them was going in with us, and it was all about who was willing to pick up a gun and put their shoulder next to yours.

Hudson went third in the line order, though it wasn’t going to be a true single line. “You will move when I move, Blake. You are my fucking shadow until I tell you different. You will follow my direct orders once we’re inside, or I will cuff you and leave you with a guard. Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” I said. I think he liked me as a person, but we were about to do his job. The job wasn’t personal, and professionally, he didn’t know me at all. No amount of charm could offset that he didn’t really trust me at his back. I hadn’t earned it yet.

They brought up a huge metal body shield with a little window in it. Officer Baldwin carried the shield. He wasn’t the bulkiest of the men, that was Derry, but Baldwin had height, and since everyone was going to be crouching behind the shield, height counted, like tall people trying to crouch under a short person’s umbrella.

I expected them to use one of those big metal rams, but they didn’t. Ms. Conroy had paid extra for a solid metal door with a lock that made it true security. All that looking at specs of the building and interviewing people had paid off. They put a small explosive charge on the lock and blew it.

The flash bang grenade went first, then in we went in the wake of the stunning noise and blinding light. When the searing light faded, the only light came from the sweeps of the men’s flashlights mounted to their guns. Then it was chaos. Not the chaos of a fight, because no one was in the first room, but the chaos of trying to shuffle behind the shield and not trip or trip someone else. They shuffled as a unit, but it was so quick, like running inside a shell of bodies. While you’re doing what amounts to dancing or gymnastics as a unit, you’re also searching the dark, keeping track of the gun in your hand, and looking for something to shoot at.

Thanks to the briefing, I knew the layout of this condo almost better than my own house. The big empty living room, the small enclosed kitchen, the hallway beyond with the guest bathroom left and the guest room right. It was a straightforward layout, thank God.

Hudson spoke in the mike in my ear, a whisper even with me standing right behind him with my hand touching his back, “Mendez, Derry, kitchen.” They peeled off wordlessly, the back of our little conga line lighter. Jung moved up, and I felt his hand against my back. Nice to know I wasn’t the only one who needed a steadying hand.

Radio in my ear: “Vic, female, not Morgan.” I think it was Derry.

“Vamp bites.”

“Yes.”

“Blake, check it out.”

I stumbled, made Jung stumble, we were like dominoes. I remembered to press my button. “What?”

“Check out the body.”

I could have argued but there was no time. I knew he was doing it to get rid of me. Maybe I really had slowed them down, but he was definitely getting me out of the way before the main shit hit the fan.

I peeled off like they had shown me and went for the kitchen. I followed his order, even though I didn’t agree. I went to check out the body, because the sergeant had told me to. Damn it.

I double-timed it to the kitchen, because if I hurried, I might still get to trail in for the main fight. Light shown through the louvered door of the kitchen. I smelled the blood before I touched the door.

Light washed over me, then dimmed, as my eyes adjusted. Derry was heading for the door as I was coming in. Hudson’s voice, sounding strained but clear, hit the radio: “Stay with Blake until she’s checked the body.” Radio silence.

Derry’s shoulders slumped, saying he was disappointed, but he didn’t argue.

Derry just moved up with me, rifle still at the ready. I went with him, though I pointed my shotgun a little to one side. The room wasn’t that wide, and I just wasn’t sure there was enough room for all of us pointing guns in, without risking crossing someone’s body. One of my goals tonight was not to do that.

I knew some of what we’d find, because I could smell it. Not just the blood, old blood, but that meaty, fluid smell, and a stale whiff of sex. Male sex. It helped me steel myself for what I was about to see.

She lay spread-eagle on the small four-seater table. Her legs had folded over the edge of the table, and her groin was splayed in a line for the door, so the view was painfully clear. She’d been raped, and for that much damage, probably not just with someone’s body. Or at least not just with a penis. I was glad when I could look away. She was wearing what looked like a silver sequined bikini, but she had pantyhose on under it. Though I might not have realized that if the clothes on her lower body hadn’t been ripped away. The pantyhose told me she was a stripper from this side of the river. The laws on the books in St. Louis for strippers are odd. Jean-Claude’s club gets around it on a grandfather clause, because as a vampire he was here before the laws went into effect, but anyone else had to abide by the rules. One of the rules was that the girls had to wear pantyhose, not just hose, under their outfits. The rules were designed by people who wanted to make sure that St. Louis could not have “those kinds” of clubs. There’s no one so self-righteous as someone policing someone else’s morality.

Her head was back, so that her eyes were staring at the far wall of the small but expensive-looking kitchen. Her hair was brown and must have been at least to her waist. I’d become pretty good at judging hair length when people were lying down. The hair was real, not a wig, so it wasn’t our missing stripper. This was indeed someone else. How many people had they kidnapped tonight?

Either Mendez or Derry had used flex cuffs on her wrists. It was standard op on intact bodies. Officers had been killed by “dead” bodies. Better safe than sorry.

Mendez squatted down. He was peering under the table. “What is that?”

I squatted, because I was closer to the ground. Derry kept an eye on the room, gun sort of at the ready, but careful to not point out toward us. It was nice to work with professionals.

There was a long cylindrical object under the table. It was black with dried blood on it. It was so caked with blood that for a second I couldn’t tell what it was, then it was like one of those abstract pictures that suddenly snap into place, and you know. I swallowed hard, against the burn of nausea. I took a slow breath through my nose and let it out easy through my mouth. My voice sounded odd even to me, when I said, “Bottle, wine bottle.”

Mendez said, “God.” He must have hit his button by accident, because Hudson heard him.

“What is it, Mendez?” Hudson asked over the headsets.

“Sorry, sir, just, Jesus, this was a bad way to die.”

“Steady, Mendez.”

“That didn’t kill her,” I said, and stood up.

Mendez moved with me. His eyes flashed white through his mask and gear.

I pointed with one hand at her neck, her breast, her arms. “They bled her to death.”

“Before?” he asked, sort of hopefully. Never a good sign when the police are asking you to please make this not as horrible as it looks.

I shook my head. “But multiple bites means she’s dead, she can’t be a vampire. The body is checked out, guys. Can I join you, or am I on permanent baby-sit duty?”

Derry moved for the door of the kitchen. Oh, goody, I wasn’t the only one who wanted out of here. I followed Derry, and Mendez brought up the rear. I’d have moved to the back of the line, but no one complained, so I stayed where I was. The sound of gunfire and yelling and screaming was ahead. I wanted to run, but Derry moved at a jog. If his body was tight with adrenaline, and his pulse thundering, it didn’t show. Mendez followed Derry’s lead, and so did I.

A woman’s scream came high and shrill, from deeper into the apartment. Her screams were accompanied by sounds that were more animal than human. Thick, wet, sucking sounds. The vampires were feeding, and Dawn Morgan was still alive. We did the only thing we could. We rushed into the hallway. We rushed off to save her. We jogged into the trap, because the bait was screaming.

78

THE ONLY LIGHT was the sweep of flashlights ahead and behind. Because I didn’t have a light, it ruined my night vision, but didn’t really help me. Derry jumped over something, and I glanced down to find that there were bodies in the hallway. The glance down made me stumble over the third body. I only had time to register that one was our guy, and the rest weren’t. There was too much blood, too much damage. I couldn’t tell who one of them was. He was pinned to the wall by a sword. He looked like a shelled turtle, all that careful body armor ripped away, showing the red ruin of his upper body. The big metal shield was crushed just past the body. Was that Baldwin back there? There were legs sticking out of one of the doors. Derry went past it, trusting that the officers ahead of him hadn’t left anything dangerous or alive behind them. It was a level of trust that I had trouble with, but I kept going. I stayed with Derry and Mendez, like I’d been told.

There was a vamp near the end of the hallway with most of the top of his head missing. His mouth was wide, showing fangs in the flash of someone’s light. Derry hit the doorway and hugged the wall to the left. I followed him. Mendez went right. Only when Mendez didn’t follow me, did I realize that I should have peeled off to the other wall with him. Hell, there were too many rules. I stayed with Derry, because there wasn’t time to correct the mistake, if it was a mistake. If we lived, I’d ask someone.

The holy objects had blazed to life, so bright, white and blue like captive stars. They were ruining everyone’s night vision. Made it hard to shoot. My cross was safely tucked away, for just that reason. By the thin flashlight beams and the incandescent flare of holy fire I saw what there was to see.

If I’d been there from the beginning, my mind would have been slow and taking it all in with that artificial sense that you have more time to do things, decide things, than you actually do. But sometimes when you step into the middle of it, you see things in strobe effect, an image here, there, but never the large picture, as if to see it all at once would overwhelm you. Hudson yelling, MP5 to his shoulder. Bodies on the ground between him and the big bed. A glimpse of pale, naked flesh on the bed—female. Two other vampires riding two of the men. One rode him to the floor, so he had to be lost to sight from Hudson and Killian’s position. The other man was trapped against the wall, still firing his gun into the chest of the vamp, while the body bucked and wouldn’t die. The vamp was pressed tight to the white glow of something that looked like a luminous rosary.

Mendez with his rifle, trying to find a shot in the mess. Stepping around giving his back to the bed, so he could pin the gunbarrel against the back of the vamp’s head. The vamp never lifted from Jung’s neck. The gunshot, like all the others, was loud, but not nearly as loud as it could have been.

It was wrong, all wrong. No vamp, except the most powerful, could stand up to holy objects like this. Only revenants, mindless newbies would feed while you pushed a gun to their head and blew their brains out. You can’t be ancient and a newbie, which meant, we were missing someone, someone that was standing right fucking here.

I dropped my shields, and I looked not toward the fighting, but away from it. Either he was better than I was, and he was invisible, which meant he was farther into the room, or he was hiding somewhere that the team hadn’t gotten to yet, or both.

I found the energy of him in the far corner in plain sight. Even knowing he was there, I couldn’t see him. Which meant either I was wrong, or he was good enough that he could stand wrapped in shadows and darkness and be invisible. The only other vamp I’d ever known that was that good had never been human. I think I could have stripped him of it using my necromancy, or Jean-Claude’s marks, but I had the Mossberg in my hands. Why waste magic, when you’ve got technology?

I tightened my brace of the butt against my shoulder, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger. The shot didn’t kill him, but it brought him stumbling away from the wall. Suddenly everyone could see him. His hands were holding his stomach where I’d shot him. He looked surprised. Tall bastard, I’d been aiming for his chest.

I hit him again, and there was an echo, two echoes. His body slammed back against the wall. I yelled into the mike, “I want to see the wall through his chest.”

No one argued. Derry had moved over to help Mendez. I was betting that Hudson had sent him, while I was concentrating on vampire stuff. Hudson, Killian, and I shot the master vampire, until there was a pale smear of wall through his chest. He slid down the wall like a broken puppet, painting the wall dark with blood. Hudson and Killian stopped firing, but I didn’t. I put a shot into the head, and had a second shot in before they joined me, but they did join me. With three of us, it didn’t take long to explode most of his head like a melon thrown against a wall. When most of his head was gone from his shoulders, I lowered my gun enough to look around and see how everyone else was doing.

Now that the master was dead, the newbie vamps were cringing away from the holy objects, just like they’re supposed to. Well, the one vamp that was still alive cringed. She pressed her bloody face against the corner behind the bed, her small hands held out as if to ward it off. At first it looked like she was wearing red gloves, then the lights shone in the blood, and you knew it wasn’t opera-length gloves, it was blood all the way to her elbows. Even knowing that, even having Melbourne motionless on the floor in front of her, still Mendez didn’t shoot her. Jung was leaning against the wall, like he’d fall down if he didn’t concentrate. His neck was torn up, but the blood wasn’t gushing out. She’d missed the jugular. Let’s hear it for inexperience.

I said, “Shoot her.”

The vampire made mewling sounds, like a frightened child. Her voice came high and piteous, “Please, please, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. He made me. He made me.”

“Shoot her, Mendez,” I said into the mike.

“She’s begging for her life,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound good.

“Shit,” I said and started across the room. Something grabbed my ankle. Reflex pointed the shotgun downward. One of the “dead” vampires hissed up at me, with a hole in its forehead, but it still had my ankle, and it was still going to bite me. From less than two feet away, the sawed-off would have been better, but there was no time. I emptied my gun into its head and back, until it let go of me and blood and other things leaked out of the body. “Hudson, dead is at least half their brains spilled, and daylight through their chests.”

He didn’t argue, just stepped up close to the other vamp and started pegging away at it. I guess making invisible vampires visible had earned me some credits with the sergeant.

I peeled shotgun shells out of the stock holder and fed them into the gun, as I walked toward Mendez and the vampire. She was still crying, still begging, “They made us do it, they made us do it.”

The woman on the bed was naked, and her eyes had started to glaze. Shit. But the room had to be secured before we could see to the victim. Secured in my line of work meant something different than for most officers of the law. Secured meant that everything in the room that wasn’t on my side was dead.

Killian was moving up by the bed to check on our victim. I hoped he could help her, because it seemed worse to lose people who were trying to save someone that didn’t get saved. Jung was trying to hold pressure on his own neck wound. Melbourne’s body lay on its side, one hand outstretched toward the cringing vampire. Melbourne wasn’t moving, but the vampire still was: That seemed wrong to me. But I knew just how to fix it.

I had the shotgun reloaded, but I let it swing down at my side. At this range the sawed-off was quicker, no wasted ammo.

Mendez had glanced away from the vamp to me, then farther back to his sergeant. “I can’t shoot someone who’s begging for her life.”

“It’s okay, Mendez, I can.”

“No,” he said, and looked at me, his eyes showed too much white. “No.”

“Step back, Mendez,” Hudson said.

“Sir . . .”

“Step back and let Marshal Blake do her job.”

“Sir . . . it’s not right.”

“Are you refusing a direct order, Mendez?”

“No, sir, but—”

“Then step back, and let the marshal do her job.”

Mendez still hesitated.

“Now, Mendez!”

He moved back, but I didn’t trust him at my back. He wasn’t bespelled, she hadn’t tricked him with her eyes. It was much simpler than that. Police are trained to save lives, not take them. If she’d attacked him, Mendez would have fired. If she’d attacked someone else, he’d have fired. If she’d looked like a raving monster, he’d have fired. But she didn’t look like a monster as she cringed in the corner, hands as small as my own held up trying to stop what was coming. Her body pressed into the corner, like a child’s last refuge before the beating begins, when you run out of places to hide and you are literally cornered, and there’s nothing you can do. No word, no action, no thing that will stop it.

“Go stand by your sergeant,” I said.

He stared at me, and his breathing was way too fast.

“Mendez,” Hudson said, “I want you here, now.”

Mendez obeyed that voice, as he’d been trained to, but he kept glancing back at me and the vampire in the corner.

She glanced past her arm, and because I didn’t have a holy item in sight, she was able to give me her eyes. They were pale in the uncertain light, pale and frightened. “Please,” she said, “please don’t hurt me. He made us do such terrible things. I didn’t want to, but the blood, I had to have it.” She raised her delicate oval face to me. “I had to have it.” The lower half of her face was a crimson mask.

I nodded and braced the shotgun in my arms, using my hip and arm instead of my shoulder for the brace point. “I know,” I said.

“Don’t,” she said, and held out her hands.

I fired into her face from less than two feet away. Her face vanished in a spray of blood and thicker things. Her body sat up very straight for long enough that I pulled the trigger into the middle of her chest. She was tiny, not much meat on her, I got daylight with just one shot.

Mendez’s voice came over the mike, “We’re supposed to be the good guys.”

“Shut up, Mendez,” Jung said in a voice that was choked and thicker than it should have been.

I knelt by Jung. “Check Mel,” he whispered.

I didn’t argue with him, though I was pretty sure that it was useless. I reached for the big pulse in his neck and found torn, bloody meat. The carpet around him was spongy with blood. They hadn’t even fed on him. They’d just torn his throat out, not to feed, just to kill.

“How is he?” Jung asked.

“Hudson,” I said.

Hudson was there, and I got up and let him tell Jung the bad news. Not my job to break the news to the wounded. Not my job. I walked out into the middle of the room. There was movement in the hallway, and it took everything I had not to shoot the medics as they came through. Hudson had had to call on the headsets, but I hadn’t heard him. Hell of a night.

They descended on the wounded with their bags and boxes, and I walked farther into the room, because there was nothing I could do. I had no power over human mortality. Vampires, some shapeshifters, but not straight humans. I didn’t know how to save them.

“How could you look her in the eyes and do that?”

I turned and found Mendez by me. He’d taken off his mask and helmet, though I was betting that was against the rules until we left the building. I covered my mike with my hand, because no one should learn about someone’s death by accident. “She tore Melbourne’s throat out.”

“She said the other vampire made her do it, is that true?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Then how could you just shoot her?”

“Because she was guilty.”

“And who died and made you judge, jury, and ex—” He stopped in mid-sentence.

“Executioner,” I finished for him. “The federal and state government actually.”

“I thought we were the good guys,” he said, and it had that note of a child who finally realizes that sometimes good and evil aren’t so much opposites, as two sides of a coin. You toss it one way, and it looks good, another way, and it’s evil. Sometimes it just depends on which end of the gun you’re on.

“We are.”

He shook his head. “You aren’t.”

I have no excuse for what I said next, other than he hurt my feelings, and he said out loud something I’d began wonder about. “If you can’t take the heat, Mendez, get out of the fucking kitchen. Get a desk job. But whatever you do, right now, get the fuck away from me.”

He stared at me.

Hudson said, “Mendez, go get some air. That’s an order.”

Mendez gave us both a glance, then he went for the door. Hudson watched him go, then looked back at me. “He didn’t mean that.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“He doesn’t understand what you do.”

I sighed. “Sure.”

“In the movies, the vampires look peaceful. Nothing here looks peaceful.”

“I don’t bring peace, Sergeant, I bring death.”

“You save more lives than you take.”

“Pretty to think so,” I said.

He clapped me on the back, the closest he’d ever get to hugging one of his people, but I took it for the compliment it was. “You did good tonight, Blake, don’t let anyone take that away from you.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” he said.

“Let’s just say that after awhile you get tired of having to shoot people who are begging for their lives.”

“They’re vampires, they’re already dead,” he said.

I shook my head and smiled. “I wish I believed that, Sergeant Hudson, I do surely wish I believed that.” I watched them start taking out the wounded. They left Melbourne where he lay, but took the girl from the bed. They were triaging, taking the ones they could save; the dead aren’t going anywhere. Well, none of the dead in this room.

79

I WAS HAVING an argument with Sergeant Hudson. We were doing it quietly at the back of the equipment van, so the media that had descended on us wouldn’t get us on camera, but it was still an argument.

“It isn’t them, Sergeant,” I said.

“So there was an extra vamp or two than the bite marks on the earlier victims. They made more.”

“The master vamp of this group is strong enough to hide his power from both the Church of Eternal Life and the Master of the City, nothing we killed up there had that kind of power.”

“We lost three men up there, I think that’s plenty powerful enough.”

I shook my head. “Most of these were babies, almost brand-new. What I saw at the earlier crime scenes wasn’t a feeding frenzy, it was methodical. The vampires up in that condo were still more like animals than thinking beings. They were too wild to be taken on an organized hunt.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, an organized hunt. You make it sound like killing humans is like hunting deer, or rabbit.”

“To some of the vampires, it is.”

He shook his head, hands on hips, and started to pace in a tight circle, but the open door of the van stopped his pacing. “It’s the right number of vamps. They had one dead stripper, and one that they nearly killed. That’s good enough.”

“They took her and left a state trooper as a witness, so we’d know. They wanted us to come here tonight. Why?”

“They ambushed us in the hallway, Blake. I think we were just better at killing them than they planned for us to be.”

“Maybe, but what if it wasn’t a trap to kill us? What if it was a trap to kill the vampires?”

“That’s just . . . that makes no sense.”

“You’re ready to close the case. You’re ready to declare them dead, defeated. We kill a few vampires, find a few dead humans in the condo, and you’re ready to believe it’s our serial killers.”

“And who else would it be? Are you saying we’ve got copycats?”

“No, I’m saying that if we close this case, then they can just move on to the next town. They can start over.”

“You’re saying they left us some of their baby vampires so we’d kill them and think it was them? They sacrificed their own people for this?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

“You know what I think, Blake?”

“No, what?”

“I think you just can’t let it go. I think you want it not to be over.”

It was my turn to try to pace, but I was smaller, and standing a little farther out from the doors, so I got almost a full circle out of my pacing. It didn’t help. “I want this over with, Hudson, more than you do. Because if these vampires were left up there as sacrificial lambs, then they used me to kill them. They used all of us as a sort of a weapon, their weapon.”

“Go home, Blake, go home to your husband, or boyfriend, or fucking dog, but go home. Your job is done here. Do you understand that?”

I looked up at him and tried to think how to explain it. I finally tried something I didn’t like admitting to the police at large. “I saw inside the memories of one of the vampires at the church earlier tonight. I saw some faces. I got some names. Those faces aren’t up there. Those names aren’t going to belong to any of the dead.”

“This case is closed, Blake, which means your warrant has been fulfilled. You’re done. Go home.”

“Actually, Sergeant, I have sole discretion on whether a warrant is finished or not. Mark me on this, if we don’t get these guys in St. Louis, they’ll move shop. We got some of them tonight, but not all of them, and we sure as hell missed the big guy, and if you don’t kill the main master, he just moves somewhere else and starts making new vampires. It’s like going in for cancer surgery, if you don’t get it all, then it keeps spreading.”

“I thought you were dating a vampire,” he said.

“I am,” I said.

“For someone who’s dating one of them, you have a damned dark view of them.”

“Ask me how I feel about human beings sometimes. I’ve gotten called in on too many serial killer cases, where they want it to be a monster, because they don’t want to believe that one human being could do shit like that to another human being.”

“How long you been doing this, hunting vamps, doing the bad crimes?”

“Six years, why?”

“Most violent crime units rotate their people about every two to five years. Maybe you need to see something a little less bloody for awhile.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I sort of side-stepped it. “Up there, the master vampire that was hiding in the corner, none of you could see him, right?”

“Until you shot him.”

“I could feel him. I knew exactly where he was. He was controlling the others in the bedroom. If he hadn’t died, then the others would have kept attacking, even with the holy objects visible. We’d have lost more people.”

“Maybe, but what’s your point?”

“My abilities with the dead are genetic, it’s like a psychic gift. No amount of training or practice will teach you how to see the invisible. There are less than twenty people in the entire country that have abilities even close to mine.”

“There are a hell of a lot more than twenty people in the new federal marshal’s program,” he said.

I nodded. “Yeah, and some of them are good. Some of them would have sensed his power, but I don’t know if any of the rest would have known exactly where to shoot.”

“You’re saying that you’re the only one who can do your job?”

I shrugged.

“Look, Blake, take some advice from someone who’s been doing this longer than you have. You’re not God, you can’t save everybody, and the police work in this town has been running just fine without you to baby-sit. You aren’t the only cop in this city, and you aren’t the only one who can do this job. You’ve got to let go of that idea, or you’ll go crazy. You’ll start blaming yourself for not being there twenty-four-seven. You’ll start thinking, if only I’d been there, this bad thing, or that bad thing, wouldn’t have happened. It’s a lie. You’re just a person, with some good abilities, and good judgment, but don’t try and carry the weight of the whole fucking world. It’ll crush you.”

I looked up into his brown eyes, and there was something in his face that said he was giving advice that had been hard-won. If I’d been a girl-girl, I’d have said something like, you sound like you’re talking from experience, but I’d hung around with the boys’ club too long not to know my manners. Hudson was opening up, and he didn’t have to, he was trying to help me; asking him personal shit would have made me an ungrateful wretch. “I’ve been the only one for so long.”

“Did you go up in that condo by yourself?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Then stop acting like you did. Do you have anyone waiting for you at home?” His voice was gentler than it had been when he’d first told me to go home to my husband or boyfriend.

“Yeah, I got someone waiting.”

“Then go home. Call him from the car, let him know that the officer down calls weren’t you.” They never released names of the downed officers to the media until all the families had been contacted, better for the bereaved, but hell on all the other families with police officers out and about tonight. They were all waiting for the phone to ring, or worse, the doorbell. No one with a police officer in the family wanted to see another cop on their doorstep tonight.

I thought about how I’d left Micah and Nathaniel standing in the parking lot. How I’d told them to take Ronnie home. How I hadn’t kissed either of them good-bye. My eyes were hot, and my throat hurt.

I nodded, maybe a little too rapidly. My voice was only a little shaky. “I’ll go home. I’ll call home.”

“Get some sleep if you can, you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

I nodded, but didn’t look at him. I’d taken a couple of steps when I turned back and said, “I’ll bet you almost anything, Hudson, that the crime lab is going to agree with me. The DNA in the bites from the first vics aren’t going to match most of the vamps upstairs.”

“You just won’t let this go, will you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know how to let go, Sergeant.”

“Take it from someone who knows, Blake. You better start learning, or you’re going to burn out.”

I looked at him, and he looked back, and I wondered what he’d seen in me tonight for him to feel that I needed the “burnout” lecture. Was he right? Or were we all just tired? Him, me, all of us.

80

I DROVE HOME thinking about vampires. Not the fun ones. The ones we’d just killed. It was nearly three in the morning, mine was almost the only car when I pulled out onto the highway. Eight dead vamps, plus one human cohort. My bet was a human servant, because he was the one that had killed Officer Baldwin with a sword. That spoke of long ago skills. Not many modern humans are good enough with a blade to take out a tactical officer armed with an MP5. Eight was enough to account for all of them, but I knew we’d missed Vittorio. He just hadn’t been there.

The night was clear and bright, and as I left the city proper behind, stars studded the sky like someone had spilled a bag of diamonds across the velvet of it. I felt surprisingly good. I wasn’t sure why and didn’t look at it too closely, just in case it was fragile, and too much poking would have broken the mood. I felt good, and I was going home, and I’d saved everyone I could, and killed everyone I could. I was out of it for the night.

There’d been enough dead females to account for Nadine and Nellie, the pair that had seduced Avery Seabrook. There’d even been an extra that could have been Gwenyth, Vittorio’s sweetheart, but I thought it long odds that all three of them would just let us shoot them without much of a fight. By the standards I was used to, it hadn’t been much of a fight. Not for what this group had been capable of. At least one of them, or more, should have tried to fly out a window, to escape. The sniper had had nothing to do tonight.

It wasn’t until I was turning off onto 55 South that I realized the Circus of the Damned would have been much closer, and gotten me to bed sooner. Now it was too late, as long or longer to backtrack as go forward. But I wanted my own bed tonight. I wanted a certain stuffed toy penguin. I wanted Micah and Nathaniel, and right at that moment I didn’t really want to see another vampire. It wasn’t the vampire vics that made me not want to face another vampire tonight, it was my victims. It was the flash pictures in my head of the girl who’d begged for her life, and Jonah Cooper, and the silent crowd watching me at the church. I tried to hide behind the shield of the horrible things they’d done to the woman in the kitchen. It had been horrible. Once I’d justified it for myself, by thinking that I was the good guy, that there were things I wouldn’t do, lines I wouldn’t cross. Lately, the lines seemed blurry, or gone. I agreed with Mendez. You didn’t shoot someone begging for their life, not if you were a good guy. But a lot of them begged. A lot of them were sorry, once they were looking down the wrong end of a gun. But they weren’t sorry while they were killing people, torturing people, no, they were having a good time, until they got caught.

What got me tonight, was her saying, “He made us do it.” Had he? Had Vittorio so controlled them that they could not disobey him? I knew from the fallout with the London vamps that we’d adopted that you were legally bound to follow your master, almost morally bound, because he was like your liege lord. But was it more than that? Could vampires make other vampires do things they did not want to do? I’d ask Jean-Claude, but not tonight. Tonight I was tired.

The highway stretched black and empty. My only company was a semi truck pulling some all-night load across the country off in the distance. The truck and I had the road to ourselves.

I was betting that wherever Vittorio was, that’s where we’d find the women. The crime lab would check the dead vamps’ DNA against the bite marks in the first few victims, and we’d know how many we’d missed. As far the St. Louis police were concerned, it was over. We’d executed most of them and chased the survivors out of town. Trouble was, serial killers don’t stop killing, they just move on and start again somewhere else. Sergeant Hudson and his men were done with it, and they’d paid a high price to be done. But my badge said federal, which meant that I might not be done with Vittorio and his people. I pushed the thought away. For now we’d driven him and his surviving members out of town. That had to be enough, at least for tonight.

I was off the highway now, on the smooth, more narrow road that led farther into Jefferson County and my house. Trees blocked the view, so the stars seemed farther away. I pulled into my driveway and saw the faint shine of lights against the living room drapes. Micah or Nathaniel had waited up. It was after three A.M., and someone had waited up. I felt guilty, happy, and apprehensive. Nothing good had ever come of my father and Judith waiting up for me. I still wasn’t completely used to living with anyone, so sometimes old reactions crept up, like I was seventeen again, and there was a light on. I told myself I was being silly, but this would be the first call-out like this one since Nathaniel had the right to make more demands on me. I wasn’t sure, yet, what all of those demands might be. So I was a little nervous as I put my key in the door. Was I being silly? Only one way to find out.

They were sitting on the couch. I thought Nathaniel was asleep with his head in Micah’s lap, but he turned as I came through the door, and I caught the flash of his eyes in the light from the television. A look of such naked relief crossed Micah’s face before he managed to hide it behind a smile. He was back to his usual smiling neutrality, back to making as few demands on me as possible, but I’d seen that first look. That look that said more than any words, that he’d wondered if he’d ever see me again. I hadn’t kissed him good-bye. I had forgotten to call from the car, tell them the officer down-calls weren’t me. The thought cut deep like some guilty knife.

Nathaniel got to me first, then slowed, before he actually touched me. The look on my face, maybe, or the fact that I just stood there halfway between the couch and the door. The look on his face was so disappointed. I got a flash of emotion from him. So sad. He thought I was drawing back, away, too scared to really be with him, with them. That wasn’t what I was scared of.

You can’t shoot someone from less than three feet away with a sawed-off and not get blowback. I had blood in my hair, on my arms. I’d gotten some of it with the wet wipes I kept in the car, but not all of it. I wasn’t clean. If I’d been just a cop, and the dead woman just a human, then I’d have worried about blood-borne disease. She could have AIDS, or hepatitis, but she was a vampire, so she couldn’t carry anything, unless you counted vampirism. Yeah, I guess that counted, but Nathaniel and Micah couldn’t get that either. But maybe I could. If I killed humans, then I was in more danger from disease, but vamps were cleaner. It was too weird for me tonight, too much thinking.

“Anita, are you alright?” Micah asked, and got off the couch to move up beside Nathaniel.

I jerked out of reach. “I’ve got blood on me, other people’s blood.” I was shaking my head over and over. “God knows what I brought home with me.”

“We can’t catch anything,” Nathaniel said, “not even a cold.” He didn’t look lost anymore, he looked worried.

“Blood can’t hurt us,” Micah said.

They were right. I was being silly about contagion, but . . . “Do you really want to touch me while I’ve still got the blood of my victims on me?”

“Yes,” Nathaniel said, and moved to hug me.

I moved back, just enough that he stopped. I was afraid if I let them hug me that I would lose it. I would just sink into their arms and sob.

“Victims?” Micah said. “Anita, this doesn’t sound like you.” But he came with Nathaniel; he tried to hug me.

I moved back until the door hit me, and I was shaking my head. “If I let you hold me, I’m going to cry. Damn it, I hate to cry.”

Micah gave me a look. “That’s not it.”

I closed my eyes and let the equipment bag fall to the floor. He was right, that wasn’t it, not completely. I tried to be honest. I tried to say what I felt. “If I get any sympathy, I’m going to fall apart.”

“Maybe that’s what you need to do,” Micah said, and he moved just a little closer, “maybe just for a little while, let us take care of you.”

I kept shaking my head. “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” he asked, voice soft.

“Of letting go.”

Micah touched my shoulder, gently. I didn’t pull away. He moved slowly, gently, easing me away from the door, and into his arms. I stayed stiff and unyielding for a moment, then my breath came out in a long wavering line, and I let myself fold around him. My hands grabbed at his shirt, handfuls of cloth, as if I couldn’t get close enough, or hold on hard enough. I wanted him naked, not for sex, though that would probably come, but because I just wanted as much of him pressed against as much of me as possible.

“I’ll go run the bath,” Nathaniel said.

I reached out for him, caught his shirt, and drew him into us. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“What about?” he asked, and he and Micah exchanged a look.

The first tear squeezed out, traitorous bastard. My voice was almost steady when I said, “I didn’t kiss you good-bye, either of you. I just drove off. I’m sorry.”

They both kissed me, soft, chaste, a mere touch of lips. Micah brushed the tear off my cheek. “We understood.” He looked at Nathaniel. “Run the bath.”

“I’d rather have a shower and get to bed.”

They exchanged another look, but with a nod from Micah, Nathaniel went for the bathroom. I looked at Micah’s face. The only man in my life I didn’t have to look up to to meet his eyes. “What’s happened? What have I missed?”

He smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was the smile he’d had when I first met him. A smile that held sadness, self-deprecation, mocking, and something else, something that sadness was too light a word for. I’d almost broken him from that smile.

I grabbed his arms, almost shook him. “What happened?”

“Nothing, I swear, everything’s fine, but Jean-Claude warned us not to let you get in the shower. He said, and I quote, ‘not between glass walls.’ ”

I frowned at him. “What are you talking about? Why should Jean-Claude care about how I clean up?”

The phone rang. I jumped like I’d been stabbed. I said what I was thinking. “If it’s another murder scene tonight, I can’t do it.” Even saying it, I knew I’d do it. If they needed me, I’d go. But what I’d said was true, I’d go, but I wasn’t sure I could handle it tonight. Admitting that even to myself scared me. It was my job. I had to be able to do it.

Micah went for the phone, while I stood in the darkened living room and prayed for it not to be the police. He called, “It’s Jean-Claude.”

“Why is he calling on the phone?”

“Come and find out,” Micah said.

I walked to the lights of the kitchen. It was only the lights over the sink, not that much light, but I blinked like a deer in headlights. I took the receiver from Micah, while he tried not to give me worried eyes. “What’s up?” I asked.

“Ma petite, how do you feel?”

His voice was the joy for me it usually was, but tonight even that voice left me flat and empty. “Like shit, why?”

“How long has it been since you fed?”

I leaned my forehead against the wall and closed my eyes. “I ate some peanuts and chips in the last day, why?” Nathaniel had put some munchies in my glove compartment.

“I am not referring to food, ma petite.”

Suddenly the emptiness spilled away, replaced by panic. “Jesus, Damian.”

“He is well. I have seen to it.”

“How can he be well, he started to die if I went just a few hours over six. I’ve gone almost twenty-four hours. God, I cannot believe this, so stupid.”

“And when in the last twenty-four hours could you have fed the ardeur, and who on?”

The question stopped the self-recriminations and helped me think. I guess there were worse things than forgetting about the ardeur during a police investigation. Like maybe, not forgetting the ardeur during a police investigation. Several horrible scenarios went through my head, like the ardeur rising in the van with Mobile Reserve, or Zerbrowski in his car. I was suddenly cold, and it had nothing to do with my earlier pangs of conscience.

“Ma petite, I can hear your sweet breath, but I need to hear your sweet voice.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, how did you keep it from getting me?”

“By shielding in every way between us, and Richard, and helping the others do so, as well.”

“That’s why you’re calling me on the phone, not mind-to-mind.”

“Oui.”

“How did you keep me from draining Damian and Nathaniel?”

“I fed the ardeur at the club, as we discussed, and I shared with Damian. It is only when he is drained that your triumverate would begin to pull upon our bad kitty.”

“One feeding through you took care of it, for this long?”

He sighed, and he sounded tired, because he was still shielding too hard for me to feel it. “Non, non, ma petite. We have done your six-hour feedings for you.”

“Who’s we?”

“Richard and Damian, and myself. Nathaniel had fed you last, and I was not a hundred-percent certain that I could control the feeding, so I did not use him.”

“Richard got a taste of the ardeur from the other side?”

“He did.”

“What’d he think of it?”

“He has new respect for our ability to not go mad.”

I wanted to ask who Richard had fed on, but it was none of my business. I wasn’t monogamous, and neither was he. I was still leaning against the wall, but my eyes were open. “Damian fed the ardeur not as the eatee, but as the eater?”

“It was not hard to raise it in him.”

“Is this permanent? I mean do Richard and Damian need to feed now, too?”

“Non, ma petite. Desperate measures, but not permanent ones.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

“Because I can feel it growing in me again, not just my need, but yours. I parceled it out, shared it among those I could, but it is time again, ma petite.”

I turned around and stared blindly out into the kitchen. “Are you saying you borrowed my ardeur for the last few hours?”

He seemed to think about that. “That will do for an explanation. Oui.”

“So I could hunt bad guys and not lose control in the middle of it all.”

“Yes.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said what I could, “Thank you.”

“You are most welcome, ma petite, put dawn is near, and when I sleep, the ardeur will return home. I would prefer to give it back to you before then, so I might feel how tempestuous that return will be.”

“You’re worried.”

“Oui.”

“You asked me how I felt, why?”

“The ardeur comes with a price, as all the hungers do, but they have their rewards, as well. I do not speak of the pleasure, but of the strengths that they give us. In effect, by stealing away your ardeur, I weakened you tonight. If I hadn’t feared contacting you mind-to-mind, I would have asked your permission first, or warned you.”

“I didn’t feel weak.” Then I thought about it. “I’m really bugged by the vampires I killed tonight. I mean, more than normal. I’m sort of shaky, and wondering if I’m the good guy after all.”

“Such self-doubt is not like you.”

“I do have some self-doubt,” I said.

“But not too much, you could not be who you are if you doubted too much.”

“Are you saying that I draw some of my bravery, or my coldness, from the ardeur?”

“I am saying that the ardeur may feed that part of you that keeps you safe in your own mind, your own heart.”

I shook my head. “This is too complicated for me, Jean-Claude. Just let me have it back, and we’ll see if I feel any better.”

“I would rather you be alone with Micah when that happens. We have very carefully left him untouched while we sought to feed, so that you might feed on him yourself.”

I didn’t feel the least bit sexy. I just wanted a quick shower and to sleep. “I’m too tired for sex, Jean-Claude. Too tired for much of anything.”

“As I feared, I took too much, or the ardeur has become attached to your own natural drives.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Long before the ardeur found you, ma petite, I found that you were seldom too tired for sex.”

I thought about blushing, but found that even that seemed like too much effort. “What do you want me to do?” What little excitement had crept back into my voice had vanished. Nothing seemed quite real, as if I was already asleep. Asleep on my feet.

“If you intend to clean up . . .”

“I’ve got other people’s blood in my hair, so yeah.”

“Fine, go to the bathroom then, but take Micah with you. Hang up the phone, go to the bathroom, take Micah with you, and sometime before you have filled the bathtub with water, I will give back to you that which is yours.”

“Nathaniel is filling the tub now. Micah said you warned us not to use the shower. Something about glass.”

“The return may be more violent than I would like, ma petite. I would feel better if you and Micah were not surrounded by glass walls.”

“Do you know this is going to be bad, or are you just worried?”

“Let us say, that I have not lived so long, or courted you successfully, without thinking worst-case scenarios.”

“Courting, is that what you call it nowadays?”

“I am hanging up now, ma petite. I suggest you do as I have bid.” He hung up.

I put the receiver back in its cradle and started walking out of the kitchen. Micah was standing by the table, watching with careful kitty-cat eyes. I understood now how much he held back behind that careful face. But tonight I didn’t pry. I had enough horrors of my own without borrowing. “You know about what Jean-Claude’s been doing with the ardeur?” I asked.

“Yes, Jean-Claude had me keep an eye on Nathaniel, so that if he started to get weak, I could call for help.”

I shook my head. “I endangered him, all of you.” I felt numb again, even the self-recrimination felt like just words. Later, when there was more of me, I’d feel bad, but right now, I’d felt about as bad as I was able. There just wasn’t enough of me left to worry about it.

“Anita.” Micah was in front of me and I hadn’t seen him move. “Anita, are you alright?”

I shook my head. The answer was no, but out loud I said, “I want to be cleaned up before the ardeur comes back. I want to get this shit off of me.” I started for the bathroom. Micah trailed after me.

Nathaniel was bending over the bath tub, his pony tail trailing around his naked upper body. He’d stripped down to silk boxers.

The sight of him like that should have moved me, but it didn’t. Cold, I felt so cold inside.

He gave me worried eyes as he moved toward me. “What can I do to help?”

I flung myself on him hard enough he staggered. He held me against the warmth of his body. He held me tight and hard, responding to my desperation. I wanted to bury myself in his flesh, wrap him up around me, but I couldn’t. I’d endangered him, risked his life, by simply not paying attention to the ardeur. If Jean-Claude had not helped out . . .

I tried to push the thought away, but Jonah Cooper’s body flashed in my head. His body on the ground, my foot on his shoulder and grass showing through his chest. “You feel the draw of them, I know you do,” he’d said.

I was on my knees and only Nathaniel’s hands had kept me from hurting myself on the edge of the tub. “Anita . . .”

I pulled away from Nathaniel and reached for Micah. He took my hand and said, “Go, Nathaniel, go, before the ardeur comes.”

“I don’t think . . .” he started to say.

I screamed, “Go, please go! God, go!”

Ididn’t see Nathaniel go, or stay, because Jean-Claude dropped his shielding. I don’t know what I’d expected. He’d made it sound like he borrowed my favorite coat, or book, and now he’d give it back, but a coat doesn’t want to come back to you, a book doesn’t care who reads it. He didn’t hand it back to me, his shields dropped, and it roared home like a train that he had fought to hold back, to keep still, but it had strained against his hold. It had hungered to come home. It was like being caught on the tracks at night, and the first hint you have that disaster is here, is a bright light, and the tracks vibrating under your feet, then the world becomes noise, light, as if thunder and lightning could be forged into metal, and it’s all coming straight through you, and you can’t get off the tracks. You can’t run. You can’t hide, because your body is the tracks, and the train is a piece of yourself that wants to come home.

81

THE ARDEUR FELL on us, and we fell into the water. It took us almost a minute to remember we couldn’t breathe under water. We came up, gasping for air, laughing almost as soon as we could breathe enough for it. Clothes had vanished in the first rush. We were naked in the water. How had we managed to get out of the jeans that fast? A piece of jean cloth floated by me. Oh, that’s how.

“No missionary position, we’ll both drown,” I said.

His curls were plastered to his head, and his hair looked black in the candlelight. The laughter died from his face, his eyes, and left something darker, more basic, behind. A look that made me shiver. All he said was, “Okay.” He moved us to the edge of the tub, pressing my back against the smooth side of it. He pressed himself up against me, pinning me between the tub and his body. The feel of him hard and firm against the front of my naked body made me close my eyes for a moment. I had some vague memory of clothes being ripped away, but I wasn’t sure when, or even which of us had done it. I was getting better at thinking when the ardeur rose, but there were moments when thinking was not what I did.

He moved back from my body so he could caress the front of himself. Just watching his hand play over that thick, firm flesh made me shiver. He angled himself downward so he could push between my thighs. He felt incredibly large sliding between my legs. He didn’t try to angle upward, or enter me. He simply pushed himself between my thighs, so that the thickness of him brushed against all of me. He rubbed himself back and forth, using his body like another hand, to caress and play between my legs. But it was a thick, hard rubbing, with none of the delicacy of fingers. You’d think water would help everything be slippery, but water makes some parts less wet, less slick, so that though it felt good, it also was rougher than it would have been if I’d been wet with something other than water.

“Not wet enough,” he said, and his voice was thick and strangely hoarse, strangled with desire.

I would have liked to argue, because the ardeur wanted to argue, wanted to say, take me, take me now. If I’d been with almost any other man in my life, we could have done just that without hurting me, or him, but Micah was the exception to a lot of rules in my life. It wasn’t the length that was the problem, it was the width. We’d found this out the hard way, and had had the rubby spots to prove it.

I managed to say, “No, not wet enough.”

He leaned his forehead against mine and said a heartfelt, “Shit.”

I nodded my head against his, wordless assent, because I didn’t trust my voice. Micah wasn’t the only one strangling on need. He drew his body from between my legs, and even that drew a small sound from me. His hands went to my waist and he just suddenly lifted me up, up so that I was perched on the edge of the tub. If his hand hadn’t been on my leg I would have overbalanced and fallen back into the water, but he steadied me. One hand stayed on my leg, but the other hand moved up the line of my thigh. I thought he was going to do me by hand, but his finger slid inside me. It was unexpected, and even one finger felt tight and good. So good that I lay back along the raised tile around the tub. I felt the heat before I actually lay down on the candles, but the heat of it pressed against my skin. I sat up so abruptly that he had to move his hands and spill me back into the water.

“Did you get burned?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, not this time.” I’d caught my hair on fire once. I laughed, sort of shakily. “Stupid.”

Micah looked at me, and there was something in that look.

“What?” I asked.

“The ardeur is gone.”

I thought about it, felt around for it, and found no, no, not gone, but receded. Not receded like when I fought it, but more like me getting almost burned had help me think again. Or maybe even the ardeur bows to physical survival. But I could feel it like a storm that had moved offshore, but was still coming.

“I thought I’d caught myself on fire.”

“Again,” he said.

I frowned at him. “Yes, again. Is it my fault that you’re so amazing that you make me forget everything, even physical safety?”

He shook his head. “Not me, the ardeur. The ardeur makes everything better, Anita.”

There was something about the way he said it, something serious and a little sad, that made me say, “What’s wrong?”

He kissed me on the tip of the nose. “Later.”

I might have argued with him, but the ardeur decided that it had given us enough time. It hit me like a train and threw me into his arms, made my hands move over his body as if I was hungry to touch him, as if no touch, no caress, nothing would be enough. We kissed the same way, as if we were hungry for each other. It was as if we could have we would have climbed into each other’s skins, wrapped ourselves through each other, closer than skin or flesh could survive.

One minute my mouth was trying to climb inside Micah’s, the next my beast rose, swimming up, up through my body, coming out of that metaphysical place, and climbing up my body. Micah drew back from my mouth enough to say, “Anita . . .”

I used hands and body to press his mouth back to mine. His beast began to spill up through his body in a line of breath-stealing heat. It rose fast and faster as if it had to catch up with mine. They raced up our bodies, raced through that dark water, raced, and raced, faster and faster until they hit the surface. It wasn’t about changing shape, it was about changing bodies. It was about that need to wrap as much of him around as much of me, as tight, and close as I could. It was as if the very essence of our bodies had responded to that desire. Our beasts spilled out of our mouths, and brushed metaphysical furred sides down each other, as we spilled inside each other’s bodies. It was closer than sex. Closer than anything I’d ever felt. It was as if for a blinding, shattering moment, we were in each other’s bodies. Not in our minds, not merely our thoughts, or feelings, not even memories, but for a breath or two, a part of me slipped inside him, and a part of him slipped inside me. They weren’t parts that could think and feel like a human being. There was none of that, wow, so this is how it feels to be Micah. There was only a sense of burrowing down, down deep inside him, of finding that metaphysical hiding place where the beast lay and having my beast curl up, for a moment, inside his most secret space, while his beast did the same in me.

In that moment, the ardeur fed. Fed on that warm, living power, fed on the sensation of being deeper inside Micah’s body than I’d ever been inside any man’s before. The ardeur fed, and left us quieter, calmer, happier.

The beasts didn’t turn and go back up the way they’d come. One moment that piece of me was curled warm and safe inside him, and the sensation of him inside me was like when we made love, as if even his beast were bigger and took up more room than mine. That warm, living energy didn’t come back up our throats, it was as if the two energies spilled out the fronts of our bodies, out our skin, so that for a heartbeat it felt as if we’d burst our skins, and two great furred shapes were passing through us, then it was as if the two beasts dropped back into place. I swear I felt as if something physical with true weight was dropped down the center of my body, and hit the end of me. As if instead of falling from the height, I was the height, and could feel the body falling through me, and hitting my floor.

We broke from the kiss, laughing, breathless. I found my voice first, “Wow.”

He looked happier than I’d ever seen him, relaxed, more . . . more at home somehow, as if some great weight had gone from him. “You know,” he said, still breathing hard, “you’re not supposed to be able to do that, if one of you is human.”

“I didn’t know you were supposed to be able to do that at all,” I said.

“If you are both powerful, and a true mated pair, then it’s possible.”

“You say it, like it has a name.”

“Shiva and Pavarti, or simply Maithuna, it’s Sanskrit for union, or coupling.”

“Shiva, who would destroy the world with his energy if Pavarti didn’t constantly have sex with him and spill off the energy.”

He nodded. “World religion class from college again?”

I shook my head. “A few years back we found a naga, a real live one that had been a crime victim. It made me go look up Hindu religion. I mean, if you get one type of supernatural being, you might get others from the same place.”

“Did you?”

“Nope.” I thought about it. “Well, not yet.” I put my arms behind his head, and drew him down for a kiss. He didn’t fight, but he kept himself just above my face. “You fed the ardeur.”

“I still want a kiss.”

He kissed me, and it was gentle at first, then grew until we were feeding at each other’s mouths again. He drew back, laughing and breathless. “I thought we’d done this already.”

I wasn’t sure how to explain it. We’d had metaphysical sex, and like sometimes happens after regular sex I was pumped, energized. I could feel him still hard and thick pressed between our bodies. I wanted him inside me. I wanted him as close physically as I’d had him metaphysically.

I kept one hand behind his neck, but let the other trace down his body, until I could cup him in my hand. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. I moved my hand up and wrapped my fingers around him. He was so hard, so thick, so solid in my hand that it made me close my eyes, made my breath shudder from my body.

I opened my eyes and knew that my focus was already soft. “I want this inside me.”

He tried for amusement, but his face was raw with the beginnings of that need. His voice was hoarse again when he said, “Even without the ardeur?”

I squeezed him tight enough to flutter his eyes back into his head. When he could see again, I said, “It’s not the ardeur that makes me want you, Micah.”

His voice was a harsh whisper, as if he were having trouble talking, “We’ll never top what we’ve already done tonight.”

I stroked my hand up the long, hard shaft of him. “It’s not about being better, just being as good.”

He shook his head. “It won’t be as good without the ardeur or our beasts, and this close to full moon, I don’t think we want to keep trying the beasts. It could get out of hand.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “Just us, Micah, just us.”

“From the moment we touched, it’s never been just us. There’s always someone, or something else, never just us.” He looked so serious.

I cupped one hand under the soft wetness of his testicles, and gently played with them, while I played my other hand over the head and shaft of him. “Then we’re past due, don’t you think?”

He swallowed hard, laughed, then gave a small nod. “You’re wetter after you feed the ardeur, but we ended up back in the water, so you won’t be wet enough or open enough for this,” he wrapped his hand around mine where I still held him, he squeezed our hands together until his head went back, eyes closed, and he shuddered hard enough to make the water slosh against the sides of the tub. He looked down at me and slipped his hand between my legs, searching, until he could slip a finger inside me. He managed two fingers inside me before my head went back, and my eyes fluttered shut. “To go in there,” he whispered.

When I could talk, I said, “Oh, darn, then you’ll have to make me wet, and open.”

He shoved the two fingers fast and hard inside me, stopped my voice along with my breath. “I can do that,” he said, and he had that look, that look that said he knew I wanted him, and that I wouldn’t say no. I didn’t say no, I said yes, over and over again. I said yes, until he worked me open with his fingers, and finally with his mouth, so he could push himself inside me. So we could finally put that in there, and it was wet and tight, and hard, and everything I wanted it to be. When I screamed his name and raked my nails down his back, when his body thrust one last time inside mine, thrust so far and so deep that it made me cry out again and arched his body above mine on the bathroom tile. Painted his body in flame and shadow above me, sent our hands into the candles, and spilled the candles into the water, to smoke and die, when all that was done, he looked down at me. Eyes not quite focused, face still slack with orgasm.

I said, in a voice breathy and panting, “Metaphysics, we don’t need no stinking metaphysics.”

It took him a blink to get the joke, but once he did, he started to laugh, and since he was still inside me, that made me writhe, which made him thrust inside me again, which made me writhe again, which made him writhe, which . . . He finally slid off to one side, onto a small candle-free slice of tile still laughing. We laughed until tiredness pulled at us like some giant hand dragging us under. It was as if the entire twenty-four hours caught up with me at once, and I was just done. Done for the day. Done for the night. Done for the year. Done.

We dried our hair as best we could. I insisted on at least running an oiled cloth over the knives that I’d dunked in the bathtub. Micah helped me gather up the big knife and the two handguns. I got the big equipment bag from the living room, but Micah begged me to just put it in the bedroom with us instead of putting everything into their various gun safes. “Just one night, it’ll be okay. I promise,” he said.

I had to agree that I didn’t want to go upstairs to the long rifle safe, then downstairs to the ammo safe, then . . . well, you get the idea.

We dragged ourselves to bed carrying more weapons than clothes. I let the equipment bag drop beside the bed, softly. Nathaniel lay on his side, curled into a little ball, like he always lay when no one was in the bed but him. I laid the knives on the bedside table on his side of the bed, again, trying to be quiet.

He opened his eyes just enough to see me, then they closed, and his breathing deepened. He didn’t wake completely, but his body responded to me climbing in beside him. He was so warm, almost hot, feverish, or maybe that was just how cool our skin was, from the bath, and the sex in the open air. I put the Browning in its homemade holster in the head of the bed. Micah put the Firestar on the bedside table by him. Nathaniel relaxed into the curve of my body, pressing as much of him against as much of me as he could. It was only then that I realized we were all nude. Nathaniel hadn’t worn anything to bed, and neither had we. I let Micah come to bed nude if he wanted to, but never Nathaniel, and never me. It hadn’t even occurred to me to get clothes on first. I’d just wanted to go to bed, to sleep, to cuddle between them both. Micah settled in against my back, and I let myself sink into the sensation of being held between them. I’d slept with Micah pressed naked to my back, but never Nathaniel. I’d had his ass pressed into the curve of my stomach and groin for months, but never without clothes, never just skin-to-skin. I pressed my breasts against the warmth of his back, one arm up and over his head so I could touch his hair. My other hand went around his waist. In his sleep, he pulled my hand closer to his body, lower, so that my fingers brushed areas I’d made very sure stayed covered.

“What’s wrong?” Micah whispered, as if he’d felt some tension in me.

I touched the silky warmth of the skin just inside Nathaniel’s hip, that soft pocket of flesh that frames the groin. Nathaniel’s hand on mine, holding me close to him, as his breathing evened back into deep sleep. I snuggled in against him, until my breath danced along his neck, and he snuggled harder against me. “Nothing,” I whispered, “nothing at all.”

Micah spooned himself in at my back. His arm going underneath my pillow, and a little under Nathaniel’s. Micah’s other arm went over my waist, and because Nathaniel was so close to me, his hand ended up resting on Nathaniel’s hip. “Ah,” he whispered, “no clothes.”

“No clothes,” I said.

He whispered against the back of my neck, and it half-tickled. “That a problem?”

“No,” I said, and moved my head a fraction down my pillow so I could breathe in the scent of Nathaniel’s neck.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” And I was, because it felt too right to be wrong.

82

THE RAID ON the vampire condo got national attention. A mixed blessing. Headlines ranged from “Condo of Death,” to “Police Raid Ends Vampire Serial Killer’s Rampage,” or the most popular, “Vampires turned serial killers, next on Channel . . .” The reports were so similar it didn’t much matter what local channel it was on. I just stopped answering my phone for a few days. The interview requests were national, and a few international. I wondered if anyone on Mobile Reserve was getting this much attention. If they were, I hoped they were enjoying it more than I was.

DNA came back, and my worst fears were confirmed. Three of the vamps killed matched the earlier victims’ bites, but that left us with five unaccounted for. Five serial killers still at large. Serial killers don’t stop killing, not unless they’re locked up, or permanently dead.

They’d fled St. Louis, the way they fled New Orleans, and Pittsburgh before that. They’d killed policemen in all three towns. Their kill count was more than twenty, and they were still out there.

There’d been a gap of of nearly three months between the killings in Pittsburgh and the killings in New Orleans. Barely a month between New Orleans and St. Louis. They were escalating, less time between killing sprees, more victims of choice, though St. Louis had managed to get away with the fewest dead among our police. How did we get so lucky? Jean-Claude got a letter.

The writing was beautiful, calligraphy, on heavy vellum paper with a watermark. The note was from Vittorio’s Gwennie:

Jean-Claude, Master of the City of St. Louis,

I have left Vittorio. His madness has grown beyond anything that I can excuse or take part in. I cannot live as he lives anymore. If he finds me, he will kill me. I have fled with another younger vampire of our kiss, Myron, and Vittorio will not forgive the betrayal. Vittorio is seeking another city now. You have driven him out, but he will find another hunting ground. His madness does not let him rest for long now. His only release seems to come when he kills the people that he sees as taunting him. I saw your Asher at Belle’s Court after the church was done with him; let me say only that Vittorio was not so lucky. He is a ruin of a man now. No, he is a monster. He has let the holy water that ate his body eat his mind, as well. Everything I loved in him is gone, lost to this mind sickness.

I hope you found the little that Myron and I could do to assist the police, helpful. We moved the bodies so that they would be found sooner. It was all we could do with Vittorio so close. Myron was the one who left the policeman alive, so you would know that the girl was taken. Myron was also in the church as one of our spies. He knew that you had the address from Cooper before he died. He did not tell anyone, but me, for the rest are trapped in Vittorio’s evil dream. We did all we could to help you, and your human servant. Please believe that. If we survive, I will try to contact you again. I truly expect that Vittorio will find us before the year is out. But sometimes it is better to live a short good life, than an evil long one.

Most Sincerely Yours,
Gwen

The letter solved some of the mystery, but it left the biggest part unanswered. Where was Vittorio? How long until he found another city to stalk? I was a federal officer, that meant when he resurfaced, I’d get to see it, if I wanted to, or if the local vampire hunter called me in on it. Denis-Luc St. John is still in the hospital in New Orleans. I talked to him on the phone, let him know what happened to the vampires that nearly killed him. He wants a piece of them when they resurface. Good for him, I’m kind of hoping to be left out of it. Is that cowardly? Maybe. If I thought I was the only one who could track them down and save the world, I’d do it, but I’m not the only cop in the country. I’m not even the only vampire executioner with a badge in the country. Let someone else have the fun for a change. I’d had about as much fun in the last few years as I could take. I’ll go if I’m asked, but I’m not volunteering. There are always more bad guys, always. There’s no way to win the war. You can win a battle here and there, but the war is always ongoing. You kill one villainous bastard, and another one just as bad, or worse, crops up. It never seems to end.

We have a meeting set up to talk to Malcolm about the blood-oath situation. Unfortunately, the no-blood-oath policy is countrywide, not just in St. Louis. A fucking disaster waiting to happen. Several of the vamps that were at the church the night I killed Cooper have approached Jean-Claude to change masters from Malcolm to him. Avery Seabrook and Wicked and Truth are among those jumping ship.

Marianne did another tarot reading that duplicated the last one. It being identical means we’re still working through it. I still don’t know who’s supposed to help me, someone from my past. Everyone that is helping seems very much my present and future.

The Dragon has given Primo permission to stay in St. Louis and would like to talk to us at a later date about council business. A mixed blessing that.

I’ve contacted the police working on the Browns’ case. They’ve agreed to have an officer fly down with some of the boy’s personal effects, which means they are stumped. Evans has agreed to look at the stuff. Barbara Brown sent me a card saying how sorry she was she hurt me.

I can’t fix the world, but I’m making progress on my life. Some nights it’s enough to come home alive and crawl into bed beside someone you love, who loves you back.

I found orchids that were the same greenish-gold as Micah’s eyes. A bouquet of them is sitting on the coffee table in our living room. Micah says he’s never gotten flowers before. Nathaniel got a frilly white apron, like no one’s mother ever really wore, and a string of pearls. I found him lying on the bed running the pearls over and over through his fingers.

For Jean-Claude pure white orchids in a simple but elegant black vase. He put them on the coffee table in his living room. Yellow roses for Asher, though they paled beside the gold of his hair. Richard and I aren’t back to the flower-giving stage yet. And, truthfully, he never did see much point in he, himself, getting flowers from anyone.

Damian nearly started a riot at Danse Macabre the first night he went to work after we became a true triumverate. He seems to have gained powers that are more Belle Morte’s line of vampire than Moroven’s line. He’s enjoying his new-found sex appeal. I’m not sure Damian is exactly in the boyfriend category, but he is my vampire servant, and he deserves better than he’s been getting from me. I gave him an envelope with a gift certificate in it. A certificate to a furniture store. He can decorate the basement as his room until we can have an apartment built over the garage for him. We had a basement-cleaning party one night; Nathaniel’s idea. Basically invite a lot of friends over and make them do grunt work, then feed them pizza afterward. Well, okay, the wereleopards, werewolves, wererats, and humans got pizza. The vampires got something a little less solid. No, Jean-Claude did not come help clean up the basement, but surprisingly, Asher did. So did Richard. He behaved himself all the way up to refreshments, then he couldn’t stand me opening a vein for Asher. He didn’t argue, he just left. He’s trying.

We’re all trying. I’m trying to remember what I thought I was doing when I started hunting vampires and helping the police. I used to think I was doing something noble. That there was a reason and a purpose to it. I used to know that I was the good guy. But lately, it feels like I’m just shoveling one pile of shit, so another one can takes its place. Like the bad guys are an avalanche, and I’m trying to stay ahead of it, by shoveling. Maybe I’m just tired, or maybe I’m wondering if Mendez was right. Maybe you can’t be one of the good guys, if you spend most of your time shooting people to death. I don’t know what bothers me more, that I can shoot someone in the face who’s begging for their life, or that legally there’s no other option. I don’t mind killing to defend my life and the lives of others. I don’t mind killing if the person has truly earned it. I’d cap Vittorio in a heartbeat. But what if the girl in the condo had told the truth? What if because her master told her to do something, she had no choice? What if away from the bad guy, she’s not a bad guy? Oh, hell, I don’t know. The only thing I know for certain is that it isn’t my job to worry about how the poor bastard turned into a killer. It’s my job to make sure they never kill anyone else again. That’s what I do. I am the executioner. Murder someone in my town, and I’m the one that you get to see. Once.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Micah

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2006 by Laurell K. Hamilton

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://us.penguingroup.com

ISBN: 1-101-14675-3

A JOVE BOOK®

Jove Books first published by The Jove Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

JOVEand the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

Electronic edition: February, 2006

My idea of love is
not everyone’s ideal.
Some have broken
under the strain
of it. This one’s for
Jon, who sees love
not as a burden,
but as a gift.

Acknowledgments

To all the people that help keep my life running smoothly: Darla Cook, Sherry Ganey, Lauretta Allen, Mary Schuermann, and Richard Nichols (no relation to the character).

To my writing group: Tom Drennan, Debbie Millitello, Rett MacPherson, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn and Mark Summer. Nill illigitamus carborundum.

Contents

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER
1

It was half past dawn when the phone rang. It shattered the first dream of the night into a thousand pieces so that I couldn’t even remember what the dream had been about. I woke gasping and confused, asleep just long enough to feel worse but not rested.

Nathaniel groaned beside me, mumbling, “What time is it?”

Micah’s voice came from the other side of the bed, his voice low and growling, thick with sleep. “Early.”

I tried to sit up, sandwiched between the two of them where I always slept, but I was trapped. Trapped in the sheets, one arm tangled in Nathaniel’s hair. He usually braided it for bed, but last night we’d all gotten in late, even by our standards, and we’d just fallen into bed as soon as we could manage it.

“I’m trapped,” I said, trying to extract my hand from his hair without hurting him or tangling worse. His hair was thick and fell to his ankles; there was lots of it to tangle.

“Let the machine pick up,” Micah said. He’d raised up on his elbows enough to see the clock. “We’ve had less than an hour of sleep.” His hair was a mass of tousled curls around his face and shoulders. His face was dim in the darkness of the blackout curtains.

I finally got my hand free of Nathaniel’s warm, vanilla-scented hair. I lay on my side, propped on my elbow, waiting for the machine to kick in and let us know whether it was the police for me or the Furry Coalition hotline for Micah. Nathaniel, as a stripper, didn’t get emergency calls much. Just as well; I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what a stripper emergency call would be. The only ideas I could come up with were either silly or nefarious. Ten rings, and the machine finally kicked on. Micah spoke over the sound of his own voice on the machine’s message. “Who set the machine on the second phone line to ten rings?”

“Me,” Nathaniel said. “It seemed like a better idea when I did it.”

We’d put in the second phone line because Micah was the main help for a hotline that new wereanimals could call and get advice or a rescue. You know, I’m at a bar and I’m about to lose control, come get me before I turn furry in public. It wasn’t technically illegal to be a wereanimal, but new ones sometimes lost control and ate someone before they came to their senses. They’d probably be shot to death by the local police before they could be charged with murder. If the police had silver bullets. If not . . . it could get very, very bad.

Micah understood the problems of the furred, because he was the local Nimir-Raj, their leopard king.

There was a moment of breathing on the message, too fast, frantic. The sound made me sit up in bed, letting the sheets pool into my lap. “Anita, Anita, this is Larry. You there?” He sounded scared.

Nathaniel got the receiver before I did, but he said, “Hey, Larry, she’s here.” He handed me the receiver, his face worried.

Larry Kirkland—fellow federal marshal, animator, and vampire executioner—didn’t panic that easily anymore. He’d grown, or aged, since he’d started working with me.

“Larry, what’s wrong?”

“Anita, thank God.” His voice held more relief than I ever wanted to hear in anyone’s voice. It meant he expected me to do something important for him. Something that would take some awful pressure or problem off their hands.

“What’s wrong, Larry?” I asked, and I couldn’t keep the worry out of my own voice.

He swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. “I’m okay, but Tammy isn’t.”

I clutched the receiver. His wife was Detective Tammy Reynolds, member of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Squad. My first thought was that she’d been hurt in the line of duty. “What happened to Tammy?”

Micah leaned in against me. Nathaniel had gone very quiet beside me. We’d all been at their wedding. Hell, I’d been at the altar on Larry’s side.

“The baby. Anita, she’s in labor.”

It should have made me feel better, but it didn’t, not by much. “She’s only five months pregnant, Larry.”

“I know, I know. They’re trying to get the labor stopped, but they don’t know . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

Tammy and Larry had been dating for a while when Tammy ended up pregnant. They’d married when she was four months pregnant. Now the baby that had made them both change all their plans might never be born. Or at least not survive. Shit.

“Larry, I’m . . . Jesus, Larry, I’m so sorry. Tell me what I can do to help.” I couldn’t think of anything, but whatever he asked, I’d do it. He was my friend, and there was such anguish in his voice. He’d never mastered that empty cop voice.

“I’m due on an eight a.m. flight to raise a witness for the FBI.”

“The federal witness who died before he could testify,” I said.

“Yeah,” Larry said. “They need the animator that brings him back to be one of us who’s also a federal marshal. Me being a federal marshal was one of the reasons the judge agreed to allow the zombie’s testimony.”

“I remember,” I said, but I wasn’t happy. I wouldn’t turn him down or chicken out, not with Tammy in the hospital, but I hated to fly. No, I was afraid to fly. Damn it.

“I know how much you hate to fly,” he said.

That made me smile, that he was trying to make me feel better when his life was about to break apart. “It’s okay, Larry. I’ll see if the flight has some empty seats. If not I’ll get a later flight, but I’ll go.”

“All my files on the case are at Animators, Inc. I’d stopped by the office to get them and load up the briefcase when Tammy called. I think my briefcase is just sitting on the floor in our office. I got all the files in it. The agent in charge is . . .” And he hesitated. “I can’t remember. Oh, hell, Anita, I can’t remember.” He was panicking again.

“It’s okay, Larry. I’ll find it. I’ll call the Feds and tell them there’s been a change of cast.”

“Bert’s going to be pissed,” Larry said. “Your rates are almost four times what mine are for a zombie raising.”

“We can’t change the price in midcontract,” I said.

“No”—and he almost laughed—“but Bert is going to be pissed that we didn’t try.”

I laughed, because he was right. Bert had been our boss, but he’d been reduced to business manager because all the animators at Animators, Inc., had gotten together and staged a palace coup. We’d offered him business manager or nothing. He’d taken it when he realized his income wouldn’t be affected.

“I’ll get the files from the office. I’ll get a flight. I’ll be there. You just take care of yourself and Tammy.”

“Thanks, Anita. I don’t know what I . . . I’ve got to go—the doctor’s here.” And he was gone.

I handed the phone to Nathaniel, who placed it gently in the cradle.

“How bad is it?” Micah said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think Larry knows, not really.” I started to crawl out of the covers and the nest of warmth that their bodies made.

“Where are you going?” Micah asked.

“I’ve got a plane to schedule and files to find.”

“Are you thinking of going out of town on a plane by yourself?” Micah asked. He was sitting up, knees tucked to his chest, arms encircling them.

I looked back at him from the foot of the bed. “Yeah.”

“When will you be back?”

“Tomorrow, or the day after.”

“Then you need to book at least two seats on the plane.”

It took me a moment to understand what he meant. I raised the dead and was a legal vampire executioner. That’s what the police knew for certain. I was a federal marshal because all the vamp executioners who could pass the firearms test had been grandfathered in so that the executioners could both have more powers and be better regulated. Or that was the idea. But I was also the human servant of Jean-Claude, the master vampire of St. Louis. Through ties to Jean-Claude I’d inherited some abilities. One of those abilities was the ardeur. It was as if sex were food, and if I didn’t eat enough I got sick.

That wasn’t so bad, but I could also hurt anyone that I was metaphysically tied to. Not just hurt, but potentially drain them of life. Or the ardeur could simply choose someone at random to feed from. Which meant the ardeur raised and chose a victim. I didn’t always have a lot of choice in who it chose. Ick.

So I fed from my boyfriends and a few friends. You couldn’t feed off the same person all the time, because you could accidentally love him to death. Jean-Claude held the ardeur and had had to feed it for centuries, but my version was a little different from his, or maybe I just wasn’t as good at controlling it yet. I was working on it, but my control wasn’t perfect, and it would be a bad thing to lose control on an airplane full of strangers. Or in a van full of federal agents.

“What am I going to do?” I asked. “I cannot take my boyfriend on a federal case.”

“You aren’t going as a federal marshal, not really,” Micah said. “It’s your skills as an animator that they want, so say that I’m your assistant. They won’t know any different.”

“Why do you get to go?” Nathaniel asked. He lay back on the pillows, the sheets just barely covering his nakedness.

“Because she fed on you last,” Micah said. He moved enough to touch Nathaniel’s shoulder. “I can feed her more often than you can without passing out or getting sick.”

“Because you’re the Nimir-Raj and I’m just a regular wereleopard.” There was a moment of sullenness in his voice, and then he sighed. “I don’t mean to be a problem, but I’ve never stayed here with both of you gone.”

Micah and I looked at each other and had one of those moments. We’d all been living together for about six months. But he and Nathaniel had both moved in at the same time. I’d never dated either of them alone, not really. I mean I’d gone out with them individually, and sex wasn’t always a group activity, but the sleeping arrangements were.

Micah and I both had a certain need for personal time, alone time, but Nathaniel didn’t. He didn’t much like being alone.

“Do you want to stay at Jean-Claude’s place while we’re gone?” I asked.

“Will he want me there without you?” Nathaniel asked.

I knew what he meant, but. . . “Jean-Claude likes you.”

“He won’t mind,” Micah said, “and Asher won’t mind at all.”

There was something about the way he said that last that made me look at him. Asher was Jean-Claude’s second in command. They’d been friends, enemies, lovers, enemies, and shared a woman that they both loved for a few decades of happiness in centuries of unhappiness.

“Why’d you say it like that?” I asked.

“Asher likes men more than Jean-Claude does,” Micah said.

I frowned at him. “Are you saying that he made a pass at you or Nathaniel?”

Micah laughed. “No, in fact, Asher is always very, very careful around us. Considering that we’ve both been naked in a bed with Asher, Jean-Claude, and you more than once, I’d say that Asher’s been a perfect gentleman.”

“So why the comment about Asher liking men more than Jean-Claude?” I asked.

“It’s the way Asher watches Nathaniel when you aren’t looking.”

I looked at the other man in my bed. He appeared utterly at home half-naked in my sheets. “Does Asher bother you?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Have you noticed him looking at you the way Micah just said?”

“Yes,” Nathaniel said, face still peaceful.

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

He smiled. “I’m a stripper, Anita. I get a lot of people looking at me like that.”

“But you don’t sleep naked in a bed with them.”

“I don’t sleep naked in a bed with Asher either. He takes blood from me so he can fuck you. It may be sensual, but it’s not about sex; it’s about blood.”

I frowned, trying to think my way through the tangle that had become my love life. “But Micah’s implying that Asher sees you as more than food.”

“I’m not implying,” Micah said. “I’m stating that if Asher didn’t think you and Jean-Claude would be pissed, he’d have already asked Nathaniel to be more than friends.”

I stared from one to the other of them. “He would?”

They both nodded in unison, as if they’d practiced.

“And you both knew this?”

They nodded again.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you, or I, were always there to protect Nathaniel,” Micah said. “Now we won’t be.”

I sighed.

“I’ll be okay,” Nathaniel said. “If I’m really that worried about my virtue, I’ll bunk in with Jason.” He smiled even wider.

“What’s so funny?” I asked. I sounded angry, because I had totally missed the whole Asher-liking-Nathaniel thing. Sometimes I felt slow, and sometimes I felt totally unprepared for dealing with the men in my life.

“The look on your face, so worried, so surprised.” He bounced up off the bed, leaving the sheet behind him. He crawled toward me, naked and beautiful. I was at the end of the bed and had nowhere to go. But he came at me so fast that I tried to back up and ended up falling off the bed. I sat naked on the floor, trying to decide if I had any dignity left to save.

Nathaniel leaned over the bed and grinned at me. “If I tell you that was really cute, will you be mad at me?”

“Yes,” I said, but I was fighting not to smile.

He leaned his upper body off the bed, toward me. “Then I won’t say it,” he said. “I love you, Anita.” He leaned down, but if we were going to kiss I’d have to come to my knees and meet him halfway.

I moved into the kiss he was offering and whispered against his lips, “I love you, too.”

“Tell me what city we’re flying to,” Micah said from the bed, “and I’ll see about flights.”

I broke the kiss enough to mumble, “Philadelphia.”

Nathaniel leaned in to me again, one hand holding on to the bedpost to keep him in place. The muscles of his arm flexed effortlessly as he used the other hand to smooth hair away from my face. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” I said, and I realized that I meant it. But one “assistant” I might be able to explain to the FBI, not two. Two and they’d begin to wonder who they were and exactly what they were assisting me with. Or that’s what I told myself. Staring into the startling lavender of Nathaniel’s eyes, I wondered if I cared what the FBI thought of me enough to leave him behind. Almost not. Almost.

CHAPTER
2

We picked up Larry’s files on the way to the airport. Micah drove so I could find a phone number to call and let everyone in Philly know that there’d been a change of cast. The business card read, Special Agent Chester Fox.

He answered on the second ring. “Fox.” Not even a hello. What was it about police work that made you have bad phone manners?

“This is Federal Marshal Anita Blake. You’re expecting Marshal Kirkland this morning?”

“He’s not coming,” Fox guessed.

“No, but I am.”

“What happened to Kirkland?”

“His wife is in the hospital.” I wondered how much I owed him on the phone. I decided not much.

“I hope she’s going to be all right.” His voice had lost some of its edge. He sounded almost friendly. It made me think better of him.

“She probably will, but they’re not sure about the baby.”

Silence for a moment. I’d probably over-shared. That girlness again. Harder to be terse.

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry that Marshal Kirkland couldn’t make it and even sorrier for the reason. I hope things work out for them.”

“Me, too. So I’m filling in.”

“I know who you are, Marshal Blake.” He was back to not sounding entirely happy. “Your reputation precedes you.” That last was definitely not happy.

“Are we going to have a problem here, Agent Fox?”

“Special Agent Fox,” he said.

“Fine, are we going to have a problem here, Special Agent Fox?”

“Are you aware that you have the highest kill count of any legal vampire executioner in this country?”

“Yeah, actually, I am aware of that.”

“You’re coming here to raise the dead, Marshal, not execute anyone. Is that clear?”

Now I was getting pissed. “I don’t kill people for the hell of it, Special Agent Fox.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard.” His voice was quiet.

“Don’t believe all the rumors you hear, Fox.”

“If I believed them all, I wouldn’t let you step foot in my city, Blake.”

Micah touched my leg, just to be comforting, while he drove one-handed. We were already on 70, which meant we’d be at the airport in moments.

“You know, Fox, if you’re this unhappy with me, we can turn around and not come. Raise your own damn zombie.”

“We?”

“I’m bringing an assistant,” I said, voice angry.

“And exactly what does he assist you with?” And his voice was full of that tone, that tone that men have been using against women for centuries. That tone that manages to imply we’re sluts without ever saying so.

“I’m going to be very clear here, Special Agent Fox.” My voice held that calm, cold anger that I used in place of screaming. Micah’s hand tightened on my thigh. “Your attitude makes me think we won’t be able to work together. That you’ve listened to so many rumors that you wouldn’t know truth if it bit you on the ass.”

He started to say something, but I cut him off.

“Think very carefully about the next thing you say, Special Agent Fox, because depending on what it is, I may or may not be seeing you in Philly today, or ever.”

“Are you saying if I don’t play nice, you won’t play at all?” His voice was as cold as mine had been.

“Nice, hell. Fox, I’d just take professional at this point. What has got your panties in a twist about me?”

He sighed over the phone. “I researched the federal marshals who are also animators. It’s a short list.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it is.”

“Kirkland comes in, does the job, leaves. Every time you get involved in a case, it all seems to go to hell.”

I took a deep breath and counted to twenty. Ten didn’t do it. “Go back through and look at the kind of cases that I get called in on, Fox. No one calls me in unless things have already gone south. It’s not cause and effect.”

“You have worked some rough shit. I’ll grant that, Marshal Blake.” He sighed again. “But you’ve got a reputation for killing first and asking questions later. As for rumors, you’re right—they don’t paint a very flattering picture of you.”

“You might bear in mind, Fox, that any man you’ve heard dirty stories about me from didn’t get to fuck me.”

“You’re sure of that.”

“Absolutely.”

“So you’re saying that it’s sour grapes, because he didn’t get the prize.”

“So we are talking about someone specific. Who?”

He was quiet for a second or two. “You worked a serial killer case in New Mexico about two years ago. Do you remember it?”

“Anyone who worked that case will remember it, Agent Fox. Special Agent Fox. Some things you don’t forget.”

“Did you date anyone while you were out there?”

The question puzzled me. “You mean in New Mexico?”

“Yes.”

“No, why?”

“There was a cop named Ramirez.”

“I remember Detective Ramirez. He asked me out, I said no, and he didn’t trash me.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“Because he was a good guy, and good guys don’t trash you just because you turned them down.”

Micah was idling in front of one of the parking garages on Pear Tree Lane. We’d turned off of 70, and I hadn’t really noticed. “Are we parking?” he asked. What Micah was asking was, Are we going to Philadelphia?

“Did any of the agents on scene ask you out?” His voice was serious and not hostile now.

“Not that I remember.”

“Did you have a problem with anyone while you were there?”

“Lots of people.”

“You admit it.”

“Fox, I am female, I clean up well, have a badge and a gun, raise the dead for a living, and slay vampires. A lot of people have issues with some of the above. Hell, a lieutenant in New Mexico quoted the Bible at me.”

“What quote?”

“ ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ ”

“He did not.” He sounded shocked, something you don’t hear much from the FBI.

“Yeah, he did.”

“What did you do?”

“I planted a big kiss right on his mouth.”

He made a startled sound that could have been a laugh. “You really did?”

“It bothered him a hell of a lot more than hitting him would have, and it didn’t get me dragged out in cuffs. But I’m betting the other cops who saw me do it gave him hell.”

Fox was laughing now.

There were cars behind us, honking. “Anita, are we going?” Micah asked.

“My assistant wants to know if we’re going to Philly today. Are we?”

Fox’s voice still held that edge of laughter. “Yeah, come on down.”

I said to Micah, “We’re going to Philly.”

Fox said, “Marshal Blake, I am going to do what I never do, and if you tell anyone I did, I’ll deny it.”

“What are you going to do?”

Micah pressed the big red button on the little stand-up ticket machine. He waited for our parking ticket to pop out. I’d told him to do valet. When you drag your ass in at zero-dark-thirty, valet was worth it.

“I apologize,” Fox said. “I listened to someone who was there in New Mexico. His version of your run-in with the lieutenant was different from yours.”

“What did he say?”

We were in the dimness of the parking garage now. “He said you hit on a married man and got pissy when he said no.”

“If you’d ever met Lieutenant Marks, you’d know that wasn’t true.”

“Not cute enough?”

I hesitated. “I guess physically he wasn’t that bad, but looks aren’t everything. Personality, good manners, sanity—all nice things to have.”

Micah had pulled around the little glass building.

The attendant was coming toward us. We were moments away from needing to get out of the car. “If we’re going to make the flight, I gotta go.”

“Why’d you turn down Detective Ramirez?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure it was any of his business, but I answered. “I was dating someone back home. I didn’t think it was fair to any of us to complicate things.”

“Someone said you were all over him at the last crime scene.”

I knew what he was referring to. “We hugged each other, Agent Fox, because after seeing what was in that house I think we both needed to touch something warm and alive. I let one man hold my hand and all the other men think I’m fucking him. God, there are times when I really hate being the only woman around this kind of shit.”

I was out of the car. Micah was getting our bags from the back.

“Now that’s not fair, Marshal. If I’d hugged Ramirez or let him hold my hand, there’d be rumors, too.”

It stopped me for a second, and then I laughed. “Well, damn, I guess you’re right.”

Micah had traded the key for a little ticket stub. He popped the handles on the carry-on bags so they’d roll. I took one of them but let him take my briefcase, since I was still on the phone. The little bus was waiting for us and a few more passengers.

“I look forward to meeting you, Marshal Blake. Time I stopped listening to secondhand stories.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“See you on the ground.” And he was gone.

I folded the phone shut and was already going up the bus steps before the attendant tried to take my bag. It was the skirt outfit and the heels. I always had more offers to help with luggage when I was dressed like a girl.

Micah came up behind me, mostly ignored, though he was dressed up, too. We’d chosen his most conservative suit, but there’s only so much you can do with a black Italian-cut designer suit. It looked like what it was: expensive.

No one would mistake him for a Fed of any kind. We’d pulled his thick, curly hair back in a tight French braid, which almost gave the illusion of short hair. He’d put on a white shirt with the suit and a conservative tie.

We settled into the back row of seats. He’d kept his sunglasses on even in the darkened parking garage, because behind those dark glasses was a pair of leopard eyes. A very bad man had forced him into animal form long enough, and often enough, that he couldn’t return completely to human form. His eyes were yellow-green, chartreuse, and not human. They were beautiful in the tan of his skin, but they tended to freak people out, hence the glasses.

I wondered how the FBI would take the eyes. Did I care? No. Things had worked out with Special Agent Fox, or seemed to be working out. But someone who had been in New Mexico was trashing me. Who? Why? Did I care? Yeah, actually, I did.

CHAPTER
3

I hate to fly. I’m phobic of it, and we’ll leave it at that. I didn’t bleed Micah, but I left little half-moon nail impressions in his hand, though I didn’t realize it until after we’d landed and were getting our bags from overhead. Then I asked him, “Why didn’t you tell me I was hurting you?”

“I didn’t mind.”

I frowned at him, wishing I could see his eyes, though truthfully they probably wouldn’t have told me anything.

Micah had never been a cop, but he had been at the mercy of a crazy person for a few years. He’d learned to keep his thoughts off his face, so that his old leader didn’t beat those thoughts off for him. It meant that he had one of the most peaceful, empty faces I’d ever met. A patient, waiting sort of face like saints and angels should have but never seem to.

Micah didn’t like pain, not the way Nathaniel did. So he should have said something about the nails digging into his skin. It bugged me that he hadn’t.

We got trapped in the aisle of the plane, because everyone else had stood up and grabbed their bags, too. We had time for me to lean in against his back and ask, “Why didn’t you say something?”

He leaned back, smiling down at me. “Truthfully?”

I nodded.

“It was sort of nice to be the brave one for a change.”

I frowned at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He turned enough so he could lay a kiss, gently, on my lips. “It means that you are the bravest person I’ve ever met, and sometimes, just sometimes, that’s hard on the men in your life.”

I didn’t kiss him back. For the first time ever with him, I did not respond to his touch. I was too busy frowning and trying to decide if I should be insulted.

“What, I’m too brave to be a girl? What kind of macho bullshit—” He kissed me. Not a little kiss, but as if he’d melt into me through my mouth. His hands slid up over the leather of my jacket. He pressed himself against me, so that every inch of him was pressed against every inch of me. He kissed me long enough and held me close enough that I felt when his body began to be happy to be there.

He drew back, leaving me breathless and gasping. I swallowed hard and managed a breathy, “No fair.”

“I don’t want to fight, Anita.”

“No fair,” I said again.

He laughed, that wonderful, irritating masculine sound that said just how delighted he was with the effect he could have on me. His lips were bright with the red of my lipstick. Which probably meant I looked like I was wearing clown makeup now.

I tried to scowl at him but couldn’t quite manage it. It was hard to scowl when I was fighting off a stupid grin. You cannot be angry and grin at the same time. Dammit.

The line was moving. Micah started pushing his carry-on ahead of him. I liked to pull mine behind me, but he liked to push. He had the briefcase, too. He’d pointed out that as the assistant he should be carrying more. I might have argued, but he’d kissed me, and I couldn’t think fast enough to argue.

Micah had had about the same effect on me from the first moment I’d met him. It had been lust at almost first sight or maybe first touch. I was still a little embarrassed about that. It wasn’t like me to fall for someone so quickly, or so hard. I’d really expected it to burn out or for us to have some huge fight and end it, but six months and counting. Six months and no breakup. It was a record for me. I’d dated Jean-Claude for a couple of years, but it had been off again, on again. Most of my relationships were. Micah was the only one who had ever come into my life and managed to stay.

Part of how he managed it was that every time he touched me I just fell to pieces. Or that’s what it felt like. It felt weak, and very girlie, and I didn’t like it.

The flight attendant hoped I’d had a pleasant flight. She was smiling just a little too hard. How much lipstick was I wearing and on how much of my face?

The only saving grace was we could hit a bathroom and get cleaned up before we met the FBI. They could pass through security with their badges, but these days even the Feds didn’t like to abuse their privileges around airport security.

I was wearing my gun in its shoulder holster but I’d been certified to carry on an airplane. Federal marshal or no, you had to go through special training these days to carry on a plane. Sigh.

I got some looks and a few giggles as I hit the main part of the airport. I sooo needed a mirror.

Micah turned, fighting not to grin. “I made a mess of your lipstick. Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry,” I said.

“No,” he said, “I’m not.”

“How bad is it?”

He let go of the carry-on handle and used his thumb to wipe across my chin. His thumb came away crimson.

“Jesus, Micah.”

“If you’d been wearing base, I wouldn’t have done it.” He lifted his thumb to his mouth and licked it, pushing way more of the thumb into his mouth than he needed to. I watched the movement sort of fascinated. “I love the taste of your lipstick.”

I shook my head and looked away from him. “Stop teasing me.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t work if you keep making me moon over you.”

He laughed, that warm masculine sound again.

I took hold of my carry-on and strode past him. “It’s not like you to tease me this much.”

He caught up with me. “No, it’s usually Nathaniel, or Jean-Claude, or Asher. I behave myself unless you’re mad at me.”

I thought about that and it made me slow. That and the three-inch heels. “Are you jealous of them?”

“Not jealous in the way you mean. But, Anita, this is the first time that you and I have ever been on our own. Just you, just me, no one else.”

That stopped me, literally, so that the man behind us cursed and had to go around abruptly. I turned and looked at Micah. “We’ve been alone before. We’ve gone out just the two of us.”

“But never for more than a few hours. We’ve never been overnight, just us.”

I thought about it because it seemed like in six months we should have managed at least one night with only the two of us. I thought, and thought, until my puzzler was sore, but he was right. We had never been overnight, just us.

“Well, damn,” I said.

He smiled at me, his lips still bright with my lipstick. “There’s a bathroom right over there.”

We pulled the suitcases over against the wall and I left Micah in a small line of men who were also watching bags and purses. Some of them had children in tow.

There was a line in the bathroom, of course, but once I made it clear I wasn’t jumping the line but repairing makeup, no one got mad. In fact, a few of them speculated, good-naturedly, on what I’d been doing to get my lipstick smeared that badly.

I did look like I was wearing clown makeup. I got my little bag of makeup, which Micah had made sure I took in with me, out of the briefcase. I’d have probably forgotten it. I had very gentle eye makeup remover that worked on anything, including lipstick. I got the mess cleaned off, then reapplied lip liner and lipstick.

The lipstick was very, very red. It made my skin seem almost translucent in its paleness. My hair gleamed black in the lights, matching the deep, solid brown of my eyes. I’d added a little eye shadow and mascara at home, and called the makeup done. I rarely wore base.

Micah was right, without the base the makeup wasn’t ruined, but . . . but. I was still pissed about it. Still wanted to be angry. Wanted to be angry, not was still angry. Why did I want to hold on to the anger? Why did it make me mad that he had the ability to drown my anger with the touch of his body? Why did that bug me so much?

Because it was me. I had a real talent for picking my love life apart until I broke it. I had promised myself, not that long ago, that I’d stop picking at things. That if my life worked, I’d just enjoy it. It sounded so simple, but it wasn’t. Why is it that the simplest plans are sometimes the hardest to do?

I took a deep breath and paused at the full-length mirror on the way out. I would have worn black but Bert always thought that that gave the wrong impression. Too funereal, he’d say. My silk shell was the red of the lipstick, but Bert had already complained months ago: no more black and red—too aggressive. So I was in charcoal gray with a thin pattern of black and darker gray through it. The jacket hit me at the waist to meet up with the matching skirt.

The skirt was pleated, forming a nice swing around my upper thighs when I moved. I’d tested it at home, but now I tested it again, just in case. Nope, not a glimpse of the top of my stockings. I didn’t own any panty hose anymore. I’d finally been won over to the truth that a comfortable garter belt, hard to find but worth the search, with a pair of nice hose was actually more comfortable than panty hose. You just had to make sure that no one caught a glimpse of them when you moved, unless you were on a date. Men reacted really oddly if they knew you were wearing stockings and a garter belt.

If I’d known that Agent Fox had already been prejudiced against me, I might have worn a pantsuit. Too late now. Why was it a crime for a woman to look good?

Would I get fewer rumors if I dressed down? Maybe. Of course, if I wore jeans and a T-shirt I got complaints that I was too casual and needed to look more professional. Sometimes you just can’t win for losing.

I was delaying. Dammit. I did not want to go back out to Micah. Why? Because he was right, this was the first time we’d ever been alone together for this long.

Why did that thought tighten my chest and make my pulse speed like something alive in my throat?

I was scared. Scared of what? Scared of Micah? Sort of. But more scared of myself, I think. Scared that without Nathaniel, or Jean-Claude, or Asher, or someone to balance things, Micah and I wouldn’t work. That without everyone interfering, there wouldn’t be a relationship. That there would be too much time, too much truth, and it would all fall apart. I didn’t want it to fall apart. I didn’t want Micah to go away. And the moment you care that much, a man has you. He owns a little piece of your soul, and he can beat you to death with it.

Don’t believe me? Then you’ve never been in love and had it go to hell. Lucky you.

I took a deep calming breath and let it out slow. I used some of the breathing exercises I’d been studying. I was trying to learn to meditate. So far I was good at the breathing part, but I just couldn’t still my mind, not without it filling with ugly thoughts, ugly images. Too much violence inside my head. Too much violence in my life. Micah was one of my refuges. His arms, his body, his smile. His quiet acceptance of me, violence and all. Now I was back to being scared. Shit.

I took another deep breath and walked out of the bathroom. I couldn’t hide in there all day; the Feds were waiting. Besides, you can’t hide from yourself. Can’t hide from your own head going ugly. Unfortunately.

Micah smiled when he saw me. That smile that was just for me. That smile that seemed to loosen something tight and hard and bitter inside me. When he smiled at me like that, I could breathe better. So stupid, so stupid, to let anyone mean that much to you.

Something must have shown on my face because the smile dimmed around the edges. He held his hand out to me.

I went to him but didn’t take his hand because I knew the moment I did I wouldn’t be able to think as clearly.

He let his hand fall. “What’s wrong?” The smile was gone, and it was my fault. But I’d learned to talk about my paranoias. Otherwise they grew.

I stepped closer and dropped my voice as much as the murmurous noise of the airport would allow. “I’m scared.”

He moved closer to me, lowering his head. “Of what?”

“Being alone with you.”

He smiled and started to reach for me. I didn’t step away. I let his hands touch my arms. He held me and searched my face as if looking for a clue. I don’t think he found one. He drew me into a hug and said, “Honey, if I’d dreamed that you’d be spooked about being alone with me, I wouldn’t have said it.”

I clung to him, my cheek pressed into his shoulder. “It would have still been true.”

“Yes, but if I hadn’t pointed it out, you probably wouldn’t have thought about it.” He held me close. “We’d have had our time away and it would never have occurred to you that it was the first time. I’m sorry.”

I wrapped my hands tighter around the solidness of him. “I’m sorry, Micah. Sorry I’m such a mess.”

He drew me away enough so he could gaze into my face. “You are not a mess.”

I gave him a look.

He laughed and said, “Maybe a little messy, but not a mess.” His voice had gone all gentle. I loved his voice like that, loved that I was the only one his voice went soft for. So why couldn’t I just enjoy him, us? Hell if I knew.

“The Feds are waiting for us,” I said.

It was his turn to give me a look. Even with the dark glasses, I knew the look.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. I gave him a smile that almost worked. “I promise to try to enjoy the parts of this trip that are enjoyable. I promise to try to not get in my own way, or weird myself out about us being . . . just us.” I shrugged when I said the last.

He touched the side of my face. “When will you stop panicking about being in love?”

I shrugged again. “Never, soon, I don’t know.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Anita. I like it right here, beside you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do you love me?”

He looked startled. “You mean that, don’t you?”

I realized I did. I had one of those aha moments. I didn’t think I was very lovable, so why did he love me? Why did anyone love me?

I touched his lips with my fingers. “Don’t answer now. We don’t have time for deep therapy. Business now. We’ll work on my neuroses later.”

He started to say something but I shook my head.

“Let’s go meet Special Agent Fox.” When I took my hand away from his lips, he just nodded. One of the reasons we worked as a couple was that Micah knew when to let it go, whatever the “it” of the moment happened to be.

This was one of those times when I truly didn’t know why he put up with me. Why anyone put up with me. I didn’t want to ruin this. I didn’t want to pick at Micah and me until we unraveled. I wanted to leave it alone and enjoy it. I just didn’t know how to do that.

We got our bags settled, and off we went. We had FBI to meet and a zombie to raise. Raising the dead was easy; love was hard.

CHAPTER
4

We met the Feds at the baggage return area, as arranged. How did we know who the FBI agents were in the crowd of people, most of the men dressed in suits?

They looked like agents. I don’t know what it is about FBI training but Feds always just seem to look like what they are. All flavors of cops tend to look like cops, but only FBI looks like FBI and not plain cops. Don’t know what they do to them down in Quantico, but whatever it is, it sticks.

Special Agent Chester Fox, agent in charge, was very Native American. The short hair, the suit, the perfect fitting-in couldn’t hide the fact that he was so very not like the rest of them. I understood now some of his pissiness on the phone. He was the first Native American agent that I’d ever found involved in a case that had nothing to do with Native Americans. If you happened to be Native American, you could usually look forward to a career of dealing with cases that called for your ethnicity but not necessarily your talents. Cases involving Native American issues were also not usually career makers, though they could be career breakers. Another interesting thing about the FBI and its dealing with Native Americans was that if you looked Indian enough, they would assign you even if the case involved a totally different tribe, with a totally different language and customs. You’re Indian, right? Aren’t all Indians the same?

No. But then the American government—whatever branch—has never really grasped the concept of tribal identity.

The agent with him, I knew. Agent Franklin was tall, slender with skin dark enough to actually be black. His hair was cut shorter and closer to his head than the last time I’d seen him in New Mexico, but his hands were still graceful and nervous. He smoothed those poet’s hands down his overcoat. He caught me looking and stopped that nervous dance. He offered me a hand just as if he hadn’t called me a slut to his partner.

I took his hand. No hard feelings here. I even smiled though I knew it didn’t reach my eyes. Franklin didn’t even try to look pleased to see me. He wasn’t rude, but he didn’t pretend he was happy either.

“Agent Franklin, I’m surprised to see you here.”

He took back his hand. “Didn’t your friend Bradford tell you I’d been reassigned?” He said friend like he meant more, and the rest was bitter. Not obvious bitter, but it had that feel to it. Nothing he said was rude enough to start a fight, but it was close.

Special Agent Bradley Bradford was head of the FBI’s Special Research section, which dealt with preternatural serial killers, or crimes involving the preternatural.

There’d been a lot of controversy about splitting those crimes out of the Investigative Support unit, the one that usually handled serial killers. At short acquaintance, Franklin had made his feelings clear on the situation. He’d been against it.

Since Bradford was his boss at the time, that had been a problem. Apparently, Franklin had been reassigned, a nonvoluntary reassignment. Not good for a career in the FBI. I was taking fallout for a political squabble that I’d had nothing to do with. Great, just great.

I started to introduce Micah, but Fox beat me to it. “Callahan, Micah Callahan.” Fox was already offering his hand and smiling, way more broadly than he’d smiled for me. How did an FBI agent know Micah? “You look good.”

Micah smiled not quite as broadly, like he wasn’t as happy to see Agent Fox. What the hell was going on?

“Fox, I . . .” Micah tried again. “The last time you saw me, I was still in the hospital. I must have looked like shit, so I guess anything’s an improvement.” I could hear the uncertainty in his voice, though I doubted anyone else could. You had to know him really well to hear that note in his voice.

“Someone who came that close to dying is allowed to look like shit,” Fox said.

I knew then that this probably had something to do with the attack that had made Micah a wereleopard. All I knew about it for certain was that it had been violent. Once someone uses the words violent and attack, you don’t press for details. I’d figured he’d tell me more when he was ready.

Micah turned to me. His face was having trouble deciding what to do, and I was betting he was glad that the glasses hid his eyes. “Special Agent Fox was one of the agents who questioned me after my attack.”

I hadn’t known that his mauling had gotten federal attention. I couldn’t think why it would have but I couldn’t ask that here and now because it would be admitting too much ignorance. Also, I wasn’t sure how much Micah wanted to share in the airport with people walking around us.

I covered. I can do blank pleasant cop face with the best of them. I did it now. “What are the odds that he’d be the agent in charge of this case?” I said, smiling, as if I knew exactly what we were talking about. I’d give Micah a chance to explain later, when we didn’t have an audience.

“I didn’t know that you were an animator,” Fox said, still talking to Micah.

“I’m not.” And Micah left it at that.

Fox waited for him to add more, but Micah smiled and didn’t. Fox would have let it go, but Franklin didn’t. Some people just can’t leave well enough alone.

“Are you a vampire executioner?” Franklin asked.

Micah shook his head.

“You’re not a federal marshal.” And Franklin said it like he was positive.

“No, I’m not.”

“Let it go, Franklin,” Fox said.

“She’s brought a civilian along on a federal case.”

“We’ll talk about this in the car,” Fox said, and the look he gave Franklin stopped the taller man in midsentence.

Fox asked me, “Do we need to wait for more bags?”

“No,” I said. “We’re going back home tomorrow, right?”

“That’s the plan,” he said, but his face was not happy, as if the whole thing with Franklin was still bothering him.

“Then we’re ready to go.”

He actually smiled. “A woman who packs light—that’s rare.”

“Sexist,” I said.

He gave me a nod. “Sorry, you’re right. I apologize.”

I smiled and shook my head. “No sweat.”

He led the way out the doors, and there were two cars waiting. One had two other agents with it, and the other was empty and waiting for us.

Fox spoke over his shoulder at us. “With the new regulations, even the FBI doesn’t get to leave cars parked unattended.”

“Glad to hear the new rules apply to everyone,” I said, more for something to say than because I cared. I wanted to look at Micah and was afraid to. Afraid if I gave him too much attention, he’d fall apart or feel like he had to explain in front of them. Of course, by not looking at him, he might think I was mad about him not sharing details. But . . . oh, hell.

We were pretending he was just my assistant. Holding his hand or giving him a kiss might expose that lie. Or give Franklin even more reason to think I was sleeping around. I hadn’t thought about what it might mean to introduce Micah as my assistant. I guess I hadn’t really thought it through at all. In my own defense, I hadn’t had time to come up with a good explanation for why I needed to bring my boyfriend along. Assistant had seemed like a good idea at the time.

I did the only thing I could think of to reassure him and keep the assistant thing going: I patted him on the shoulder. It wasn’t much, but he rewarded me with a smile, as if he’d known the mental gymnastics I was going through. Maybe he did.

Fox drove. Franklin rode shotgun. Micah, the briefcase, and I rode in the backseat. The other car followed us as we pulled away.

“We’ll drop you at the motel,” Fox began.

Micah interrupted him. “Actually, I booked us into the Four Seasons.”

“Jesus,” Franklin said.

“The FBI won’t pick up the tab for the Four Seasons,” Fox said.

“We wouldn’t expect it,” Micah said.

I sat there wondering why Micah had changed hotels, then realized that Fox had said motel. Oh. Micah wanted a nicer place for our first night alone together. Logical—so why did it make my stomach tight? What was he expecting of our first night alone?

“Are you really going to let her bring a civilian into our case?”

Fox looked at Franklin. Even from the backseat it didn’t look friendly. “I suggest, strongly, that you let this go, Agent Franklin.”

“Jesus, what is it about her?” Franklin said. “She blinks those big brown eyes and everyone just looks the other way while she breaks a dozen rules and bends the very law we’re sworn to uphold.” He turned around in the seat as far as the seat belt would let him. “How do you do it?”

Fox said, “Franklin,” and the word was a warning.

“No, Fox, it’s all right. If we don’t get this settled, Agent Franklin and I won’t be able to work together, will we, Agent Franklin?” My voice wasn’t friendly when I said all that. “You want to know how I do it?”

“Yeah,” Franklin said, “I do.”

“I know how you think I do it. You think I fuck everyone. But I’ve never met Fox, so that can’t be it. So now you’re scrambling, trying to figure it out.”

He scowled at me.

“When you thought it was just sex, just a woman sleeping her way through her career, you were sort of okay with it, but now, now you just don’t get it.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t. Fox is the most by-the-book agent I’ve ever worked with, and he’s letting you cart around a civilian. That’s not like him.”

“I know the civilian,” Fox said. “That makes a difference.”

“He was a victim of a violent crime. So what? You knew him how long ago?”

“Nine years,” Fox said in a soft voice, his dark eyes on the traffic, hands careful on the wheel.

“You don’t know what kind of person he is now. Nine years is a long time. He must have been a teenager then.”

“He was eighteen,” Fox’s careful voice said.

“You don’t know him now. He could be a bad guy for all you know.”

Fox glanced in the rearview mirror. “You a bad guy, Micah?”

“No, sir,” Micah said.

“That’s it?” Franklin said, and he looked like he was going to work himself into hysterics or a stroke. “You ask if he’s a bad guy, and he says no, and that’s good enough?”

“I saw what he survived; you didn’t. He answered my questions when his voice was only a hoarse rasp because the killer had clawed out his throat. I worked for Investigative Support for five years and what was done to him is still one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.” He had to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting the sudden line of traffic in front of us. We all got very well acquainted with our seat belts, and then he continued. “He doesn’t have to prove anything to you, Franklin, and he’s already proven anything he ever needed to prove to me. You are going to lay off him and Marshal Blake.”

“But don’t you even want to know why he’s here? What she brought him for? It’s an ongoing case. He could be a reporter for all you know.”

Fox let out a long, loud breath. “I’ll let them answer this question once, just once, and then you let it go, Franklin. Let it go before I start having more sympathy with why Bradford had you reassigned.”

That stopped Franklin for a second or two. The traffic started creeping forward. We seemed to be caught in rush-hour traffic. I thought at first that the threat would make him give it up but Franklin was made of sterner stuff than that.

“If he’s not an animator or a vampire executioner, then what does he assist you with, Marshal Blake?” He almost managed to keep the sarcasm out of the “Marshal Blake.”

I was tired of Franklin, and I’m not that good at lying. I’d had less than two hours of sleep and had to fly on a plane. So I told the truth, the absolute truth.

“When you need to have sex three, four times a day, it’s just more convenient to bring your lover with you, don’t you think, Agent Franklin?” I gave him wide, innocent eyes.

He gave me a sour look. Fox laughed.

“Very funny,” Franklin said, but he settled back in his seat and he left us alone. The truth may not set you free, but used carefully, it can confuse the hell out of your enemies.

CHAPTER
5

The hotel was nice. Very nice. Too nice. There were people in uniforms all over the place. Not police—hotel employees. They sprang forward to get doors. To try to help with luggage. Micah actually let a bellman take our bags. I protested that we could carry them. He’d smiled and said to just enjoy it. I hadn’t enjoyed it. I had leaned against the mirrored wall of the elevator and tried not to get angry.

Why was I angry? The hotel had surprised me, badly. I’d come expecting a clean-but-nothing-special room. Now we were going up in a glass and gilt elevator with a guy in white gloves pressing the buttons, explaining how the security on our little key cards worked.

My stomach was a tight knot. I had crossed my arms under my breasts, and even to me, I looked angry in the shiny mirrors.

Micah leaned beside me but didn’t try to touch me. “What’s wrong?” he asked, voice mild.

“I didn’t expect this kind of . . . place.”

“You’re mad because I booked us into a nice hotel with a nice room?”

Put that way, it sounded stupid. “No, I mean . . .” I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the glass. “Yes,” I finally said, voice soft.

“Why?” he asked.

The elevator doors opened and the bellman smiled and stood so he held the doors open but left us plenty of room to move past him. If he’d figured out we were fighting, it didn’t show.

Micah waved me in front of him. I pushed away from the elevator wall and went. The hallway was what I’d expected from the rest of the hotel; all dark, expensive wallpaper with curved candlelike lights at just the right intervals, so it was both well-lit and strangely intimate. There were real paintings on the wall, not copies. No big-name artists but real art. I’d never been in a hotel so expensive.

I ended up in front with Micah close behind and the bellman bringing up the rear. I realized halfway down the dark, thick carpeting that I didn’t know what room I was looking for. I looked back at the bellman and said, “Since I don’t know where I’m going, should I be in front?”

He smiled, as if I’d said something clever. He walked faster without seeming to hurry. He took the lead and we followed him. Which made more sense to me.

Micah walked beside me. He still had the briefcase over one shoulder. He didn’t try to hold my hand; he just put his hand down where I could grab it if I wanted to. We walked like that for a few steps. His hand waiting for mine, my arms crossed.

Why was I mad? Because he’d surprised me with a really nice hotel room. What a bastard. He hadn’t done anything wrong, except make me even more nervous about what he expected from me on this trip. That wasn’t his bad, it was mine. My issue, not his. He was behaving like a normal civilized human being. I was being churlish and ungrateful. Dammit.

I unwound my arms. They were actually stiff with anger and holding so tight. Shit. I took his hand without looking at him. He wrapped his fingers around mine and just that little bit of touch made my stomach feel better. It would be all right. I was living with him, for God’s sake. He was already my lover. This wouldn’t change anything. The tight feeling in my chest didn’t get better, but it was the best I could do.

The hotel room had a living room. A real living room with a couch, a marble-topped coffee table, a comfy chair with its own reading lamp, and a table in front of the far picture window that was big enough to seat four. And there were enough chairs to do that. All the wood was real and polished to a high shine. The upholstery matched but not exactly, so that it looked like a room that had grown together piece by piece instead of being bought all at once. The bathroom was full of marble-and-gleaming everything. The tub was smaller than the one we had at home, let alone Jean-Claude’s tub at his club, the Circus of the Damned, but other than that, it was a pretty good bathroom. Better than any I’d ever seen in a hotel before.

The bellman was gone when I wandered out of the bathroom. Micah was putting his wallet back in that little pocket that good suit jackets have for wallets, if your wallet is long enough and slender enough not to break the line of the suit. The wallet had been a gift from me, at Jean-Claude’s suggestion.

“Whose credit card did you put this on?” I asked.

“Mine,” he said.

I shook my head. “How much are you blowing on this room?”

He shrugged and smiled, reaching for the bag with the clothes in it. “It’s not polite to ask how much a gift cost, Anita.”

I frowned at him as he moved past me to a pair of huge French doors on the far wall. “I guess I didn’t think of this as a gift.”

He pushed one side of the doors inward and moved through it, talking over his shoulder. “I was hoping you’d like the room.”

I trailed behind him but stopped in the doorway. The bedroom had two dressers, an entertainment center, two bedside tables with full-size lamps, and a king-size bed. The bed was piled high with pillows, and everything was white and gilt and tastefully elegant. And way too bridal suite for me.

Micah had the suiter in the lid of the carry-on unrolled. He unhooked the hangers from the loops and turned to the large closet.

“This place is bigger than my first apartment,” I said. I was still leaning against the folded door, not quite in the room. As if, by keeping one foot in the other room, I’d be safer.

Micah still had his sunglasses on as he unpacked us. He hung up the other suits we’d bought so they wouldn’t wrinkle. Then he turned to me. He looked at me, shaking his head. “You should see the look on your face.”

“What?” I asked, and even to me it sounded grumpy.

“I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, Anita.” He sounded less than pleased. Micah seldom got upset about anything, and almost never with me. I liked that about him.

“I’m sorry this is weirding me out.”

“Do you have any idea why it’s bothering you this much?” He took off the glasses and his face looked finished, with his eyes showing. The kitty-cat eyes had bothered me a little at first, but now they were just Micah’s eyes. They were an amazing mix of yellow and green. If he wore green, they looked almost perfectly green. If he wore yellow—well, you get the idea.

He smiled, and it was the smile he used only at the house. Only for me and Nathaniel, or maybe just for me. At that moment, it was just for me.

“Now, that is a much better look.”

“What?” I said again, but couldn’t keep the smile off my face or out of my voice. Hard to be sullen when you’re staring at someone’s eyes and thinking how beautiful they are.

He walked toward me, and just that—him walking across the room toward me—sped my pulse, made my breath catch in my throat. I wanted to run to him, to press our bodies together, to lose the clothes and what was left of my inhibitions. But I didn’t run to him because I was afraid to. Afraid of how much I wanted him, of how much he meant to me. That scared me, a lot.

He stopped in front of me, not touching me, just looking at me. He was the only man in my life who didn’t have to look down to meet my eyes. In my heels, I was actually a little taller.

“God, your face! Hopeful, eager, and afraid, all there on your face.” He laid his hand against my cheek. He was so warm, so warm. I curved my face into his hand and let him hold me.

“So warm,” I whispered.

“I’d have had flowers waiting, but since Jean-Claude sends you roses every week, there didn’t seem to be a reason for me to send you flowers.”

I drew back from him, searching his face. It was peaceful, the way it could be when he was hiding his feelings. “Are you mad about the flowers?”

He shook his head. “That’d be silly, Anita. I knew I wasn’t the top of your dating food chain when I hit town.”

“So why bring up the flowers?” I asked.

He let out a long breath. “I didn’t think it bothered me, but maybe it does. A dozen white roses every week, with a red rose added since you started having sex with Jean-Claude. And now there are two more red roses in the bouquet; one for Asher and one for Richard. So it’s like the flowers are from all three of them.”

“Richard wouldn’t see it that way,” I said.

“No, but he’s still one of your lovers, and you still get something every week that reminds you of him.” He frowned, shook his head. “This room is my flowers to you, Anita. Why won’t you let me give it to you?”

“The flowers are a lot less expensive than this room,” I said.

He frowned harder and it wasn’t a look I’d seen much on his face. “Is it money that makes the difference for you, Anita? I draw a decent salary from chairing the Furry Coalition.”

“You’ve earned the salary, Micah. You average, what, sixty hours a week?”

“I’m not saying I don’t deserve the money, Anita. I’m just asking why you won’t take this from me, when you take gifts from Jean-Claude?”

“I didn’t like the flowers at first either. You got to town just after I’d given up fighting about it with him.”

He smiled then, but it wasn’t a really happy smile. More rueful. “We’re going home tomorrow, Anita. I don’t have time for you to get used to the idea.” He sighed. “I was looking forward to spending some time, just us, and you aren’t happy about it. I think my feelings are hurt.”

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Micah.” I really didn’t. I touched his arm, but he stepped out of reach and went back to unpacking. The tight feeling in my stomach returned, but for a different reason.

Micah never fought with me. He never pushed about our relationship. Up until that moment, I’d have thought he was happy. But this didn’t feel happy. Was that my fault because I wasn’t enjoying the room? Or was this a talk that had been coming, and I just hadn’t known it?

“You know,” he said from the bed, “you are the only woman I know who wouldn’t be asking me questions about how I met Agent Fox.”

The change of topic was too fast for me. “What? I mean, do you want me to ask?”

He stopped with the toiletries kit in his hands, as if he had to think about his answer and moving would have interfered with the thinking. “Maybe not, but I want you to want to ask. Does that make any sense?”

I swallowed past my rapidly speeding pulse. This felt like the beginnings of a fight. I didn’t want to fight, but without Nathaniel or someone else to help me talk my way out of it, I wasn’t sure I knew how to derail it. “I’m not sure I understand, Micah. You don’t want me to ask, but you want me to want to ask.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“How can you, when even I don’t understand it?” He looked angry for a moment, and then his face smoothed out to its usual handsome, pleasant neutrality. It had only been in the last month that I’d realized how much pain and confusion he hid behind that face. “I want you to care enough about me to be curious, Anita.”

“I do care,” I said, but I kept myself pressed against the open French door. My hands were behind my back, fingers clutching the door like it was an anchor to keep me from getting swept away in the emotional turmoil.

I puzzled for a way out of the fight that was coming and finally had an idea. “I thought you’d tell me when you were ready. You’ve never asked me about my scars.” There. That was a valid point.

He smiled, and it was his old smile, the one I’d almost broken him of. The smile was sad, wistful, self-loathing, and had nothing to do with anything pleasant. It was a smile only because his lips went up instead of down.

“I guess I haven’t asked about the scars. I figured you’d tell me if you wanted me to know.” He had all the clothes put away, only the toiletries case still waiting on the bed. “I promised Nathaniel I’d order food when we got here,” he said.

Again the conversational switch was too fast for me. “Are we changing the topic?”

He nodded. “You scored a point.” He said, “You didn’t like the room, and it hurt my feelings. Then you didn’t seem to care about meeting Fox and hearing more details about my attack. I thought, if she cared, she’d want to know more.”

“So we’re not going to fight?”

“You’re right, Anita, I’ve never asked how you got any of your scars. I’ve never asked you, just like you’ve never asked me. I can’t get angry with you for something I’ve done myself.”

The tightness in my chest eased a little. “You’d be amazed by the number of people who would still fight about it.”

He smiled, still not happy, but a little better. “But I would really like it if you’d try to enjoy the room and not act like I’ve lured you here for nefarious purposes.”

I took a deep breath and let it out, then nodded. “It’s a beautiful room, Micah.”

He smiled, and this time it reached his kitty-cat eyes. “Just like that, you’ll try.”

I nodded. “If it means that much to you, yes.”

He took a deep breath, as if his own chest had been a little tight. “I’ll put the toiletries up, then look at the room service menu.”

“Nathaniel was pretty put out that he didn’t get to make us a real breakfast,” I said, still clinging to the door.

“I remember when a bagel was breakfast,” Micah said.

“Hell,” I said, “I remember when coffee was breakfast.”

“I don’t,” he said. “I’ve been a lycanthrope too long. We have to eat regularly to help control our beasts.”

“One hunger feeds the other,” I said.

“I’ll order food. You look at the file.”

“I looked at it on the plane.”

“Do you remember anything you read?”

I thought about it, then shook my head. “No. I’d hoped it would help take my mind off of the whole being hundreds of feet above the ground situation, but I guess it didn’t really help.”

“I noticed just how unhelpful it was.” He raised his hand up. There were still dim marks of my nails. Considering how fast he healed, that meant I’d actually hurt him.

“Jesus, Micah, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “I’m not complaining. Like I said on the plane, it was interesting to see you so . . . so shaken.”

“You being there helped,” I said in a small voice.

“Glad to hear that I spilled blood for a good cause.”

“Did I really bleed you?”

He nodded. “It’s healed, but yeah, you did. You still aren’t quite used to being more than human strong.”

“I’ll read the file because I need to before tonight, but if you want to tell me about how you became a wereleopard, you can. Honestly, once you told me it was an attack, I treated you like any survivor. You don’t question survivors about the trauma; you let them come to you.”

He walked toward the doors, and for a moment I thought he’d walk by without touching me. Which would have been bad. He gave me a quick kiss and a smile, then moved past me to put the toiletries kit in the bathroom.

I stood there for a moment, leaning against the door. We were doing the exact thing I’d feared we’d do alone together. We were raking emotional shit. I sighed and moved into the living room. The briefcase was waiting beside the couch. I got the file out and took it to the four-seater table by the big picture window. The main road was just outside, but it wound around a sidewalk that wound around a large fountain. It somehow made it seem less of a road and more of a view.

I could hear Micah puttering in the bathroom. He had to be putting out the toothbrushes, deodorant, etc. . . . I would have stopped unpacking once the good clothes were hung up. Both Micah and Nathaniel were neater and more domestically organized than I was. So was Jean-Claude I guess. I wasn’t sure about Asher. But I was definitely the slob of the group.

I opened the file and started to read. There wasn’t much there. The deceased’s name had been Emmett Leroy Rose. He’d had a double degree from the University of Pennsylvania in accounting and prelaw. He’d gotten his law degree at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He’d died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three, while in federal custody waiting to testify at an important trial. He’d been dead less than three months. It listed his race as African American, which wasn’t important to me. His religion was listed as Protestant, and that information I did need. There were a few religious persuasions that could interfere with zombie raising. Vaudan—voodoo—was the big one. It could be tricky to raise someone who messed with some of the same magic that I would be using. Wiccan could also make things difficult, and so could some of the more mystically oriented faiths. Straight Christian of whatever flavor wasn’t a problem. And psychic abilities could mess with a zombie and make it either hard to raise or hard to control once you raised it. If there was anything less than normal human about Emmett Leroy Rose, it wasn’t in the file.

In fact, there were some important things missing from the file. Like what had he been arrested for—what illegal activity did they catch him at that was bad enough to get him in federal custody awaiting his testimony? And exactly what did an important trial mean? Was it mob business? Was it government business? Was it something else I couldn’t even think of? Who did Mr. Rose have dirt on, and what had the Feds had on him that made him willing to shovel it? Did I need to know any of the above to raise him from the grave? No. But I wasn’t used to going into this blind. If they’d sent me this file, I’d have told them no dice without more info. Yeah, they’d have replied it was a need-to-know basis, and I’d have said if they wanted me to raise the zombie, I needed to know. Larry had just taken the crumbs they gave him and not complained.

I wondered how Tammy was doing. Did I call and ask? Later, I decided. I’d try to get some more info out of Fox first. Truthfully, I’d had about as much emotional angst as I could deal with for a little bit. If the news was bad it would wait, and I wouldn’t know what to say anyway. I said a quick prayer that Tammy and the baby would be all right. That was the most concrete thing I could do.

I called the number I had for Fox. No emotional problems, just business. What a relief.

“You have everything in the file that you need to raise Rose from the dead, Marshal Blake,” Fox said.

I’d figured he’d say that, but . . . “Just tell me this. Fox, how hot was Emmett Leroy Rose?”

“What do you mean, ‘hot’?” he asked, but his tone said he knew.

“How important a witness was he?”

“He died of natural causes, Blake. He wasn’t murdered. There wasn’t a contract out on him. We just caught him doing something bad. So bad, he didn’t want to go to jail over it. So he gave us more important people. Or was going to.”

“Did he have a bad heart?”

“No, if he had, we’d have had a court reporter in to take down his testimony, just in case. We found out later that his father had died of an unexpected heart attack at almost the same age.”

“You see, Fox, if you’d known that, you might have gotten his testimony down sooner, right?”

He was quiet a second, then said, “Maybe.”

“Is anything you haven’t included in this file going to bite me on the ass later? Like a father who died of a sudden heart attack.”

He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “It’s a good point, Marshal Blake, but no, there’s nothing we left out that will impact you or your work.”

“Have you ever seen someone raise the dead, Special Agent Fox?”

He was quiet again. Then, “Yes.” Just that one word.

I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “So you’re happy with the information I’ve got.”

“Yes,” he said again, and there was a tone that said this conversation was about over. “Why do I think that if I’d called you in first instead of Kirkland, you’d have been a much bigger pain in the ass?”

That made me laugh. “Oh, yes,” I said. “I’m a much bigger pain in the ass than Larry.”

“How’s his wife doing?”

“I’m going to call them when I get off the phone with you.”

“Give him my best.” He hung up.

I sighed and hung up my end. Then I went for my cell phone in the front of the briefcase. I turned it on, and there was a message. I pushed buttons until the phone gave up the message. Larry’s voice: “Anita, it’s Larry. They’ve got the labor stopped. They’re going to keep her overnight, just to be safe, but it looks good. Thanks for taking the run to Philadelphia. Thanks for everything.” Then he laughed. “How do you like the file? Real informative, isn’t it?” He laughed again, then hung up.

I sat down on the couch sort of suddenly. I don’t think I’d realized how worried I was until it was all right. I didn’t even like Tammy much, but Larry was my friend and it would have broken his heart.

Micah was standing in front of me. I looked up. “Tammy and the baby are going to be fine. He must have called while we were in the air.”

Micah smiled and touched my face. “You’re pale. You were really worried about it, weren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Were you hiding it from me or didn’t you know either?”

I gave him a smile that was a bit too wry to be happy. “Stop knowing me so well, dammit.”

“Better than you know yourself, sometimes,” he said softly. And that was a little too close to the truth.

CHAPTER
6

Room service came with a knock and a polite voice. Micah got to the door before I did, but he didn’t just open it. Some people in my life I’ve had to teach caution to, but Micah had come with it as part of the standard boyfriend package.

He checked the peephole, then looked at me. “Room service.” But he didn’t open the door. I watched him take a very deep breath, scenting the air. “Smells like room service.”

My hand eased back from the gun under my arm. I hadn’t even realized my hand was on it until that moment. His scenting at the door had made me think, just for a second, that something was wrong, not that he was simply scenting the air because it smelled good.

He put his sunglasses on before he opened the door. I made sure my jacket was covering the gun. Didn’t want to weird anyone out, and definitely didn’t want to give the staff a reason to talk. Hiding how far outside normal we were was standard practice. People tend to get nervous around guns and shapeshifters. Go figure.

The guy smiled and asked where we’d like the tray set up. We let him put a cloth on the table by the window.

It seemed to take a long time for him to get everything ready. He placed water glasses, real napkins, even a rose in a vase in the center of the table. I’d never seen anything this elaborate from room service.

Finally, he was done. Micah signed for the food, and the guy left with a Have a nice day that actually sounded sincere.

Micah shut the door behind him, putting all the locks in place. I approved. Locks don’t help you if you don’t use them.

I was trying to decide whether to frown. “I like the caution—you know I do.”

“But,” he said, setting the sunglasses on the coffee table.

“But I thought I should compliment you before I complain about something else.”

His smile slipped a little. “What now?”

“There’s a salad here with grilled chicken on it and a butterflied chicken breast grilled with veggies. The salad better not be mine.”

He grinned then, and it was that sudden grin that gave me a glimpse of what he might have looked like at fifteen.

“You get the chicken breast.”

I frowned. “I would have preferred steak.”

He nodded. “Yes, but if you eat that heavy then sometimes the food doesn’t sit well if the sex is too, um, vigorous.”

I tried not to smile and failed. “And is the sex going to be, um, vigorous?”

“I hope so,” he said.

“And you got the salad, because . . .”

“I’ll be doing most of the work,” he said.

“Now, that’s just not true,” I said.

He wrapped his arms around me, and his being the same height made the eye contact very serious, very intimate.

“Who does the most work depends on who is doing what.” His voice was low and deep. His face leaned closer as he said, “I know exactly what I want to do to you and with you, and it means that I will be doing”—and his mouth was just above mine—“most of the work.”

I thought he’d kiss me, but he didn’t. He drew back and left me breathless and a little shaky. When I could talk without sounding as wobbly as I felt, I asked, “How do you do that?”

“Do what?” he asked as he sat down on his side of the table, spreading his napkin in his lap.

I gave him a look.

He laughed. “I am your Nimir-Raj, Anita. You are my Nimir-Ra, my leopard queen. The moment we met, my beast and that part of you that calls and is called to the wereleopards were drawn to each other. You know that.”

I blushed, because the memory of just how much we’d been drawn together from the moment we’d met always made me a little embarrassed. All right, more than a little.

Micah was the first man I’d ever had sex with within hours of meeting him. The only thing that had kept it from being a one-night stand was the fact that he stuck around, but I hadn’t known he would when it first happened. Micah had been the first person I fed the ardeur off of, the first warm body that I slaked that awful thirst on. Was that the bond? Was that the foundation of it?

“You’re frowning,” he said.

“Thinking too hard,” I said.

“And not about anything pleasant, from the look on your face.”

I shrugged, which made the jacket rub on the gun. I took the jacket off and draped it across the back of the chair. Now the shoulder holster was bare and aggressive against the crimson shirt. My arms were exposed, which showed off most of my scars.

“You’re angry,” he said. “Why?”

I actually hung my head, because he was right. “Don’t ask, okay? Just let my grumpy mood go, and I’ll try to let it go, too.”

He looked at me for a moment, then gave a small nod. But his face was back to being careful. His neutral, pleasant I’m managing her moods face. I hated that face because it meant I was being difficult, but I didn’t know how to stop being difficult. I was tripping over issues I’d thought I’d worked out months ago. What the hell was the matter with me?

We ate in silence, but it wasn’t companionable silence. It was strained, at least in my own head.

“Okay,” Micah said, and his voice made me jump.

“What?” I asked, and my voice sounded strident, somewhere between breathy and a yell.

“I have no idea why you are this”—he made a waffling motion with his hand—“but we’ll play it your way. How did you get the scars on your left arm?”

I looked down at my arm as if it had suddenly appeared there. I stared at the mound of scar tissue at the inside of the elbow, the cross-shaped burn scar just below it, the knife cut, and the newer bite marks between the two. Those bites were still sort of pink, not white and shiny like the rest. Okay, the burn wasn’t white, darker actually, but . . . “Which one?” I asked, looking up at him.

He smiled then. “The cross-shaped burn scar.”

I shrugged. “I got captured by some Renfields—humans with a few bites—who belonged to a master vampire. The Renfields chained me up as a sort of snack for when their master rose for the night, but while we were waiting they decided to have some fun. The fun was heating up a cross-shaped branding iron and marking me.”

“You tell the story like it doesn’t mean anything to you.”

I shrugged again. “It doesn’t. Not really. I mean it was scary and horrible, and hurt like hell. I try not to think about it. If I dwell too much on the things that could go wrong or have gone wrong in the past, I have trouble doing my job.”

He looked at me, and he was angry. I didn’t know why. “How would you feel if I told my story the same way?”

“Tell your story any way you want, or don’t tell it, Micah. I’m not the one forcing us to play true confessions.”

“Fine,” he said. “I was eighteen, almost nineteen. It was the fall I went away to college. My cousin Richie had just gotten back from basic. We both came home so we could go hunting with our dads one last time. You know, one last boys’ weekend out.” His voice held anger, and I finally realized that he wasn’t angry at me.

“At the last minute, Dad couldn’t come with us. Some hunters had gone missing, and Dad thought one of his patrols had found them.”

“Your dad was a cop?”

He nodded. “County sheriff. The body they found turned out to be a homeless guy who got lost in the woods and died of exposure. Some animals got to him, but they hadn’t killed him.”

His face had gone distant with remembering. I’d had a lot of people tell me awful truths, and he told it like most of them did, no hysterics. No anything, really. No effect, as the therapists and the profilers would say. He looked empty as he told his story. Not matter-of-fact the way I told my story, but empty, as if part of him wasn’t really there. The only thing that showed the strain was that thread of anger in his voice.

“We were all armed, and Uncle Steve and Dad had taught Richie and me how to use a gun. I could shoot before I could ride a bike.” He set his silverware down on the table, and his fingers found the salt shaker. It was real glass, smooth and elegant for a salt shaker. He turned it around and around in his fingers, giving it all his eye contact.

“We knew it might be the last time the four of us got to hunt together, you know? College for me, the army for Richie—it was all changing. Dad was really upset that he didn’t get to come, and so was I. Uncle Steve offered to wait, but Dad told him to go ahead. We wouldn’t all get our deer in one day. He was going to drive up and join us the next day.”

He paused again, this time for so long that I thought he’d stopped for good. I gave him the silence to decide. Stop, or go; tell or not.

His voice when it came was emptier; no anger now, but the soft beginnings of something worse. “We’d gotten a doe. We always got two buck tags and two doe tags, so between the four of us, we could shoot what we found.” He frowned, then looked at me. “You don’t know what a deer tag is, do you?”

“The deer tag tells you what you can shoot, buck or doe. You don’t get a choice some years, because some years there are more does than bucks, so they give out more doe tags. Though usually it’s buck that’s more plentiful.”

He looked surprised. “You’ve been deer hunting.”

I nodded. “My dad used to take me.”

He smiled. “Beth, my sister, thought it was barbaric. We were killing Bambi. My brother, Jeremiah—Jerry—didn’t like killing things. Dad didn’t hold it against him, but it meant that Dad and I were closer than him and Jerry, you know?”

I nodded. “I know.” And just like that he’d told me more about his family than I’d ever known. I hadn’t even known he’d had siblings.

He kept his eyes on my face now. He stared right at me as he said the next part, stared so hard that even under normal circumstances it would have been difficult to hold his gaze. Now, like this, it was like lifting some great weight just to meet the demand in his eyes. I did it, but it was hard work.

“We had a doe. We’d field dressed it and put it on a pole. Richie and I were carrying it. Uncle Steve was a little ahead of us. He was carrying Richie’s gun and his. I had my rifle on a strap across my back. Dad always told me that if it was my gun, I needed to hold on to it. I had to control it at all times. Funny. I don’t think Dad really liked guns.”

His face started to break, not badly, but around the edges. All the emotions that he was trying not to have chased around the borders of his face. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you might not have understood it, but I’d had too many people tell me too many awful things not to see it.

“It was a beautiful day. The sun was warm, the sky was blue, the aspens were like gold. The wind was gusty that day. It kept blowing the leaves around in showers of gold. It was like standing inside a snow globe except instead of snow, it was golden, yellow leaves. God, it was beautiful. And that was when it came for us. It moved so fast, just a dark blur. It hit Uncle Steve and he just went down, never got back up.” His eyes were a little wide, his pulse jumping enough in his throat that I could see it. But other than that his face was neutral. Control—such tight control.

“Richie and I dropped the deer, but Richie didn’t have a gun. I got my rifle almost to my shoulder when it hit Richie. He went down screaming, but he drew his knife. He tried to fight back. I saw the knife sparkling in the sunlight.”

He stopped again, and this time the pause was so long that I said, “You can stop, if you want to.”

“Is it too horrible for you?”

I frowned and shook my head. “No, if you want to tell it, I’ll listen.”

“I made a big deal out of this, not you. My own fault.” He said that last word with more feeling than it needed. Fault. I could taste the survivor’s guilt on the air.

I wanted to go around the table and touch him but was afraid to. I wasn’t sure he wanted to be touched while he told the story. Later, but not now.

“You know how time can freeze in the middle of a fight?”

I nodded, wasn’t sure he saw it, and said, “Yes.”

“I remember the face, its face, when it looked up at me from Richie’s body. You’ve seen us in half-man form. The face is leopard, but not. Not human, but not animal either. I remember thinking, I should know what this is. But all I could think was Monster. It’s a monster.”

He licked his lips and drew a breath that shook when he let it out. “I had the rifle to my shoulder. I fired. I hit it. I hit it two or three times before it got me. It ripped me with its claws, and it wasn’t a sharp pain. It was like being hit with a baseball bat—hard, thick. You know you’re hurt, but it doesn’t feel like you’d imagine claws would feel—do you know what I mean?”

I nodded. “Yeah, actually, I know exactly what you mean.”

He looked at me, then down at my arm. “You do know what I mean, exactly what I mean, don’t you?”

“More than most,” I said, voice soft and as matter-of-fact as I could make it. He had so much emotion that I gave him none back. It was the best I could do.

He smiled at me. Again it was that sad, wistful, self-deprecating smile. “The rifle was gone. I don’t remember losing it, but my arms wouldn’t work anymore. I lay there on the ground, with that thing above me, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. Nothing hurt, nothing scared me. It was almost peaceful. After that it’s only snatches. I remember voices, being on a stretcher. I remember being put in a helicopter. I woke up in the hospital with Agent Fox on one side and my dad on the other.”

I realized then what had sparked the trip down memory lane. “Seeing Fox today brought it back.” Some days I’m just slow.

He nodded. “It scared me to see him, Anita. I know that sounds stupid, but it did.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid, and it didn’t show. I mean, even I didn’t pick up on it.”

“I wasn’t afraid in the front of my head, Anita. I was afraid in the back of my head. And then you didn’t like the room, and—”

I went to him then. I wrapped my arms around him, pressed his face against my chest. He hugged me back, tight, so tight, as if he were holding on to the last solid thing in the universe.

“I love the room. I love you. I’m sorry I was shitty.”

He spoke with his face still buried against my body, so his words were muffled. “I didn’t survive the attack, Anita. The wereleopard that attacked us ate as much of my uncle and Richie as it could hold, and left. Some hunters found us, and they were both doctors. I was dead, Anita. No heartbeat, no pulse. The doctors got my heart started again, got me breathing again. They patched me up as best they could, and they got me to a clearing so a chopper could get me to a hospital. No one expected me to live.”

I stroked his hair, still slick and tight in the braid. “But you did,” I whispered.

He nodded, rubbing his head against the silk shirt and my breasts underneath. Not sexual, but comforting.

“The wereleopard was a serial killer. He hit only hunters, and only after they’d killed an animal. The FBI put out a warning to hunters after we were attacked. Fox said they put it together as a serial case only a few hours before we were attacked. The first attack had been on a reservation where he was assigned.”

“He solved it,” I said.

“He caught the . . . monster. He was there when they killed it.”

He kept saying it and monster. You didn’t hear that often from shapeshifters—not about other shifters. “I died, was brought back, survived, and healed. Healed so fast. Incredibly fast. Then a month later I was the monster.” His voice was so sad when he said it, so unutterably sad.

“You’re not a monster,” I said.

He drew away enough to look up at me. “But a lot of us are, Anita. I joined Merle’s pard, and he was a good leader, but Chimera came and took us over, and Chimera was crazy and cruel.”

Chimera had been the leader I’d killed to save Micah and his people, and a lot of other people. Chimera had been the only panwere that I’d ever heard of, someone who could turn into a variety of animals. Before I’d seen him I’d have said it was impossible, but I’d seen him, and had to destroy him. He’d been real and powerful, and a very creative sexual sadist.

I held his face in my hands. “You are a good person, Micah. You are not a monster.”

“I used you when we first met, Anita. I saw you as a way to save my leopards. To rescue us all.”

“I know,” I said. “We talked about it. You asked me what I would have done to save Nathaniel and all the leopards from Chimera. I agreed that I would have done anything, or at least what you did to get me involved. I couldn’t fault you on it.”

“From the moment you touched me, the plan changed. You changed it. You changed everything. You never looked at me like I was a monster. You were never afraid of me, not in any way.”

“You make it sound like someone else was afraid of you.”

He sighed again. “I had a high school sweetheart. We weren’t exactly engaged, but we had an understanding that once we got our college degrees, we’d marry.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

He shook his head. “We waited for sex, a year of waiting. We both wanted to be out of high school first, be eighteen. Her older sister had gotten pregnant in high school, and it had wrecked her life, so Becky was careful. I was okay with that. I planned to spend the rest of my life with her, so what was a year or more?”

He spilled me down into his lap so I was sitting across his legs, very ladylike, thank you. “What happened?” I asked, because he seemed to want me to.

“What made her finally break up completely with me was me being a monster. She couldn’t love an animal.”

I couldn’t keep the shock off my face. “Jesus, Micah, that’s—”

He nodded. “It was rough, but me being a shapeshifter was the last straw, not the first one.”

I frowned a little. “What was the first straw?”

He looked down, and I realized he was embarrassed.

“What?” I asked.

“I was too big.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. “You mean you were too well endowed for her?”

He nodded.

I looked at him and tried to decide what to say. Nothing good came to mind. “She didn’t like having sex with you?”

“No.”

“But—but you’re, like, amazing in bed. You’re—”

“But you weren’t a virgin, and I wasn’t eighteen and a virgin, too.”

“Oh,” I said, and thought about it. Micah was very well endowed. Not just long but wide, which I’d discovered could be a harder problem to deal with than length. There were positions you could do or modify for length. Width you just had to adjust to. I thought about having all that shoved inside for the first time, maybe without enough foreplay. “I guess I can see the problem.”

“I hurt her. I didn’t mean to, but I did. I got better at it. More foreplay, more—just better.”

“There is a learning curve,” I said.

He rested his forehead on my shoulder. “But Becky never really enjoyed me inside her. We had sex, but I always had to be so careful of her or she said it hurt.”

“You know women have different sizes of vaginas, just like there are different sizes of penises. Maybe she was small inside, and you are not small.”

He looked up at me, his cheek resting on my bare arm. “You think so?”

“I do.”

He smiled. “You don’t have a problem with me, any of me.”

I smiled back. “No, and she was just one person. One negative doesn’t make it a problem.”

“It wasn’t just one vote, Anita.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve had dates in college where everything was fine until they saw me, all of me. Then they picked up their clothes and said no way.”

I gave him a look. “You’re serious.”

He nodded.

Another man, I might have accused of bragging, but Micah wasn’t bragging. I had a thought. It was almost insightful. “Becky said you hurt her because you were so big, and then you had girls in college who wouldn’t even try it. That must have really messed with you.”

“It was either a really big plus or a really big minus with women. But most of them, even the ones who said yes, didn’t want a standard diet. I was like a novelty.” His voice held unhappiness the way it had held anger earlier. “Becky made me feel like a monster for wanting to hurt her, for wanting to be inside her, for wanting sex so badly I’d hurt her. Most of the women I dated made me feel the same way, or like I should have had a dial on my hip and a battery case, like I was some sort of toy they’d bought in a sex store. Just wind me up.”

I looked at him again.

“Trust me, Anita, there are just as many bastards out there who are girls as bastards who are guys. Except when a girl treats you like a sex object, it’s supposed to be all right because you’re a guy and you only want sex anyway, right?”

“The old double standard,” I said.

He nodded and patted me. “Until you.”

I thought about it for a second. “Wait a minute. How did you know I wouldn’t have a problem with your, um, size?”

“You know how wereanimals are always walking around naked, unless you make us put on clothes?”

I smiled. “Not all of you guys are comfortable nudists, but most, yeah.”

“First, I’d seen Richard nude, and I knew he had been your lover. He isn’t small either.” I fought not to blush again. “Second, you’d seen me nude and you hadn’t reacted badly.”

“So you saw an ex-lover and he was well endowed. And I hadn’t told you to be careful where you point that. It might go off.”

He smiled. “Something like that.”

“How did you know that I hadn’t broken up with Richard because he was too much man for me to handle?”

“I asked.”

I must have looked as surprised as I felt.

He laughed. “I didn’t ask Richard. I asked around and found out he thought you were too bloodthirsty, and he didn’t like the police work. None of that bothered me.”

“So you took a chance,” I said.

He nodded. “And from the moment we made love, I knew I would do anything, anything, to be in your life.”

“You said that. It was one of the first things you ever said to me after we’d had sex. That you were my Nimir-Raj, and I was your Nimir-Ra, and you would do anything, be anything I needed, to be in my life.”

“I meant it.”

“I know you did.” I traced my finger down the side of his face. “Admittedly, it took me a while to realize that you really did mean it. That you would do anything, be anything I needed. What if I’d asked awful things of you, Micah? What would you have done?”

“You wouldn’t ask awful things of anyone.”

“But you barely knew me then.”

“I just had a feeling.”

I searched his expression, trying to see where that certainty had come from. His face was back to being peaceful but not empty. This was his peaceful I’m happy face.

“I would never have been able to trust a stranger like that.”

“We were never strangers, Anita. From the moment we touched, we weren’t strangers. Our bodies knew each other.”

I gave him the hard look, but he just laughed. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that isn’t how you felt, too.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and finally said, “So what? Not love at first sight, but love at first fuck?”

His face went all serious on me. “Don’t make fun of it, Anita.”

I had to look down then, sitting chastely on his thighs, and I had to look away. “I did feel it, that draw to your body, from the first time we touched. It’s just . . . I was raised believing that sex was bad, dirty. The fact that you got through all my defenses so quickly still sort of embarrasses me.”

He put his arms around me and scooted me higher up his lap, so I could feel that he was happy to have me there. Just feeling how hard he was, pressed against my thigh, made me catch my breath.

“Never be embarrassed about how your body re-acts, Anita. It’s a gift.” He slid his arm under my legs and stood up with me in his arms.

“I can walk,” I said.

“I want to carry you.”

I opened my mouth to tell him to put me down but didn’t. “Where are you carrying me to?”

“To the bed,” he said.

I tried not to smile, but it was a losing battle.

“Why?” Though I was pretty sure I knew why.

“So we can have sex, lots and lots of sex, and when we’ve had as much sex as we can stand, you can drop your shields and feed the ardeur now, early, so it doesn’t try to rise while we’re surrounded by FBI agents.” He started carrying me toward the bed again. He carried me easily, smoothly, even though there probably wasn’t twenty pounds’ difference in our weight.

I said the only thing I could think of. “You do know how to sweet-talk a girl.”

He grinned at me. “Well, I could have said that I plan on fucking you until you’re unconscious, but then you’d just think I was bragging.”

“I’ve never passed out during sex,” I said.

“There’s got to be a first time,” he said. And we were at the foot of the bed now.

“Talk is cheap,” I said.

He threw me on the bed. Threw me suddenly and far enough that I did that squeaky girlish scream when I bounced on the bed. My pulse was in my throat suddenly. He had his tie undone and was working on the buttons of his shirt. “Bet I’ll be naked first.”

“No fair,” I said. “I’ve got the shoulder holster to get off.”

He was pushing the silk suspenders off his shoulders and pulling his shirt out of his pants. “Then you better hurry.”

I hurried.

CHAPTER
7

Micah lay back on the bed while I was still struggling out of my clothes. Seeing him naked against the pillows and the gold and white of the bedspread made me stop and stare. And, no, I didn’t only stare at his groin. How could I stare at just one thing when all of him was lying there?

He didn’t look that muscular clothed. You had to see him at least mostly naked to appreciate the fine play of muscle in his arms, chest, stomach, legs. Clothed, he looked delicate, especially for a man. Nude, he looked strong and somehow more . . . more something that clothes stole from him. His tan was dark against the cream of the bedspread, making his body stand out like it had been drawn there. His shoulders were wide, his waist and hips narrow. He was built like a swimmer, but it was his natural shape, not from any particular sport that he did.

I missed the spill of his hair around his face, but he’d left it in its braid, and I didn’t tell him to take it down. Sometimes it was good not to have all that hair flying loose. It could get in the way.

I let my gaze settle last on the swell of him, so hard, so long. Long enough that he could touch his own belly button without using his hands. Thick enough that I couldn’t get finger and thumb completely around him when he was at his thickest. I came back up to his face and met those eyes, the delicate curve of his face.

“You are so beautiful,” I said.

He smiled. “Shouldn’t that be my line?”

I pulled at the garter belt. “You want me to leave this and the hose on, or take them off?”

“Can you get the underwear off without the garter coming off?” he asked.

I put my thumbs under the edge of the lace panties and slipped them off. Jean-Claude had broken me of wearing the panties on the inside. He said that was only for looks. For real, you put the panties on last, so they can come off first. I didn’t say that out loud, because I wasn’t sure Micah really wanted to be reminded right now that I was having sex with other men. He shared well and didn’t seem to mind, but talking about another lover in the midst of sex just seemed bad form.

I stood there for a moment in nothing but the garter belt, the hose, and the heels. I stood there until his eyes filled with that darkness that men’s eyes fill with in the moment they realize you won’t say no. There is something of possession in that look, something that says mine. I can’t explain it, but I’ve seen enough to know that all men do it, at least part of the time. Do women have a look that’s similar? Maybe. Did I? Without a mirror I might never know.

He crawled across the bed to me and said, “Come here.” His hand wrapped around my wrist, pulling me against the bed, but I had to climb up on it, had to let him help pull me onto it.

He led me until we crawled to the head of the bed. He pulled me onto all those pillows. So many pillows, so high, that I was propped up against them. I was almost sitting up. Almost.

I expected Micah to lie down with me, but he didn’t.

He knelt and said, “Bend your knees.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what he had in mind, but I bent my knees firmly together, curling my legs, heels and all, against the front of my body. It felt very posed, but the smile on his face made it worth it. The smile said that I’d done exactly what he wanted me to do. He laid his hands on the top of the hose and ran them down that silky length until his hands curled around my ankles. He spread my legs with his hands on my ankles, spread me wide. He put my feet in the high heels to either side, knees bent. Apparently my legs weren’t quite wide enough, because he spread them just a little wider.

He leaned back from me on his knees and just looked down at me. “Wow,” he said, and his voice came out in a hoarse growl. An innocent word, said in a tone that made it anything but innocent.

“God, what a view.” And his voice was still that low, growling bass, as if it should have hurt to talk. He trailed his hands down my thighs until he ran out of hose and traced fingertips along my bare thighs. He slid his hands under my buttocks, cupping my ass. He lay down with his hands still cupped under my body. He propped himself up on his elbows and stared up the length of my body at me.

My voice was breathy. “That’s why you kept the braid in.”

“Yes,” he whispered, and began to lower his face down toward me, the way you’d move in slowly for a kiss. He hesitated. “The angle’s not quite right.” He lifted me up, as if he could hold me forever in his hands like an offering to himself. My feet came off the bed with his lifting. I was left with the choice of either holding my own legs up with my hands or putting my feet around Micah. If I hadn’t been wearing high heels I wouldn’t have worried about it, but the heels were not meant to stab into someone’s back. Nathaniel might have enjoyed it, but Micah wouldn’t.

He licked between my legs and the sensation stole my thoughts, my words, and my good intentions. I put my legs around his body. The shoes ended up resting on his lower back, the toes on the swell of his buttocks, the tip of the heels pressed into his back.

I waited for him to protest, but he didn’t. He slid his face between my thighs, plunged his mouth into me, against me, over me. He kissed between my legs as if it were my mouth. Exploring with lips, tongue, and, lightly, teeth. He kissed me as if I could kiss him back, and the sensation of it made me move my hips against him, so that it became like a kiss. A kiss of his mouth between my legs, my hips rolling up to his mouth, my thighs pressing against his face, my heels digging into his back.

I felt a spasm pass up his body, shivering up his back, his shoulders, to his hands, making his fingers tighten around my ass.

He raised up enough to talk, his mouth shining. His voice was breathy, strained. “I can’t decide if the heels feel amazing, or just hurt. Can we lose them?”

I scraped one shoe off on the bedspread and used that foot to push the other shoe off. I put my feet back on his back, feeling the warmth and swell of him through the hose. “All you had to do was ask.” My voice was breathless and lower than normal. It’s called a bedroom voice for a reason.

He smiled at me and lowered his face slowly downward. He kept his gaze on my face as he slid between my thighs. Those chartreuse eyes rolled up to me as he licked between my legs, so that it gave the illusion that his face ended with the green-gold of his eyes.

“God, Micah, I love your eyes like that.”

He growled, and the sound of it vibrated across my skin. It made me cry out, head back, eyes closed. The growl turned to a purr as he drew the most intimate part of me deeper into his mouth. That purring growl sang across my skin, vibrating, building. He drew as much of me into his mouth as he could and sucked as hard and fast as he could.

That heavy, delicious warmth began to build between my legs. Micah drew that warmth, that weight of pleasure with his mouth, drawing it out and out, more and more, building it with every movement of his lips, every caress of his tongue, until with one last flick of his tongue he brought me. That weight burst over me in a rush of warm pleasure that pulsed through me, over me, again and again as if as long as Micah sucked, the pleasure would never stop. I was left gasping, eyes fluttered shut, boneless, helpless. I was wrecked, ruined, drowned in the pleasure of it. I felt the bed move, felt Micah over me. I tried to open my eyes, but the best I could do was flutter them enough to see light and shadows.

“Anita,” he said, voice soft, “are you all right?”

I tried to say yes, but no sound came out. I could think it, but that was as far as I got.

“Anita, say something. Blink if you can hear me.”

I managed to blink, but even when my eyes fluttered open, I still couldn’t focus. The world was blurred colors. I put up a thumb to let him know I was okay, because talking was still too hard.

He leaned close enough that I could see his face clearly. “Now I’m going to fuck you,” he said.

I managed to whisper, “Yes, please, yes.”

CHAPTER
8

He put his hands under my thighs and pulled me off the mound of pillows. Pulled me so that my lower body was flat to the bed, but my upper body was still a little propped up. He put a finger inside of me, just a finger, but the sensation of it writhed me across the bed, made me cry out.

“So wet, but so tight. You’re always so tight after I do you by mouth.”

He was kneeling between my legs, his body so hard, so ripe, so ready. I said the only thing I was thinking.

“Fuck me, Micah, fuck me.”

“You’re tight, Anita, really tight.”

I raised up on my elbows. “But wet. I’m so wet. You’ve made me so wet.”

He licked his lips and swallowed. I could see his pulse jumping in his throat. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“If it hurts, I’ll say so.”

He looked down at me, and his face didn’t look lustful now; it looked nervous, uncertain. I knew he wanted to try to shove himself inside me, but he was afraid to. How many women had hurt him? How many had told him he was a freak, a monster, simply because he was so very male? I sat up enough to wrap my hand around the hard length of him. Just holding it in my hand threw my head back, made me cry out. I stared at him, knowing my eyes were wild, squeezing my hand around him until his head went back, his eyes rolled into his head.

I slid my hand up over him, caressing the soft, luscious head. I leaned back on my elbows, looking at him. “Fuck me, Micah. Fuck me before I stop having little spasms inside me. You made me so wet, so tight, my body is still having little mini orgasms. I want you inside me while my body is still spasming.”

He bent over and kissed me, his mouth still wet from me, still tasting like meat and that fresh taste, almost like rain. People can make fish jokes, but not every woman tastes the same.

He drew back from the kiss, kept himself propped up on his arms. But his body was already pushing against me.

Feeling the weight of him against me made me fall back against the bed. He kept his body above mine so I could see every inch of him as he began to try to push his way inside me.

I was wet enough, but he was so wide, so very wide, that he had to ease his way in, and even easing had a level of force to it. He had to force his way in. If I’d released the ardeur, I would have been more open, more ready for him. The ardeur alone without much foreplay could make my body ready, eager, and more open. But we both wanted me tight, both wanted to feel him fight his way inside me.

The tip vanished inside me, with so much left still. Watching him push inch by inch inside me made me cry out, made my body rise up, so that my hands went around my own thighs. So that I held my legs up and made my body a little ball. So I could see, and feel, all of it.

Halfway through his eyes closed, and he stopped moving, head down. His voice came strained. “So wet. God, so tight. You keep gripping me with your body. It’s like the farther in I push, the more you spasm. Just me pushing inside you, causing small orgasms.”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice was breathy, it was eager. “Yes, the sensation of you inside me, when I’m this tight, this wet. It’s amazing. Oh, God, Micah, don’t stop, don’t stop.”

He raised his face up then and met my eyes. He searched my face as if he thought I was lying to him.

“You’re serious?”

“Yes, God, yes.”

“You’re wet enough, but we’ve never tried this when you were this tight, Anita.” Eagerness fought in his eyes with worry. “I can push in faster, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

I stared into his face and said what I was thinking. “I don’t know whose ghost you’re fighting right now, but it’s not me. Whoever you thought you hurt, it wasn’t me. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me the way we both want you to.”

I watched him decide with our faces inches apart, our bodies already wedded to each other. I watched him decide. His hips moved forward, shoved himself inside me. I’d told him to stop being careful. He took me at my word.

He shoved himself inside me, fought to push his hardness inside me, as far and as fast as he could. I was too tight and he was too wide for speed, but whereas before when he felt resistance he’d hesitated, now he shoved harder. My body resisted, and his body crashed through. He shoved all that hard, wide meat inside me. He forced his way in, while my body was still trying to figure out if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

On one hand it felt amazing, so hard, so long, so wide, and all inside me. God, it felt good. It flung me back against the bed, tore screams of pleasure from my mouth. It made me writhe around him, wriggling and struggling, caught between orgasm and my body telling me that maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. About the time I thought, Too much, too wide, slow down, and actually drew breath to say it, the orgasm stopped being spasms and was suddenly full-blown. It caught me off guard as a lot of intercourse orgasms did. It turned almost-pain to unbelievable pleasure. It made me throw my body around him, over him, fling my upper body against the pillows, over and over again like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I writhed and screamed, and fought, and danced under him. And he shoved himself as far inside me as he could, hitting the end of me when there was still some of him yet to go.

He drew himself out of me, and it rubbed, because orgasm was tightening me around him, trying to hold on to all of him as he pulled back out. He began to shove himself inside again as far and hard as the tightness would let him. He fought his way in and out, while I writhed and screamed. I had to hold on to something. My hands found his shoulders, his arms, and drew blood down them. Too much pleasure, too many sensations, as if all that pleasure spilled out of me in the blood that ran down his body.

His voice came gasping. “Feed the ardeur soon, Anita, please. God, soon. I’m not going to last much longer.” I’d forgotten what we were doing. I’d forgotten about the ardeur. I’d forgotten everything but the sex. It took only a thought, and the ardeur was suddenly there. But I was too far gone in orgasm, pleasure, our bodies. Always before, the ardeur had felt like more, like its own presence, but now it was only another part of the sex. It was like an extra layer of heat added to a bonfire that was already burning down the room.

It tore sounds from my throat, raked my nails down Micah’s back, and only then did I realize he was on top of me, not above me, but pressed on top of me in a more standard missionary position. I hadn’t remembered when he changed position.

The ardeur had opened me to him, and he was finally able to shove himself in and out of me, not fighting my body now but sliding in and out. He came to the end of me before his thrust was finished, but there was no more of me, nowhere else for him to go. He raised up on his arms for a moment so I could gaze down my body at the meat of him going inside me, over and over and over, and the orgasm was almost, almost, almost. I could feel his body changing rhythm, feel that he was close. The ardeur couldn’t feed off of Micah until he orgasmed. He was too dominant, too controlled; only orgasm let his shields down enough to be food for me.

He cried out above me, his hips doing one last thrust that brought me screaming off the bed, bowing my back, closing my eyes. I screamed for him a long time after he had finished, and he lay on top of me, trying to relearn how to breathe. I screamed and writhed underneath him, still caught in the aftershocks of what we’d done.

When he could move, he pulled out of me, and that made me writhe again, but almost as soon as he was out the ache began. That the endorphins had begun to fade that fast meant I’d be sore later. But it was the kind of sore I didn’t mind. The kind of sore that would be like a keepsake, that I could take out and look at and remember what we’d done. I’d remember the pleasure of it with every ache between my legs.

Micah lay oddly, half on his stomach, half on his side. The arm that was toward me was bleeding. He’d have his own aches and pains to remember this by. He moved, propping himself up on his elbows, and I saw his back.

I gasped and said, “Jesus, Micah, I’m sorry.”

He winced. “The nails don’t usually hurt this soon after great sex.”

I nodded. “When the endorphins go quick, you know you’re hurt.” His back looked like he’d been attacked by something with more claws than I had.

“Are you hurting?” he asked.

“A little ache.”

He gave me serious eyes. “When I drew out, there was blood. Not much, but some.”

“We’ve had color before,” I said.

“Yeah, but that’s usually near your period. This isn’t.” His face was serious again. That shadow of old memories, old girlfriends in his eyes.

“How does your back feel?” I asked.

He grinned for me. “It hurts.”

“Do you regret it?”

He shook his head. “God, no, it was a-fucking-mazing.”

“Ask me how I feel,” I said.

“Did I hurt you?”

“I ache already, which means a little.” I touched his face before he could look away. “Now ask me if I regret it.”

He gave me that sad, mixed smile of his. “Do you regret it?”

“God, no,” I said. “You were a-fucking-mazing.”

He smiled then, and it was a real smile. I watched the ghosts fade from his eyes until there was nothing but warm pleasure left.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you so much.”

“And I love you.”

He looked down at the bedspread, which was a little worse for wear. “I better get up off this before we get more blood on it.” He got to his feet, steadying himself on the edge of the bed as if his legs weren’t quite working yet. I couldn’t have walked if a fire alarm had gone off, so I sympathized.

There were spots of blood here and there, almost outlining the upper part of his body. There was also a spot of crimson where his lower body had been pressed to the bedspread. White had been a bad choice for it. I pushed myself up enough to look down at my own body. There was blood between my legs and a little on the bedspread below my body. “Think the maid will call the cops?” I asked.

He started a shaky walk toward the door. I think he was headed for the bathroom. “Not if we tip her enough.” He caught the door as if he’d have fallen without it.

“Careful,” I said.

He leaned against the door for a moment, then looked at me. “You make everything all right for me, Anita. You make me feel like a human being instead of a monster.”

“And you love all of me, Micah, every last hard-boiled, ruthless bit of me. You make it okay that sometimes I am the monster. You know what I do, and you still love me.”

“You’re not a monster, Anita”—he grinned at me—“but you are ruthless. But then I like that in a girl.” He went toward the bathroom still a little shaky but moving better. I settled back on the bed and waited for my knees and thighs to work enough to walk. I might as well get comfortable; it was going to be a while before I could move.

CHAPTER
9

Philly was a pretty city, what little I’d seen of it. The visit so far had consisted of the airport and the hotel room and some amazing sex. We could have been anywhere. The cemetery reminded me that the city was in one of the thirteen original colonies. It was old, that cemetery. It breathed its age and the age of its dead. Breathed it along my skin the moment we stepped out of Fox’s car. Once, a cemetery this old would have been peaceful for me. Too old to have ghosts, maybe a few shivery spots if you walked directly over a grave, but mostly the dead here would be inert, earth to earth, dust to dust, and all that. But now the dead called to me, even through my shielding.

Theoretically, no one could raise the long dead without a human sacrifice. I probably held the record for oldest without one, but even two-hundred-plus years dead should have been beyond me. So why, lately, did the long dead whisper power across my skin?

I shivered, but it wasn’t from the early November cold. In fact, I was too warm in the leather jacket. Micah was suddenly at my side. He helped me slip the jacket off, whispering, “Are you all right?”

I nodded. I was all right, better than all right. Standing there in the power-kissed darkness was intoxicating. It was as if my skin were drinking magic from the very air. Which, with necromancy, wasn’t possible.

Micah asked Fox if we could put the jacket back in the car. I didn’t wait to hear what Fox said; I was already walking out into the dark. I absently trailed my fingers along the weathered tops of the tombstones as I walked between them.

Old cemeteries are crowded things. The ground was smooth and rough, but there was no longer much to differentiate ground from grave, so that I walked one step on the ground, then on the second step walked over a grave. You know the old saying Someone walked over my grave? This was like the reverse of that. I didn’t feel bad, or shaky, or scared. With every grave I walked over, I felt better, steadier, more confident. I took a little energy from every body I passed over, no matter how old. I could have drunk in the power of the dead underneath me and done . . . Done what?

The thought stopped me literally in my tracks. What I hadn’t realized was that Franklin was following me, close. I hadn’t even known he was there.

He ran into me, or nearly. He had to grab my arms to keep from smacking into the back of me. It startled both of us. He apologized before I’d finished turning around.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were . . . stopping.” He sounded breathless and way more upset than he should have been.

I was left staring up at him, wondering why he was nervous. Then I saw what he was doing with his hands. He was running them up and down the sleeves of his trench coat, as if he’d touched something and was trying to wipe it off. He wasn’t being insulting. I doubt he even realized he was doing it. I might have done the same thing if I’d touched someone else’s magic unexpectedly. It was like walking through metaphysical cobwebs; you had to brush it off. He had felt at least some of the power I was getting off the graves.

I might have asked Franklin why he’d been hiding that he was psychic, but Fox and Micah came up to us, and somehow I didn’t think Franklin would want me being that insightful in front of them. Had he told the FBI that he was talented? I was betting not. It had been a plus in only the last two, three years tops. Before that they looked at it as a psychological disorder. You didn’t get to be a federal agent with a psychological disorder.

It did explain why he had a serious dislike of me. If he was hiding what he was, he wouldn’t want to be around someone who complemented his talents, whatever they might be. No, if you were hiding, you didn’t want to be around people who were out of the broom closet, as it were.

“Is there a problem?” Fox asked.

Franklin said, “No, no problem,” a little too fast.

I just shook my head, still looking up at the taller man.

I don’t think Fox believed us, but he let it go. We weren’t talking, so he was out of options. He gave us both a look, then said, “Then if there’s no problem, everyone is waiting for us.”

I nodded again, then thought to ask, “Is Rose’s grave the newest one in this cemetery?”

Fox thought about it, then nodded. “Yes, why?”

I smiled at him and knew that it was a dreamy smile, as if I were listening to music he couldn’t hear. “Just wanted to know what I was looking for, that’s all.”

“I can take you to the grave, Marshal. You don’t need to look for it.”

I wanted to look for it. I wanted to walk the cemetery a tombstone at a time and find it myself.

Micah answered for me. “That would be good, Fox. Lead the way.”

I looked at him and fought to make it friendly. He gave me a look in return that was a warning. In the dark, with all the trees around, I doubted anyone else could have seen his expression as clearly as I did. But we both had better-than-normal night vision, though I doubted mine could compare to his kitty-cat eyes. Those eyes were bare for all to see now. Too dark for his black-lensed sunglasses, but you’d be surprised how many people wouldn’t notice the strangeness of his eyes. Even in full light, a lot of people wouldn’t see his eyes for what they were. People see what they want to see, unless forced to see the truth.

I looked full into his eyes and read the warning there, the worry. Was I really all right? the look asked.

The truth was yes and no. I felt great, but it was the kind of great that could go south fast and hard. One minute fine, the next moment the power could do something unfortunate.

I took a deep breath and tried to center and ground, the way I’d been taught, but that was a skill I’d learned from a psychic and witch. Her talents ran to prophecy and empathy so finely tuned it was almost telepathy. She didn’t raise the dead. She didn’t truly understand my talent.

Drawing myself into the center of my body was great—I felt steadier, more myself and less power-fuzzed—but the moment I tried to ground all that power into the earth, to bleed some of it off, it turned. Turned so that it didn’t go deep but out and away. My power chased through the ground so that I sensed the graves, all the graves, like I was the center of a great wheel. The graves were the points along the spokes, and I knew them all. I didn’t drop my shields that I hid behind to keep the dead from bothering me. The shields were just not there.

I’d known that my power was growing, but I hadn’t truly understood what that might mean until right this second. I knew the dead in every grave here. I knew which still had a remnant of energy. What graves would have shivery spots if you walked over them, the last gasp of what had once been a ghost. Most of the graves were quiet, only bones and rags and dust. I’d been able to stand in a cemetery and do this for years. But what had changed was: one, I hadn’t done it on purpose, and two, every grave I touched was a little more energetic for my power having breathed over it. That was new.

“Stop it, Blake.” Franklin’s voice was tight with anxiety.

I looked at him. “Stop what?” I asked, but my voice was lazy with power.

“Don’t toy with him, Anita,” Micah said.

“I’m missing something,” Fox said.

I nodded. “Yeah, you are.” I could have let Franklin’s cat out of the bag, but I didn’t. I knew what it felt like to be different and to want nothing, absolutely nothing, as much as simply to be normal. I’d given up on that a long time ago. It wasn’t possible for me and never had been. Maybe it wouldn’t be possible for Franklin either, but that wasn’t my call. I did the only thing I could for him. I lied.

“When Franklin and I bumped into each other, he caught an edge of my power. It happens sometimes when my shields are down.” That was a lie. It happened only if your abilities were similar to mine in some way, or you were so strongly psychic in some other way that you would sense any strong psychic gift used near you. Either Franklin had abilities with the dead like mediumship, being able to talk with the recently departed. Or he was powerful in some other way. Naw. If he’d been that gifted, he wouldn’t have been able to hide it. I was betting that somewhere in his background was a family member who could talk to spirits. Someone he probably hated or was embarrassed about. You dislike most in others what you hate in yourself.

Fox said, “Is that right, Franklin? You bumped into the marshal.”

Franklin nodded. “Yes.” One word, no emotion to it, but the relief in his eyes was too raw. He turned away from Fox, from me, to hide those relieved eyes. He knew I knew, and he knew I’d lied for him. He owed me. I hoped he understood that.

Fox looked from one of us to the other, as if he suspected we were lying, or at least hiding something. He looked at Micah and got a shrug. Fox shook his head and said, “Fine.” He looked at us a heartbeat longer, then shook his head, as if he’d decided to let it go. “We’re going to be the last to arrive at graveside, Marshal Blake. I don’t want to leave the federal judge and the lawyers waiting too long in the middle of a cemetery, so I’ll lead the way. I think it will be faster that way.”

I couldn’t argue the faster part. “Then lead the way, Special Agent Fox.”

He gave me one more hard look. It was a good look, as those kinds of looks go. But if he thought I was going to break down and fess up because of a hard look, he was wrong. I gave him a pleasant, even eager face, but nothing helpful.

He sighed and settled his shoulders, as if his shoulder holster chafed. He started off through the cemetery. Franklin fell into line behind him without a backward glance.

Micah and I followed them. Micah had us drop back enough to whisper, “You’re having trouble controlling your power tonight, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

“Why?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“Then should you be raising the dead?”

“I think it will be one of the easier raisings I’ve ever done. There’s so much power.”

He grabbed my arm. “Do you even know that you’re touching every tombstone as you walk by it?”

I stood there with his hand on my arm and stared at him. “I’m what?”

“You’re caressing the tops of the tombstones like you’d stroke a hand through flowers in a field.”

I looked at the worry in his face and knew that he wasn’t lying, but . . . “Was I?”

“Yes,” he said, and his grip on my arm was suddenly almost painful.

“You’re hurting me,” I said.

“Does it help?”

I frowned at him, then realized what he meant. The small pain had pushed back the power. I could think about something other than the dead. My first clear thought was fear. “I don’t know what’s wrong tonight. I really don’t. I knew I was gaining abilities from the vampires, but I didn’t think it would bleed over to the zombie stuff. I mean, that’s my magic, not Jean-Claude’s, not Richard’s. Mine. Whatever happens metaphysically, it doesn’t usually mess with my basic talent.”

“Should you cancel tonight?” he asked.

I licked my lips, tasting the fresh lipstick I’d put on after we’d made love. I shook my head, moving into the circle of his arms. I hugged him. “If this is a new power level, then one night won’t make a difference.” I held him, breathing in the warm solidity of him.

“There’s always a learning curve to new abilities, Anita,” he whispered into my hair. “Even if that ability is only a stronger version of something else. Do we really want the learning curve to be on the FBI’s dime?”

He had a point, a good one, but . . . “I’ll be able to raise this zombie, Micah.”

“But what else will you raise?” he asked.

I drew back enough to see his face. “How did you understand that?”

“Isn’t that what you’re afraid of? Not that you can’t raise the dead, but that you’ll raise more than you were paid for?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” I shivered and drew away so I could rub my arms. “That’s exactly it.”

“The protective circle is usually to keep things out,” he said. “Right?”

I nodded again.

“Tonight, I think maybe it will be to keep you in.”

“So I don’t spread over more of the graves,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“They should have chickens waiting for me to slaughter. I know Larry would have told them to bring the livestock.”

Fox yelled, “Marshal, Callahan, are you coming?”

“We’ll be there in a minute,” Micah called. He leaned into me, hands on my arms. “Do you really think chicken blood will keep this contained?”

“Not their blood, but their lives, yes,” I said.

“I’m not sure adding fresh death to your magic tonight is a good idea.”

“What choice do I have, Micah? I can make a small cut in my arm or hand and use the blood, but I’m not sure what my blood touching the graveyard will do tonight. So much power tonight, it’s intoxicating.”

“Then use my blood,” he said.

I looked at him. “You’ve never shared blood for a zombie raising.”

“No, but I let Jean-Claude take blood from me. How much different can it be?”

There were many answers to that, but I settled for “A lot different. I can’t cloud your mind to make it not hurt.”

“It’s a little cut, Anita. I’m okay with it.”

I sighed and hugged him again. A lot of men will date you, and some will sleep with you, and a few are content to play second fiddle to your job, but how many will literally open a vein for you? Not many.

I gave him a quick kiss. “Let’s go raise Mr. Rose from the dead.”

He picked up the bag with all the zombie-raising paraphernalia in it. He’d carry it. After all, he was the assistant. He needed to look useful. We finished the walk to the grave hand in hand. Maybe it wasn’t professional, but I didn’t care anymore. Besides, once I cut his arm open with the machete, no one would complain that he wasn’t assisting me enough. No, they’d think he was more than earning his paycheck. The fact that he didn’t get paid to be my assistant would be our little secret.

CHAPTER
10

One of the things in the gym bag that Micah was holding was a machete longer than my forearm. Even with a badge I might have had trouble getting it on the plane, except for the magical artifact law. Magical practitioners who earned their living from their magical talent could not be denied access to their magical tools. They were to be treated the same way as crosses, or Stars Of David. The machete had had to go through checked baggage until the Supreme Court put through the exclusion act. Made it all so much more convenient for me.

We were introduced to everyone. I gave a special nod to the court reporter, the only other woman there. I spent a lot of time being the only woman everywhere I went. I’d begun to like having other women around. It made me feel less like a freak. The only girl in the all-boys club had begun to get a little lonely of late.

The lawyers on one side were unhappy with me from the moment they saw me. How relieved they must have been when Rose died quietly of natural causes before he could testify. Now here I was, about to bring him back from the dead so he could testify after all. What’s the world coming to when even the dead can testify in federal court?

Arthur Salvia was the head lawyer on the side that wasn’t happy to see me. His name sounded vaguely familiar, as if he’d been in the news for something, but I couldn’t place it. “Your honor, I must protest again. Mr. Rose died before he could testify in court. The testimony of a dead man is not admissible.”

“I get to say what is admissible, Mr. Salvia. You’ll get your chance to cross-examine the witness.” He frowned and turned to me. “That is correct, Ms. Blake? The zombie will be able to be cross-examined?”

I nodded, realized he might not have the night vision to see it, and said, “Yes, your honor. The zombie will be able to answer questions and respond to cross-examination.”

He nodded too, then said, “There, Mr. Salvia. You will get your chance to cross-examine Mr. Rose.”

“Mr. Rose is dead, your honor. I renew my objections to this entire proceeding—”

The judge held up his hand. “Heard and noted, Mr. Salvia, but save the rest of your objections for the appeal.”

Salvia settled back. He was not happy.

Micah leaned in very close to my ear and whispered, “He smells like fear.”

The lawyer for the accused was allowed to be nervous, but fear? That seemed a bit strong. Was he afraid of the graveyard and the whole zombie thing, or was it something else?

There was a wire mesh cage over to one side with a chicken in it. The bird clucked softly to itself, making the sleepy noises chickens make when they’re settling down for the night. The chicken wasn’t afraid. It didn’t know it had been brought to play blood sacrifice. Larry would have needed it. I didn’t. I’d discovered that I could use a little bit of my own blood to represent the sacrifice needed to raise the dead by accident. Or necessity, after Marianne, the woman who was helping me learn to control my metaphysical abilities, had gotten grief from her coven.

She hadn’t been Wiccan when I first started going to her. She’d just been psychic. Then she got religion, and suddenly she was asking if I could raise the dead without killing an animal. Something about her coven speculating that she, as my teacher, would take on some of my bad karma from doing death magic. So I tried. I could do it. The zombie wasn’t always as well put together, or as smart, but it still talked and could answer questions. Good enough for government work, as they say. But constantly having cuts all over my left hand and arm got old. I refused to cut my gun hand. It hurt, and I was beginning to run out of fresh places to cut. I decided that since I ate meat anyway, it wasn’t so different from slaughtering a few animals to do my job. But the whole experience had taught me that I could, if I had to, raise the newly dead without killing an animal. Very recently, I’d discovered that I didn’t need any blood to raise a zombie sometimes.

I guess I should have known I could, because I’d accidentally raised the dead when I was younger. A beloved dog that crawled out of the grave to follow me home; a college prof that committed suicide and came to my dorm room one night.

That should have told me that the blood wasn’t absolutely necessary, but I’d been taught zombie-raising by a man who needed the blood, needed the sacrifice, needed the herbal salve, and all of it. I’d done it the way I’d been taught, until recently.

I was saving the lives of a lot of livestock, but it wasn’t doing my nerves any good.

The judge asked in a voice that managed to be both friendly and condescending, “Could you explain what you’re about to do so we’ll understand what’s happening and for Elaine—Ms. Beck—to get it into the court record?” He motioned at the dark-haired woman at her little folding stool and table.

His request stopped me. In all the years I’d been raising the dead, no one had ever asked me to explain. Most people treated me like a dirty little secret. Something you may need to do, but you don’t want to know the details. Like sausage making. People love eating sausage, but they don’t want to know too many details about how it’s made.

I closed my mouth, then managed to say, “Fine.” Of course, since I’d never explained before, I wasn’t sure how to explain at all. How do you explain magic to people who don’t do magic? How do you explain psychic gifts to people who have none? Hell if I knew, but I tried.

“First we’ll do a circle of protection,” I said.

Salvia asked, “I have a question for Marshal Blake.”

“She’s not a witness, Mr. Salvia,” the judge said.

“Without her abilities, this testimony would be impossible to retrieve. Is that not true, your honor?”

The judge seemed to think about that for a second or two. “Yes, but all I’ve asked of the marshal is that she explain the mechanics of what she is about to do. That isn’t witness testimony.”

“No, but she is an expert witness, the same as any other forensic expert.”

“I’m not certain that an animator is a forensic expert, Mr. Salvia.”

“But she is an expert on raising the dead, correct?”

Again the judge thought about it. He saw the trap that his little request for an explanation for the court record had gotten us into. If I had information for the court record, then my information was suddenly open to questioning by the attorneys. Shit.

“I will concede that Marshal Blake is an expert on raising the dead.”

Laban, the head attorney for the other side, said, “I think we’ll all agree to that. What is the defense’s point?”

“If she’s an expert witness, then I should be able to question her.”

“But she’s not giving testimony,” the judge said. “She’s explaining what she’s doing so we’ll be able to follow along.”

“How is that different from collecting any other evidence?” Salvia said. “If she were any other expert, I would be allowed to question her methodology.”

I had to give it to him, he was making a point. A point that could keep us here for hours.

“Your honor,” I said, “may I ask Mr. Salvia a question?”

The judge gave me his long, considering look, then nodded. “I’ll allow it.”

I looked at the lawyer. He wasn’t that much taller than me, but he stood straight for every inch of it. So did I, but his stance was more aggressive, as if he were squaring himself for an attack. I guess in a way he was.

I’d testified in court a few times when a lawyer got clever and tried to win an appeal on a zombie who had said this will is real, not this one. I’d even been called into court for an insurance company that decided to appeal the zombie’s testimony on the grounds that the dead were not competent to give testimony. I’d stopped getting dragged into court to defend myself after I’d offered to bring the zombie into court to give open court testimony. The offer was accepted. And that was back in the days when my zombies actually looked more like the shambling dead than a person.

We’d all made the papers, and the media had made much of the fact that the mean ol’ company had traumatized the family a second time. In fact, it had been the beginning of a countersuit for mental distress. The insurance company would eventually pay more in the second suit than in the original life insurance claim. Everyone learned their lesson, and I got to stay in the cemetery and out of the courtroom. But I’d spent weeks being drilled with the argument that I was not a true forensic expert. Salvia was about to hear me spit that argument back at him.

“Mr. Salvia, would you say that most evidence is open to interpretation depending on which expert you get to interpret that evidence?”

He considered that for a moment. Most lawyers won’t answer questions fast, especially not in court. They want to think it through first. “I would agree with that statement.”

“If I was here to collect DNA or some other physical evidence, my actions might be open to scrutiny, because my method of collection could impact how reliable my evidence was, correct?”

Micah gave me a look. I shrugged at him. I could talk lawyer-speak up to a point, in a good cause. Getting us out of here before five a.m. was a good cause.

Salvia finally answered a cautious “I would agree. Which is why I need to question your methods, so I can understand them well enough to represent my client.”

“But, Mr. Salvia, what I’m about to do is not open to interpretation of any kind.”

He turned to the judge. “Your honor, she is refusing to explain her methods. If I don’t understand what the marshal is doing, then how will I be able to adequately defend my client?”

“Marshal Blake,” the judge said, “I’m sorry that I opened this issue with my request for information, but I can see the defense’s point.”

“For most experts, I would see his point, too, your honor, but may I make one more point before you rule on whether the defense gets to question my every move?”

“I won’t allow him to question your every move, Marshal,” he said with a smile that even by moonlight seemed self-satisfied. Or maybe I was just watching the entire night go up in questions, and that was making me grumpy. I’d never had to raise the dead while being questioned by hostile lawyers. It didn’t sound like a fun evening. “But I will allow you to make your point.”

“If I raise Emmett Rose from the dead tonight, you’ll be here to see it, right?”

“Are you speaking to me, Marshal Blake?” asked the defense lawyer.

“Yes, Mr. Salvia, I am speaking to you.” I fought to keep the impatience out of my voice.

“Could you repeat the question?” he asked.

I repeated it, then added, “If I fail to raise Emmett Rose from the dead tonight, you’ll be here to see that, too, right?”

I could see him frown even in the cooler darkness under the trees. “Yes.” But he said it slowly, as if he didn’t see the trap but suspected that there was one.

“I will either raise the zombie from this grave, or I will not. Correct, Mr. Salvia?”

“Your honor, what is Marshal Blake trying to get at?” Salvia asked.

“Do you concede that my raising Emmett Rose from the dead is either a yes or no question? Either he pops out of the grave, or he does not.”

“Yes, yes, I concede that, but I still don’t see—”

“Would you say that the zombie rising from the grave is open to interpretation?” I asked.

Salvia opened his mouth, closed it. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”

The judge said, “Marshal Blake has made her point. Either the zombie will rise from the grave, or it won’t. We will all be here to see the zombie either rise, or not rise. It isn’t open to interpretation, Mr. Salvia. Either she will do what she’s being paid for, or she won’t. It either works or it does not.”

“But the ritual she chooses to raise the dead could affect the ability of Mr. Rose to give intelligent testimony.”

The judge asked me, “Is that true? Marshal, could your choice of rituals affect the zombie?”

“Not the ritual. No, your honor. But the ability of the animator.” The moment that last bit left my mouth, I flinched. I should have stopped with “No, your honor.” Dammit.

“Explain the last part of that statement,” the judge said.

See, I’d said too much. Given them something to question and be confused by. I knew better than that.

“The greater the degree of power the animator has, and sometimes the more practice he or she has at raising the dead, the better their zombies are.”

“Better how?” he asked.

“More alive. The greater the power used, the more alive the zombie will appear. You’ll also get more of their personality, more of what they were like in life.”

Again, I’d overexplained. What was the matter with me tonight? The moment I thought it, I knew, or thought I knew. The dead were whispering to me. Not in voices—the true dead have no voices—but in power. It should have taken energy from me to raise a zombie. They shouldn’t have been offering power up to me, like some sort of gift. Power over the dead comes with a price, always. Nothing’s free with the dead.

Micah touched my arm. It startled me. I looked at him, and he said softly, “Are you all right?”

I nodded.

“The judge is talking to you.”

I turned back to the judge and apologized. “I’m sorry, your honor. Could you repeat what you just said?”

He frowned at me but said, “You seemed distracted just then, Marshal Blake.”

“I’m sorry, your honor. I’m just thinking about the job ahead.”

“Well, we’d like you to concentrate a little harder on this part of the proceedings before you rush ahead of us.”

I sighed, swallowed a half dozen witty and unhelpful things, and settled for, “Fine, what did you say that I missed?”

Micah touched my arm again, as if my tone might have been a little less than polite. He was right. I was getting angry. That old tension in my shoulders and along my arms was settling in.

“What I said, Marshal, was I was under the impression that only a blood sacrifice would give you that much life in a zombie.”

I thought better of the judge. He’d done some research, but not enough. “There’s always blood involved in raising the dead, your honor.”

“We understand that the FBI was requested to supply you with poultry,” he said.

Any normal human being would have said, Is that what the chicken is for? Court time is not the same as real time; it’s sort of like football time. What should take five minutes will take thirty.

“Yes, that is why the chicken was requested.” See, I could talk the long way ’round the mountain, too. If a question has a simple yes or no answer, then give that. Beyond yes or no questions, explain things. Don’t add, don’t embellish, but be thorough. Because you’re going to have to talk one way or the other. I preferred to give complete answers in the beginning rather than have my explanations be made longer on cross-examination.

“How does the chicken help you with this protective circle?” he asked.

“You normally behead the chicken and use its blood, its life energy, to help put up a protective circle around the grave.”

“Your honor,” Salvia again, “why does Marshal Blake need a protective circle?”

Laban, our friendly neighborhood prosecutor, said, “Is my esteemed colleague going to question every step of the ritual?”

“I think I have the right on behalf of my clients to ask why she needs a protective circle. One of my objections to this entire procedure was the worry that something else could animate the corpse, and what is raised will be merely Mr. Rose’s shell but with something else inside it. Some wandering spirit could—”

“Mr. Salvia,” Laban said, “your fanciful worries did not convince the judge to grant your motion. Why bring it up again?”

Truthfully, one of the reasons we put up protective circles was to keep wandering spirits, as Salvia put it, from animating the corpse. Though I’m not sure spirits were what I’d worry about. There were other things, nastier things, that loved getting hold of a corpse.

They’d use it for walking-around clothes until someone made them leave it, or until they’d so damaged it that the body no longer functioned well enough to be useful. I did not say this out loud. To my knowledge, no animator had volunteered this part of the reason for the protective circle. It would open too many legal problems when we were still striving to have animation be accepted as standard practice for court cases. The circle also helped raise power, and that was the main reason for it. The whole corpse-being-highjacked thing was so rare that I actually didn’t know anyone who had ever had it happen to one of their zombies. It was one of those stories that always seems to happen to the friend of your uncle’s cousin, who no one actually ever met. I wasn’t going to help Salvia keep us here all night.

“Mr. Laban is right,” the judge said. “There is nothing in the literature about zombies being taken over by alien energy.” His voice held distaste, as if Salvia had actually proposed some sort of alien possession theory.

For all I knew, he had. I guess if the prosecution’s star witness can be raised from the dead to testify, then the defense is allowed to look for unusual help, too. Aliens seemed a little far-fetched, but hey, I raise the dead for a living and slay vampires. I really couldn’t throw stones.

“Marshal Blake, once you have your protective circle, how much more ritual will you need?” I think the judge was tired of the delays, too. Good—me getting impatient didn’t help much. But the judge getting impatient—that could be very helpful.

I thought about it and was glad he’d phrased the question the way he had. How much ritual would I need? A very different question from, What comes next in animating the dead? Once the circle was up, I deviated so far from normal animating ritual that it was like comparing apples to watermelons.

“Not much more, your honor.”

“Can you be more exact?” he asked.

“I’ll call Emmett Rose from the grave. Once he’s above ground, then I’ll put blood on or in his mouth, and he’ll be able to answer questions very soon after that.”

“Did you say you put blood on the zombie’s mouth?” Salvia again.

“Yes.”

“You’re going to have the zombie suck on the chicken?” This from one of the agents who had been waiting with the judge.

We all looked at him, and he had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Not suck on the chicken, no. But I’ll spread the blood across the mouth.”

“Mr. Rose was a good Christian. Isn’t painting him up with chicken blood a violation of his religious freedom?” Salvia said.

The judge said, “As much as I appreciate your concern over Mr. Rose’s religious freedom, Mr. Salvia, I have to point out that he isn’t your client, and that the dead have no rights to violate.”

Of course, I had to add my two cents’ worth. I just couldn’t help myself. “Besides, Mr. Salvia, are you implying that you can’t be a good Christian if you sacrifice a few chickens and raise a few zombies?” The anger was creeping from my shoulders and into my voice. Micah started rubbing his hand up and down my arm, as if to remind me that he was there, and my temper was, too. But his touch did help make me think. I guess sometimes I needed an “assistant” for more than sex and blood. Sometimes I just needed a keeper.

I got a few startled looks. Salvia wasn’t the only one who’d assumed I wasn’t Christian. I don’t know why it still hurts my feelings, but it does. The judge said, “You may answer Marshal Blake’s question.” I was definitely not the only one sick of Salvia’s bitching.

“I didn’t mean to imply anything about your own religious beliefs, Marshal Blake. I apologize for assuming that you weren’t Christian.”

“Don’t worry about it, Salvia. Lots of people assume all sorts of shit about me.”

Micah whispered, “Anita.” One word, but enough.

I could have used the dead as an excuse, and it might even have been true, but the real reason was I’ve never held my temper well. I’m better sometimes, worse others, but it never takes long for me to get tired of assholes.

Salvia was pissing me off, and the judge with his Please explain the unexplainable, Marshal Blake wasn’t far behind in the pissing-me-off department.

“Sorry about that, your honor, but can we cut to the chase here?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by cutting to the chase, Marshal Blake.”

“Emmett Rose is the recently dead. I mean he hasn’t hit one year dead. It’s an easy job, your honor. A little blood, a little power, and voilà, a zombie. He’ll be able to answer questions. He’ll be able to be cross-examined. He’ll do everything you want him to be able to do. Having experienced Mr. Salvia’s questioning technique, I think the cross-examination may last a long damned time. So in the interest of all of us not spending the entire bloody night in the cemetery, can I please get on with it?”

Franklin made a noise low in his throat. Fox was shaking his head. I knew I was fucking it up but I couldn’t seem to stop. I wanted out of this cemetery. I wanted away from the graves and their promise of power. I needed my circle of protection up now, not an hour from now. My head would stop echoing with half-heard whispers like words from a distant room. Or a radio station turned down low. I could almost hear the voices, almost hear the dead. I shouldn’t have been able to do that. They weren’t ghosts. The quiet dead are just that, quiet.

“I will remind you, Marshal, that this is still a court of law. I can hold you in contempt.”

Micah turned me to him and drew me into a hug. His breath was warm against my face. “Anita, what’s wrong?”

I felt movement at my back a moment before Fox asked quietly, “Are you all right, Blake?”

I leaned into Micah. His arms held me, tight and almost fierce, as if he would press me out the other side of his body. He whispered against my face, “What is wrong, Anita? What is it?”

I grabbed on to him and pressed as much of him against me as I could, so that we were plastered against each other, as close as we could get with clothes on. I buried my face against the side of his neck, drawing in the warm, sweet scent of his skin. Soap, the slight sweetness of his cologne, and underneath that the scent of his skin. The scent of Micah. And underneath that, that faint, neck-ruffling scent of leopard. The moment I smelled it, I felt better. That musky, almost-sharp scent of leopard helped chase back the almost-voices of the dead.

“Do you want me to hold you in contempt, Marshal Blake?” The judge’s voice dragged me back from Micah’s skin, pulled me away from falling into the warmth and life of him.

I barely turned my head to look at the judge, but it felt like some huge physical wrenching. The moment I couldn’t bury my face in Micah’s skin, the voices were back. The dead were trying to talk to me. They shouldn’t have been doing that. Ghosts would sometimes do that if they couldn’t find a medium to speak with, but once you were in a grave, you weren’t supposed to be this lively.

I looked at the judge and tried to explain what was happening without giving Salvia more ammunition to delay things. “Your honor—” And I had to clear my throat to make my voice reach him only a few yards away. I tried again, pressing Micah’s body against mine. Even with everything that was going wrong, I could feel his body beginning to respond to my nearness. We had that effect on each other. It didn’t bring on the ardeur or distract me. Feeling his body respond helped me think, helped me feel alive.

“Your honor, I need my protective circle up sooner rather than later.”

“Why?”

“This is another tactic to rush these proceedings,” Salvia said.

“As you’re trying to delay them?” Laban said. Never good when the lawyers start sniping at each other.

“Enough,” the judge said, and then he looked at me. “Marshal Blake, why is it so important that you get your protective circle up?”

“The dead feel my power, your honor. They are, even now, trying to. . .” I sought a word that wouldn’t be too much. If I said, talk, they might ask what the dead were saying, and it wasn’t like that.

Micah answered for me. “The circle isn’t to protect the zombie, your honor. In this case it’s to protect Anita, Marshal Blake. She let her psychic shields down when we entered the cemetery, and she’s being overwhelmed by the dead.”

Fox said, “Shit,” as if he understood more about that whole shielding thing than most people did.

“Was that wise, Marshal Blake, to let down your protection so early?”

I answered, “This is a very old cemetery, your honor. Since I replaced Marshal Kirkland at the last minute, I didn’t realize how old. There is a remote chance in a place this old that there might be problems that would affect the raising. It’s standard practice to drop shields and let my power search the cemetery when I’m this unfamiliar with the area.” What I was saying was half-true. I was not going to admit that my shields had been ripped away by my own growing abilities.

“Search for what?” the judge asked.

“Sometimes very old cemeteries, especially those that haven’t been used in a while, like this one, can become unconsecrated. It’s like they need to be re-blessed before they qualify as consecrated ground again.”

“And that would affect the zombie how?”

Micah’s arms relaxed minutely, so that we were still holding each other but not pressed so fiercely against each other. He was right—we were going to be here awhile. I relaxed into his arms.

“Well, it could mean there were ghouls in the cemetery, and they’re attracted to the freshly dead. They would have burrowed into the new grave and eaten Mr. Rose by now. There might, or might not, have been left enough of him for him to be able talk to you.”

“Ghouls, really?” He started to ask something else, but I think it was only curiosity and not the case, because he shook his head and frowned. “Did you sense any ghouls?”

“No, your honor.” The fact that I’d actually dropped shields more by accident than design would be our little secret. I’d told the truth about the ghouls, but they hadn’t been why my power danced out over the graves.

“All very interesting, Marshal,” Salvia said, “but your shields being down doesn’t change that you are trying to rush these proceedings.”

I turned in Micah’s arms enough to give Salvia the look he deserved. He must have had bad night vision, because he didn’t flinch. Franklin did, and it wasn’t even directed at him.

“And what do you hope to gain by delaying things, Salvia?” I asked. “What difference does it make to your clients whether Rose rises now or two hours from now? It’s still going to happen tonight.”

Micah leaned his face against my ear and spoke just barely above a breath. I don’t think he wanted to risk anyone else hearing. “His fear spiked. He is delaying for a reason.”

I turned and breathed against his ear, “What could he hope to gain by an hour delay?”

Micah nuzzled my ear and whispered, “I don’t know.”

“Are we interrupting the two of you?” Laban this time.

One of the agents muttered, “Get a room.”

Great, we were going to piss everyone off. If I’d been working with police that I knew, I might have told them that the shapeshifter with me knew Salvia was lying and delaying with purpose, but over-sharing with the police—any flavor—isn’t always wise. Besides, Fox had no reason to believe us, and even if he did, what good would it do us? Maybe Salvia didn’t like cemeteries or zombies. A lot of people didn’t. Maybe he was only delaying the moment when the walking dead rose from the grave. Maybe.

“Your honor,” I said, turning only enough to give them my face but keeping most of me in Micah’s arms. The warmth and pulse of him helped me think. The whispers of the dead couldn’t push past the life of him. He had become my shield. “Your honor, I would love it if you would stop the arguing and let me raise Mr. Rose from the dead. But if that isn’t possible, can I at least put up the circle of protection? Mr. Salvia will still be able to question me, but I will not have to cling to Mr. Callahan quite so tightly.”

Micah whispered, “Aww.”

It made me smile, which probably didn’t help convince the judge I was serious, but it made me feel better.

“What does a protective circle have to do with why you are clinging to Mr. Callahan?” the judge asked.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“No one here is too terribly stupid, Marshal. Try us.” Maybe the judge was also getting impatient with everybody.

“The dead are crowding me. Burying myself against my assistant helps remind me of the living.”

“But you are alive, Marshal. Isn’t that enough?”

“Apparently not, your honor.”

“I have no objection to you putting up your circle of protection, Marshal.”

“I object,” Salvia said.

“On what grounds?” the judge asked.

“It is only another ploy to rush these proceedings.”

The judge sighed loud enough for all of us to hear it. “Mr. Salvia, I think these proceedings have been delayed enough tonight. We are all past worrying about them being rushed.” He looked at the watch on his wrist, one of those timepieces with glowing hands. “It is now after three in the morning. If we do not hurry this along, dawn will get here before the marshal gets to do her job. And we will have all wasted our night for nothing.” The judge looked at me. “Raise your circle, Marshal.”

The bag was on the ground where Micah had dropped it when he grabbed for me. I let loose of him enough to kneel by it. The moment I wasn’t pressed against him, that breathing, whispering presence was stronger. I was gaining strength from the dead, but they were also gaining something from me. I didn’t understand entirely what that something was, but we needed to stop it. The circle would do that.

The only thing we needed for the circle was the machete. I pulled it out, and the moment the blade bared in the moonlight, people gasped. I guess it was a big blade, but I liked big blades.

I laid the machete on top of the gym bag and shrugged out of the suit jacket. Micah took it from me without being asked. He’d never actually helped me at a zombie raising. I realized that when I’d told the lawyers and agents what was about to happen, I’d been telling him, too. Funny, he was such a big piece of my everyday life that I had forgotten that this other big piece was something he’d never seen. Did I take Micah for granted? I hoped not.

Removing the suit jacket had left my shoulder holster and gun very naked. With normal clients I might have kept the jacket on, because guns spooked people, but the clients were the FBI—they were okay around guns. Besides, the jacket was new and I didn’t want to get blood on it. I should have been cold in the autumn night, but the air was too full of magic. Since I was dealing with the dead the magic should have been cool, but tonight it was warm. Warm the way almost all other magic is warm.

Salvia said, “Do you need a gun to raise the dead?”

I guess even when working for the FBI there are still civilians to placate. I gave Salvia a look and couldn’t quite make it friendly. “I’m a federal marshal and a vampire executioner, Mr. Salvia. I don’t go anywhere unarmed.”

I picked up the machete in my right hand and was holding out my other arm when Micah grabbed my right wrist.

I looked at him. “What are you doing?” I asked, and I couldn’t keep the unhappy tone out of my voice. Keeping it from being hostile was hard enough.

He leaned in, speaking low. “Didn’t we already discuss this, Anita? You’re using my blood for the circle, right?”

I blinked at him. It actually took me a few seconds to understand what he meant. The fact that it took any time at all to see his logic meant that there was something going on with the dead in the ground that shouldn’t have been happening. My power easing through the cemetery had done something to the graves. If I put my blood on the ground, what more would that do? But there was something in me, or at least in my magic, that wanted that deeper connection. My magic, for lack of a better word, wanted to pour my blood along the ground and bring the dead to some kind of half-life. Would it make them ghosts? Would they be zombies? Ghouls? What the hell was happening with my power lately? No answers, because there was no one living to ask. Vampires had made it standard policy to kill necromancers. Raise a zombie if you want to, talk to a few ghosts, but necromancers of legend could control all undead. Even the vamps. They feared us. But standing there with Micah’s hand on my wrist, I felt the energy from the graves almost visible in the air. That energy was wanting the blood, wanting what would happen next.

Franklin’s voice came strangled from the dark. “Don’t do it, Blake.”

I looked at him. He was rubbing his arms, as if he felt that press of power. Fox was looking at him, too. I hadn’t outed Franklin, but if he wasn’t careful tonight, he was going to do it himself.

“I won’t do it,” I said.

Franklin’s eyes were too wide. The last time I’d seen him had been over the bloody remains of a serial killer’s victim. Did the newly dead talk to him? Was he able to see souls, too? Maybe it wasn’t me he hadn’t liked in New Mexico. Maybe it was his own untrained gifts.

I turned back to Micah. “Your turn.”

I saw the tension in Micah’s shoulders ease. He released my wrist, and I let the machete point at the ground. He smiled. “Which arm do you want?”

I smiled and shook my head. “You’re right-handed, so left. Always better to use the nondominant hand for it.”

I looked back at Fox. “If you could hold the jackets for Micah?”

Fox took them from him without a word. A very cooperative man, especially for FBI. They tended to argue, or at least question more. Micah took off his own suit jacket and laid it on top of the growing pile in Fox’s arms.

Micah’s shirt had French cuffs, which meant he had to undo a cuff link before he could roll up his left sleeve. He put the cuff link in his pant’s pocket.

“What are you doing, Marshal Blake?” the judge asked.

“I’m going to use Mr. Callahan’s blood to walk the circle.”

“Use his blood?” This was from Beck, the court reporter, and her voice was several octaves higher than when she’d said hello.

The judge looked at her as if she’d done something unforgivable. She apologized to him, but her fingers never stopped typing on her little machine. I think she’d actually taken down her own surprised comment.

I wondered if the dirty look from the judge got recorded, or if only out-loud sounds counted.

“My understanding is that if you were going to use the chicken, you would behead it,” the judge said in his deep courtroom voice.

“That’s right.”

“I assume you aren’t going to behead Mr. Callahan.” He made it sort of light, almost joking, but I think that his prejudice was showing. I mean, if you’ll raise the dead, what other evil are you capable of? Maybe even human sacrifice?

I didn’t take it personally. He’d been polite about it; maybe I was just being overly sensitive. “I’ll make a small cut on his arm, smear the blade with the blood, and walk the circle. I may have him walk beside me, so I can renew the blood from the wound as we move around the circle, but that’s all.”

The judge smiled. “I thought we should be clear, Marshal.”

“Clear is good, your honor.” I left it at that. The nights when I would have gotten insulted because people hinted that all animators did human sacrifice were past. People were afraid of what I did. It made them believe the worst. The price of doing business was that people thought you did awful, immoral things.

I’d cut other people before, used their blood to help me or combine with mine, but I’d never held their hand while I did it. I stood on Micah’s left side and interlaced the fingers of our left hands together so that our palms touched. I stretched his arm out and laid the blade’s edge against the smooth, untouched skin of his arm.

The underside of my left arm looked like Dr. Frankenstein had been at me. Micah’s was smooth and perfect, untouched. I didn’t want to change that.

“I’ll heal,” he said softly. “It’s not silver.”

He was right, but . . . I simply did not want to hurt him.

“Is there a problem, Marshal?” the judge asked.

“No,” I said, “no problem.”

“Then can we move things along? It’s not getting any warmer out here.”

I turned to look at him. He was huddled in his long coat. I glanced down at my own bare arms, not even a goose bump in sight. I gazed up at Micah, in his shirtsleeves. Being a shapeshifter, he wasn’t really a good judge of how cold it was, or how warm. I took a moment to glance at everybody. Most of them were buttoned up, some with hands in pockets like the judge. There were only three people who had their coats open, and, even as I watched, Fox began to shrug out of his own trench coat. The other two people were Salvia and Franklin. Franklin I’d expected, but not Salvia. If he was that sensitive, it could explain his fear. Nothing like a little psychic ability to make you not want to be around a major ritual. I might raise the dead on a regular basis, but magically it’s a big deal to breathe life into the dead. Even temporarily.

“Marshal Blake,” the judge said, “I’ll ask one more time. Is there a problem?”

I settled my gaze back on him. “You want to open a vein for me, Judge?”

He looked startled. “No, no, I do not.”

“Then don’t rush me when I’ve got someone else’s arm under my blade.”

Fox and Franklin both made noises. Fox seemed to be turning a laugh into a cough. Franklin was shaking his head, but not like he was unhappy with me.

The court reporter’s fingers never faltered. She recorded his impatience and my angry answer. She, apparently, was going to record everything. I wondered if she’d tried to record the cough and the inarticulate noise from the agents. I should probably watch what I said, but I doubted I would. I mean, I could try, but watching what I said was usually a losing battle. Maybe I’d feel more polite after the power circle went up. Maybe.

Micah touched my face with his free hand, made me look at him. He gave me that peaceful smile. “Just do it, Anita.”

I laid the blade edge against that smooth skin and whispered, “If it were done when ’tis done, ’twere well it were done quickly . . .”

He said, “Are you quoting Macbeth?”

“Yes.” And I cut him.

CHAPTER
11

The blood looked black in the moonlight. Micah was utterly silent as his blood eased from the cut, and I moved the blade so that it could catch the heavy drip of his blood. So calm. Calm about this as he was calm about nearly everything, as if nothing could move him from the the center of himself. As I learned more of what his life had been like, I knew that this still-water calm had been hard won. My calmness was the calmness of metal, but he was water. He was the still forest pool. Throw a stone in, and once the ripples fade, it’s as it was. Throw a stone at metal and it leaves a dent. There were nights when I felt like I was covered in dings and dents. Holding Micah’s hand, with his blood welling onto the cool gleam of my blade, I could feel the echo of that watery calm.

The autumn night was suddenly scented with the sweet, metallic perfume of fresh blood. Once that smell had meant work: raising the dead or a crime scene. But thanks to my ties to Jean-Claude and Richard and the wereleopards, the scent of blood meant oh-so-much more.

Then I looked up from the blood and met Micah’s eyes, those pale leopard eyes, and realized that I didn’t need to look all the way to St. Louis for why the blood smelled good.

His pulse began to beat against my palm like a second heartbeat. That heartbeat pushed the blood out of him faster than it should have, as if my power, or our power, called it. The cut wasn’t that deep, but the blood poured over our hands in a hot wash.

“Oh, my God!” The only female voice, so that was the court reporter. Men cursed, and someone else was making sounds like he might lose his dinner. If this bothered them, then they’d never make it through the zombie part.

I let go of Micah’s hand, and the moment I did, the blood flow slowed. Slowed to what it should have been. Something about our combined energies had made it flow faster, hotter. He watched me back away from him with the dripping machete. I started walking the circle, dripping his blood along the way, with my gaze still tied to his. There were no dead whispering in my head now. The night was too alive for that. I walked the circle suddenly painfully aware of how much I’d been missing in that nightscape. I could feel the wind against my skin in a way that I hadn’t a second ago. There were so many scents, it was like being blind, and suddenly being given sight. Smell was something we humans didn’t really use at all, not like this.

I knew there was something small and furry in the tree over the grave. Before I’d smelled only that dry autumnal scent of leaves. Now I could smell different leaves, different scents of the individual trees. I didn’t know what each scent was, but I could suddenly pick out dozens of different trees, bushes. Even the ground underfoot was a wealth of scent. This wasn’t even a good night for scent, too cool, but we could hunt. We could—

“Anita,” Micah said, his voice abrupt and startling.

It made me stumble and brought me back to myself. It was almost like waking from a dream. It had only been recently that everyone realized that some of my new abilities, though they came through vampire marks, made me more like a lycanthrope than a vamp. A new lycanthrope that didn’t always have the control you might want in public.

I was almost back to Micah. I’d nearly walked the complete circle, as if my body had gone on without me while my mind tried to cope with a thousand different kinds of sensory input. Moments like this gave me an entirely new sympathy with dogs that were nose-deaf. It wasn’t that the ears didn’t work but that the nose was working so much more that nothing mattered but the scent. The scent you were tracking. What was it, where was it, could we catch it, could we eat it?

“Anita?” Micah made it a question, as if he knew what I’d been sensing. Of course, it was his sense of smell I’d been borrowing. He did know.

My heart was in my throat, my pulse singing with that rush of adrenaline. I looked down at the ground and found I was only a few blood drops away from completing the circle.

But I hadn’t concentrated at all. I’d walked circles with just naked steel and my will. Was the blood enough with me on automatic pilot? There was really only one way to find out. I let the blood drip from the machete and took those last few steps. I took my last step, but it was that last drop of Micah’s blood that held power like the hot breath of some great beast. That power slid over me, over him, and out into the night, as that last drop of blood fell.

It had that feel that sometimes happens in emergencies where everything slows down, and the world becomes hard edge, like everything is carved of crystal. Painfully real, and full of sharp edges.

I realized in that crystalline moment that I had never used the blood of a shapeshifter to do a power circle, and the only time I’d used the blood of a vampire, the magic had gone horribly wrong. But that vampire had died to complete the circle, and Micah was alive. Not a sacrifice, only blood, but magically there wasn’t as much difference between the two as we’d all like to believe. Cut yourself and it is a small death.

It was as if the power circle were a glass and power was poured into it, held in that small space. When I’d accidentally killed a vamp, the power had just been necromancy. This was warmer—it was like drowning in bathwater. So warm, hot, alive. The air was alive with power. It crawled over my skin, burned over me, so that I cried out.

Micah’s cry echoed mine.

I turned through the heavy air and watched him collapse to his knees. He’d never been inside a completed power circle. Of course, I’d never been inside a circle when this kind of power went up. It was like some hybrid between the coldness of the grave and the heat of the lycanthrope. That’s what had been wrong from the moment I’d hit the cemetery. That’s why the dead had seemed more active than they should have been. Yes, my necromancy was getting stronger, but it was my tie to Micah that had made the dead whisper across my skin, Micah’s nearness that had made the dead seem more “alive” than they had ever been.

Now we were drowning in that living power. The air inside the circle was growing heavier, thicker, more solid, as if soon it wouldn’t be air at all but something plastic and unbreathable. I had to fight to inhale, as if the air were crushing me. I fell to my knees on top of the grave and suddenly knew what to do with all that power.

I plunged my hands into the soft, turned earth, and I called Emmett Leroy Rose from the grave. I tried to shout his name, but the air was too thick. I whispered his name, the way you whisper a lover’s name in the dark. But it was enough, that whisper of name.

The ground shivered underneath me like the hide of a horse when a fly lands on it. I felt Emmett below me. Felt his rotting body in its coffin, inside the metal of its burial vault. Trapped underneath more than six feet of earth, and none of it mattered. I called him, and he came.

He came to me like a swimmer rising up, up through deep, black water. He reached for me. I plunged my hands into that shifting dirt. Always before I had stood on the grave but never in it. I had never laid my bare skin into the grave while the ground was doing things that ground was never meant to do.

I knew I was touching earth, but it didn’t feel like dirt. It felt warmer, more like very thick liquid, and yet that wasn’t it either. It was as if the earth under my hands had become part liquid and part air, so that my hands reached impossibly down and through that solid-seeming earth until fingers brushed mine. I grabbed at those fingers the way you’d grab at a drowning victim.

Hands grasped mine with that same desperate strength, as if they’d thought they were lost and my touch was the only solid thing in a liquid world.

I pulled my hands out of that sucking, liquid, airy earth, but something pushed as I pulled. Some power, some magic, something pushed as I pulled the zombie from the grave.

The zombie spilled upward out of the grave in a shuddering burst of dirt and energy. Some zombies crawl out, but some, most of mine lately, are just suddenly standing on the grave. This one was standing, his fingers still intertwined with mine. There was no pulse to his skin, no beat of life, but when he stared down at me, there was something in his dark eyes, something more than there should have been.

There was intelligence and a force of personality that shouldn’t have been there until I put blood on his mouth. The dead do not speak without help from the living, one way or the other.

He was tall and broad, his skin the color of good, sweet chocolate. He smiled down at me in a way that no zombie should have done without first tasting blood.

I stared down at my hands still grasping his and realized that my hands had been covered in Micah’s blood when I plunged them into the dirt. Had that done it? Had that been enough?

Voices were speaking, gasping, exclaiming, but it was all distant and less real than the dead man who held my hands. I knew he’d be very alive, because there’d been so much power. But even to me, the only thing he lacked was a pulse. Even by my standards it was good work.

“Emmett Leroy Rose, can you speak?” I asked.

Salvia interrupted me. “Marshal, this is highly irregular. We were not ready for you to raise Mr. Rose from the grave.”

“We were ready,” Laban said, “because the rest of us want to go home before dawn.”

Rose’s head turned slowly toward Salvia’s voice, and his first words were “Arthur, is that you?”

Salvia’s protests stopped in midsyllable. His eyes were wide enough to flash their whites. “Should it be able to do that? Should it recognize people?”

“Yes,” I said, “sometimes they can.”

Rose dropped my hands, and I let him. He moved toward Salvia’s side of the circle. “Why, Arthur? Why did you order Jimmy to put the boy’s body in my car?”

“I don’t know what this thing’s talking about. I didn’t do anything. He was a pedophile. None of us knew it.” But Salvia’s words were a little too fast. I knew now why he’d been trying to delay the zombie-raising. Guilt.

Rose stepped forward, a little slow, a little uncertain, as if he looked more alive than he felt. “Me, a pedophile? You bastard. You knew that George’s son was a fucking child molester. You knew, and you helped cover for him. You helped get him his kiddies, until he got too rough and killed that last one.”

“You’ve done something to his mind, Marshal. He’s babbling.”

“No, Mr. Salvia, the dead don’t lie. They tell the absolute truth as they know it.”

Micah came to stand beside me, holding his wounded arm up and pressing on it. He seemed as fascinated with the walking dead man as the rest of them. He might never have seen a zombie before, but then he wasn’t really seeing one now, not the kind most people call from the grave anyway.

Rose had come to the edge of the circle. “The moment you had Jimmy put the boy in my car, I was dead, Arthur. You might as well have put a bullet in me.” He tried to take another step toward Salvia. The circle held, but I felt him push against it. That shouldn’t have been possible. No matter how good the zombie, the circle should have been sacrosanct, inviolate. Something was wrong.

I called out, “Fox, your report said he died of natural causes.”

Fox came to stand a little closer to the circle but not closer to Rose, as if he found the dead man a little unnerving. “He did. Heart attack. Not poison, or anything like that. A heart attack.”

“You swear it,” I said.

“I swear,” he said.

“Why put Georgie’s last victim in my car, Arthur?” Rose continued. “What the fuck did I ever do to you? I had a wife and kids, and you took me away from them the moment that body went in my car.”

“Oh, shit,” I whispered.

“What’s wrong?” Micah asked.

“He blames Salvia for his death. Not the pedophile that hurt the kid.” My stomach clenched tight, and I started to pray, Please don’t let this go bad.

Fox said, “You’d think he’d blame the guy who put the body in his car.”

“He blames Salvia because that’s who ordered it done,” I said.

“You’re scared,” Micah said softly. “Why?”

I spoke to Fox, trying to keep my voice low and not attract the zombie’s attention. “A murdered zombie always does one thing first and foremost: it kills its murderer. Until its murderer is dead, no one can control it. Not even me.”

Fox gave me wide eyes on the other side of the circle. Franklin had moved well back from the circle, from the zombie, from me. Fox whispered, “Rose wasn’t murdered. He died of a heart attack.”

“I’m not sure he sees it that way,” I whispered back.

Rose screamed, “Why, Arthur!” And he tried to walk out of the circle. It gave, gave like a piece of plastic stretched tight by a pushing hand.

I yelled, “Emmett Leroy Rose, I command you to stay.” But the moment I had to yell anything, I knew we were in trouble.

Rose kept trying to move forward, and the circle was no longer a wall. It was folding outward—I could feel it. I threw my will and power not into the zombie but into the circle. I yelled, “NO!” and threw that no, that refusal, into the circle. It helped. It was as if the circle took a breath that it had needed. But I’d never tried to do anything like this before. I didn’t know how long it would hold the dead man.

The dead man turned to me and said, “Let me out.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“He killed me.”

“No, he didn’t. If he’d really killed you, you’d be outside this circle right now. If you were the righteously murdered, nothing I could do would hold you.”

“Righteously murdered.” And he gave a laugh so bitter that it hurt to hear it. “Righteous. No, not righteous. I took money I knew was dirty. I told myself that as long as I didn’t do any of the illegal stuff, it was okay. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay.” He glanced back toward the circle, but then his eyes were all for Salvia. “I may not have been a righteous man, but I did not know what Georgie was doing to those kids. I swear to God, I didn’t know. And you had the body put in my car. Did you see the boy before Jimmy moved him, Arthur? Did you see what Georgie had done to him? He ripped him open. Ripped him open!”

And he hit the circle, hit it with his hands like he was trying to reach through it, and it gave. I felt it begin to tear like paper.

I screamed, “No! This circle is mine! Within the limits of this circle of power I command. I command, not you, and I say no, no, Emmett Leroy Rose, you shall not pass this circle.”

Rose staggered back from the circle. “Let me out!”

I screamed, “No! Fox, get Salvia out of here!” Then something hit me in the arm. Hit me so hard that it spun me around. I fell to all fours. I couldn’t feel my arm, but I was bleeding. I had a second to think, Oh, I’ve been shot, before Micah moved past me, standing in front of me. Standing between me and where the shot had come from. He was pointing. I heard the second bullet hit the gravestone behind me, a sharp ping of sound.

Salvia was screaming, “Don’t shoot her! Don’t shoot her, you idiot. The zombie is up—don’t shoot her now. It won’t do any good.”

I crawled around the tombstone, putting it between me and the shooter. My arm worked enough to help me scramble across the ground. The feeling was even returning to it, which was good, because that meant I wasn’t hurt too badly.

The downside was that I was hurt, and now my body knew it. The bullet had only grazed me, but whatever grazed me had been of a big enough caliber that I could see things in my arm that were never meant to be visible to the naked eye. I hate seeing my own muscle and ligaments. It means the shit has hit the fan, and I’m standing downwind.

Gunshots were sounding, this time going away from us and out into the night. The FBI were returning fire. Good for them. I used my left hand to get my right one moving, so I could get my gun out. I wasn’t as good left-handed, but it was better than nothing.

I yelled, “Micah!” With bullets flying, I wanted him with me.

But it wasn’t Micah who loomed over me. Rose bent his large dark shape over me, reaching for me. I ordered him, “Don’t.”

“Let me out,” he said.

“No,” I said. I fired into him, though I knew better than anyone there that bullets wouldn’t do a damn thing.

He was a zombie; they didn’t feel pain. He grabbed me and lifted me off the ground as I fired point-blank into his chest. His body rocked with the impact, but that was all.

Claws blossomed through his throat a moment before I realized Micah was on the zombie’s back, only his hands in half-clawed form, like only the really powerful shapeshifters could do. But you can’t kill the dead.

Rose smashed me down with everything that his more-than-human body had in it. I hit the gravestone. The inside of my head was suddenly filled with white starbursts, then the starbursts were crimson, and the inside of my head spilled to velvet dark, and that was all she wrote. The velvet dark, and nothing.

CHAPTER
12

I woke staring up at a white ceiling. Micah was standing by the bedside, smiling down at me. Bedside? My left arm was taped down to a little board and there were needles and tubes going into it. My right arm was bandaged like a mummy. Someone had left a florist shop in one corner near the window, complete with those silly character Mylar balloons.

“How long?” I asked, and my voice sounded funny. My throat felt like sandpaper.

“Forty-eight hours.” He found one of those cups with the little bendy straws and brought it to me. The water tasted stale and metallic in a none-too-tasty sort of way, but my throat felt better.

The door opened, and a doctor, a nurse, and Nathaniel came through the door. The doctor and nurse I’d expected. I reached for Nathaniel and found that my right arm actually did work.

He gave me that wonderful smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. They looked haunted, and I knew that I’d put that particular look there. Me, getting hurt.

The doctor’s name was Nelson, and the nurse was Debbie. Nurse Debbie, like she didn’t have a last name, but I didn’t protest. If it didn’t bother her, I guess it didn’t bother me.

Dr. Nelson was short and roundish, with most of his dark hair receding around a face that looked too young for either the hairline or the weight. “It’s good to see you awake, Marshal.” And he laughed, as if that amused him. “Sorry, but every time I say it, I keep thinking of Gunsmoke, my dad’s favorite show.”

“Glad I could be amusing,” I said, and I had to clear my throat again.

Micah gave me some more water, and Nathaniel moved up on the other side of him. He touched the side of my face, and even the brush of his fingertips made me feel better.

Nurse Debbie’s eyes flicked to the two men, and then her face had that pleasant professional look again.

“First, you’re going to be fine,” Nelson said. He had the nurse hold my arm up while he began to cut away the bandages.

“Good to hear it,” I said in a voice that was beginning to sound more like me.

“Second, I have no idea why. You took a very large caliber rifle round to your right arm. There should be muscle damage, but there isn’t.” He slid the bandages off, handing them to the nurse to dispose of. He took my hand in his and raised my arm so I could see it. There was a slick, pink scar on the side of my arm, about an inch and a half wide at its widest. “It’s been only forty-eight hours, Marshal. Care to explain how you’re healing this fast?”

I gave him nice blank eyes.

He sighed and lowered my arm to the bed. He got out one of those little flashlights and began to shine it in my eyes. “Any pain?”

“No,” I said.

He made me follow his fingers back and forth; he even made me look up and down. “Your head connected with a marble tombstone, so the FBI tells me. Our tests showed you had a concussion. Initially we thought your skull was cracked, and you were bleeding in places inside your head where you don’t want to be bleeding.” His eyes were very serious as he studied my face. “We ran a second set of tests before scheduling you for surgery, and what do you think, Marshal? No internal bleeding. Gone. We thought we’d read the first test wrong, but I’ve got the pictures to show what we saw that first night. There was a crack in your skull, and you were bleeding, but later that morning, it had stopped. In fact, the second set of tests shows the fracture healing. Healing like your arm is healing.” His serious expression intensified. “You know, the only person I’ve ever seen heal damage like this was a lycanthrope.”

“Really,” I said, giving him my best blank face.

“Really,” he said, and looked at Micah. He had his sunglasses back on over his kitty-cat eyes, but something about the way Nelson looked at him said the doctor had probably seen Micah without the glasses. “We had to type you for surgery. There are certain things we look at it in a blood test, just routine these days. Guess what we found?”

“No idea,” I said.

“Weird fucking shit,” he said.

I laughed. “Should I be worried? I mean, are doctors supposed to say ‘weird fucking shit’ to their patients?”

He shrugged, laughed, but it was too late to go back to the nice roly-poly doctor disguise. There was a very sharp mind in there, and someone who only did good bedside manner because he was supposed to.

Nurse Debbie moved, almost uneasily, beside him.

“You’re not a lycanthrope, but you’re a carrier, which is impossible. A person either has lycanthropy, or she doesn’t. You’re actually carrying around four different kinds. Wolf, leopard, lion, and one we can’t even identify, all of which is impossible. You can’t catch more than one kind of lycanthropy, because once you’ve got one, it makes you immune to the others.” He looked at me as if the look would be enough and I’d crack and confess.

I just blinked at him. I’d suspected the leopard and wolf, but the only time I’d been touched by a were-lion had resulted in tiny wounds. They had been from Micah’s old leader, Chimera, in lionman form. He’d bled me, but it was unusual to catch feline-based lycanthropy from such small damage. Lucky fucking me.

“Did you hear me, Marshal? You’re carrying four different kinds of lycanthropy.” He kept giving me his hard-as-nails look.

I kept blinking at him. If he thought his threatening doctor face was enough to get me talking, then he hadn’t seen anything truly scary in his life. I just looked at him.

“Why do I think this isn’t news to you?”

I shrugged, the tubes and needles pulling on my left arm. That hurt worse than anything else. “I got attacked by some shapeshifters a few years back, but lucky me, I didn’t catch anything.”

“Don’t you get it, Blake? I’m telling you that you did catch it. It’s floating around in your veins right now. But you aren’t a lycanthrope, are you?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Why aren’t you?”

I shrugged again. “Honestly, Doc, I don’t know.”

“Well, if we could figure out how to put this into other people and not make them shifters, we could make people pretty much indestructible.”

“I’d tell you how it works if I knew.”

He stared down at me with that hard look again. “Why don’t I believe that?”

I smiled. “If I could tell you something that would help millions of people, I would. But I think I’m sort of a metaphysical miracle, Doc.”

“I read the papers. I watch the news,” he said. “I know you’re the human servant of the St. Louis Master of the City. Is that what makes this kind of healing possible?”

“I honestly don’t know, Doc. Not for certain.”

“Does being a vampire’s human servant help you heal like this?”

“It helps me be harder to hurt,” I said.

“And the lycanthropy?”

“That I can’t answer, Doc.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Can’t,” I said.

He made an impatient sound. “Fine. You’re fit, well enough to go home. I’ll get the paperwork started.” He moved toward the door. He turned with his hand on the door. “If you ever figure out how the healing works, I’d love to know.”

“If it’s something that can be duplicated, I’ll share,” I said.

He left shaking his head.

I looked at the nurse, and she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“I need to take out the IVs.” Debbie hesitated, then said, “A little privacy, maybe?” She said it like she wasn’t certain. Why was she so nervous?

Micah and Nathaniel glanced at me. I shrugged again. Nathaniel smiled at me, and the smile had a touch of mischief in it. Micah shook his head, smiling as well, and they left.

Debbie was as gentle as she could be. It actually hurt more for the tape to come off than the needle. When she had my arm free of all the paraphernalia, she said in an almost embarrassed voice, “Which one of them is your boyfriend?”

“You mean, Micah and Nathaniel?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Both of them are.”

She gave me a look. “Mr. Callahan told you to say that, didn’t he? They’ve been incorrigible, teasing all of us.”

“Teasing all of you?” I made it a question.

“Saying that you lived with both of them, then trying to make us guess which of them is your boyfriend.” She actually blushed. “There’s a betting pool, so whichever of us was here when you first woke had to ask.”

“A betting pool for what?”

“Which one is your boyfriend. Some people even bet that they both were. Some even said neither.” She looked almost painfully embarrassed. “I have to ask. I’m sorry.”

“I live with both of them,” I said.

She gave me that look again, like she didn’t believe me.

“Honest, cross my heart and hope to—well, you know.”

She shook her head. “And what is Mr. Graison’s job?”

I had to smile. “He’s a stripper.”

She put her hands on her hips and almost stamped her foot at me. “It can’t all be true.”

The door opened behind her. It was my men and Special Agent Fox. The nurse threw them both a look, then hurried out.

“What have you been telling the nurses while I’ve been lying here?”

“The nurses were just trying to be friendly at first,” Micah said, “but when we answered their questions truthfully, they didn’t believe us.”

“No one lives with two men,” Nathaniel said, mimicking someone’s voice that I didn’t remember hearing. “And federal marshals don’t live with strippers.”

“Once we knew you were going to be all right, Nathaniel teased them a little,” Micah said.

Fox laughed. “A little.”

I held my left hand out to Nathaniel, and he took it with a smile. “You mad?” he asked.

“No. It was the crack about federal marshals not living with strippers, wasn’t it?” I said.

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“The nursing staff seemed more interested in your boyfriends than in you,” Fox said.

“Well,” I said, “it’s hard to compete when the guys are this cute.”

Micah came around and took my other hand. He ran his finger over the new scar. “You’ve finally got one on your right arm.”

I sighed. “My only unscarred arm. Damn.”

Fox said, “I come all the way down here to tell you what you missed, and I don’t think you give a damn.”

I smiled at Fox. “Truthfully, I’m just glad to be alive. When I hit that marble, I knew I was hurt.”

His face went very serious. “Yeah, you were hurt. We all thought . . .” He waved it away. “It doesn’t matter what we thought. When you went down, the zombie attacked Salvia. We couldn’t stop him. Not to mention he had a shooter in the cemetery.”

“I remember Salvia saying something about not shooting me now. That the zombie was up and it wouldn’t help anything.”

“He wasn’t delaying to be irritating. He was delaying to give the new hit man time to get to the cemetery. The idea was that with you dead or badly injured, they’d have more time to think of a plan C.”

“Plan C? What happened to plan A and B?”

Micah began to rub his thumb over my knuckles in small circles. Nathaniel pressed my hand against his chest. Whatever I was about to hear, I wasn’t going to like it.

Fox told me, “After you and Micah went to a different hotel, a salesman checked into the room that we’d reserved for Marshal Kirkland. The salesman was shot in his room. Then the killer put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door and probably took a plane to a different country. A very clean, very professional hit. Micah wanting a romantic weekend may have saved your lives.”

Micah kept stroking my hand, and Nathaniel kept holding on, as if there was more to come.

“Salvia must have gotten the shock of his life when he got word that Marshal Anita Blake was coming to raise the zombie. He scrambled around and hired a not-so-clean, not-so-professional hit.”

“But it almost worked,” Micah said.

“I finally remembered where I knew Salvia’s name from,” I said. “He’s a lawyer for some old-fashioned mob, real hard-core Italian.”

Fox nodded.

“If I understood what Salvia and Rose were arguing about, then Georgie is the son of the head of that family. He’s a pedophile, and Salvia and others had helped cover it up.”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Fox, didn’t you think the son’s family would try to stop the testimony?”

“Old-fashioned mob does not attack federal officers. It’s bad for business,” Fox said.

“Old-fashioned is the operative phrase here, Fox. If what’s left of the Italian mob found out one of their own had hidden a violent pedophile, even his own son, the Feds would be the least of Georgie boy’s family’s worries. The other mobsters would clean house on their own long before subpoenas and trial dates caught up with them.”

“In retrospect, you’re right,” he said.

“In retrospect, you could have gotten Anita killed,” Micah said.

Fox took in a lot of air and let it out slow. “You’re right, Micah. I almost fucked up your life again.”

I frowned at them both. “What are you guys talking about now?”

“When Micah was in a bed like you are now, I told him that I had wanted to put out an alert two days before he and his uncle and cousin went hunting. I wanted to put out an alert to keep the hunters out of the woods, but I wasn’t the agent in charge. Hell, I was just the Indian who got lucky, because some of the first kills were on Indian land. I was outvoted, and I liked my career more than I liked the idea of saving lives. I told Micah that I owed him for that.” Fox looked at all of us. “And now I owe him again, because we should have taken more precautions for your safety.”

I looked at him. “I didn’t think the FBI was allowed to admit they were wrong.”

He smiled, but not like he was entirely happy. “If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”

I raised Micah’s hand to my lips and kissed him. It took some of the anger out of his face. I kissed Nathaniel’s hand too, and held them close. “I’m just glad to be alive, Agent Fox.”

He nodded. “I’m glad, too.” Then he headed for the door.

When the door closed behind him, Micah let out a breath I hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Every time I see that man, something bad happens in my life.”

I tugged on his hand so he’d look at me. “What happened to the zombie?”

He gave a frown that showed even around the sunglasses. “I know Salvia tried to kill you, but you ask first about the zombie?”

“Salvia’s dead,” I said.

He nodded. “I thought you were unconscious by then.”

“I was, but once I wasn’t there to help with the zombie, it tore him apart, right?”

“Yes,” he said.

“He deserved to die,” Nathaniel said, and there was a look in his face, so fierce, so pitiless, that it almost scared me. I’d seen a lot of looks on his face, but never one so cold.

“They shot the zombie, they cut at him, but he tore Salvia up.”

“Did they get the shooter?”

“They got him,” Micah said. “He’s dead, too.”

“Did they get Rose’s testimony?” I asked.

He lowered his glasses enough to give me the full force of his chartreuse eyes. The look was eloquent. Nathaniel laughed.

Micah looked from one to the other of us, then finally back at me. “Do you seriously think that with you dying, Salvia dead, and an assassin gunned down, they were going to question the zombie?”

“Well, why not? They had to wait for the ambulance, right?”

Micah shook his head. Nathaniel laughed again and leaned over to plant a kiss on my forehead. He looked at Micah. “If she’d been there and awake, she’d have questioned the zombie,” he said.

“Fine, if they didn’t question Rose, what happened to him? Without me they couldn’t put him back in the grave.”

“Larry flew up.”

Nathaniel pointed to the huge bunch of Mylar balloons. “Those are from Larry and Tammy.”

I realized then what the death of the salesman would have meant for Larry. It wouldn’t have been some salesman in the wrong place at the wrong time; it would have been Marshal Larry Kirkland dead.

“He was really upset, Anita. He blamed himself.”

“Not his fault.” I squeezed Micah’s hand. “Though thanks for the romantic hotel room. Who knew it would be a lifesaver?”

“Let’s get you dressed,” he said, “and go home.”

Nathaniel kissed my hand and started finding my clothes, wherever the nurses had hidden them. Micah went for the door to see if Dr. Nelson needed any help getting me signed out. He stopped in the doorway and said, “You scared the hell out of me. Don’t do it again.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

He leaned his forehead against the door edge for a moment, then he looked at me. “I love you.”

I had a lump in my throat that hadn’t been there a second before. “I love you, too.”

Nathaniel was suddenly airborne. I had a second to make that little-girl eep sound, and then he landed around me on all fours, perfectly. “Does anything hurt?”

“No,” I said, breathless and laughing.

“Good,” he said, and he lay down on top of me, pressing his body against me hard enough that I had to either spread my legs for him or risk bruising tender bits on both of us. He lay above the sheets, both of us fully clothed, but he was suddenly above me, and the look in his eyes was more intimate than nakedness could have made it. Because what was in his eyes was emotion too real for lust, too real for anything but a very different four-letter word.

He kissed me. He kissed me as if my mouth were air, food, and water, and he’d been dying without the taste of it. That’s when Nurse Debbie and the other members of her betting pool came in. They screamed like freshmen at their first frat party. And I’d thought nurses were jaded.

DANSE MACABRE

DANSE MACABRE

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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Copyright © 2006 by Laurell K. Hamilton.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hamilton, Laurell K.
Danse macabre / Laurell K. Hamilton.—1st ed.
dansemacabre.litdansemacabre.litp. cm.
ISBN 1-101-14682-6
1. Blake, Anita (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. Werewolves—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.A443357D36 2006
813'.54—dc22            2006010793
http://us.penguingroup.com

To Jonathon, who comforts me while I weep; who holds me close while I scream; who understands why I rage. Because he knows how to weep, understands that pleasure can come in a scream, and has his own rage to battle. They say opposites attract, but not for me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Laura Gentry (1911–2005), my grandmother, who raised me.

To Darla Cook, who helped this book come to be. She makes so much go right. To Rett MacPherson, may this acknowledgment find your life peaceful and happy. Deborah Millitello, hope we see more of each other soon. Mark Sumner, stop being a tease and finish the book. Sharon Shinn, friend and wonderful writer. Tom Drennan, so many children, so little time. Marella Sands, sorry that your vision didn’t find its audience. I look forward to the next world you build.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

1

IT WAS THE middle of November. I was supposed to be out jogging, but instead I was sitting at my breakfast table talking about men, sex, werewolves, vampires, and that thing that most unmarried but sexually active women fear most of all—a missed period.

Veronica (Ronnie) Sims, best friend and private detective, sat across from me at my little four-seater breakfast table. The table sat on a little raised alcove in a bay window. I did breakfast most mornings looking at the view out onto the deck and the trees beyond. Today, the view wasn’t pretty, because the inside of my head was too ugly to see it. Panic will do that to you.

“You’re sure you missed October? You didn’t just count wrong?” Ronnie asked.

I shook my head and stared into my coffee cup. “I’m two weeks overdue.”

She reached across the table and patted my hand. “Two weeks—you had me scared. Two weeks could be anything, Anita. Stress will throw you off that much, and God knows you’ve had enough stress.” She squeezed my hand. “That last serial killer case was only about two weeks ago.” She squeezed my hand harder. “What I read in the paper and saw on the news was bad.”

I’d stopped telling Ronnie all my bad stuff years ago, when my cases as a legal vampire executioner had gotten so much bloodier than her cases as a private eye. Now I was a federal marshal, along with most of the other legal vamp hunters in the United States. It meant that I had even more access to even more awful shit. Things that Ronnie, or any of my female friends, didn’t want to know about. I didn’t fault them. I’d rather not have had that many nightmares in my own head. No, I didn’t fault Ronnie, but it meant that I couldn’t share some of the most awful stuff with her. I was just glad we’d made up a long-standing grumpiness in time to have her here for this particular disaster. I was able to talk about the bad parts of my cases with some of the men in my life, but I couldn’t have shared the missed period with any of them. It concerned one of them entirely too much.

She squeezed my hand hard and leaned back. Her gray eyes were all sympathy, and apology. She was still feeling guilty that she’d let her issues about commitment and men rain all over our friendship. She’d had a brief, disastrous marriage years before I met her. She’d come here today to cry on my shoulder about the fact that she was moving in with her boyfriend, Louie Fane—Dr. Louis Fane, thank you very much. He had his doctorate in biology and taught at Washington University. He also turned furry once a month, and was a lieutenant of the local wererat rodere—their word for pack.

“If Louie wasn’t hiding what he was from his colleagues, we’d be going to the big party afterward,” she said.

“He teaches people’s kids, Ronnie; he can’t afford to find out what they’d do if they found out he had lycanthropy.”

“College isn’t kids, it’s definitely grown-up.”

“Parents won’t see it that way,” I said. I looked at her, and finally said, “Are you changing the subject?”

“It’s only two weeks, Anita, after one of the most violent cases you’ve ever had. I wouldn’t even lose sleep over it.”

“Yeah, but your period is erratic, mine’s not. I’ve never been two weeks late before.”

She pushed a strand of blond hair back behind her ear. The new haircut framed her face nicely, but it didn’t stay out of her eyes, and she was always pushing it back. “Never?”

I shook my head, and sipped coffee. It was cold. I got up and went to dump it in the sink.

“What’s the latest you’ve ever been?” she asked.

“Two days, I think five once, but I wasn’t having sex with anyone, so it wasn’t scary. I mean, unless there was a star in the east I was safe, just late.” I poured coffee from the French press, which emptied it. I was so going to need more coffee.

Ronnie came to stand next to me while I put more hot water on the stove. She leaned her butt against the cabinets and drank her coffee, but she was watching me. “Let me run this back at you. You’ve never been two weeks late, ever, and you’ve never missed a whole month before?”

“Not since this whole mess started when I was fourteen, no.”

“I always envied you the regular-as-clockwork schedule,” she said.

I started dismantling the French press, taking out the lid with its filter on a stick. “Well, the clock is broken right now.”

“Shit,” she said, softly.

“You can say that again.”

“You need a pregnancy test,” she said.

“No shit.” I dumped the grounds into the trash can, and shook my head. “I can’t go shopping for one tonight.”

“Can’t you make a quick stop on the way to Jean-Claude’s little tête-à-tête tonight? It’s not like this is the main event.”

Jean-Claude, Master Vampire of the City of St. Louis, and my sweetie, was throwing one of the biggest bashes of the year to welcome to town the first ever mostly-vampire dance company. He was one of their patrons, and when you spend that much money, you apparently get to spend more to throw a party to celebrate that the money was helping the dance troupe earn rave reviews in their cross-country tour. There was going to be national and international media there tomorrow. It was like a Big Deal, and I, as his main squeeze, had to be on his arm, smiling and dressed up. But that was tomorrow. Tonight’s little get-together was sort of a prelim to the main event. Without letting the media know, a couple of the visiting Masters of the City had snuck in early. Jean-Claude had callled them friends. Master vampires did not call other master vampires friends. Allies, partners—but not friends.

“Yeah, Ronnie, I’m riding in with Micah and Nathaniel. Even if I stop, Nathaniel will insist on going in whatever store with me, or wondering why I don’t let him go. I don’t want any of them to know until I’ve got the test and it’s yes or no. Maybe it’s just nerves, stress, and the test will say no. Then I won’t have to tell anybody.”

“Where are your two handsome housemates?”

“Jogging. I was supposed to go with them, but I told them you’d called and needed me to hold your hand about moving in with Louie.”

“I did,” she said, and sipped her coffee. “But suddenly me being nervous about sharing space with a man for the second time in my life doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Louie is nothing like the asshole I married when I was young and stupid.”

“Louie sees the real you, Ronnie. He’s not looking for some trophy wife. He wants a partner.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I don’t know much today, but I’m sure Louie wants a partner, not a Barbie doll.”

She gave me a weak smile, then frowned. “Thanks, but I’m supposed to be comforting you. Are you going to tell them?”

I leaned my hands against the sink, and looked at her through a curtain of my long dark hair. It had gotten too long for my tastes, but Micah had made me a deal: If I cut my hair, he’d cut his, because he preferred his hair shorter, too. So my hair was fast approaching my waist for the first time since junior high, and it was really beginning to get on my nerves. Of course, today everything was getting on my nerves.

“Until I know for sure, I don’t want them to know.”

“Even if it’s yes, Anita, you don’t have to tell them. I’ll close up my agency for a few days. We’ll go away on a girls’ retreat, and you can come back without a problem.”

I pushed my hair back so I could see her clearly. I think my face showed what I was thinking, because she said, “What?”

“Are you honestly saying that I don’t tell any of them? That I just go away for a while and make sure that there’s no baby to worry about?”

“It’s your body,” she said.

“Yeah, and I took my chances by having sex with this many men on a regular basis.”

“You’re on the pill,” she said.

“Yeah, and if I’d wanted to be a hundred percent safe I’d have still used condoms, but I didn’t. If I’m…pregnant, then I’ll deal, but not like that.”

“You can’t mean you’d keep it.”

I shook my head. “I’m not even sure I’m pregnant, but if I was, I couldn’t not tell the father. I’m in a committed relationship with several of them. I’m not married, but we live together. We share a life. I couldn’t just make this kind of choice without talking to them first.”

She shook her head. “No man ever wants you to get an abortion if you’re in a relationship. They always want you barefoot and pregnant.”

“That’s your mother’s issues talking, not yours. Or at least not mine.”

She looked away, wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I can tell you what I’d do, and it wouldn’t involve telling Louie.”

I sighed and stared out the little window above the sink. A lot of things to say went through my head, none of them helpful. I finally settled for, “Well, it isn’t you and Louie having this particular problem. It’s me, and…”

“And who?” she said. “Who got you knocked up?”

“Thanks for putting it that way.”

“I could ask, who’s the father, but that’s just creepy. If you are, then it’s this little tiny, microscopic lump of cells. It’s not a baby. It’s not a person, not yet.”

I shook my head. “We’ll agree to disagree on that one.”

“You’re pro-choice,” she said.

I nodded. “Yep, I am, but I also believe that abortion is taking a life. I agree women have the right to choose, but I also think that it’s still taking a life.”

“That’s like saying you’re pro-choice and pro-life. You can’t be both.”

“I’m pro-choice because I’ve never been a fourteen-year-old incest victim pregnant by her father, or a woman who’s going to die if the pregnancy continues, or a rape victim, or even a teenager who made a mistake. I want women to have choices, but I also believe that it’s a life, especially once it’s big enough to live outside the womb.”

“Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” she said.

“Maybe, but you’d think being excommunicated would’ve cured me.” The Pope had declared that all animators—zombie raisers—were excommunicated until they repented their evil ways and stopped doing it. What His Holiness didn’t seem to grasp is that raising the dead was a psychic ability, and if we didn’t raise zombies for money on a regular basis, we’d eventually raise the dead by accident. I had accidentally raised a deceased pet as a child, and a suicidal teacher in college. I’d always wondered if there had been others that never found me. Maybe some of the accidental zombies that occasionally show up are the result of someone’s psychic abilities gone wrong, or untrained. All I knew was that if the Pope had ever woken up as a child with his dead dog curled up in bed with him, he’d want the power controlled. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d believe that it was evil and he’d pray it into submission. My prayers just didn’t have that kind of punch to them.

“You can’t mean you’d actually have this…thing, baby, whatever.”

I sighed. “I don’t know, but I do know that I could never just go away, get an abortion, and never tell my boyfriends. Never tell them that one of them might have made a child with me. I just couldn’t do it.”

She was shaking her head so hard that her hair fell around her face, covered the upper half of it. She ran her hands through it sharply, like she was pulling on it. “I’ve tried to understand that you’re happy living with not one, but two men. I’ve tried to understand that you love that vampire son of a bitch, somehow. I’ve tried, but if you actually breed…actually have a baby, I just don’t get that. I won’t be able to understand that.”

“Then don’t, then go. If you can’t deal, then go.”

“I didn’t mean that. I just meant that I can’t understand why you would complicate your life this way.”

“Complicate, yeah, I guess that’s one way of putting it.”

She crossed her arms tight over her chest. She was tall, slender and leggy, and blond. Everything I’d wanted to be as a child. She was small-chested enough that she could fold her arms over her breasts instead of under them, something I couldn’t have done. But her legs went on forever in a skirt, and mine did not. Oh, well.

“Okay, then if you’re going to tell them, tell Micah and Nathaniel and get a test and test yourself.”

“I told you, I don’t want anyone to know until I know for sure.”

She looked up at the ceiling, closed her eyes, and sighed. “Anita, you live with two of them. You sleep over with two more of them. You are never alone. When are you going to have time to run in and get a test, let alone have the privacy to use it?”

“I can pick one up at work on Monday.”

She stared at me. “Monday! It’s Thursday. I’d go fucking crazy if I had to wait that long. You’ll go crazy. You can’t wait nearly four days.”

“Maybe my period will start. Maybe by Monday I won’t need it.”

“Anita, you wouldn’t have told me if you weren’t pretty sure you needed a pregnancy test.”

“When Nathaniel and Micah get back, they’ll jump in the shower, we’ll get dressed up, and go straight to Jean-Claude’s. There won’t be time tonight.”

“Friday, promise me that Friday you’ll get one.”

“I’ll try, but…”

“Besides, when you start asking your lovers to use condoms, won’t they figure something out?”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah, I heard you say if you’d used condoms you’d be safe. Don’t tell me that you’re not going to want to use them for a while. Could you really have unprotected sex right now, and enjoy it?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Then what are you going to tell the boys about this sudden need for condoms? Hell, Micah had a vasectomy before you even met him. He’s like super-safe.”

I sighed again. “You’re right, damn it, but you are.”

“So pick up the test on the way to the thing tonight.”

“No. I’m not going to rain all over Jean-Claude’s meeting. He’s planned this for months.”

“You didn’t mention it to me.”

“I didn’t plan it, he did. The ballet isn’t really my thing.” Truthfully, he hadn’t mentioned it to me until they were coming to St. Louis, but I kept that part to myself. It would just give Ronnie another reason to say that Jean-Claude was keeping secrets from me. He’d finally admitted that the Masters of the City all coming here had been something he hadn’t planned, at least not from the beginning. He’d just negotiated it so the vampire dancers could cross many different vamp territories without problems. Jean-Claude agreed the meet was a good idea, but he was also nervous about it. It would be the largest gathering of Masters of the City in American history. And you don’t bring that many big fish together without worrying about shark attacks.

“And how will Mr. Fang-Face feel about being a father?”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Sorry, how will Jean-Claude feel about being a daddy?”

“It’s probably not his.”

She looked at me. “You’re having sex with him, a lot. Why isn’t it his?”

“Because he’s more than four hundred years old and when vampires get that old, they aren’t very fertile. That goes for Asher and Damian, too.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “I’d forgotten that you had sex with Damian.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She covered her eyes with her hands. “I’m sorry, Anita. I’m sorry that it’s weirding me out that my uptight monogamous friend is suddenly sleeping with not one, but three vampires.”

“I didn’t plan it that way.”

“I know that.” She hugged me, and I stayed stiff against her. She wasn’t being comforting enough for me to relax in her arms. She hugged me tighter. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m being a jerk. But if it’s not the vampires then who else but your houseboys.”

I pulled away from her. “Don’t call them my houseboys. They have names, and just because I like living with someone, and you don’t, don’t make that my problem.”

“Fine, that leaves Micah and Nathaniel.”

“Micah is fixed, remember? So it can’t be him.”

Her eyes went wide. “That leaves Nathaniel. Jesus, Anita, Nathaniel as the father-to-be.”

A moment ago I might have agreed with her, but now it pissed me off. It wasn’t her place to disparage my boyfriends. “What’s wrong with Nathaniel?” I said, and my voice was not entirely happy.

She put her hands on her hips and gave me a look. “He’s twenty and a stripper. Twenty-year-old strippers are the entertainment at your bachelorette party. You don’t have babies with them.”

I let the anger seep into my eyes. “Nathaniel told me you didn’t see him as real, as a person. I told him he was wrong. I told him you were my friend, and you wouldn’t disrespect him like that. I guess I was wrong.”

She didn’t back down or apologize. She was angry and staying that way. “Last time I checked, Nathaniel was supposed to be food, just food, not the love of your life.”

“I didn’t say he was the love of my life, and yeah, he started out as my pomme de sang, but that doesn’t…”

But she interrupted me. “Your apple of blood, right, that’s what pomme de sang means?”

I nodded.

“If you were a vampire you’d be taking blood from your little stripper, but thanks to that bloodsucking son of a bitch you have to feed off sex. Sex, for God’s sake! First that bastard made you his blood whore, and now you’re just a—” She stopped abruptly, a startled, almost-frightened look on her face, as if she knew she’d gone too far.

I gave her a flat, cold look. The look that says my anger has moved from hot to cold. It’s never a good sign. “Go on, Ronnie, say it.”

“I didn’t mean it,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I said, “you did. Now I’m just a whore.” My voice sounded as cold as my eyes felt. Too angry and too hurt to be anything but cold. Hot anger can feel good, but the cold will protect you better.

She started to cry. I just stared at her, speechless. What the hell was going on? We were fighting—she wasn’t allowed to cry in the middle of it. Especially not when she was the one being a cruel bastard. I could count on one hand the times I’d seen Ronnie cry and still have fingers left over.

I was still angry, but I was puzzled, too, and that took a little of the edge off. “Shouldn’t I be the one in tears here?” I asked, because I couldn’t think of what else to say. I was mad at her and I’d be damned if I would comfort her right now.

She spoke in that breathless, hiccuping voice that serious crying can give you. “I’m sorry, oh, God, Anita, I’m sorry. I’m just so jealous.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “What are you talking about? Jealous of what?”

“The men,” she said in that shivering, uncertain voice. It was like she was someone else for a moment, or maybe this was just part of Ronnie that she didn’t let people see. “All the damned men. I’m about to give up everybody. Everybody but Louie, and he’s great, but damn it I’ve had lovers. I hit triple digits.”

I wasn’t sure that being able to number your lovers at over a hundred was a good thing, but it was something that Ronnie and I had agreed to disagree over a long time ago. I did not say, Look who’s the whore, or other hurtful remarks I could have made. I let all the cheap shots I could have made go. She was the one crying.

“And now I’m giving it all up, all of it, for just one man.” She leaned her hands against the cabinet as if she needed the support.

“You said sex with Louie was great. I think you’ve used words like fantastic and mind-blowing.”

She nodded, her hair spilling around her face so that I couldn’t see her eyes for a moment. “It is, he is, but he’s just one man. What if I get bored, or he gets bored with me? How can just one be enough? The last time we were both cheating a month after the wedding.” She looked up at that last remark, her gray eyes wide and frightened.

I made a small helpless gesture, and said, “You’re asking the wrong person, Ronnie. I’d planned on monogamy. It seemed like a good idea to me.”

“That’s exactly what I mean.” She wiped at the tears on her face in harsh, angry motions, as if the touch of them made her even more upset. “How is it that you, my girlfriend who had only three men in her entire life, ends up dating and fucking five men?”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I tried to concentrate on the hard facts. “Six men,” I said.

She frowned at me, her eyes taking on that look that meant she was counting in her head. “I only count five.”

“You’re leaving someone out, Ronnie.”

“No”—and she started counting on her fingers—“Jean-Claude, Asher, Damian, Nathaniel, and Micah. That’s it.”

I shook my head, again. “I had unprotected sex with one more man last month.” I could have said it differently, but maybe if we got back to my personal disaster, we could stop talking about Ronnie’s penis envy. She needed more therapy than I knew how to give lately.

She frowned harder, then she got it. “Oh, no, no,” she said.

I nodded. Happy to see from her expression that she got the full awfulness of it.

“You just had sex with him once, right?”

I shook my head no, over and over again. “Not just once.”

She was looking at me so hard that I couldn’t hold her gaze. Even with the tear tracks drying on her face, she was suddenly Ronnie again. Ronnie had a good hard stare. I couldn’t meet it, and was left looking at the cabinets. “How much more than ‘not just once’?” she asked.

I started to blush and couldn’t stop it. Damn it.

“You’re blushing—that’s not a good sign,” she said.

I stared down at the countertop, using my long hair to hide my face.

Her voice was gentler when she said, “How many times, Anita? How many times in the month you’ve been back together?”

“Seven,” I said, still not looking up. I hated admitting it, because the number alone said louder than any words just how much I enjoyed being in Richard’s bed.

“Seven times in a month,” she said. “Wow, that’s…”

I looked up, and the look was enough.

“Sorry, sorry, just…” She looked as if she wasn’t sure whether she was going to laugh, or be sad about it. She controlled herself, and finally sounded sad when she said, “Oh, my God, Richard.”

I nodded again.

“Richard.” She whispered his name, and looked suitably horrified. It was worth a little horror.

Richard Zeeman and I had been off-again, on-again, for years. Mostly off. We’d been engaged briefly until I saw him eat someone. Richard was the leader—Ulfric—of the local werewolf pack. He was also a junior high science teacher, and an all-around Boy Scout. If Boy Scouts were six foot one, muscled, amazingly handsome, and had an amazing ability to be self-destructive. He hated being a monster, and he hated me for being more comfortable with the monsters than he was. He hated a lot of things, but we’d made up just enough to have fallen into bed in the last few weeks. But as my Grandma Blake told me, once was enough.

Of all the men in my life, the worst possible choice to be the father would be Richard, because he of all of them would try for the white picket fence and a normal life. Normal wasn’t possible for me, or him, but I knew that and he didn’t, not really, not yet. Even if I was pregnant, even if I kept being pregnant, I wasn’t going to marry anyone. I wasn’t going to change my living arrangements. My life worked the way it was, and Richard’s idea of domestic bliss was not mine.

Ronnie gave an abrupt laugh, then swallowed it. I was glaring at her. “Come on, Anita, I’m allowed to be impressed that you’ve managed to have sex with him seven times in the space of a month. I mean, you don’t even live together, and you’re having more sex than some of our married friends.”

I kept giving her the look that makes bad guys run for cover, but Ronnie was my friend, and it’s harder to impress your friends with the scary look. They know you won’t really hurt them. The fight was dying under the weight of friendship, and of my problem being more immediate than her years of issues unresolved.

Ronnie touched my arm. “Oh, it wouldn’t be Richard’s. You’re having sex with Nathaniel at least every other day.”

“Sometimes twice a day,” I said.

She smiled. “Well, my, my…” Then waved her hand as if to keep from distracting herself. “But the odds are that it’s Nathaniel’s, right?”

I smiled at her. “You sound happy about that now.”

She shrugged. “Well, a choice of evils, ya know.”

“Thanks a lot, Ronnie.”

“You know what I meant,” she said.

“No, I don’t think I do.” I think I was ready to be angry about her thinking the men in my life were a choice of evils, but I didn’t get a chance to be angry, because two of the men in my life were coming through the front door.

I heard them unlocking the door before it opened, and their voices came raised and a little breathless from the run. They’d been able to run faster, and farther, without me along. I was, after all, still human, and they were not.

Standing between the island and the cabinets we couldn’t see the door, but only heard them laughing as they came toward the doorway to the kitchen.

“How can you do that?” Ronnie asked, voice soft.

“What?” I asked, frowning.

“You were smiling.”

I looked at her.

“You smiled just at the sound of their voices, even with everything…”

I stopped her with a hand on her arm. One way I knew I didn’t want them to find out about the maybe-baby was by overhearing a conversation. Their hearing was a little too keen to risk it. And here they came, my two live-in sweeties.

Micah was in front, looking back over his shoulder, still laughing, talking. He was my height, short, slender, and muscular in that swimmer sort of way. He had to have his suits tailored because he needed an extra-small athletic cut. You didn’t get that off the rack. He’d come to me tanned, and stayed that way from jogging outside, mostly shirtless, all summer and autumn. He’d added a T-shirt to the short-shorts today. His hair was that deep, rich brown that some people get after starting life as very blond. His dark hair was tied back in a low ponytail that couldn’t hide how curly it was, almost as curly as mine. He’d taken off his sunglasses, so when I moved into his arms I could look up into his chartreuse eyes. Yellow-green leopard eyes in his delicate face. A very bad man had once forced him to stay in leopard form until, when he came back to human, he couldn’t come all the way back.

We kissed and our arms just seemed to automatically glide around each other, to press our bodies as close together as we could with clothes on. He’d affected me this way almost from the moment we had seen each other. Lust at first sight. They say it doesn’t last, but we were six months and counting.

I melted against his body and kissed him fiercely, deeply. Partly it was what I always wanted to do when I saw him. Partly I was scared, and touching and being touched made me feel better. Not long ago I’d have been more discreet in front of company, but my nerves just weren’t good enough to pretend today.

He didn’t get embarrassed, or tell me, “Not in front of Ronnie,” the way Richard would have done. He kissed me back with the same drowning intensity. His hands holding me like he’d never let me go. We drew back, breathless and laughing.

“Was that for my benefit?” Ronnie asked, and her voice was not happy.

I turned around, still half in Micah’s arms. I looked at her angry eyes and suddenly was ready to be angry back. “Not everything is about you, Ronnie.”

“Are you telling me you kiss him like that every time he comes home?” The anger was back, and she used it. “He’s been gone, what, an hour? I’ve seen you greet him after a day’s work, and it was never like that.”

“Like what?” I asked, voice sliding down. If she wanted to fight, we could fight.

“Like he was air and you couldn’t breathe him in fast enough.”

Micah’s voice was mild, placating, trying to talk us both down. “Did we interrupt something?”

I turned to face Ronnie, squarely. “I’m allowed to kiss my boyfriend the way I want to kiss him without getting your permission, Ronnie.”

“Don’t try and tell me you weren’t rubbing my face in it, just now, with the show.”

“Go get some therapy, Ronnie, because I am fucking tired of your issues raining all over me.”

“I confided in you,” she said, voice strangled with some emotion I didn’t understand, “and you put on a show like that in front of me. How could you?”

“Oh, that wasn’t a show,” Nathaniel said from just inside the doorway, “but if it’s a show you want, we can do that, too.” He glided into the kitchen on the balls of his feet, showing both the grace of his dance training and that otherworldly grace of the wereleopard. He pulled his tank top off in one smooth gesture and let it fall to the floor. I actually backed up a step before I caught myself. I hadn’t realized until that moment that he was angry with Ronnie. What little cutting remarks had she been making to him, that I hadn’t heard? When he told me she didn’t see him as real, he’d been trying to tell me more than I had heard. That I’d missed something big was there in his angry eyes.

He tore the tie from his ponytail and let his ankle-length auburn hair fall around his nearly naked body. The jogging short-shorts just didn’t cover that much.

I had time to say, “Nathaniel—” and he was in front of me. That otherworldly energy that all lycanthropes could give off shivered off his skin and along my body. He was five-six, just tall enough for me to have to look up to meet his eyes. His anger had turned them from lavender to the deeper color of lilacs, if flowers could burn with anger and force of personality. Nathaniel was in those eyes and with that one look he dared me, challenged me, to turn him down.

I didn’t want to turn him down. I wanted to wrap his body and that skin-crawling energy around me like a coat. Lately almost any stress seemed to feed into sex. Scared? Sex would make me feel better. Angry? Sex would calm me. Sad? Sex would make me happy. Was I addicted to sex? Maybe. But Nathaniel wasn’t offering actual sex. He just wanted as much attention as I’d given Micah. Seemed fair to me.

I closed the distance between us with my hands, my mouth, my body. The energy of his beast spilled around us like being plunged into a warm bath that had a mild electric charge. He’d been one of the least of my leopards until a metaphysical accident had taken him from pomme de sang to my animal to call. I was the first human servant to a vampire to gain the vampire ability to call an animal. All leopards were mine to call, but Nathaniel was my special pet. We’d both gained from the magical bonding, but he’d gained more.

He lifted me up, using just his hands on my thighs. Even through my jeans he made sure I knew he was happy to be pressed against my body. So happy that it forced a small sound from me.

Ronnie’s voice came harsh, ugly, like she was choking on her anger. “And when the baby comes, are you going to fuck in front of it, too?”

Nathaniel froze against me. Micah’s voice came from behind us. “Baby?”

2

THAT ONE WORD fell into the room like a thunderbolt, except that afterward the room was quiet. So quiet that I could hear the blood pounding in my head. Nathaniel’s body was so still against mine that if I hadn’t felt his pulse against my hand, it would have been like he wasn’t there. I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe. It was like a moment before a gunfight, when you know it’s going to happen, that anything, any movement, will set it off, and you don’t want to be the one that makes that happen.

Nathaniel looked down at me, and the look was enough. It broke the unnatural silence, and sound spilled around us. Micah said, “Did Ronnie say baby?”

“Yeah, I said baby.” Her voice was ugly with anger.

Nathaniel let me slide to the floor, his hands going to my shoulders. His eyes were so serious that I had to fight to keep meeting them. I did it, though my eyes flinched as if the force of his questions were a light too bright to meet.

“Are you pregnant?” he asked, voice soft.

“I’m not sure,” I said, and I gave Ronnie the glare she deserved. “I was going to wait until I was sure before I told any of you guys. But I had to tell someone. I thought, hey, I’ll tell my best friend, but I guess I was wrong.”

“The kiss with Micah may not have been for my benefit,” Ronnie said in that ugly voice that I didn’t recognize as hers, “but your pet stripper and you, that was for my benefit.”

I turned so that I was facing her, Nathaniel at my back. “You’re jealous of the men in my life, yeah, I get that now.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, and said, “I guess that’s fair. I tell your secret, you tell mine.”

I shook my head. “Me telling Nathaniel and Micah that you are jealous of how many men are in my bed, that isn’t the same as you telling them that I may be pregnant.” I had a mean idea, so I said it. “But it might be close if I told Louie that you were jealous of my boyfriends. Does he know that you can number your old lovers in triple digits?” Yeah, it was mean, but she’d earned it. Only family can fight as dirty as best friends.

She paled a little, and that was enough to answer the question. “He doesn’t know,” I said, and made it a statement.

“I think he deserves to know,” Nathaniel said, and again there was that tone in his anger that said it was more personal than it should have been between them.

“I’d planned on telling him,” she said.

“When?” he asked, and he moved around me, so that he was facing her.

I glanced at Micah, and he shook his head, as if he didn’t know what was going on either. Good to know we were both confused.

“When you’d moved in together, married him, or never?”

“We’re not getting married,” she said in a voice that was just a little desperate, as if her fear was washing her anger away. She rallied then. “You did that little show with Anita to rub my face in the fact that I’m about to become monogamous. You’re always doing shit like that.”

“And how many times have you said, ‘Oh, it’s Anita’s little stripper,’ or ‘pet stripper,’ or ‘how’s tricks,’ or my personal favorite, ‘you’re damned cute for a walking, talking, beefsteak,’ or is that ‘beef cake’?”

“Jesus, Nathaniel.” I looked at Ronnie. “Did you say all that to him?”

The anger faded around the edges as she finally looked uncomfortable. “Maybe, but not like he makes it sound.”

“Then why didn’t you say it in front of me?” I asked. “If there was nothing wrong with saying it, why not in front of me?”

“Or me,” Micah said, “I would have told you if she’d been saying things like that to Nathaniel.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Nathaniel?” I asked.

He gave me his angry eyes. “I told you she didn’t see me as real, as a person.”

“But you didn’t tell me what she’d said; I needed to know.”

He shrugged. “She’s your best friend, and you’d just made up after a big fight. I didn’t want to start another one.”

“I was just kidding around,” Ronnie said, but the tone in her voice said she didn’t believe it either.

I looked at her. “How would you feel if I said stuff like that to Louie?”

“You can’t call him a stripper, or an ex-prostitute, because he’s not.” The moment she said it, her face showed me she knew she shouldn’t have. “I didn’t mean…,” she began, but it wasn’t me that put her in her place, it was Nathaniel.

“I know why you call me names,” he said, and he moved in closer, not touching, but invading the hell out of her personal space. “I see the way you watch me. You want me, but not like Anita does. You just want me for a night, or a weekend, or a month, then you’d be done like you’re always done with everybody. I know why you don’t want to commit to Louie.” I’d never seen him like this, relentless. I actually made a small move, as if I’d stop him, but Micah caught my eye, and shook his head. His face was serious, almost grim. I guess he was right. Nathaniel had earned this, and Ronnie had, too. But it wasn’t going to end anywhere I wanted to be.

He said again, “I know why you don’t want to commit to Louie.”

She said in a small, weak voice, “Why?”

“Because it torments you to know that you will never know how I am in bed.”

“Oh,” she said in a voice that was almost her own, “so I’m not wanting Louie because you’re such a stud?”

“Not me, Ronnie, but the next me. The next guy you get obsessed about. Not love obsessed, but I-wonder-what-he’d-be-like-in-bed obsessed. And you’ve always been beautiful enough, hot enough, to get anyone you’ve ever wanted, right?”

She stared at him as if he were something horrible. He prompted her, “Right?”

She nodded, and whispered, “Yes.”

“You knew Anita wasn’t fucking me, so you thought if she didn’t want me maybe it would be okay, but I didn’t pick up on any of it. I ignored the hints, so you started to get mean about it. Maybe you didn’t even know why you were doing it.” He leaned in so close that she moved back until her butt hit the cabinet, and she had nowhere else to go. “You kept belittling me in front of Anita, and worse behind her back, as if you’d convince her she didn’t want to keep me. That I wasn’t good enough to keep. Real enough to keep. Have you ever set your sights on anyone and not fucked them, at least once?”

She gave a little trembling shake of her head. She was biting her lower lip, and tears gleamed unshed in her eyes.

“Then suddenly, Anita is going to keep me, and you don’t poach your friends’ guys. That is a rule. You thought I was just food, and you could have me, at least once. Suddenly I’m a boyfriend, and it’s against your rules to try for me, but you still wanted me. Just once. Just once to feel me inside you…”

I called it then. “Enough, Nathaniel, enough.” My voice was shaky. This had gotten so ugly, so fast. How had I missed it?

Nathaniel moved back from her slowly, and said, “I used to believe in women like you, Ronnie. I used to think that anyone who wanted me that badly must love me, at least a little.” He shook his head. “But people like you don’t love anyone, not even themselves.”

“Nathaniel,” Micah said, as if he’d been shocked by that one, too.

Nathaniel ignored him. “You need to find out what you’re running from, Ronnie, before it ruins the best thing you’ve ever found.”

She spoke in a harsh whisper, “You mean Louie.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I mean Louie. He loves you. He really, truly loves you, not just for a night, or a month, but for years. Part of you wants that or you wouldn’t still be with him.”

She swallowed hard enough that it sounded like it hurt. “I’m scared.”

He nodded, again. “What if you love him? What if you give him your whole heart and then he dumps you the way you dumped so many others?”

She gave that trembling nod of hers again. “Yes.”

“You need help, Ronnie, professional help. I can recommend someone.”

I knew Nathaniel saw a therapist, but I’d never heard him talk about it with anyone before, not like this.

“I’ve been with her for a few years. She’s good. She’s helped me a lot.” His face was gentler than it had been.

Ronnie looked at him as if he were the snake and she were the helpless little bird.

He went to the corkboard above the phone. There were business cards pinned to it; important numbers, notes. He took one of the cards down. He walked back over to Ronnie and held it out to her. “If she can’t take you, she’ll know someone good who can.”

Ronnie took the card carefully, just by the corner as if she were afraid it would bite. She gave him wide, frightened eyes, but she put the card in her jeans pocket. She let out a deep breath, and turned to me. “I’m sorry, Anita. I’m sorry about everything.” She looked at Nathaniel, then back at me. “And now I’m going to leave the mess behind and let you guys clean it up like I’ve always done. I am sorry.” And she walked out. We all waited until we heard the door close behind her.

The three of us stood for a few seconds in silence, waiting for the shock waves to settle. But of course there were other problems than just Ronnie’s issues.

Micah turned to me, and said, “Are we in a mess?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said.

“But you think you’re pregnant?” he said.

I nodded. “I missed last month. I’d planned on finding out for sure before I told anyone.” I sighed and crossed my arms under my breasts. “I haven’t bought a pregnancy test, because I wasn’t sure how to take it without one of you finding out.”

Nathaniel came to stand beside me, but to one side so he wouldn’t block my view of Micah. “Anita, you shouldn’t have to go through this alone. At least one of us should be holding your hand while you wait for the little strip to turn colors.”

I looked up at him. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

“Once; she wasn’t sure it was mine, but I was the only friend she had to hold her hand.”

“I thought I was your first girlfriend.”

“She found out I’d never been with a girl, so she took care of it.” His voice made it seem utterly matter-of-fact. “I wasn’t very good at it, but she came up pregnant. It was probably one of her customers, but it could have been mine.”

“Customers?” Micah made it a question.

“She was in the game, like I was then.”

I knew “the game” meant she’d been a prostitute, but “the game” usually meant when he was on the street. He’d been off the street by sixteen. “How old were you?” I asked.

“Thirteen,” he said.

The look on my face made him laugh. “Anita, I’d never been with a girl, but I’d seen a lot of men. She thought I should know what it’s like to be with a girl. She was my friend, protected me sometimes, when she could.”

“How old was she?” Micah asked.

“Fifteen.”

“Jesus,” I said.

He smiled, that gentle, almost condescending smile that always let me know what a sheltered life I’d led.

“And she got pregnant,” Micah said, softly.

Nathaniel nodded. “The odds were that it wasn’t mine. We had sex twice. Once so I could see if I liked it. The second time so I could get better at it.” His face softened in a way I’d never seen before.

“You loved her,” I said, voice as gentle as I could make it.

He nodded. “My first crush.”

“What was her name?” Micah asked.

“Jeanie, her name was Jeanie.”

I almost didn’t ask, but it was the most he’d ever talked about that part of his life, so I asked. “What happened?”

“I held her hand while the test turned positive. Her pimp paid for an abortion. I went with her. Me, and another girl.” He shrugged, and the soft light faded in his eyes. “She couldn’t have kept it. I knew that. We all knew it.” He looked suddenly sad, lost.

I wanted to take that lost look out of his eyes, so I hugged him, and he let me, and he hugged me back.

“What happened to Jeanie?” Micah asked.

He stiffened in my arms, and I knew then it would not be a good answer. “She died. She got into the wrong car one night, and the date killed her.”

I hugged him tighter. “I am so sorry, Nathaniel.”

He hugged me, one fierce, tight hug, then he moved back enough to see my face. “I was thirteen and she was fifteen. We were street hookers. We were both drug addicts. There wasn’t going to be a baby.” His eyes were so serious. “I’m twenty, and you’re twenty-seven. We both have good jobs, money, a house. I’ve been clean for three, almost four years.”

I pulled back from him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying we have choices, Anita. Choices that I didn’t have the last time.”

My pulse was in my throat, threatening to choke me. “Even if I am—” and it took me two tries to say—“pregnant, I’m not sure I’m keeping it. You understand that, right?” My chest was so tight I could barely breathe.

“It’s your body,” he said. “I respect that. I’m just saying that we have more than one way to go here, that’s all. It has to be mostly your choice.”

“Yes,” Micah said, “you’re the woman, and like it or not, the final choice has to be yours.”

“Your body, your choice,” Nathaniel said, “but we need a pregnancy test. We need to know.”

“We’re running late now,” I said. “You guys need to shower and we have to go to Jean-Claude’s place.”

“Can you really just go to the cocktail party with this hanging over us?” Nathaniel asked.

“I have to.”

He shook his head. “It’s fashionable to be late, and once he knows why, Jean-Claude won’t mind.”

“But…,” I said.

“He’s right,” Micah said, “or am I the only one that thinks I would go crazy smiling and nodding tonight, and not knowing?”

I hugged myself tighter. “But what if it’s positive, what if…” I couldn’t even finish it.

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Micah said.

“Whatever happens, Anita, it will be okay. I promise,” Nathaniel said.

It was my turn to look into his face and realize how young he was. We were only seven years apart in age, but they could be an important seven years. He promised it would be all right, but some promises you can’t keep no matter how hard you try.

That tight feeling climbed up my throat and spilled out my eyes. I started to cry, and couldn’t stop it. Nathaniel wrapped his arms around me, held me against his body, and a moment later Micah moved in behind me. They both held me, while I cried my fear and confusion and anger at myself. Self-loathing didn’t even begin to cover it.

When the crying slowed, and I could breathe without hiccuping, Nathaniel said, “I’ll go out and get the test. Micah can shower while I’m gone. I should be back in time to clean up and we’ll only be a little late.”

I pushed myself away, enough to see his face. “But what if it’s a yes, I mean how can I go to the party if it’s a yes?”

Micah leaned over my shoulder, putting his face next to mine. “You don’t want to know,” he said, “because you’ll find it easier to pretend tonight, if you don’t know.”

I nodded, my cheek sliding against his.

“I’ll get the test,” Nathaniel said, “and we’ll use it later tonight, after the party. But we are getting one, or two, to take with us.” For someone who was supposed to be a submissive his voice held no compromise. It was simple fact.

“What if someone finds it in our stuff?” I asked.

“Anita, you’re going to have to tell Jean-Claude and Asher sometime,” Nathaniel said.

“Only if it’s positive,” I said.

He gave me a look, but nodded. “Okay, only if it’s positive.”

Positive. It seemed like such the wrong word. If I was pregnant it was definitely a negative. A really big, scary negative.

3

AN HOUR AND a half later we were parked in the employee lot behind the Circus of the Damned. Nathaniel had helped me with my eye shadow. He could blend about a dozen different colors and make it look like I wasn’t wearing anything, yet make my eyes look amazing. He did his own eyes for the stage, so he had the practice. My dress was actually a skirt outfit. Black, stiff material, so that the gun in its holster at the small of my back didn’t show through the dark cloth. Nor did the knife in its spine sheath. My hair hid the hilt. 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. Yeah, they were our “friends” but they were still Masters of the City, and I was the Executioner. Someone wouldn’t be able to resist trying me out, just a little. Like someone who shakes your hand too hard. But this “handshake” could make the cross burn against my skin. I did not want another cross-shaped burn scar.

Both the men were in Italian-cut suits, tailored to their bodies. Nathaniel was in black with a lavender shirt shades paler than his eyes. His tie was rich, purple silk. He’d braided his hair, so that it gave the illusion that his hair was short, until you saw the braid waving around his ankles. His black leather shoes gleamed, the cuffed pants long enough to hide the fact that he wore no socks. Micah was in charcoal gray with a thin black pinstripe. His shirt was a green with yellow undertones, almost the same shade as his 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.

I was wearing jogging shoes, but there was a pair of four-inch black heels in the overnight bag. 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. Though strangely, they weren’t uncomfortable. They looked like they should have been, but they weren’t. Either that, or I was getting better at walking in high heels. Jean-Claude’s fault. I’d put the shoes on when we reached the bottom of the stairs, before we saw our guests.

I had a key to the new back door of the Circus of the Damned. No more waiting around for someone to let us inside. Yea!

I’d actually turned the key and felt the lock click over, when the door started opening inward. Security was pretty good at the Circus of late, since we’d made a deal with the local wererats. But it wasn’t a wererat that opened the door; it was a werewolf.

Graham was tall enough and muscular enough to make it impossible to move through the door without brushing him. He stood for a moment looking down at me, at us, I guess, though it felt more personal than that. 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.

Graham was the only one of the lycanthropes I’d ever known to have his parents visit his place of work. Since his usual job was security at Guilty Pleasures, a vampire and furry strip club, that had been an interesting night.

I thought for a moment Graham would stay in the doorway and make me push past him. I think for a moment, so did he. I was almost sure he would have moved, given us room, but Micah stepped up, just a little in front of me. “Give us some room, Graham.” He didn’t say it mean, or even call any of that otherworldly energy. He even made it a little bit of a request, but Graham’s face darkened just the same.

I watched Graham think about it. Think about not moving. He was already dressed in what all the security would be wearing tonight; black slacks, black T-shirt, though the shirt should probably have been a size larger. The one he was wearing looked like it was having trouble holding on, as if one flex too many and it would shred. Micah looked fragile beside him.

Micah let down some of his careful control. He let just a whisper of the power that lived inside him breathe through the night. My skin shivered with it. His voice came lower, deeper, an edge of growl to it. “We are Nimir-Raj and Nimir-Ra and you are not. Move.”

“I am wolf and not leopard; you have no authority over me.” He actually tensed, as if he were bracing for the fight.

I’d had enough. “But I have authority over you, Graham,” I said.

His eyes did not move from Micah, as if I weren’t a threat. There were so many reasons Graham had not made the leap from bodyguard to breakfast snack for me.

His ignoring me pissed me off, and the first thread of anger brought my own version of the beast. That warm, prickling thread of power breathed over my skin and danced around the men around me. I was not a true shapeshifter, because I couldn’t shift, but I carried four different strains of lycanthropy in my bloodstream. If you catch one type of lycanthropy, it protects you from any other strain. You can’t carry more than one disease at a time, but I did. A medical impossibility, but blood tests don’t lie. I carried wolf, leopard, lion, and one mystery strain that the doctors couldn’t identify running through my veins. That, and some metaphysical impossibilities, meant I had power to call. Power to use, up to a point.

Nathaniel rubbed his arms and said, “Easy, Anita.”

He was right. Because I couldn’t shift, it was possible to call the beast, but impossible to finish the call, so it was like having a seizure. Not pleasant, and I’d ruin the dress. But I was tired of Graham. Tired of him in so many ways. The energy had made him look at me, and for the first time I saw him remember that I was something besides a piece of ass he wanted, and hadn’t had, yet.

“I am the lupa of your pack, Graham, until Richard picks another mate.” I stepped up, and Micah moved back so I could do it. I kept moving, pushing my power into that tall, muscular body, so that it was Graham who moved out of my way. “But I will always be Bolverk of the Thronnos Rokke Clan, Graham. I will always be the doer of evil deeds for your Ulfric, your wolf king. I am the executioner of bad little werewolves who don’t remember their place. I think you’ve forgotten that.”

I’d backed him up among the boxes in the storeroom. His head actually hit the lone light that hung from the ceiling. The light swung and filled the room with shadows, and darkness.

I could feel that part of me that had begun life as Richard’s beast, but now, somehow, was mine, pacing just below the surface of my mind. It was as if my body were a cage in the zoo, and my beast paced the narrow confines of its prison. Paced, and did not like it. Trapped, so trapped, and so wanting to break free.

I staggered. Micah and Nathaniel caught me before Graham could reach me. Micah growled, “Don’t touch her!”

Nathaniel said, “She’s called wolf; if another wolf touches her right now, it will make it harder to control.”

I clung to them, my two cats. I put my face against the warmth of Micah’s neck, and drew in a deep breath of his scent. But underneath the warm scent of him, the sweetness of his cologne, was the nose-wrinkling musk of leopard. It helped chase back the wolf, helped me fight free before things got out of hand.

Graham dropped to his knees, head bowed. “Forgive me, lupa, I forgot myself.”

“Size doesn’t make you dominant, Graham, power does. You are submissive to me in our pack. You are always submissive to Micah, because he is the leader of another people that has a treaty with the wolves. You will treat him accordingly or it will not be as lupa that I talk to you next, but as Bolverk.”

He looked up, startled, as if he hadn’t expected me to say that last. He’d been playing, and I’d upped the stakes so high he didn’t like the game anymore. Maybe if I hadn’t been so tense about the maybe-baby I wouldn’t have invoked Bolverk, or maybe I was just tired of Graham.

Once Nathaniel moved from pomme de sang to my animal to call, then I’d needed a new pomme de sang. As my animal to call he was bound metaphysically too close to be just food. Jean-Claude and some of the other vamps had put their heads together and finally realized that there was a reason that an animal to call, human servant, and pomme de sang are three separate jobs. The first two are so closely bound to you metaphysically that though they can feed you, it’s a little like eating your own arm. You can do it, but it has a price. It fills your belly, but it also takes energy from other places. It was actually Elinore, one of the vamps we invited in from England to join our vampire kiss, who figured out why I was having to feed so often from all my men. Because almost all the men I was feeding the ardeur from were bound to me metaphysically—Jean-Claude as my master, Richard as my Ulfric and Jean-Claude’s animal to call. We were a triumvirate of power, but we needed fuel from outside that triumvirate sometimes. I’d accidentally made another triumvirate of power with Nathaniel as my animal to call, and Damian as my vampire servant (another impossibility), and again they weren’t a complete meal. So no matter how much I “fed” off any of them, I just didn’t stay filled up. Asher, Jean-Claude’s second-in-command, and our sweetie, was a full meal. Requiem would probably have been a full meal if I’d allowed myself to have full-blown intercourse with him. Byron had been emergency food, and frankly just wasn’t enough my type to be a permanent part of my bedroom. He enjoyed sex with me, but he liked boys better. I don’t mind not being someone’s main squeeze, but being the wrong sex, that just made my head hurt.

Jason, Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang, was great, but he couldn’t feed both me and Jean-Claude every day. I needed to find someone else to fill the spot, or maybe a couple of someones, until I got more control of the ardeur.

Graham had been one of the local men that Jean-Claude had encouraged me to “interview” as my new pomme de sang. Jean-Claude thought that if I’d “interview” them a little more intimately, I’d have a new pomme by now. He’d called me stubborn. Asher had called me foolish, to refuse to sample such bounty. Maybe it was foolish. I hadn’t told Ronnie that all the men in my life had given me a short list of other men to try out. She’d have freaked even worse than she already had, because if Louie had been that generous with her, she’d have been a happy camper. But Ronnie wasn’t me, and what might have made her happy just seemed to confuse me.

Of all the men who had come to my bed, to sleep and cuddle, Graham had been the most pushy. He’d made it clear he wanted more from me than I wanted to give. Of course, if I hadn’t been so stubborn, he’d be in the running for would-be daddy. The thought made me cold down to my toes. Let’s hear it for not fucking everyone who bunks over.

“I beg forgiveness, lupa.” His face still showed the shock of hearing me invoke Bolverk, but the words were not begging words. Not really. To beg forgiveness among the wolves meant only one thing—something closer and more intimate than I wanted from Graham—but if I refused the gesture, then it would be a breach between us, one that could grow and eventually harm Richard’s pack. Shit.

“Then beg, Graham.” My words didn’t come out uncomfortable, they came out angry. Anger was always my shield. I was trying to learn other things to hide behind, but anger was still my tried and true, and for that moment, it worked.

He stood, and standing he towered over me. So broad, so muscled, so big, but there was fear in his face. Finally, he believed that I might, if he pissed me off enough, hurt him. That I might have the right to hurt him. It was not a bad thing to see fear on his face. He was overdue for it. We’d tried being nice, Micah, Nathaniel, and me, but some people won’t take nice treatment. If a person won’t take nice, there are always alternatives.

He could have used the submissive gesture to take me in his arms, but he did it the way it had been shown to me. He touched my face lightly with his fingers, just enough to steady himself. If we’d been in public he would have laid a very light kiss against my lips, but we weren’t in public so it got to be more interesting. He leaned over me, and the prelude was too like a kiss for my comfort.

It made me want to back up, but I was dominant to him. A dominant does not back away from a submissive, no matter how much bigger he is. It’s not about size and strength. It’s about who’s tougher, and no matter how big he was, Graham was not the toughest person in the room. Not even close.

He bent down, and down, his mouth hovering over mine so that I could feel his breath warm against my lips. I think even at the last second he thought about stealing the kiss I’d never allowed him, but he thought better of it. He did what he was supposed to do, though frankly the kiss would have been less embarrassing. In some ways, at least.

He was supposed to lick across my lower lip. It was a version of the gesture a submissive wolf uses toward a dominant. It’s based on the food-begging behavior of wolf pups. But saying all that didn’t change the fact that his fingers were gentle against my face, and his breath was warm against my mouth. The tip of his tongue touched my lip, and slid across it. Wet, gliding, sensual, wetter than the first real kiss should be. Wet, as if I’d taken a drink of wine and spilled just a little across my lower lip. Just enough so that I had to lick across my lip in an echo of what he had just done to me. As if I were drinking down the touch of his mouth.

He shivered, his breath trembling on the air. “That was nice.”

“It was supposed to be you begging the forgiveness of your pack’s lupa,” I said, but my voice was a little shaky, and not nearly firm enough.

He gave a quick smile, the one that ruined the hip-tough-guy image, and made him look his age. Graham had yet to see twenty-five. “I do ask forgiveness, but it’s still the most you’ve ever let me touch you.”

I shook my head and pushed past him. Micah and Nathaniel followed me. Nathaniel was carrying the overnight bag that held, among other things, the pregnancy tests. I knew when he came out of the store with them why I’d put off buying them. It made the whole problem more real. Stupid, but it did.

“You’ve slept in the same bed with me, Graham,” I called back over my shoulder as I headed for the big door that led underground.

“Sleeping’s not what I want,” he said.

I stopped at the door, and just turned and stared at him. The other men moved to either side to let me see him better.

Graham looked at me, his eyes peeking through the silky fringe of his overly long bangs. It always made me think of an animal peering at me through the grass. The upper layer hadn’t been this long when I met him.

“I do not need your shit tonight, Graham.”

“Why are you always mad at me?”

“I am not always mad at you, Graham.”

“If you’re not mad at me, then why don’t you like me better?”

“I don’t dislike you, Graham, I just don’t want to fuck you. I’m allowed not to fuck you, even though you want to fuck me.”

“Don’t fuck me then, just feed the ardeur off me. Feed it the way you fed off Nathaniel for months without intercourse.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to introduce the passion of the ardeur to someone I’m not keeping. It’s cruel.”

“The ardeur is the greatest orgasmic experience that any of the vampire lines can give to a mortal.” Graham’s face was full of such eagerness, his hands reaching out to the air as if he could draw the ardeur out of it, and hug it to him. “I just want to know what it feels like. The real deal, not the little tastes I’ve had by accident. Why is that wrong, Anita? Why is it wrong to want that?”

“She’s afraid you’ll become addicted,” Micah said, voice soft.

Graham shook his head. “I’ve never been addicted to anything in my life.”

“Lucky you,” Nathaniel said.

“Please, Anita, don’t go to strangers to feed the ardeur. Don’t go to strangers when there are people right here who would do almost anything to feed your need.”

I made an exasperated sound, almost a scream of frustration, and went for the door. I opened it and we headed down the stone steps that led down, down, to the actual home of the Master of the City.

The steps were too wide, too something, as if they’d been carved for something that didn’t walk on two feet. The stairs were always awkward, which was why I was still in jogging shoes. Micah took my hand anyway, and I let him. If it looked to Graham like I was needing help down the stairs, fuck him, or rather don’t. I needed the comfort of touch tonight. Nathaniel stayed on my other side, but didn’t try to take my right hand in his. I’d need that hand for the gun or the blade. Yeah, these vamps were supposed to be Jean-Claude’s friends. But they weren’t my friends, not yet.

We were at the landing just before the stairs took a turn. It was a blind turn, but if you hugged the far wall, you didn’t stay blind for long.

“Wait,” Graham said, “please, wait. I should go first.”

We all turned and watched him walk the few steps down to us. He gave a smile that was almost nervous. “I am the bodyguard, remember?”

I looked him up and down, and said, “Are you carrying?”

He sighed. “No. Richard says we’re dangerous enough without guns.”

I shook my head. “Not if everyone else has them, Graham. Silver bullets don’t let you get close.”

He shrugged those massive shoulders. “Richard is Ulfric; if you want to change policy, take it up with him. I’m just doing what I’m told.”

I sighed. I loved Richard, really I did, but we had some serious differences of opinion.

Graham eased past us, but stopped on the step below the landing. He looked up, but not like he was happy. “I was hoping that Jean-Claude would have joined us by now.”

I gave him a look. “What do you mean, joined us? Jean-Claude is waiting downstairs with our guests, right?”

He shook his head. “There was an emergency upstairs.”

“Asher is managing the Circus; he should be able to take care of any emergencies.”

Graham licked his lips. “I don’t know the details, because I was left down here to wait for you, but Meng Die did something. Something that made Asher call for Jean-Claude to help him.”

Meng Die was a petite Chinese doll, or that’s what she looked like. But she, like me, didn’t really match the packaging. She’d been the second-in-command in San Francisco, before Jean-Claude called in all the vamps he’d made in this country to help bolster his defenses. Her master had been happy to let her go, because she’d been nights away from a palace revolt that would have left him dead and her in charge. In fact, he wouldn’t take her back, though Jean-Claude had offered.

Meng Die wanted to be Jean-Claude’s second-in-command, but that was Asher’s job. Then all the vamps had come from London after their master went crazy and had to be killed. Suddenly Meng Die was just another master vampire in a kiss that was lousy with master vamps. She was powerful enough to be third, or maybe even second, but temperamentally, she wasn’t suited to be that close to any throne. Too dangerous. Too ambitious.

“What the hell did she do now?” I asked.

Graham shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I thought you were almost her pomme de sang,” Nathaniel said.

“I was,” he said.

“You don’t seem too worried about her.”

He shrugged those big shoulders. “She keeps promising to make me, or Clay, her pomme de sang, but she never makes the decision. She was still fucking Requiem, too, until he started turning her down.”

“Requiem isn’t sharing Meng Die’s bed anymore?” I asked.

“No.”

I frowned. “Did he find a new girlfriend?”

Graham licked his lips again. “Sort of.”

“I know that look, Graham, that’s your I-have-more-bad-news-and-I-don’t-want-to-tell-it look. Spill it, all of it.”

He sighed again. “Damn it, if you’re not my girlfriend you shouldn’t be able to read me that easily.”

It was my turn to shrug. “Just tell me.”

“Requiem thinks that the reason you’ve turned him down as your new pomme de sang is because he was fucking Meng Die. He said you’re not a woman who shares your men.”

I didn’t know whether to scream, or curse, or laugh. “Did he tell Meng Die that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He told me. He told Clay.”

“Did you tell Meng Die?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I am not that stupid. She takes bad news a hell of a lot worse than you do.”

“Is Clay that stupid?” I asked.

“Requiem told her,” Micah said, voice soft.

We all looked at him. “You know that?” I asked.

He shook his head. “But it would be something he would do, not to cause trouble, but to be honest with her.”

I thought about it, then had to agree. “Damn, he would. I wonder if he told her recently?”

“Did you turn her down?” Nathaniel asked Graham.

He gave the quick grin again. “No. She may not hold the ardeur, but the sex is still amazing. I’ve done vamps before, but never Belle Morte’s bloodline. If Meng Die is an example of what they have to offer in bed, then my new goal in life is to be one of their pommes de sang.”

“I thought you wanted to be Anita’s pomme,” Nathaniel said.

Graham looked a little startled, as if he’d said more than he’d meant to say. “If Anita would feed the ardeur off me, just once, I might never look at another woman, but until she does…” He let the sentence fade, but it summed up why Graham was not a strong contender for me. He didn’t really want me, he wanted the ardeur. If any of the other female vamps from London had held the ardeur, he’d have chased them instead of me, or as well as me. Not very flattering—to him, or to me.

“Until I do, you’re keeping your options open,” I said.

He shrugged. “I gave all my options up for Meng Die, and she kept Clay and Requiem on her string. I shared her with Clay in a way I’ve never shared anyone.” He looked sad for a moment, then it passed. I wasn’t sure if it passed because his sorrow was that shallow, or he had pushed it away. “Anita isn’t going to give up all of you guys for me. Why should I give up everyone else just for a chance to be in her bed? I mean, just for a chance, not even the certainty of it.”

“I didn’t ask Requiem to sacrifice his libido to me.”

“You never ask anyone to give up other people for you, but if they don’t, you don’t sleep with them,” Graham said.

And that was a little closer to the truth than I wanted to hear. I hadn’t asked Requiem to give up Meng Die, but the fact that he was fucking her had been a point against him. Why? One, because I simply did not like her. Two, Graham was right, I didn’t share my men. Not with other women. The fact that I then expected them to share me with about half a dozen other men, well…Not fair. Not fair at all.

4

THE STAIRS ENDED in a small room with a door at the other end of it. The door was heavy wood and metal like the door to a dungeon, and in front of that door stood Clay, werewolf and bodyguard. He came toward us, hurrying, which wasn’t good. The look on his face wasn’t good either. He looked worried.

Graham was all business, the mantle of bodyguardness sliding over him so that that was all that was left. When he actually concentrated on business instead of trying to get into my pants, he was one of the best of the wolves for bodyguard duty. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Clay shook his head. “Jean-Claude isn’t with you?” His tone of voice made it half question.

“No,” Graham said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, thinking maybe if we kept asking the question he’d answer it.

“Nothing.” He looked at me, and smiled an apology. “Nothing except that we’ve got a room full of guests and no hosts. It’s just me and the four other bodyguards in the room. We aren’t even allowed to offer refreshments without one of the dominants being present.”

“Are you this worried because you think we’re being bad hosts?” Micah asked.

Clay seemed to think about it, then nodded. He did that apologetic smile again. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Clay was as tall as Graham, but his hair was blond, curly, and careless. Where Graham took time and attention with his appearance, Clay just didn’t seem to care. He wasn’t sloppy, just comfortable. He was wearing the same black-on-black outfit, but he’d put black jogging shoes with his slacks, not dress shoes. He looked good, but a little uncomfortable out of his jeans. I sympathized.

“Stupid,” he said, “but yeah, I think the evening is starting off badly. I mean, Jean-Claude gets a message and has to run out. The two Masters of the City are all right so far, but the two women are sniping at each other. The muscle, or food, or whatever they are, just stands around looking grim, or pouty-seductive. It has the feel of something that could go south if we don’t have someone to help keep it friendly.”

I took that last seriously. Clay worked security at Guilty Pleasures, and he was good at spotting trouble before it got started. It made him invaluable at the club.

“Exactly what did Meng Die do to make Asher send for Jean-Claude tonight of all nights?” I asked.

He sighed. “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but it had to be bad or Asher wouldn’t have called him away from the other masters.”

I could have opened the vampire marks between us and found out what Jean-Claude was doing, but he’d warned me against doing that with new vamps in town. One, we were trying to hide some of my powers under the proverbial basket; two, Jean-Claude wasn’t a hundred percent certain that some of the Masters of the City might not be able to listen in to such communications. His phrase: such communications. So, unless it was a true emergency, no mind-to-mind communication until everyone left town.

Did he need my help? No. Not against Meng Die. She was mean, and powerful, but not that powerful. I also trusted her to be smarter than to start shit bad enough that the only penalty would be death. She was like most of the old vamps, a survivor at heart.

Micah was looking at me, almost like he’d followed my line of reasoning. Out loud he said, “Jean-Claude and Asher can handle it.”

“You didn’t read my mind,” I said.

He smiled, that smile that made him seem so gentle. “I read your face.”

“Great.”

He raised his eyebrows, and shrugged, as if, sorry.

Nathaniel said, “How can both of you still be wanting to be Meng Die’s pomme? She’s not dependable.”

Graham laughed, a loud abrupt sound that almost startled. “Dependable. I don’t want to be her pomme because she’s dependable. I want to be her pomme because we are fucking amazing together.”

Clay shrugged. “I love her, at least I thought I did.”

“You don’t sound very sure,” Nathaniel said.

“Jean-Claude made us both bunk over with you and Anita a couple of times. Meng-Die was upset, but not that upset. I thought it was because she knew that we’d be back. That I cared about her enough not to be lured away. Then Requiem turned her down because he thought that was why Anita wouldn’t take him as her next pomme de sang.” Clay’s face showed something close to pain. “She went ballistic. Jean-Claude rips us out of her bed, forces us to sleep with you, and she’s cool about it. Losing Requiem bothered her, more than losing us.”

I watched the look in his pale eyes. That had hurt him. He really did care for her. Damn. “Some women, especially of Belle Morte’s line, seem to take rejection really badly. You guys had no choice. Jean-Claude said bunk over, and you had to do it. Requiem chose to leave her. That cuts a certain type of woman, or man, real deep.”

Clay put those puzzled, pain-filled eyes on me. “You mean it hurt her pride.”

I nodded. “Trust me, most master vamps have more than their share.”

He shook his head. “I know you’re trying to make me feel better, Anita, but what you’ve just said is that her hurt pride means more to her than whatever she feels for me. Thanks for trying to make me feel better.”

“But I failed miserably,” I said.

He actually touched me voluntarily, rare for Clay lately; he squeezed my shoulder, very guy. “Yeah, you really suck at this whole comfort thing, but thanks.”

He had never been very handsy, but after he bunked over and felt the ardeur rise in the bed, he’d touched me only when he absolutely had to. I think he was afraid to touch me. The hints of the ardeur made Graham chase me harder. The same kind of hints scared Clay. One man’s heaven, another man’s hell.

“We should introduce ourselves to our guests,” Micah said, “and you need to change shoes.”

I sighed. “So we’re on our own for this little cocktail party.” I knelt down, careful of my hose on the stone floor, and took off the jogging shoes.

“I’m afraid so,” Clay said.

“Great, just great.” I stood up and let Nathaniel slip the first high heel on, then Micah balanced me while Nathaniel did the other shoe. Four-inch heels, what had I been thinking? I never did like cocktail party talk, but that wasn’t the problem this time. I could fake small talk if I had to. The problem was that the two masters in the other room had brought along candidates to be my new pomme de sang.

It was my own damn fault. I hadn’t chosen from any of the local talent. I had also expressed concern about bringing this many Masters of the City into our territory. It just didn’t sound safe to me. So Elinore, one of our new British vamps, had an idea. A wonderfully, awful idea. Since Masters of the City were coming from all over the United States, why didn’t we have a sort of contest? The masters could bring some candidates for my new pomme de sang.

I’d said no. In fact, I’d said hell no, but Jean-Claude had pointed out that I could simply turn them all down. That the chances of my finding someone I liked well enough to keep were slim. He had a point. And Elinore was right, it was a way to get all the masters to behave themselves while they were visiting us. I mean, if you’re looking at what amounts to your new in-laws, you mind your manners. I couldn’t argue with the reasoning, but it meant that I felt like a piece of prize beef. Or would that be cheesecake?

Why was I such a prize? Because I was Jean-Claude’s human servant and he was the first American master to become his own sourdre de sang, fountain of blood. Bascially he’d hit the power curve where he was his own bloodline. It was rare, very rare, for any master vamp to hit that level of power, and he was our first in this country. It was a very big deal. We hadn’t advertised the fact, but the Vampire High Council over in Europe knew it, and apparently they hadn’t kept it entirely secret. We’d gotten a lot of overtures of friendship in the last few weeks. All right, we’d gotten a lot of people trying to align themselves with us. Not the same thing as friendship, actually, but better than the alternatives.

But when I agreed to all of it, I had never dreamt that I’d be doing the first introductions without Jean-Claude on my arm. Shit.

Micah took my arm in his. “It’s going to be fine.”

Nathaniel hugged me. “We’ll help you be charming.”

“I’m just not the Cinderella type,” I said.

“But you’re not Cinderella, Anita, you’re the prince. You’re Prince Charming.”

I stared into Nathaniel’s lavender eyes, and felt the first cold hand of fear in my stomach. Me, Prince Charming? There had to be some mistake.

Though I guess if you have to choose between being the woman who is trying to catch the prince’s eye, or the prince who doesn’t want to be caught, prince is better. Or at least that’s what I told myself as Clay led us through the door, and the drapes that formed the walls of the living room.

I let Micah and Nathaniel each take an arm. Yeah, I couldn’t get to my weapons fast, but what was waiting for me in the next room wasn’t a problem that guns and knives could solve. It was a problem that only diplomacy, witty banter, and sly sedcution could manuevuer us through. We were so screwed without Jean-Claude and Asher.

5

THE ROOM WAS all gold and white and silver from the drapes to the couch, the love seat, and the two chairs framing the empty white brick of the fireplace. It looked denuded without the picture of Jean-Claude, Asher, and their lost love, Julianna. A picture painted about five hundred years before I was born. Yeah, the wall looked bare, but the room didn’t. The room seemed positively drowning in vamps and shapeshifters. I really did not want to play hostess without Jean-Claude. Really, really didn’t.

Stepping into the room I gave them the smile I’d learned at work for clients. The smile that was bright and shiny, and only reached my eyes if I pushed hard. I pushed hard, but my hands were literally clutching at Micah and Nathaniel, as if they were the last pieces of wood in the ocean. I finally realized that I was scared. Scared of what? Polite banter, cocktail party talk? Surely not. I mean, no one here was going to try to kill me. Usually if no one tried to kill me, or I didn’t have to kill anyone else, it was a good night. So why the major case of nerves?

Micah was introducing us, while I tried to get a handle on this sudden outbreak of rabid shyness. It wasn’t like me. I didn’t like small talk and parties with strangers, but I wasn’t shy.

Clay and Graham took up their posts at our backs. There were more of our guards scattered around the room, but none of them could help us with the part that was scaring me.

Micah leaned in and whispered, “Anita.”

I did the long blink, the one that means I’m thinking really hard, and trying not to show it. You have to know what it is to spot it, honest. “Welcome to St. Louis, and I hope our hospitality will be better from this moment on.” There, that wasn’t horrible. Point for me.

One of the vamps came forward smiling. He wasn’t much taller than me, but broad enough through the shoulders that he looked almost misshapen. The way some short bodybuilders do in suits. “We are all Masters of the City here, Ms. Blake; we all know that some business cannot wait for niceties.”

He just stood there, waiting, smiling, pleasant. It was my turn to prove that we weren’t country bumpkins. To prove that we did indeed know the niceties. I got myself loose from Micah and Nathaniel. I stood on my own two feet and offered him my hand. “Welcome, Augustine, Master of the City of Chicago.” Jean-Claude had described everyone to me, so at least I was pretty sure who I was talking to. That was all I was sure about.

Most master vamps tried to be scary, or mysterious, or sexy. This one smiled wide enough to flash fangs, and said, “Auggie. My friends call me Auggie.” His hair was short, blond, but still had lots of small, stylized curls to it. The haircut didn’t match the suit and the approach.

He took my offered hand gently in his, as if I were too delicate to touch. Some muscular men do that. Usually it bugged me, but tonight I was okay with it. He turned my hand over and began to raise my wrist to his mouth. I did not raise my own arm. You end up hitting people in the face when you do that. I’d been practicing with Jean-Claude and Asher. My hand had to sit passive in his as he raised my wrist toward his mouth. He was a Master of the City and I was just a human servant. If Jean-Claude had been here, it would have been Auggie offering up his wrist, but I was officially outranked, so I got to offer up.

He bowed over my wrist, and raised his eyes to me at the same time. His eyes were a gray so dark they were almost black. But they were just eyes, and I could meet them. Most masters aren’t used to humans doing that. Auggie’s eyes widened at it, and I think my smile slipped from welcoming to just a little bit arrogant. That I could meet his eyes with impunity made me feel better, more myself.

His lips curled into a close, secretive smile, not at all the wide grin he’d greeted me with. He laid his lips against my wrist, where the blood runs shallow below the skin. Even then it was just lips on skin, then he kissed my wrist, and a little jolt of power went through my body. It tightened things low and intimate in my body. Tightened them so quick and hard that it caught my breath, and made me stumble.

I felt movement at my back, but I shook my head. My voice was breathy, but I said, “No, I’m all right. It’s okay.” I felt rather than saw everyone pull back. I had eyes only for the vampire still hovering over my wrist. I didn’t pull away from him. I looked into his eyes, until I saw that they were like the sky when it goes black, just before it falls down and destroys everything you own. But I wasn’t just a human servant gaining all my power through my ties to Jean-Claude. I’d come to him with partial immunity to vampire gaze, and what I did next was my power, my magic. Necromancy.

I put a little bit of power down my hand, into his skin, like you’d push someone away who’d invaded your space. I told him, metaphysically, Back off.

He pulled his hand away, dropped that strange gray gaze. His breath came out in a sharp sound. “I apologize if my little push of power caused you discomfort, but I am trying to behave myself, Ms. Blake. Forcing me to show more of my power might not be wise.”

He raised his face as he finished, gave me a glimpse of a face that was no longer boyishly handsome, or cute, in an ordinary sort of way. Now his face was simply beautiful. The bone structure more delicate than it had looked a moment ago. The eyes were rimmed with a lace of dark lashes. If I hadn’t spent the last few years staring into Jean-Claude’s lashes, I’d have said they were the prettiest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a man. Only the color of his eyes remained unchanged. That extraordinary charcoal gray with its shades of black.

I stepped back enough to look him up and down. His body was the same, and not. He was still short, for a man, but the suit fit him better. I’d gone suit shopping with enough men to know expensive when I saw it. It had been made for his body, and when a short man lifts enough weights to get an upper body that broad, it needs to be made to fit. But the suit looked good now, sleek and stylish, rather than fitting oddly.

He’d been using mind games to appear less beautiful and more ordinary. All I’d meant to do was stop him from doing what amounted to metaphysical foreplay. What I’d done instead was strip him of his camouflage.

I shook my head. “I’ve seen vamps waste energy to make themselves scarier, but never to appear ordinary.”

“Yes,” a woman’s voice said, “why would you hide so much of yourself, Augustine?” I looked at the woman who went with the voice. She sat on the white love seat, tucked in very close to the only other vamp in the room who made my skin tighten when I met his eyes. The man was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and handsome in an ordinary sort of way. After looking into Augustine’s face, it wasn’t really fair to compare. But I knew who he had to be.

“Welcome, Samuel, Master of the City of Cape Cod. As Jean-Claude’s human servant I welcome you and yours to St. Louis.”

He stood, and he hadn’t had to. He could have made me come to him. His hair was a dark, dark brunette, almost black, but I’d spent too many years staring at my own hair to mistake it for true black. The careless fall of short curls reminded me of Clay’s hair. Cut well, but not fussed with. He was taller than Nathaniel, but not by much, maybe five-seven tops. He looked neat and trim, well-built but not obviously muscular in a simple black suit. He wore a nice green T-shirt underneath it. If Jean-Claude had dressed him, it would have been silk, and closer fitting. The T-shirt, like the suit, hinted, but hid more than it showed. A thin gold chain graced the neck of the shirt. On the end of the chain was a very old coin set in more gold. The coin was one of those ancient pieces they find in shipwrecks sometimes. Or maybe the shipwreck imagery came because I knew what his animal to call was: mermaids. No, really, mermaids. Samuel was unique among now-living vamps in his animal to call.

His wife was one. The man and woman standing behind the love seat had to be merpeople, too. I’d never actually met any of the sea people before.

I fought the urge to look away from the vampire in front of me. I mean, I’d seen vamps, but mermaids, that was new. I offered Samuel my hand. He took it more solidly than Auggie had, like he’d shake hands well. Then he raised my wrist to his mouth. Like Auggie, he rolled his eyes up to gaze at me as he did it. Samuel’s eyes were hazel, pale brown with an edge of grayish green around the pupil. The green shirt brought out more of the green, so his eyes were almost an olive green, but they were definitely hazel, not true green. But then I had high standards for true-green eyes.

Samuel’s eyes were just eyes, and when he laid a chaste kiss across my wrist it was just a kiss, no extras. I rewarded his restraint with a smile.

“Ah, Samuel, always the gentleman,” Auggie said.

“Something you could learn from,” said the woman in white, who had to be Samuel’s wife, Thea.

“Thea,” Samuel said, a slight warning in his tone, but it was very slight. Jean-Claude had warned us all that Samuel’s only weakness was his wife. She got her way most of the time, so when dealing with the Master of Cape Cod, you had to negotiate with both of them.

“No, she’s right,” Auggie said, “you were always a better gentleman than I.”

“Perhaps,” Samuel said, “but one does not have to say such things out loud.” There was an edge of heat in his voice, the first stirrings of anger.

She bowed a body that was inches taller than his, bowed and hid her face. I was betting it was because her face just didn’t look sorry enough. Her dress was somewhere between cream and white, and it matched her skin and her hair. She was all whites and creams and pearls. At first glance you might think albino, but then she raised her eyes back up to us both. Her eyes were black, so black that her pupils were lost in the color of her irises. Her lashes were golden, her eyebrows gold and white.

Muscles played under her thin arms as she stood and smoothed her long dress around her body. Her coloring was odd, but not outside human norms. Her white-blond hair fell to her waist. Her only jewelry was a circlet of silver set with three pearls, the biggest in the middle and two smaller to either side, surrounded by tiny but brilliant diamonds, so that the light flashed and winked as she moved her head. Her pale neck was smooth and unadorned, with no gill slits. Jean-Claude had told me that when they wished, the maids of the sea—his phrase—could look very human.

“May I present my wife, Leucothea. Thea.” He took her by the hand and drew her into a low curtsey.

Did I curtsey back? Did I tell her to get up? What should I do? What could Meng Die have done that was taking Jean-Claude this long to sort out? She was so on my shit list.

Not knowing what else to do I offered her a hand up. She took my hand, raising a softly startled face to me. Her fingers were cool against my skin.

“Are you helping me rise like a queen taking pity on a commoner, or do you acknowledge that I am your superior?”

I helped her to her feet, though she moved like a dancer and hadn’t needed the help. I dropped her hand, and said what I was thinking. When in doubt I usually do. “Okay, truthfully, I’m not sure who outranks who between the two of us. If Jean-Claude had been here then you could offer up to him, but it’s me, and I don’t mean to be insulting, but I’m just not sure who tops who here.”

Thea’s pale face looked surprised, but Samuel looked pleased.

Auggie laughed an abrupt, very human-sounding laugh, turning me to look at him. “Jean-Claude said you were a breath of fresh air, Anita, but such an honest breeze, I’m not sure we’re up to it.”

“I like it,” Samuel said.

“Only because you are hopeless at deceit,” Auggie said.

Samuel gave him a look. “None of us who have risen to Master of the City is without deceit, old friend.”

The humor in Auggie’s face softened, and faded. I realized that of almost all the other master vamps I’d ever seen, his face was the most mobile, the most expressive. Now it went suddenly blank the way all the old ones could do. “Fair enough, old friend, but you do prefer honesty.”

Samuel nodded. “Aye, that I do.”

“You like honesty?” I said. “Then you are going to love me.”

There were abrupt laughs from at least two different corners of the room. In one of the corners was Fredo, slumping artfully, his black T-shirt a little bulky in places from all the knives he hid on his body. There were other knives out in plain sight, two huge ones on either hip like an old-time gunslinger. His dark face was set in laughing lines, his black eyes glittering out from the fall of his dark hair.

The other laugh had come from almost the opposite corner. Claudia was nearly six foot six, the tallest woman I’d ever met, and a serious weight lifter. She made the too-thin Fredo look frail. Her black hair was tied back in its usual tight ponytail. She wore no makeup, and her face was still startling in its beauty. Claudia cared less about looking like a girl than I did. But even with the weight lifting, her body was all woman. Without the extreme height and the muscles, she would have been one of those women who couldn’t go anywhere without getting hit on, or at least leered at. She still got the leers, but most men were afraid of her, and they should have been. She would probably be the only other woman carrying a gun tonight. At the moment her face was soft with the laughter that was still bubbling in her throat. She had a nice laugh, deep and throaty. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard her laugh before.

“What’s so funny?” I asked them both.

“Sorry, Anita,” she said, voice still full of laughter.

Fredo nodded. “Yeah, sorry, but you, ‘honest’? Jesus, ‘honest’ doesn’t cover it.”

Micah had to clear his throat sharply, and even Nathaniel’s face was sort of glowing with the effort not to smile at me.

I fought not to get angry, and finally managed it. Bully for me. “I can lie if I have to.” And even to me it sounded pouty.

“But it’s not your nature,” Fredo said, which was a little too perceptive for someone who was supposed to be just muscle.

“He’s right,” Claudia said, and she’d finally managed to control her laughter. “I apologize for the outburst.”

“She is like you, Samuel,” Thea said, “an honest heart.”

“That would be a good thing,” he said. And the way he said it made me finally look at some of the other people in his party. My thought about in-laws was a little too accurate with Samuel and Thea: they were offering up their three sons as possible pommes de sang for me. Which I found a little creepy, but all the vamps had patiently explained to me that most of the really old vamps come from a time when arranged marriages between powers was the norm, not the exception.

The twins were easy to spot, because they were identical. I knew their names: Thomas and Cristos. They had their mother’s white-blond color, but the short careless curls of their father. They were both taller than their father, somewhere around five-ten like Mom. But their bodies were slender, not enough muscle development. I searched their curious faces and found them young. Very young. They had to be legal, or Jean-Claude wouldn’t have agreed, but they didn’t look legal. Maybe merpeople aged slower than humans.

The other son I wasn’t certain of, because there were two dark-haired men standing behind the love seat. One of them met my eyes bold as brass. The other man wouldn’t meet my gaze; he actually blushed, embarrassed. I was betting that was the son. Maybe he thought it was all as weird as I did.

“They are lovely, my sons, are they not?” Thea asked, and that brought my attention back to her.

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, but finally said, “Well, yeah, I guess, I mean, I wasn’t looking at them for that.” I felt the blush crawl up my face and cursed myself for it.

She smiled. “Let us decide which of us is of higher rank, so I may introduce you to them formally.”

I thought about it, looked at Micah and Nathaniel. They both shook their heads; they didn’t know either.

“I have a thought,” Thea said, and the tone in her voice made it clear that she wasn’t sure I’d like it. Her voice was melodious, almost like singing.

“I’m willing to hear it,” I said.

“We are animal to call and human servant, but I am married to a Master of the City, and you are not. Would that be a way to decide who is higher rank?”

“Thea,” Samuel said.

“No,” I said, “it is a way to decide this. Marriage beats just dating, I’m okay with that.”

Samuel frowned at me. “We were warned that you had a temper, Ms. Blake.”

I shrugged. “I do, but Thea’s reasoning is as good a way as any to decide which of us offers up a body part.”

“You don’t find it insulting to acknowledge her as greater than yourself?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

He looked at me, looked at me as if he were trying to see all the way through to my spine. It wasn’t vampire tricks, it was just him trying to decide what I was, or wasn’t. Once I would have squirmed under such a look, but not now. Now I just stood there and gave him calm eyes back.

Thea made some small movement that drew my attention back to her. She was waiting, outwardly patient, but there was a demand in her. Time to put up, or shut up.

I offered her my wrist.

She took my hand in hers, and again her hand was cool in mine. She wrapped her hand around mine, and used it to draw me in toward her body. She wasn’t going to take the wrist, she was going for the neck.

I didn’t fight, but I did pull back a little.

She hesitated, giving me those strange black eyes of hers. “If I outrank you, Anita, then it is my choice where to touch.”

I shook my head. “No, that you’re trying for the neck instead of the wrist means only one of three things: you don’t trust me, you’re showing how big and bad you are, or you’re thinking sex. Which is it, Thea?”

“The second,” she said. She kept trying to pull me in against her body, and I started to let her. The strength in her one hand let me know that if I really wanted to struggle I’d have a fight on my hands. She was strong, like shapeshifter strong.

She kept her grip on my wrist as she used her other hand to pull me in against her body, until the two of us were pressed together, not tight, but so our bodies brushed from chest to thighs.

I had to talk staring at her shoulder. She was just too tall for me. “Why do you want me to know that you’re big and bad?”

“My wife is very competitive with other women, Anita,” Samuel said. “Surely Jean-Claude mentioned that, as he mentioned your temper to us.”

“He said something about it, but…” She let go of my wrist so she could slide that arm around my back, pressing me closer to her. Her other hand was sliding up my back toward my hair. But I hadn’t understood what competitive meant, I thought. It took almost everything I had not to tense up as she entwined her body around me, close now, so close, lover close, sex close.

Her breasts were small and tight, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. Eeek. I felt stupid with my arms limp at my sides, and I didn’t really want to encourage her, but…I ended up sort of hugging her just to keep my balance on the damned high heels.

She leaned her mouth close to my face and whispered, “I do want you to understand that I am superior to you, Anita, but that is only half my reason.”

My pulse sped up a little at that. I started to turn to look at her face, but she grabbed a handful of curls and kept my face turned away. I was left staring at the man who had blushed. He looked at me, full face, and he suddenly looked like a younger version of Samuel. How had I not seen it before? He mouthed, I am sorry.

I had trouble speaking around my pulse now, because I had that bad feeling that something was about to happen. Something I wasn’t going to enjoy. “What’s the other half of your reason?” I asked, voice breathy, holding that edge of nervousness that held a touch of fear.

“I want to know what you are, Anita,” she whispered, and her breath was warmer than it had been. Her hands were warm now, as if she had caught a sudden fever. It reminded me of the way some of the shapeshifters felt close to the full moon.

“What’s happening?” I asked, but my voice was only a whisper.

Her fingers entwined through my hair until she held my face immobile with her strong hands, and I could feel the heat of her fingers through my hair. She drew her face back from my neck, and stared down at me. She held my face tilted up to her as if for a kiss. “Are you truly what they say you are?”

I struggled to swallow so I could whisper, “What do they say I am?”

“Succubus,” she whispered as she lowered her face toward mine. I knew in that instant that she was going to kiss me. “I am seeking another of my kind, Anita. Are you what I seek?” And with the last word she closed her mouth over mine.

6

HER MOUTH WAS warm, so warm against mine. Warm like hot chocolate. Something you wanted to open your mouth and sip from. It wasn’t my idea, opening my mouth, it was hers. Somehow, it was her thought in my head. I didn’t like that, not one little bit. The not liking helped me keep my mouth closed tight. She drew back enough to whisper, “Do not fight me.”

I heard voices around us arguing. Help was coming, I just had to hold on. I just had to hold my shields in place and not let her do what she was trying to do. Just hold on, that was all. I’d held on when help was miles away; now it was just inches. I could do this.

She’d tried gentle persuasion, mind games, they hadn’t worked. She tried force. She kissed me so hard, that either I opened my mouth to her, or she was going to cut my lip on my own teeth. If she’d been a man I would have just let her kiss me—was I really this homophobic? If she hadn’t whispered through my mind that she wanted me to open my mouth, I might have done it, but she wanted it too badly. Part of me was just that stubborn, but part of me was afraid of why she wanted it so badly. I knew she was a siren, a sort of uber-mermaid. I knew that some of her magic dealt with seduction and sex. I knew that she could control the other mermaids. I knew all sorts of things from talks with Jean-Claude; what I didn’t know was why she wanted me to open my mouth.

Her kiss bruised my mouth and I tasted blood, sweet, metallic candy on my tongue. The moment I tasted the blood, it hurt. She’d cut the inside of my lip on my own teeth.

She drew back. “Why fight so hard simply not to kiss me back? Are you so much a hater of women?”

I tried to shake my head, but she still held my face immobile. “Why do you want me to open my mouth? What difference does it make to you?”

“You are strong, Anita, so strong. The walls of your inner tower are high, and wide, but not impenetrable.”

I was getting angry, and I wasn’t sure what that would do to my inner tower and its walls. I did not want the beast to rise while we were still doing introductions. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, but said what my anger wanted me to say; I just wasn’t angry when I said it. “Either let me go, or breach those walls, but either way this ends.”

“How so?”

“I’ve done all that vampire etiquette requires, so either let me go, or I call in my guards and they force you to let me go.”

“Do you need help to break free of me?” she asked, and her voice was singsong again.

“Unless I’m willing to shoot you, yes.”

Graham came close enough to say quietly, “Say the word, Anita, and we move her.” He sounded eager, or angry. I guess I couldn’t blame him. This whole thing had gone beyound grandstanding to just plain rude.

Samuel came to our side. “Thea, this is not the way.”

She turned her head and looked at him. “Then what is the way?”

“Perhaps you could simply ask.”

A look crossed her face, as if that would never have occurred to her, then she laughed, a high wild sound, and for a second I thought I heard the laughter of seagulls. “So simple, my darling Samuel, so simple.” She released the grip on my hair so I could move my neck, which was a relief. She stayed entwined around me, but not so forcefully. We were still too close for comfort, but it was more friendly. “My deepest apologies, Anita; it has been so long since I met anyone who could withstand my desires that I simply kept trying to force. Forgive me.”

“Let me go, and I will.”

She gave that laugh again, and it wasn’t my imagination. When she laughed I heard the sound that herring gulls make, and the whisper of surf. She let me go, stepped back. The moment she moved back the tension level in the room plummeted. All the guards on every side had thought the flags were about to go up. Me, too.

She bowed. “My deepest apologies. I underestimated you, and I am ashamed of my actions.”

“I accept your apology.”

She stood and regarded me with those black eyes in that pale white and gold face, as if some delicate porcelain doll had the eyes of a movie demon. “You know that we are offering our sons as your pommes de sang.”

I nodded. “Jean-Claude told me, and I’m honored.” Actually it creeped me out, but I understood that it was supposed to be an honor.

“But do you know why?”

That stopped me, because the answer was, “Jean-Claude said you wished for a stronger alliance between our two kisses.”

“We do”—Samuel joined his wife—“but there is a reason that my wife was so adamant that we bring all three of our sons to your table.”

“And that reason would be what?” I wanted to just skip this until I had more vampire backup, but I didn’t think I’d get the choice.

Micah was suddenly at my side, taking my hand. I felt better. I wasn’t alone. We could do this. We didn’t have vamps, but we had each other. Nathaniel came in at my back, not quite taking my other hand in case I needed it for weapon grabbing, but close enough that he was a line of heat at my back. Better and better.

“I am a siren,” Thea said.

I nodded. “I know.”

“Do you understand what that means among my kind?”

“I know that most mermaids who exhibit siren abilities are killed by the other merpeople before they can reach their full power.”

“Do you know why?”

“Because in full power you can control the merpeople magically.”

“As a necromancer can control all types of undead,” Thea said.

I shrugged. “Yeah, I have some control over a lot of undead, but it’s not perfect control, and it doesn’t work on everyone.”

“Nor does mine work on every merperson, though it works on many. But do you know what the basis of that control is?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Sex, or seduction perhaps.”

I crooked an eyebrow at her. “What does that mean exactly in this context?”

“It means that I hold something similar to the ardeur that you and Jean-Claude share. It attracts both my kind and mortals to me, as the ardeur attracts the dead and apparently lycanthropes and mortals to you.”

I frowned at her. “Yeah, a lot of guys want a full taste of the ardeur once they get a small taste.” I fought not to look for Graham when I said it. “But they aren’t attracted to me because of it.”

She gave that gull-and-surf laugh again. “You do not know what you are, Anita. The ardeur alone does not make you a succubus, or Jean-Claude an incubus. I have met others with the ardeur, but fewer with that next level of power. You have it. Your master has it. People are drawn to you because of it. The very touch of your skin can be addictive.”

I gave her a look. “Like the touch of your skin is supposed to be addictive?”

“Yes.”

I fought not to smile, but didn’t quite succeed. I licked the cut she’d made in my lip, and said, “No insult meant, but I don’t crave your touch.”

“No, you fought me. You won.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I believe that my sons have inherited my powers, but there is only one way for a siren to be fully born. Another siren must bring them into their power.”

I saw where this was going, or was afraid I did. “Let me guess: the only way to bring them over is to have sex.”

She nodded.

“You can’t find another siren to do the job for you?”

“I am the last of my kind, Anita. I am the last siren. Unless you have the power to awaken my sons.”

Micah squeezed my hand tighter. Nathaniel moved in so that our bodies touched from shoulder to hip. “Okay, if we’re being honest, I’m a little disturbed by your pimping out your sons to me.”

“What does ‘pimping out’ mean?” she asked.

I sighed. Great, one of those moments when you really don’t want to explain the slang. Nathaniel said, “It means to sell someone else for sexual purposes.”

She frowned, then said, “I cannot truly argue the definition. I wish you to have sex with my sons, and it will gain us both a stronger alliance. They will gain power from it. So, if that is selling, I cannot argue this ‘pimping out.’”

“But if you are only a carrier of the ardeur and not a true succubus, then you cannot do what Thea wishes,” Samuel said.

I looked at them both. “And how do we find out if I’ve got what Thea wants?” I couldn’t keep the suspicion out of my voice.

Nathaniel stroked my shoulder like you’d settle a nervous horse, but I didn’t push him away. I was getting tense, and fighting not to get angry.

“Let down your inner walls, and let my power taste yours.” She said it like it was easy, a small thing.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“The thought of my ‘pimping out’ my sons to you makes you uncomfortable, does it not?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“If your power is not close enough to mine, then we will stay for the parties, and the ballet, but you will not have to look at them as pommes de sang. We will take our sons home and you will not have to worry over your discomfort.”

It sounded too easy. “It sounds simple, but before I say yes, what are the possible side effects of your power exploring mine?”

She looked puzzled. “I am not certain I understand the question.”

“She means,” Micah said, “what bad things could happen if she allows this?”

She actually thought about it for almost a minute. “It should be only a touch of powers, like two leviathans moving in the deep, sliding their sides against each other, then passing away into the dark depths of the sea.”

I felt calmer, as if I could feel those dark, peaceful depths.

“Should be,” Micah said. “What else could happen?”

“It could call your ardeur to the surface and you would be forced to feed.”

I was suddenly tense again, the peaceful dark depths gone like smoke in the wind. “No,” I said.

Nathaniel whispered in my ear. “You can feed from me without intercourse, Anita. It’s a way of getting rid of them.”

Micah looked at me. “Only you can decide if the chance of having to feed the ardeur here and now is worth it, Anita.”

I looked at the sons. The twins looked at me, smiling, somewhere between amused and embarrassed. But it was the kind of embarrassment that any teenager would have felt if his mom did something that made him squirm. The older one, behind the love seat, looked more like I felt, uncomfortable as hell.

“You must be Sampson,” I said.

He looked startled, then nodded. “I am.”

“What do you think about all this? I mean, do you want to be brought into your sirenhood?”

He looked down, then up. “Do you know that you are the first person to ask me how I feel about this?”

I let the surprise show on my face.

“It’s no reflection on my parents. They love me. Us. But Father is over a thousand years old, and Mother is older still. Arranged marriages don’t seem strange to them, and they both would love to have one of us be as powerful as Mother. It would cement our power base along the entire eastern seaboard of this country. I understand all that, or I wouldn’t be standing here.”

“But,” I said.

He smiled, and it was his father’s smile. “But, I don’t know you. The thought of being forced to have sex with anyone is just…wrong.”

I looked at the twins. “And you, Thomas and Cristos, right?”

They nodded.

“How do you feel about this?”

They looked at each other, then one blushed and the other didn’t. The one who didn’t blush said, “I’m Thomas, Tom, when Mom’s not around to complain.” He gave her a smile out of his father’s hazel eyes. “I saw pictures of you before we came. I knew you were pretty, and”—now he blushed, bit his lip, and tried again—“I would love to have an excuse to have sex with you. There, that’s the truth.”

“How old are you?” I asked.

He glanced at his parents.

“Don’t look at them, answer the question.”

Sampson answered it, “They’re seventeen.”

“Seventeen,” I said. “Jesus, that’s not legal.”

“It is legal in Missouri,” Thea said. “We did check your laws before we brought them here.”

I looked at her, and didn’t know what my face showed, but it felt like nothing pleasant. “I don’t do teenagers. Hell, I didn’t do teenagers when I was one.”

“Then let my wife taste your power, Anita,” Samuel said. “It is likely that your power will not do what we need. Succubus is close to siren, but not the same creature. If your power does not recognize Thea’s, then we will allow Sampson to go home with his morals intact. We will disappoint Thomas.”

That reminded me. “Cristos, you never said how you feel about all this.”

The one who had blushed raised his eyes to me. The look was enough—embarrassment, fear even, but under that was eagerness. The look just screamed virgin. I so was not going to be the one who took his virginity. So not doing that. The fact that his parents were encouraging it just made it creepier.

His voice was low, but deep enough. It was not the voice of a child, but the look was. “Cris, I’m Cris.”

I wanted to say out loud, Your first time should be with someone you care about. Your virginity should go to someone you love. But I didn’t want to embarrass him more than he already was, so instead I said, “Fine.” I looked at Thea. “Thea can taste my power.” I did not add that I hoped she didn’t like the power, because nothing was going to make me pick any of their sons.

Sons. Children. It made me remember why we had pregnancy tests in our overnight bag. Would I be bargaining for some sort of arranged shacking-up for my own child some day? I mean, no matter who the father was, none of us was exactly human, and most of us were scarily powerful. Shit. I wished I hadn’t thought of that.

Thea was in front of me, her head to one side, studying my face. “You look worried, Anita, very worried, as if you’ve thought of something new to fret over.”

That was a little too perceptive. I was really going to have to work harder at hiding my facial expressions tonight. I tried for a little truth. “Samuel is only the second master vamp I’ve ever met with a grown child, or children. It’s just…weird.”

Micah leaned more of himself against the arm he was holding. Nathaniel cuddled in tighter to my back, though the gun kept him from being as comforting as I wanted him to be. They knew what I’d thought of, or maybe they’d been thinking the same thing, or something close to it.

Thea turned her head to the other side, and it didn’t remind me of anything aquatic. It reminded me of a bird of prey judging the distance to my eye.

I shivered. Please, God, don’t let me be pregnant.

She touched my face with fingers that were still fever warm. “It is not I who put that frown between the dark beauty of your eyes.”

I drew my head back enough not to be touched. “Very poetic. Let’s get this done, Thea. We’re wasting moonlight.”

She gave a smile that reminded me of the one that Tom had used just before he blushed and bit his lip, and admitted wanting to have sex with me. The twins looked very much like her except for the eyes.

“Very well, but your men will have to step away. I do not know what the effect would be if they were touching you while I do this. It might raise the ardeur for certain, or…”

“Or what?” I asked.

“Or they might bolster your defenses and keep me from testing your power at all.” She gave a movement of pale shoulders that was almost a shrug, but not quite. “I will treat you as I treat Samuel. I will tell you the truth. I simply am not certain. If you were a vampire then I might know, but you are more, and less. You are not simply one thing or the other, but both, and many. I think it must change the rules of power and magic around you.”

I took in a deep breath, let it out slow, and nodded. I moved forward and Micah and Nathaniel moved back. They gave me the room we asked for. I’m not sure any of us were sure it was a good idea, but if she found me wanting then there were three very unpalatable pomme de sang candidates off the table. Yippee.

Thea took me in her arms again, and I didn’t fight it. I even wrapped my arms around her. She didn’t try to control my head this time. She trusted me to let her kiss me.

I actually went up on tiptoe for her, which meant she was closer to six feet than I’d thought. I found myself putting a hand along the edge of her face as if this were a kiss that I wanted. Sometimes I touched someone’s face because it was intimate. Sometimes I touched them because a hand on the face helps you control the kiss more if things get out of hand. Two guesses which reason it was this time, and first guess doesn’t count.

7

SHE KISSED ME, and this time I didn’t fight her. I let my body melt into hers, let her feed at my mouth. There is a moment in a kiss, especially an open-mouth kiss, where the caress of lips and tongue spills over some line, and beyond that line, you kiss back. I kissed her, kissed her as she was meant to be kissed, full and complete, tasting her.

I drew back enough to whisper, “You taste salty.”

She breathed her answer in my mouth, as she drew me back into the kiss, “You taste of blood.” Her breath filled my mouth, caressed the back of my throat. Her breath tasted fresh and clean like the wind off the ocean.

Her lips tasted like she had just that second taken a sip of the ocean. I licked her lip, and found that there was a whitish film on the fullness of her mouth. It wasn’t illusion. It was real.

I swallowed the salty taste of her lips, staring up at her, feeling the surprise on my face. “How…” But I never finished the question, because I didn’t just swallow the taste of salt, I swallowed her power.

I heard the ocean whispering against the shore. I could hear it like music. I looked around the room. I wanted to ask someone else if they could hear it. I meant to look for Micah, or Nathaniel, but that wasn’t who caught my gaze. Thomas was staring at me with wide eager eyes. His brother had collapsed to the love seat, and was covering his ears with his hands, rocking back and forth. Cristos was fighting it, whatever it was, but Thomas wasn’t. Sampson had a death grip on the love seat, but his eyes had drowned to black so that he looked blind. The other man and woman they’d brought with them turned black eyes to me. The woman was hugging herself, as if cold, or afraid. The man had a death grip on his own wrist, the typical jock pose turned into something harsh and struggling, as if, if he let go of his wrist, he would do something unfortunate. Last I found Samuel’s eyes. His eyes had bled to vampire fire, the glowing brown with flecks of green flame in their depths. They all could hear it, that whispering, seductive sound. The ocean was calling, and I didn’t know how to answer.

I was still staring into Samuel’s eyes when I felt a hand glide down my shoulder. I turned, and found Thomas standing next to us. Thea began to pull out of my arms, giving me to Thomas’s arms as she moved, so that it was as if the embrace never stopped, only the arms holding me had changed.

There was movement around us. I saw Micah’s face, his lips moving, but I couldn’t hear him. All I could hear was the sigh and echo of the sea. Thomas touched my face, turned me back to look at him. He spoke, and his words held the growling echo of surf over rocks. “You hear my voice though, don’t you?”

I nodded, my face pressed against his hand. His hand was large enough to cup the entire side of my face. He leaned down, and I went up on tiptoe to help him finish the kiss. I wasn’t thinking that he was seventeen. I wasn’t thinking we had an audience that included his parents. I wasn’t thinking that men I loved were watching. I saw nothing but his face, felt nothing but the strength of his hands on my face, his arm trailing down my back, his hand gliding down my body. The inside of my head was peaceful, full of a soft, rushing sound, like water as it spills along some peaceful shore. I wasn’t the one who fought free of the mind games, it was Thomas who spoiled it. His hand slid down, down, and found the gun at the small of my back. It made him hesitate. Made him stumble as if his magic had legs to be tripped by a misplaced stone.

I pulled back from him, saw the uncertainty on his face. He was still handsome, and the compulsion to touch him was still there whispering through my head, but his eyes were wide, his face uncertain. He looked fresh and new and untried, like someone who had never hugged someone and found her wearing a gun.

The sound of the surf pulled away, and I could hear the murmuring in the room. People wondering what to do, whether they should interfere.

“That’s a gun,” he said, in a voice as uncertain as his face.

I nodded. I had gone back to being flat-footed on my heels, no more tiptoe, no more helping him seduce me with his mother’s magic, or his own.

He’d actually missed the big knife down my spine, because he hadn’t come to the midline of my body until low on my back. But it was a big weapon to miss. Baby, he was a baby. And I’d have said that if he’d been twenty-seven instead of seventeen. Baby not in years, but in my world. You don’t miss a knife as long as a forearm, not and live, not for long. Not in my world.

I gazed up into his face. The black was beginning to drain away, showing the hazel of his human eyes. He was the son of a master vampire and a siren, but where he lived was a gentler, kinder place than my life. I would leave him to that gentleness.

I drew out of his arms, completely. “Go back and sit down, Thomas.”

He hesitated and looked at his mother. She was watching me, not him. Watching me with those black eyes. There was a considering look on her face, as if she wasn’t sure what she thought of the show.

“Do as Anita says, Thomas,” she said, at last.

He went back to the love seat, to sit beside his brother. It left Thea and me staring at each other.

“He hesitated only for a moment,” she said, “yet, it was enough.”

“It’s not his power,” I said, “not yet. It’s yours. You loaned him enough power to roll me.”

She made a gesture that was almost a shrug, but her hands went out in a wide gesture. I think it meant, Perhaps, or, You caught me. I wasn’t sure which, and wasn’t sure I cared.

“You have greeted Thomas, but we have two other sons,” she said.

Micah came up beside me. He took my hand. “In fairness to our other guests, I think we need to greet more of Auggie’s people.”

“They are only his henchmen, and his mistress. We have brought you our flesh and blood, the fruit of our lives.”

Micah nodded, still smiling. “We appreciate that, but—”

I cut him off, and said, “Enough, Micah, thanks for trying to be all polite and hosty, but I’ve had enough of games for the night.”

He squeezed my hand, as if saying, Be nice.

I squeezed back, but I was done being nice. I wouldn’t be rude, but…“I’m going to greet Auggie and his people now, because they didn’t try to roll me. Until Jean-Claude joins us, you and your sons are just going to have to wait to be greeted.”

“So Augustine’s whore is higher in rank than my sons?” Thea sounded genuinely angry.

There was a sound of outrage from the other side of the room—a woman’s voice protesting and Auggie trying to calm her. I glanced to find him talking to a statuesque brunette in a very tiny dress. She was mad, and I didn’t blame her.

I turned back to Samuel. “You talk to her, Samuel. You explain that your wife damn near abused our hospitality tonight.”

“If we have truly abused your hospitality, then Jean-Claude could revoke our safe conduct,” he said, voice deep, but strangely soft.

“I understand that.”

“Did we frighten you that badly?” he asked.

“I agreed to Thea tasting my power, not Thomas. It wasn’t what we negotiated for. I was told you were an honorable man; bait and switch isn’t very honorable.”

“Could you hear anything we said while Thomas touched you?” Micah asked.

I glanced at him, and shook my head. “I could hear his voice and the sound of the sea, that was it.”

“I pointed out to Samuel that you hadn’t bargained for Thomas.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that for a siren to truly taste your power it needed to have a sexual flavor to it, and since you were not a lover of women, one of the boys would be helpful.”

I shook my head. “I’m going to greet Auggie and his people now. Whether I let any of your other children touch me, or not, is up for a very serious debate.” I put my gaze on Thea. “I don’t like to be forced, or played, Thea. If you really want your sons to have a chance at my bed, or body, or power, you need to remember that.”

“I saw into your mind when I embraced you,” she said. “I saw what you think of my sons. You are disinclined toward them. Without magic to persuade you, I do not think they have any chance at your bed, your body, or your power.”

My pulse was suddenly in my throat. I fought to keep a blank face, but wasn’t sure I succeeded. How much had she read while she was playing inside my head? Did she know about the pregnancy scare?

Thea was watching me very narrowly. She saw the fear on me, but didn’t understand why. Which meant either she’d only read things about her sons in my head, or she didn’t understand why being pregnant would scare me. If the former, yea; if the latter, she was too odd for me to talk to.

I turned to Auggie and his angry girlfriend. She was the only woman on his side of the room. Standing in the spike heels she was over six feet tall. But whereas with Claudia it was all muscle, and menace, this woman was thin. There was no play of muscle to her arms and legs. She was making angry gestures with large hands, darkly painted nails, a diamond flashing on her right hand. Her dress was red with silver sequins. It fit her like a tiny, glittery second skin. The dress was so short that when she flounced around the couch, taking too long a step, she flashed enough flesh that I knew she wasn’t wearing anything under the dress. Oh, my.

Auggie coaxed her back to me. Her face was perfect in a high-cheekboned, almost stark way. She wore enough makeup, artfully applied, that stark should not have been a word you used for her face. Her hair was long, and teased too high on the top, as if she’d never quite left the eighties, but it was brunette. It might even have been her natural color. The spaghetti straps of her dress and the thin material should not have been able to support her breasts. Breasts that large do not stay perky without more help than the dress could give. Her breasts sat under the dress in a way that real breasts just don’t. She flounced toward me, holding Auggie’s hand. The walk was good, bouncy, but her breasts didn’t bounce with her. They were big, and even shapely, but they rode under her dress like they were way more solid than breasts are meant to be.

It took Micah tugging on my hand to let me know I’d missed something, staring at her chest. I shook my head and gave Auggie eye contact. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“This is Bunny; she is my mistress.”

Bunny. I thought, was it her real name? I hoped so—who would choose to be Bunny? I nodded. “Hi, Bunny.”

Auggie gave her a little pull, and a nod.

She gave an angry sullen face to me. “At least I’m only whoring for one man, not a dozen.”

Micah actually pulled me away from her. I let him do it. I was so astounded at the rudeness of it that I was speechless. I wasn’t even angry yet; it was too unexpected. Too rude.

Auggie ordered her to kneel, and when she didn’t do it fast enough, he forced her. “Apologize, now!” His power filled the room like cold water, shivering along my skin.

“Why am I a whore, when his wife is pimping out her own sons, and this one is fucking everything and everyone that will stand still?”

“Benny,” he said in a very quiet voice. I knew that tone of voice. It’s the careful, controlled one you use when you’re afraid of what you’ll do if you yell.

The only vampire he’d brought with him moved around the couch to stand beside him. “Yeah, boss.”

“Take her out of here. Get on a plane, take her back to Chicago, help her pack. Make sure she takes only what belongs to her.”

Bunny’s eyes went wide. “No, Auggie, no, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”

He moved away, so she couldn’t touch him. She tried to crawl after him, but Benny grabbed her arm. “Come on, Bunny, we gotta plane to catch.”

She was human, and in five-inch heels, but she put up a fight. Benny was having trouble getting her to the door without hurting her. She’d proven to the entire room that she was naked under the tiny dress.

I said, “Claudia.”

She came to me, all serious, the bodyguard’s bodyguard. “Pick someone, or two someones, to help Benny get her out of here.”

Claudia nodded, almost a bow, and said, “Fredo, Clay, help our guest out.”

Fredo pushed himself from the wall, all boneless ease like some dark, well-armed cat. Clay just took Bunny’s other arm, and helped Benny start carrying her toward the door. She used the spike heels effectively, probably drawing blood through Clay’s pants. He never slowed, and neither did Benny, though his face was bleeding from nail marks. Fredo got both her ankles, and they carried her out.

Auggie gave me a very low bow. “I don’t know what to say, Anita. I’m sorry that I brought her. I knew she was jealous, but not crazy jealous.”

“Jealous?” I made it a question.

“She, like Samuel’s Thea, is very competitive around other women.”

I frowned at him. “So she and Thea were like trying to outbitch each other?”

He looked at me. “You really don’t understand why she didn’t like you from the moment you stepped into the room, do you?”

Micah drew me in against his body, hugging me one-armed. I looked back and forth from one to the other of them. “What?”

“No,” Micah said, “she doesn’t.”

“Don’t what?” I asked.

“You are a natural beauty,” Auggie said. “Artifice gave Bunny her face, her figure; most of her best features were found under a surgeon’s blade. In you walk, all natural equipment, wearing more clothes, and still get more attention from the men in the room than she did. When you were with Thea and Thomas, every man in the room was riveted. We wanted you. Wanted to touch you, in a way that is rare.”

I felt myself blushing and tried to stop it, but, as usual, lost. “You’re babbling, Auggie,” I said.

“Watching you and a siren, two if you count the boy. Watching two creatures formed of desire, and it was not the pale beauty most eyes watched, Anita. It was the dark.”

I frowned at him. “I don’t need this much ego-boo, Auggie, just make your point. If you have a point?”

Nathaniel came up. “I’ll translate.”

“What do you mean, translate?” I said, turning to him.

He took my hand, and shook his head. His face had that I-love-you-but-you-amuse-me look. “You outvamped the sirens, Anita.”

“How?”

“I believe,” Auggie said, “because your power is over the dead, and the undead. I was told your animal to call was only leopard.”

I nodded. “It is, but through Jean-Claude’s marks, I also have ties to the wolves.”

“Yes, but my men are neither. They are lion, and yet they felt your call.”

I glanced behind him at the two men he’d brought along as both bodyguards and food, and I was told as pomme de sang candidates, though Auggie, like Samuel, had a new twist on the whole pomme thing. Auggie was hoping to convince one of our new female vamps from London to come home with him and play house. He wanted another of Belle’s line in his bed. Maybe that had predisposed Bunny to be pissy. He had come here to replace her, after all.

Auggie was offering to trade one of his werelions for a bedmate of Belle’s line. I wondered how the men in question felt; did they want to stay in St. Louis? Did they want to leave Chicago? Had anyone asked them? I was betting not.

They were both tall, and muscular, and all they needed was a blinking sign over their heads that said “bodyguard.” They both wore tailored suits that hid the guns I was almost one hundred percent sure were under there somewhere. One was brunette, the other pale; other than that they looked as if an unimaginative baker had used the same cookie cutter for both of them. Only the icing was different. The pale one had short spiky, blue hair, which had actually been dyed well, so that it wasn’t a solid blue color, but pale blue, dark blue, all mixed together like real hair is, and dyed hair seldom is. Except that nobody has hair the color of Cookie Monster and a spring sky on the top of their head. His eyes were a pale blue made deeper, richer, by the hair color. He was a little more slender through the shoulders, and maybe an inch taller, than the other guard.

The brunette’s hair looked like it might curl, but he’d cut it so short it didn’t have the chance. His shoulders had a swell that I was familiar with; someone lifted weights as more than a casual hobby. Not a bodybuilder, but he worked at it. He was tall enough to carry the shoulders.

Cookie Monster had a slight smile on his slender face. It reached the blue of his eyes, as if we just amused the hell out of him. Brunette watched me like I might do something bad, and he would be ready. The smile didn’t fool me; they were both professional muscle. They were dangerous, and they were totally unacceptable as pomme de sang candidates. Too dominant, too unbending. Yeah, it was a quick judgment, but I’d have bet almost anything I was right.

My eyes went to the other man who still stood behind the couch. I’d have said human, but the power that lurked just below that dark, elegant surface made me think, maybe not. I knew he was Octavius, Auggie’s human servant. I’d have liked to just greet the two bodyguards, and let their power tell me I was right to think they were too dominant for what we wanted, but technically since they weren’t Auggie’s special animal to call, Octavius outranked them.

Almost as if he read my face, Octavius said, “Greet them first, Ms. Blake, let us see what you think of your choices. I, too, think the night is wasting away.” His voice matched the smooth elegance of the rest of him.

I nodded, and said, “Thank you.” But I didn’t like that Octavius had read me that easily. I moved around the couch, with Micah and Nathaniel at my back, and Graham and Claudia flanking all of us. I don’t think any of our guards liked the two werelions any better than I did.

“You guys have names?” I asked.

Cookie Monster grinned at me, eyes sparkling. Why did I think he’d grin just like that while he gutted someone? “Haven, I’m Haven.”

I nodded acknowledgment, then turned to Brunette. “And you would be?”

“Pierce.”

“You guys only have one name apiece? Like Madonna?”

Pierce frowned at me. Haven laughed, and it was a good laugh. Head back, full-throated; if he hadn’t made the hairs at the back of my neck crawl, I’d have smiled.

Auggie glided up to the two men, putting a hand on each of them. Their eyes tightened, not a flinch, but noticable. What had he done when he touched their backs, oh-so-lightly?

Auggie smiled, that happy, happy smile that filled his gray eyes with light. “My lions are like vampires, Anita; they can, if they choose, have only one name among us. Pierce and Haven do have first names, but I think they will keep them until they know if they’re staying.”

“What, you think I can’t run them through a computer and a record check because you don’t give me their real names?”

“If their criminal record worries you, then let me allay your fears. They both have one.” He was still smiling when he said it.

It was all getting too weird. These were our friends, and I was already feeling like I’d been thrown into the deep end of the pool. Jean-Claude, where are you? I thought.

I got a confused glimpse of fighting. He and Asher were struggling to hold Meng Die down. It reminded me of watching the men carrying Bunny out. If they want to hurt you, and you don’t want to hurt them, you are at a disadvantage. They were inside the building that housed the carnival’s freak show upstairs. Though most of the “freaks” were rare supernaturals. I saw people looking in at them from the outer areas. They had an audience.

I thought, Ask for help, get some guards in there and get her out of sight.

I felt more than heard him think that asking for help with the other vamps maybe sensing it would make him look weak. I thought back, Taking advantage of your resources is not weakness, it’s good management.

I felt him reach out to the wolves upstairs. I felt them moving toward him. Soon there’d be too many men for her to fight back. What they’d do with her once they subdued her, that was a different question. I had one more awful thought. I turned to Claudia. “Can you contact the wererat guards upstairs via mind?”

She pulled a small cell phone from one pocket. “How about phone?”

“Meng Die’s animal to call is wolf; I’d like a few wererats to join everyone in the freak show.”

Claudia didn’t ask, she just made the call. So nice not to be questioned.

“And what does Jean-Claude need that much help with?” Auggie said.

“She’s a female of Belle’s line. You want her?”

He laughed. “Not if she’s this wild, no.”

“Auggie wouldn’t need help to subdue one of his vamps,” Pierce said.

“Jean-Claude could subdue her, or even kill her, but she’s chosen a place where there’s an audience. Committing murder in front of civilians is a no-no,” I said.

“But once behind the scenes, will he kill her?” Haven asked.

I sighed. “Probably not.”

“Weakness,” Pierce said.

Auggie patted them both on the back, and again there was that tightening around their eyes. “Now, now, boys, some masters would have killed Bunny for her disrespect. Everyone runs his territory a little differently.” He was still cheerful, and charming, but there was an edge to it.

“What are you thinking, Auggie?” I asked. I didn’t really expect an answer, but I got one.

“That Jean-Claude is too sentimental for his own good sometimes.”

I smiled, and knew it left my eyes cold. “You know, sentimental is not a word I would have used for him.”

“Then he has changed.”

“Don’t we all,” I said.

Auggie nodded, the smile melting around the edges. “Taste them, Anita. Taste your new toys.”

I shook my head, and said, “Can you stop touching them while I do it? I’d hate to confuse your tie to them with their power.”

He gave a small bow and stepped back. He even went to sit on the couch, where Octavius joined him. I stepped away from my own people. I fought not to look at one particular guard of ours. Our local lions were ruled by Joseph, and he was in the corner dressed as a bodyguard. He was ready to help if needed, but he and I both knew that he was mostly here to check out the new werelions. I was betting he liked them even less than I did.

I looked up at the two men in question. “Do you guys want this trade?”

That surprised them both, though Haven hid it sooner. He smiled. “I’m cool with it, if it works out.” His eyes were cooler when he said it, as if the smile were beginning to melt down his face. If I asked the right question I might even see the real Haven behind the smiling, hip exterior.

Pierce glanced behind them at Auggie. I said what I’d said to the twins. “Don’t look at your master, look at me, and give me an honest answer. Do you want to be traded to St. Louis?”

He started to look at the couch again. I touched his arm. A jolt of power ran through me, made me drop his arm. It stopped him midmotion, turned him back to me with his pulse pushing at the side of his throat. “What was that?”

I fought the urge to rub my hand along the side of my skirt. “I’m not sure. Power, some kind of power.”

“You’re not sure?” He sounded as suspicious as he looked.

“I honestly don’t know why there was a power jump when we touched. I didn’t like it either.”

“I want to go home,” he said. “I don’t like being traded away, and I really don’t like being offered up for sex like some kind of whore.” He let the anger fill his voice, and the anger raised his power like heat across my skin.

Octavius said, “Be careful, cat.”

“No,” I said, “I want honesty. I’ve seen what happens if someone is forced to be in a group that they don’t want to be in. The local lion pride works well; I don’t want to queer their deal.”

“So you won’t taste Pierce now, will you?” Auggie asked from the couch.

I shook my head. “Take him back home, Auggie. I’m surprised you brought him, him not wanting to come.”

“Bunny said Pierce was one of the best lovers she’d ever had. I thought you’d enjoy that.”

I couldn’t control my face fast enough.

“What’s wrong with that?” Auggie asked.

“The idea of Bunny, just—” I made a push-away gesture. “I’m fighting off a visual.”

“She could be crude, but she was very good at her job.”

I looked at Auggie. “And her job would be?”

“Sex.”

“She’s your mistress, not your whore. Mistress means more than just sex.”

“Now that is Jean-Claude talking.”

“Maybe, but it’s still true.”

He shrugged those massive shoulders. “You’ve met her, Anita, do you really think I sat around and had stimulating conversations with Bunny?”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “No, I guess not.” Then another thought occurred to me. “Why would you date anyone that you couldn’t talk to?”

He just stared at me, a look on his face that I couldn’t read. “You mean that, don’t you?” He smiled, almost sadly, shook his head, and wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Oh, Anita, you make me feel jaded, and very old.”

“Do I apologize for that?” I asked.

He looked up, smiling still. “No, but that you meant that question makes me wonder about my choices for your pomme de sang. I looked for good sex, dominants, because everyone needs more muscle. I did not look for good conversation, or someone with interests like yours. I wasn’t looking for a date. I was looking for food and fucking.”

“You need a woman in your organization, Auggie. Being all guys limits you.”

“Are you saying I need a woman’s touch?”

“Yeah, and there isn’t a woman of Belle’s line that will go with you just to be your whore. We promised them that they’d have choices when they came here.”

“Are you saying I have to court them?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

“And Jean-Claude agrees to this?” Octavius said.

I nodded. “He gave his word that no one would be forced to have sex against their will.”

“Ah,” Auggie said, then he laughed. “Dating. I haven’t dated in decades. I wonder if I remember how.”

“The Master of the City does not have to date,” Octavius said, “he commands.”

“You’re in the wrong town for that attitude,” I said.

“You are so certain of that?” he said.

“Absolutely.”

“Taste Haven,” Auggie said. “If you don’t like him, then I’m going to have to send home for some less dominant take-out.”

I looked up at the tall man in front of me. He looked down with that soft, laughing face, and I just didn’t buy it. It was like the smile and sparkly eyes was his version of a cop face. A way to hide everything.

He dropped gracefully to his knees. Which made him not that much shorter than me. I added at least another inch to his height. He laughed, that joyous laugh that seemed so sincere. “You should see your face, so suspicious. I just thought that this way you have your choice of wrist or neck. With me standing, you can’t reach my neck.”

It made sense, so why didn’t I like it? No answer other than the one I’d had since I saw him. Being close to him reacted with that primitive part of the brain that keeps you alive if you don’t argue with it. Touching him was dangerous in some way, but in what way? The trouble with the primitive brain is that it doesn’t reason, or explain, it just feels. I could just touch him, then turn him down. He’d be on his way back to Chicago, no harm, no foul.

I reached for his hand, and he gave it. I wondered if I’d get that jolt of energy like I had from Pierce, but his hand was simply warm. His hand was very passive in mine, but when I pushed back the sleeve of his jacket, he had on a French-cuffed shirt, with real cuff links. “Shit.”

“You don’t like French cuffs?”

I frowned down at him. “It’ll take a while to unhook your wrists.”

He gave me that smile again, but the blue eyes weren’t quite as neutrally cheerful. I got to glimpse the coldness under that smile. For some reason it made me feel better. I liked truth, most of the time.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked, and his voice held just a hint of uncertainty. Good.

I shook my head. “Nothing.” I smoothed my hand up the side of his face, turned him so the line of his neck stretched above the collar of his dress shirt. I bent over him, one hand on his shoulder for balance, the other cradling the side of his face. The neck was always so much more intimate than the wrist.

I meant to simply lay my lips against his neck. But when I was close enough to smell his skin, all my good intentions vanished. He smelled so warm, so incredibly warm. I wanted to put my mouth against that warmth, but not to kiss. I put my face so close to the warm, smooth line of his neck that a hard thought would have made my lips touch his skin. But I kept just above his neck, and breathed in the scent of him. Warm, a faint hint of some powdery sweet cologne, barely there, soap, and underneath just the scent of his body. Human, and deeper still, where my breath blew back hot from his skin, the musky hint of cat. Cleaner, less sharp than leopard. But definitely cat, not wolf, not dog. I breathed in the scent of lion as it rose from his skin, as if my breath called it forth.

My arms slid down his back, across his shoulders, folding my body around his. He’d behaved himself until then, hands at his sides, but now he reached for me, wrapped me in the strength of his arms, the force of his fingers, kneading at my body through my clothes.

I heard him whisper, “Oh, God.”

I laid the gentlest of kisses against that hot, smooth skin, a feather’s touch of a kiss, and it wasn’t enough. I could smell what I wanted just below the surface. I could smell his blood like something sweet and metallic. I licked along his neck, licked over the warm, jumping life of his pulse. He shuddered in my arms.

I heard a voice. “Anita, Anita, don’t do this.” I didn’t know who it was, and didn’t understand what they were talking about. I needed to taste his pulse, feel it quiver between my teeth until it burst hot and scalding in my mouth.

A wrist appeared near my face. I smelled leopard. Micah called me back from that quivering edge. “Anita, what are you doing?”

I didn’t unwind from Haven’s body. I raised my face only enough to see Micah. “Tasting him,” and my voice sounded hoarse and not mine.

“Let him go, Anita.”

I shook my head, and felt Haven’s fingers hard and firm, as if he had claws to sink into my body, and I wanted him to do it.

Graham came next, putting his wrist between me and that pulsing candy. But the musk of wolf was not what I wanted.

Nathaniel was next, putting the sweetness of his wrist between me and Haven’s neck. He still smelled of vanilla, but that wasn’t the scent I was after tonight. I shook my head. “No.”

“Something’s wrong, Anita, you need to stop.”

I shook my head again, sending my hair flying over the kneeling man’s face. He made a sound low in his throat from the sensation of it. The sound made me push Nathaniel away and lay my mouth over the shivering of Haven’s pulse, not a kiss, no, my mouth was too wide for a kiss. My jaw tensed to bite him, and two things happened simultaneously. Someone grabbed a handful of my hair, and a wrist I didn’t know well was suddenly in my face.

A voice that had already gone growling deep said, “If it is lion you want, then here I am.”

I followed that scent upward, as he pulled my head backward with my hair. Joseph stood above me, his hair golden, his eyes already the deep, perfect amber of lion.

The man at my feet wrapped himself tighter around me, not kneading me with his fingers now, but clinging. “No,” Haven said, “no, she’s mine. Mine!”

“Not yours,” Joseph growled. He drew his wrist upward and my body followed the line of his skin. It wasn’t Haven I wanted, it was lion. Would anyone do? Maybe. It wasn’t a person I chased, but a scent.

Haven came up off the floor in a movement too quick to follow. He was just suddenly moving, and Joseph was there, and the next moment they were across the room, crashing through the drapes into the stone wall beyond.

The drapes cascaded down around them, so that half the living room “wall” was ripped away, revealing the bare stone and the torch-lit corridor beyond.

The guards waded in, trying to separate them. I was left standing, staring, not entirely sure what had happened, or why. Joseph had saved me, from something, something…

Cloth ripped, loud and violent. Haven came up, out of the ripped drapes, and sailed across the room, to find the drapes at the other side. They collapsed around him, but he never tried to rise. He was just a shape under the cascading cloth.

Joseph stepped out of the fall of white and gold cloth, half his shirt ripped away. His hands were half-clawed, and his face was beginning to lose its human shape, like his body becoming soft clay. His hair was lengthening, starting to form the golden halo of his mane.

Auggie stepped to the edge of the spilled cloth around him, and his voice echoed through the room like the whisper of a giant. Intimate, soft, and thunderous all at once. “Lion, I am master here, not you.”

Joseph growled at him with teeth gone long and dangerous. His voice was so low and growling that it was hard to understand. “I am the Rex of the St. Louis Pride. I was invited to see the lions you brought, and I have found them wanting.”

Octavius came up beside Auggie, laid a hand on his back, and the power level rocked off the scale. It was like a metaphysical earthquake, except nothing moved, nothing you could see anyway. But it stumbled me on my high heels. Joseph staggered back a step from it. The others turned startled faces toward Auggie, but they weren’t as affected as Joseph.

“Have you ever met a master vampire that could call your animal, Rex?” Auggie asked.

Joseph was breathing harder than he should have been, but he managed to growl, “No.”

“Let me show you what you’ve been missing.” He didn’t gesture, or speak, but suddenly the air was hard to breathe. The air was so heavy with power that we should all be choking on it. But it wasn’t meant for us.

Joseph collapsed to his knees, snarling, fighting, but he could not stand against it.

“Let me see your human eyes, Rex.”

The growing mane began to shrink. The fur that had been climbing over his skin began to be reabsorbed. His face was reshaping itself. Only when he was Joseph again, fully human again, did the air ease a little.

“What do you want, vampire?” Joseph said, in a human voice that sounded breathy.

“Obedience,” Auggie said, and there was nothing friendly about that one word. The good-natured man was gone, and the master vampire was revealed. “Come to me, Rex, crawl to me.”

Joseph fought him. You could watch the struggle of it on his face, but finally he dropped to all fours.

“Stop it, Auggie,” I said, “leave him alone.”

“He is my beast, not Jean-Claude’s. There is no tie between my host and the lions.”

“There is tie between me and the lions. I invited Joseph here tonight.”

He never looked at me, but Octavius did. He put those perfect chocolate eyes on me, and his face held nothing but arrogance. Which pissed me off. Anger is bad, but sometimes, well, it has its uses.

I moved toward them. I put myself between them, blocking his view of Joseph. It was like I’d taken a punch. Nathaniel was there to grab me, and the moment he touched me, I felt better. He was my animal to call now, not just my type of animal, but truly my animal to call, as Richard was to Jean-Claude. It was sort of like a furry human servant, and it gave some of the benefits. Power, extra power.

“Joseph and his people are our allies. My leopards and I have a treaty with them. To harm one is to harm both.”

Auggie looked at me then, his eyes swimming gray like clouds with lightning caught inside them. “If Jean-Claude had made this treaty I would have to abide by it, but you are a human servant, Anita. You do not bind me, as your master would. Just as, if you visit us in Chicago, deals made by Octavius alone are not binding on your master.”

“So you’ll hurt Joseph because why, because he stopped me from doing some metaphysical shit with your lion? Is that it?”

“He is lion, and no lion can resist me.”

“He is the Rex of St. Louis, Auggie, you have no authority over him,” I said.

“Would you challenge me with Octavius at my back? Would you set yourself against me with your master busy elsewhere?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I will punish him for his insult to me and mine, Anita. I will do it. You can either allow it, gracefully, or you can force me to control you, as I control Joseph.”

“If you think you can control me, Auggie, knock yourself out.”

It was suddenly harder to breathe again. Micah came in at my other side. He was my Nimir-Raj, and it helped me think, but it didn’t help me fight. “Graham,” I said.

He came to my reaching hand, and the moment I touched him, I could feel the wolves. Feel the tie through Richard to the pack. That neck-ruffling scent of wolf. The green peace of woods and fields, and…

I staggered, and only Nathaniel and Graham’s hands kept me on my feet. Pierce the werelion was at Auggie’s side.

I wanted to call Jean-Claude, but was afraid to. Auggie was his friend, but what I was feeling pushing against me, filling the very air, was more powerful than anything I’d ever felt from Jean-Claude. If I lost to Auggie, then I lost. But if Jean-Claude lost to him, then there was a chance he would be defeated as Master of the City. And right there, in that moment, I saw the real reason I hadn’t wanted these bastards in our city. I hadn’t trusted us to be strong enough.

I would not cost us the city. I would not be the ruin of us all. I would not. I was trying to fight him as if I were another master vampire, but that wasn’t what I was. I was a necromancer. I was supposed to have control over all the dead. We would see.

I let go of the men who held me up. I took a step away from the hands of the living, and opened that part of me that I always had to shield. That part of me that was like some great closed fist, tight, tight, or who knows what we could do, by accident or by design.

I almost never unleashed my necromancy outside a cemetery. But there were no dead bodies for the power to find, there were only vampires. My power blew out from my body like a chill wind, and it found its mark.

“What is this?” Auggie asked. Octavius’s face didn’t look so arrogant over his shoulder. Pierce moved away from him as if something about my power had made it hard to keep touching him.

“If being human servant or Nimir-Ra gains me nothing, then there are other titles, Auggie. Other powers to be invoked.”

He licked his lips, a nice nervous gesture. “What is this power?”

“Haven’t you heard, Auggie, I’m a necromancer.”

“There are no true necromancers,” Octavius said, but his voice didn’t sound so certain.

“Have it your way, but you will leave Joseph and his people alone while you’re in my city.”

“Or what?” Auggie asked, his eyes still full of gray light.

“I have another title among the vampires; do you know what it is?”

“The Executioner, they call you the Executioner.”

“Yeah, they do.”

“Are you threatening to kill me?” He managed to sound amused, even with my power breathing around his body.

“I am telling you the rules. You do not mess with our people. And all the vampires, all the shapeshifters, and other supernaturals to be named later, qualify as our people.”

“We were attacked,” Octavius said.

“Fine, you’ve proved your point. You forced him to swallow his beast. I say it’s enough.”

“I am a master vampire, a ruler of a city; you do not dictate to me.”

“If you’re vampire enough to make me back down, then come and get me, Auggie. I stand here alone, no animal to call, no Nimir-Raj, no vampire at my back. I stand here with nothing but my own power. Are you vampire enough to do the same?”

He smiled. “Are you saying to step away from Octavius and my lion, and meet you in the middle of the room, for what? A duel? You would die.”

“A testing of wills then,” I said.

“You cannot hope to win,” he said.

“If that’s true, then you have nothing to lose, do you?”

“Anita,” Claudia said, “I’m not sure about this.”

“Come to me, Augustine, come to me.” I put everything I had into that command. I wanted him to come to me, now. Before Jean-Claude got here.

He pushed away from his human servant and his lion. He started walking toward me, just like I wanted. “Augustine,” Octavius said, “do not do this.”

“Come to me, Auggie, come to me.”

He had taken two more steps, before he frowned at me. “You are bidding me to come. You are truly calling me.”

“I told you what I was.”

He shook his head. “I will not come to you.”

“Afraid?”

“Cautious,” he said.

“Fine, then I’ll meet you halfway, that’s fair.”

“Anita,” Graham said. I ignored him. I started walking toward the waiting vampire. “Meet me partway, Auggie.”

He started toward me, not gliding, but stiffly, as if his body wasn’t working quite right. He finally stopped before he reached me. Stopped with a look you don’t get to see on a master vampire’s face often. Nervous, he was nervous.

“What happens when we meet in the middle, Anita?”

“If you get past me, fine, but if you don’t, then I win.”

“That doesn’t seem fair; you have only to stand your ground, but I must walk past you.”

We both stopped about two feet away from each other. I coaxed my power, whispered to it what I wanted. I wanted him to obey me. I’d never tried this so overtly against any vampire. A Master of the City was probably not the place to start, but it was too late now.

He swayed on his expensive shoes. “I will not.”

“Will not what?” I asked, but my voice held the power that was breathing around us. My voice knew what.

I expected him just to keep resisting. I should have remembered that there were other options.

“You want me, Anita, you can have me. I can do what I wanted to do all along, and Jean-Claude can’t even get mad.”

I hesitated, stumbling in my mind, the power flickering. “What…”

He moved faster than I could follow, closing the distance, taking me in his arms. I was suddenly pinned against his body, my arms trapped. My power pushed at him, but his power pushed back.

“I feel it, your power, and God, you are powerful. If you were just a necromancer you might even win, but you aren’t just that, are you?” He lowered his face toward me, as if he meant to kiss me.

“Stop, I command you to stop.”

He actually hesitated, swallowing hard, closing his eyes, but when he opened them, it was as if his power had taken a catastrophic leap. The gaze from his eyes stopped the breath in my throat. “Strong, but not strong enough.” He flexed his power, like some invisible muscle, and that flexing shot through my body. It bowed my spine, and only his arms kept me upright. We half fell to our knees, as if my collapse caught him by surprise. He ripped my controls away from the ardeur. He did it better and quicker than Thea had dreamt of. He brought the ardeur, with my body wrapped in his. He brought the ardeur knowing that once it rose like this, he would be my food. Which, of course, was what he had meant. He could do what he’d wanted to all along, and Jean-Claude couldn’t even get mad.

8

PASSION LIKE SOMETHING touchable, solid, spilled up through my body and over his. Lust like some thick, heavy paint flowed over us, covering us, trapping us.

I froze, afraid to breathe, afraid to speak, afraid most of all to move. I’d gone from finding Auggie handsome, arrogant, and beginning not to like him, to wanting to be naked with him. Even for the ardeur it was an abrupt switch.

I wanted to ask him what had he done to me, but was afraid to move that much, and even more afraid to draw his attention to me. Afraid of what he would do, no, not true: terrified of what I would do.

I stayed frozen in his arms. Perfectly still, only my pulse moving. If I could simply not move, I could hold on. I’d won the fight. Auggie was offering himself up as food; that made me the winner. Vampire rules: food loses. All I had to do was hold on until Jean-Claude came. I could do that. He was close. I could feel him coming down the stairs. Minutes, minutes away from help. But fighting the ardeur by not acting only works if the other person involved wants it to work. It needs two people trying to fight it. Auggie didn’t want to fight it. He wanted to lose.

His eyes closed, and his head fell back, almost as if the sex had already started. His voice was hoarse as he said, “I had almost forgotten how it feels to be consumed by passion.” He lowered his face so he could meet my gaze. “I try to forget the touch of it, Anita. I almost succeed in convincing myself it wasn’t real, that nothing ever felt so amazing, then she sends me a dream.”

I knew who she was, because when any of Belle’s line said her, or she, of course, you knew who she was. Belle Morte. It was always Belle Morte. Their dark mistress, the creator of them all.

“Did you hear me, Anita? Did you hear me?” His arms moved so that he was gripping my upper arms, our bodies still pressed too close together. There was room to try to fight, to try for a weapon, but it was too late for that. If I went for a weapon, I wasn’t certain I could make my hands grab a gun, or a blade. My hands ached for the touch of his skin. I wasn’t trustworthy. I wanted to scream in my mind for Jean-Claude, but with the ardeur this strong, I wasn’t sure if it could spread that way.

Auggie shook me. “Did you hear me, Anita?”

I felt movement, caught a glimpse of black at the sides. If anyone touched us the ardeur would spread to them. Bad, very bad. “Stay back,” I whispered, “tell them.”

Micah said, “Don’t touch either of them. It spreads by touch.”

“You touch her and I’ll shoot you, Graham.” This from Claudia.

“Look at me, Anita,” Auggie said. “Me.”

I swallowed my pulse, and moved, very slowly, to look at him. I met the charcoal gray of his gaze, and whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him. “She sends such dreams, Anita. Dreams like this, where lust is something touchable, holdable, caressable, and it’s spilling over your skin, drowning you in its need.” He leaned in toward me, as if for a kiss.

I turned my head down, away, still careful, still slow. Move too fast and the ardeur was like a predator, attracted by quick movements. But a small turn of the head, that I could do.

“Don’t turn away. Let me kiss you. Let me spill this waiting press of heat over us. Let us drown together.”

I kept my face turned away, my hands in fists, because all I could think of was what his body would feel like under my hands. I wanted to trace his shoulders, his chest, see the muscled promise of him nude before me. It was like months, or years, of dating and wanting all packed into moments. Requiem, one of our imports from Britain, could cause instant body reaction, hours of really good foreplay in seconds of power. Could Auggie hit the emotional markers as fast as Requiem could hit the physical ones? Sweet Mary, Mother of God, help me.

The moment the thought left me, I was calmer, could think more clearly. For years I hadn’t prayed during times like this, too embarrassed, but I’d finally realized if my faith was real, then it didn’t desert me just because I was outside societal norms.

“No,” he said, “no, I will not come this close and be denied.” He drew me in against his body, and I fought to stay stiff and unyielding when all I wanted to do in the whole wide world was touch him. He rested his cheek against my hair. “I feel your master’s nearness, Anita. You wait for rescue, but remember, unless you actually feed from me, then you have not won this fight.” I felt the press of his lips against my temple, soft and hot. “Do you really believe Jean-Claude will win against me? Feed and you win, and so does he.”

He was implying what I’d already thought of, that if Jean-Claude hit the door before I’d won, that we would lose, badly. I’d felt the power in Auggie, and I knew the power in Jean-Claude. If it was a straight-up battle, we would lose. I couldn’t let that happen.

Micah’s voice came from behind me. He didn’t touch me, but he said, “There are other hungers, Anita. Other drives.” He spoke carefully, as if he wasn’t sure how well I could hear him.

Micah was right. The ardeur had a habit of swallowing the world, and my logic with it. There were other hungers and they were inside me, just like the ardeur. Once I’d thought to raise other hungers I had to open the marks between Richard, or Micah, or Nathaniel, but I knew better now. The beast wasn’t something I got from them. It was something inside me. The fact that it had no way out, no way to make my body match its hunger, didn’t make it less real.

I closed my eyes and reached down inside myself, like a metaphysical hand reaching into a sack. Searching for what I needed. Auggie inadvertently helped me. He jerked me off my knees with a crushing grip on my arms. It hurt, but the pain didn’t blow my concentration, no, the beast liked anger. Anger and pain meant we had to fight, and we were good at fighting.

Always before the beast had been a process, but now it was like a switch in my head. One moment me, the next, something that wasn’t thinking about sex, or even food. Escape, escape, escape!

I screamed into his face, wordless, rage-filled. He jerked me close to his face. He grabbed my hair, and tried for that kiss. But it was too late for kisses. Too late for so much.

I bit him. Sank my teeth into his pouting lower lip. The grip on my hair became painful, and he tried to control my face, my head, my mouth, with that bruising grip. He couldn’t pull me off before I bit through his lip, and he seemed to know that, because his other hand went to my jaw, the way you’d grip an animal at the hinge of the jaw, pressing inward. If you have the strength you can force an animal not to bite down completely. If you have the strength you can pry him off.

He had the strength to keep me from biting his lip off, but that was all, unless he was willing to crush my jaw. I kept trying to bite him, and he kept me from doing it. If there’d been enough person left in me I’d have gone for my gun, or the knife, but I’d given up thoughts of knives and guns when I embraced my beast. All I could think of was teeth and claws. I raked my nails down his hands, bloodied him in ribbons to try to get free.

He was going to have to cripple me or let me go. But he had one other option, and he used it. He threw another burst of power into me. He raised the ardeur again, drowned my beast in desire, and things that are only partly about mating. If he’d been like some of Belle’s line and only affected me physically, the beast wouldn’t have left, but his flavor of Belle Morte’s power was more…human. It was not just lust, but love. He had the ability to make you love him. Evil did not begin to cover what he did to me. Because in that moment, I loved him. Loved him completely and utterly. Part of me that was still sane prayed, Don’t let this be permanent.

I went up on my knees, stretching toward that full mouth that a moment before I’d been trying to bite off. I gave him the kiss he’d wanted. The fresh blood didn’t make it horrible, he was a vampire and…Roses, roses on the air like some cloying perfume. I was drowning in the scent of it, so that as I kissed him, the blood tasted of roses.

Auggie jerked back from me. “Roses, oh, God, you taste of roses.” He pulled back enough to see my face, and the fear showed on his face. “Your eyes, Anita, your eyes.”

I’d seen Belle Morte’s eyes in my face before. Her pale brown eyes like dark honey filled with fire. I stared up at Auggie with her eyes, and she saw him, too. While her dark light filled my eyes she saw what I saw.

She whispered through my mind, “Did you truly believe that Jean-Claude being a sourdre de sang would keep you safe from me, Anita?”

Yeah, actually, I had. She knew, and thought it was funny as hell. “What do you want?” I asked. Fear like fine champagne was tingling through my body. The ardeur, the beast, all of it, was washed away under that rush of fear.

She gazed up at Auggie, kneeling above us, and I knew what she wanted. I felt regret in her. Regret that Auggie had gone from her bed and her body. “But you exiled him,” I said.

“Stay out of my thoughts, Anita.” She was sitting on the edge of her huge four-poster bed. A bed I’d seen once before in Jean-Claude’s memories. She was curled there, a white gown centuries out of date covering the lushness of her body, so that she looked petite, like a dainty pouting child as she leaned against the carved wood. Her hair was a wealth of dark waves longer than my own. For the first time I realized that we looked at least superficially alike. Petite brunettes with ice-pale skin, and brown eyes.

“I was the greatest beauty in all of Europe; how dare you compare yourself to me?” Her power lashed through me, like the sharp blow of a whip.

“Forgive me,” I said, because I’d meant no disrespect. I hadn’t meant I was as beautiful as she, only that we shared some traits.

The thought mollified her, but it also freed her to concentrate on why she’d entered me in the first place. Not good. “Augustine,” she said, her voice spilling in a lower alto purr than my normal voice. It wasn’t her voice exactly, because she had to use my throat, but it wasn’t my voice either. It was close enough to hers to widen Auggie’s eyes, and make him go paler than death itself. I don’t know if I’d ever seen a vampire go pale before.

“How is this possible?” he whispered.

“You called me,” she said with my lips. “Your power and your blood called me.”

He swallowed, rolling his lips when he did it, so that the blood seeped faster from the cut. The bite was healing as we watched, but it was still bleeding. “I did not mean…”

“You caused her to love you, Augustine, as you tried to force me to do. But no one forces Belle Morte, no one.”

“Forgive me, I did not know what my powers could do.” He whispered it, hands still on my arms, but gentle now. His hold was so loose that I could have broken away easily, but it was too late for that to matter. We had bigger problems than the ardeur.

“But I can enjoy you again, here and now, and it will not be I who falls in love, but her. It will cause her pain, and Jean-Claude pain. It will even cause you pain.” She laughed, sitting on her bed hundreds and hundreds of miles away. “For as Requiem can raise the body’s lust in his victim, he also raises it in himself. So, once you force a woman to love you, you love her back. It is the nature of our bloodline that our powers are two-edged.”

Again, I felt regret in her. I knew in that moment that once Auggie had used his power to its full extent, the effect wasn’t temporary.

“No, Anita,” she said inside my head, talking to me from the firelit edge of her bed. “It is quite permanent, I assure you.”

“Then you love…”

She lashed out again, with that sharp power. It stopped what I’d been about to say, and let her speak. “All love Belle Morte. All adore me. It is my nature to be loved.”

But I’d been too close to her mind too often not to understand her better than that. “Lust,” I said out loud, “all lust after Belle Morte.”

“Lust, love, what difference the word, it means the same.” But we were too deeply wedded together. She knew my thought on that, that lust and love aren’t the same thing at all, and that thought was so loud that I felt her stumble in her mind. Felt her doubt; for half a moment, I felt doubt there. And it wasn’t I who put that seed of doubt in her mind. It was already there, had been there since Jean-Claude and Asher left her side voluntarily centuries ago.

“They returned to me, Anita, don’t forget that. They could not live without Belle Morte!” She was on her knees on the bed now, face beautiful in her anger. But I knew better than most what lay behind anger: fear.

“Enough of this!” she shouted, and that shout echoed through my mind, my body, and hit Auggie like a blow. He staggered, fighting to stay on his knees, to hold me. But her power was there, her version of the ardeur, the original. All that had come from Belle Morte were but pieces of her own power. We were reflections of her. The real thing roared over me, tore a scream from my mouth, and Auggie echoed me.

Her power tried to spill out from us, tried to fill the room and touch everything near us. Auggie threw up a wall around it. He used his will, his power as a Master of the City to hold it back. But it wouldn’t last for long. I tried to call necromancy. I’d used it to chase her out before, but I couldn’t shut down the ardeur. Until that was cleared, I was useless.

He found his words before I did. “Everyone out, out, all of you. We can’t hold it like this for long. When we lose control it will fill this room.”

“It spreads by touch,” Micah said.

Auggie shook his head. “This isn’t Jean-Claude’s ardeur, this is Belle’s. Proximity is enough.” He shuddered, shoulders hunching as if some great weight were beginning to crush him. “Samuel, get your family out. You don’t know what this could make you do.”

A voice from behind us, with more French accent than I usually heard in it, said, “Augustine, what have you done to ma petite? The power, she presses…” I looked at him, and the words stopped. “Belle Morte.” He said it, flat, as if he’d just swallowed all the emotion he had.

He was dressed in his signature colors, black and white. A black velvet jacket barely touched the top of his waist. The white lace of his shirt spilled out between that blackness, held at the neck by the cameo that had been one of my first presents to him. The pants were leather and looked poured on. The knee-high black boots were some of the plainest he owned. Of course with his body gliding toward us there was nothing plain about him. We both knew the potential of his body too intimately to ever believe such simple camouflage. Because it was a we. And because it was a we, she knew why Jean-Claude had his black curls pulled back in a ponytail. She knew why the clothes were elegant but some of his least expensive. Why he wore almost no jewelry. He had planned to appear as the visiting masters had last seen him. He was going to hide what he truly was, let them wonder about his power. It was a gamble that I had disagreed with. I thought it was like baiting them. Look how powerless I am, try me. Jean-Claude said that he had never gotten in trouble when dealing with other masters by hiding some of his abilities. It was a strategy that had saved his life in the past.

She used me to say, “I see you Jean-Claude. All these simple games do not hide you from Belle Morte. But you were right to come humble before me, as I like my men.”

I stared at him with Belle Morte’s eyes, while she laughed, and laughed, and laughed on her big, empty bed. I thought, empty. Since when did Belle sleep alone? That thought made her stumble in her mind again. A moment of hesitation, but Jean-Claude took it. He used it to put himself at my back. To fold all the velvet and leather of his body around me, so that he and Auggie faced each other across me.

Belle roared back through me, but in some ways, her moment had passed. Jean-Claude was sourdre de sang and I was his human servant. Touching, she could not turn me against him. But she left us with a parting gift, an evil whisper in my mind. “You are sourdre de sang. You can chase me out, but you cannot cure what Augustine has begun. When I leave her mind, the ardeur will still be there. It will spread to the three of you, and you will do things together that you have not done in centuries.”

She was in my head, so I couldn’t hide that this was the first I’d heard of Auggie and Jean-Claude being more than friends. She laughed in her firelit bedroom all those miles away. She spoke through me, that alto purr trying to come out of my mouth. “Oh, Jean-Claude, you did not tell her that you and Augustine were lovers.”

Jean-Claude was very still against my body, as if he were holding his breath. I realized he was waiting for me to react to what she’d said. He was waiting for me to be angry and make the disaster that was about to happen even worse. But I surprised us all.

I wasn’t shocked. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t. I’d known he hadn’t come to me a virgin. I even knew that he’d had other male lovers besides Asher. Of course, knowing something in the abstract wasn’t the same as having the fact kneeling in front of you, holding you in his arms. I looked up at Auggie and expected to be upset, but maybe Auggie’s powers had done something to me, or maybe I was picking up Jean-Claude’s emotion, or even Belle’s. Whatever the reason, I gazed up at the man in front of me and saw the line of his face from temple to jaw like the stroke of some fine painting. The charcoal-gray eyes had lost their fire; fear and willpower had shut down some of his vampiric powers. But even empty of anything but him, the eyes were utterly compelling. It wasn’t just the lace of black lashes and the drowning color that for the first time convinced me that gray could be as beautiful as blue, but the look in those eyes. He stared down at me like a drowning man. Something of pain and loss so raw that it tightened my throat. My reaction was sympathy; Belle’s was not. She was glad, so terribly glad that after all these centuries the sight of her eyes could still fill him with such pain. She wanted him to hurt. Wanted him to suffer. Wanted him to feel cast out, driven from paradise by the hand of a vengeful god, or, I guess in this case, goddess.

Augustine’s power meant that I watched his pain as one freshly fallen in love, in that first blinding, overwhelming rush where you’ll do or say almost anything to make each other happy. I wanted to make it all better, to kiss it and make it all go away.

“No,” Belle said, “no, they lied to you. You should feel betrayed. Heartbroken.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said, but she knew I didn’t mean it.

“So calm, Anita. See through my eyes and your lovely calm will not survive.”

I knew I still knelt, held between Jean-Claude and Augustine, but I was trapped in Belle’s memories, so that we sat on a throne in a huge dark, torch-lit room. Augustine was tied to a metal framework, the naked line of his body exposed to all. He had come begging Belle to take him back. She had refused, but offered one more taste of the ardeur. These weren’t thoughts; I was in her head so deeply that I shared her memories. She meant to humiliate him. He had made her love him, and that she could not forgive.

Jean-Claude and Asher appeared before the throne. They were dressed in long cloaks that hid all but their faces. Asher’s face had the flawless beauty that had once been his. So this memory was from a time before he and Jean-Claude left Belle to save Julianna, the woman they both loved, from Belle’s jealousy. Jean-Claude and Asher were still her perfect pair. Her matched beauties that did all we asked.

I knew they were naked under the cloaks. I knew what she meant them to do.

Augustine’s voice, next to my ear, startled me, but did not break Belle’s memory. It was like a voice from on high. “You are her master, Jean-Claude. Do not let Belle show this to Anita.”

It was as if his voice helped call me back, because the person talking was not the person tied there. The Jean-Claude he spoke to was not the servant who stood before this throne. This had happened long, long ago. It wasn’t real anymore.

“It happened, Anita, just as I will show it to you.”

“Ma petite,” Jean-Claude said, “can you hear me?”

I blinked up at them, saw their faces looming over me, but Belle’s power roared through my head. “No, Anita, you will see the reality of it.” I was back in that torch-lit room. I could feel their hands on me, but all I could see was what Belle showed me.

“Touch her bare skin,” Auggie said.

Asher and Jean-Claude began to glide around the bound man. It was almost a dance, the swaying of cloaks, the grace of their movements.

Hands glided over my bare arms. The moment his bare skin touched me, the memory began to grow dark. It was as if the lights were dimming, hiding what was happening.

“No!” Belle shouted, and she pulled me back into that dark hall, all those centuries ago.

The cloaks were gone, and their bodies were pale and perfect. I heard Augustine protest. “You promised me the ardeur.”

“I keep all my promises, Augustine.”

Jean-Claude glowed like some dark star, laying only his hand on the naked back of the other man. Augustine said, “Ah, now I understand.” He lifted his face at an awkward angle to look back along his body at Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude knelt in front of him, so he didn’t have to strain. He cupped Augustine’s chin in his hand, and spoke, so low that Belle could have not heard it. “I have given you but a taste. If you find my touch repulsive, then I can stop.” He put his face next to Augustine’s mouth, as if he were kissing the other man’s neck. He gave Augustine a chance to breathe his answer, “You have such fine control over the ardeur, so soon.”

“Oui.”

“If this is but a taste, and all she will allow me, then I want it.”

Jean-Claude pulled back enough to see the other man’s face. He cupped Augustine’s face in his hands. I realized that I was seeing Jean-Claude’s face through Augustine’s eyes. I watched Augustine see the uncertainty in the other man’s eyes. “Would you risk her anger to save me?”

“I do not enjoy force.”

Asher knelt beside Jean-Claude, and there was a look I’d never seen on his face. Arrogance, fierceness, something predatory, and something else. Something dangerous, and unpleasant.

Asher’s voice fell into the memory. “Jean-Claude, do not let Anita see me like this.” Until that moment I hadn’t known Asher was somewhere in the room, waiting for us to win, or lose, this battle. And he was seeing what Belle was forcing me to see. How was she doing this?

“You are all blood of my blood, Anita. I can do many things to that which is mine.”

Hands on me, cloth tearing, my body jerking with the force of it. The coolness of air on my back. Jean-Claude’s chest and stomach pressed against my back, the lace of his white shirt only a frame for our flesh. But the moment that much of his skin touched mine, the memory turned black and Belle was back on the edge of her big bed in the flickering light of candles. Her anger filled her eyes with dark honey flame. She had never known that Jean-Claude gave Auggie a choice, all these long years ago.

Jean-Claude’s bare arms wrapped around my nearly naked upper body. He wrapped his arms around me, cradled me as close to his body as the gun and knife at my back would allow.

Augustine’s hands were still in mine, as if he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, let me go. But it was Jean-Claude’s body that chased her back. That shut down the memory.

“Your body can stop me, but I leave you two parting gifts, Jean-Claude and Augustine. The first is the ardeur that will claim the three of you, and if I push hard enough will spread through the room to all that are left. I feel Asher and…” She closed her eyes, licked her lips. “Mmm, Requiem is there, as well. They will try to hold it back when it happens. Perhaps they will succeed, perhaps not.” Then she looked directly at us, and it was as if she could see us, truly see us. Such concentration in those eyes. “My second is a question to you and a gift for Anita. Have you realized one of her talents, Jean-Claude, that she can borrow the abilities that are used against her? My ability to make living memories, I give to her now, just this once. I want her to have it to use, and I will not fight her magic’s ability to take it. I will let her take this power to her mind, and I leave her with this question: Do you really believe that Augustine and Jean-Claude only had sex this one time, or were there more?”

Cloth tore, and more of Jean-Claude pressed against me. “I close this door to you, Belle, for she is mine, not yours.”

“I’m going, I’m going, enjoy my gifts.” But I was still tied close enough to her mind to know that she had no choice. She pretended she did, but Jean-Claude had chased her out. The last thing I felt from her was regret. Regret for the men she left me with, that I had them and she did not.

I came up gasping as if I’d been underwater. I was down to nothing but bra and panties, the skirt suit ripped away. My gun with its holster had vanished with the skirt. Jean-Claude’s clothes were mostly gone, as well.

“Is there anything your bloodline does that doesn’t involve getting naked?”

He laughed, that wonderful, touchable laugh. And I wasn’t the only one who reacted to it. Auggie shivered as he gripped my hands. He was still in his expensive suit, even his tie tight in place. He’d behaved himself admirably.

I looked around the room and found it empty except for Asher on the side near the outer door and Requiem on the side near the hallway that led farther into the underground. Asher with his golden hair that hid the scars the Church had given him when they tried to burn the devil out of him with holy water. Requiem tall and pale, with hair almost as dark as mine and Jean-Claude’s. His face was graced by a mustache and a small trimmed beard. Though tonight he looked like something big had hit him on the side of the face. They both held their arms up and out from their bodies. I could feel power radiating from them. I realized they’d thrown up the vampiric equivalent of a power circle to try to hold in the ardeur, and the memories. To stop it from spreading.

I relaxed in Jean-Claude’s arms, squeezed Augustine’s hands. There was a whisper in my mind, “Were there other times?” Was it my thought, or hers? I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, because the question came, and the thought was enough.

I was thrown into the middle of a memory that had me clawing for air. Auggie on top, pressing Jean-Claude’s body into a bed.

“Non, ma petite, non.” His body pressed against me, all that lovely nakedness, but it wasn’t enough. This wasn’t Belle’s power imposed on me. She’d figured out what I’d only discovered recently myself, that I could borrow powers from vamps if they used those powers on me first. Some powers were more permanent than others, some didn’t take at all, but this one was taking. This one was taking, and I couldn’t stop it.

I screamed, and Auggie’s arms were bare under my hands. But it didn’t help. It didn’t help.

“Then have all the memory, Anita,” Auggie said, “see it all.”

We were in a room, small but elegant. Auggie sat in a chair. Jean-Claude was down on one knee before him, hat in hand, head bowed.

This Auggie’s yellow hair was down to his shoulders. He wore blue and silver gray with too much lace for my taste. “So the rumors are true—you have left her voluntarily.”

Jean-Claude nodded, and looked up. “I have.”

Auggie laughed. “You leave heaven voluntarily when I cry in hell for one last glimpse of it.” He shook his head, sighed, the humor vanishing from his face. “But if you are strong enough to leave heaven I will get you to the coast. I know a ship and a captain that I trust.”

“What is the destination of the ship?”

“The English colonies. The United States of America, they are called now. But honestly, Jean-Claude, does it matter where it goes as long as you are off the continent, and far from her?”

Jean-Claude bowed his head again as if whatever was in his eyes, he didn’t wish to share. “I cannot pay you, Augustine, I have left with nothing.”

“It is a gift in honor of your bravery at leaving paradise, not once, but twice. Twice, when I would give everything I have to go back.”

Jean-Claude raised his face, beautiful and empty, his face when he was hiding what he was thinking. “Is it Belle you miss, or the ardeur?”

“Both.”

“I cannot give you Belle, but the ardeur is mine to share.”

Such eagerness on Augustine’s face for an instant. A need so raw it filled his eyes with fire like lightning’s glow behind gray clouds. Then his face stilled, all that hunger hiding away, but we had seen it. For in that instant, I was no longer seeing the room like some floating phantom. I was inside Jean-Claude’s head as I had been inside him and Belle in the earlier memory.

Augustine’s voice was as empty as his face when he said, “It is a gift, Jean-Claude. I would be your friend. Friends do not count the costs of favors.”

We were surprised, and had been too long with Belle Morte to trust it. “I would have bargained my body to gain what you offer so freely, Augustine.”

“And that is why I offer it freely. Yes, I long to be with her again. I will love her until the end of the world, but I did not always like her, or what she forced us to do.” His face darkened with memories, but he waved them away, and smiled. “I would have stayed with her forever, doing her bidding, her willing slave, even though I knew her to be evil. I was too”—he seemed to search for a word—“immersed in her to ever wish to save myself, or save all those she wished me to enslave for her. If she had not cast me out, I would never have been strong enough to go.”

“You refused direct orders from her. Some at her court still speak of it.”

He nodded. “Even someone as weak as I am has things he will not do.” Such sorrow on his face, such loss.

We laid our cheek against his hand where it lay on the chair arm. We rolled our eyes upward, so we could watch his face. His hand was very still under our cheek, as if he’d stopped breathing. “Let me share the one gift I have with my only friend.”

He fought to keep the eagerness off his face, but only half succeeded. “You do not have to do this, Jean-Claude. I meant what I said. It is my gift to you.” There was a tension in his hand where it lay, as if his body fought to be still but his hand betrayed him.

“I know your preference is for women.”

“As is yours,” Auggie said.

“Yes, but Belle does not share her personal men with other women.”

Auggie smiled, and the smile was friendly but nothing more; it didn’t match the growing tension in the hand that lay under our cheek. His voice was mild as he said, “Unless it is a woman she wished for us to seduce.”

We smiled, too. “For money, or land, or politics, oui.” We shared a smile made up of centuries in her bed, pawns in her great plans. “I am the only one of her line to have inherited the full power of the ardeur, Augustine, and there are none of our blood in this new America.”

“So my last opportunity to taste the ardeur and yours to be with another master of Belle Morte’s line is tonight.”

We nodded, our face rubbing along his hand.

He took his hand, gently, out from under us. “You are frightened,” he said, and his face was soft with wonder.

“I am.”

“Then why leave her?”

“Because I could not stay, not and be hated by them both.”

“Both?”

We could not hide the tears, except by turning our faces away. Augustine came down on the floor with us. He held us while we cried. “It is not Belle that has broken your heart, it is Asher.”

We wept for the first time in months. Wept into his arms, and he kissed our tears away and we sought comfort in the only arms that we trusted. Our only friend.

The earlier memory returned of them in the sheets. But it wasn’t shocking this time. I was ready for it, knew what to expect. And I knew that this Jean-Claude had been the one who spent over twenty years as a happy couple with Asher and Julianna. This Jean-Claude had lost Julianna, and Asher—Julianna burned as a witch, and Asher consumed by hatred at Jean-Claude for not getting there in time to save her. This Jean-Claude still blamed himself. Jean-Claude had taken the wounded Asher back to Belle Morte’s court to save his life, and the bargain for that salvation was that Jean-Claude was her whipping boy for a hundred years. The Jean-Claude in Augustine’s bed had lost everything and everyone he’d ever loved. He took the only comfort he could find, and I couldn’t begrudge him that.

The memory faded round the edges, because it wasn’t the sex that was important to me, or Jean-Claude, or even Augustine. It was the emotion of it. I came back gasping, pulse in my throat. “If that’s a memory, then why does it almost hurt to come out of it?”

“I do not know, ma petite, but we have not much time. I could not stop the memory, but I was able to direct it. I wanted you to understand what happened between us, because I cannot stop what is about to happen. We have fought her to give me time to soften the blow.”

“We?” I looked up at Augustine, and his eyes held sorrow the way Jean-Claude’s could hold lust.

“We’ll hold it as long as we can, Jean-Claude, but hurry, whatever you are going to do, hurry.” Asher’s voice, but it held sorrow to match Auggie’s eyes. I looked at Asher, and found his face traced with the faintly reddish lines of vampire tears. I realized then that everyone in the room had shared the memory.

“I am sorry, Anita,” Auggie said, and he looked across me at Jean-Claude. “Sorry to you both.”

“Sorry about what exactly?” I asked.

“This,” he said, softly, and it was as if they’d both been holding their breaths, and suddenly they let go. They dropped their shields, their wills broke together, and the ardeur was suddenly there, smothering us all.

I thought I heard laughter, dim and echoing, Belle’s laughter somewhere deep inside my head.

9

THE ARDEUR CAME and the clothes went. The custom-made leather knife sheath ripped away with all the rest. We fell to the carpet naked, all hands and mouths. The heavy metal and glass coffee table got shoved to one side as if it weighed nothing.

I pressed Auggie’s muscled body onto the carpet, lay on top of him naked, feeling that he was already hard and ready, but I wanted to start at the other end. We kissed, and his lips were as full and ripe as they’d looked. He kissed delicately, though I knew the ardeur rode him and what he wanted to do was anything but delicate. I licked and kissed along his neck, his upper chest. I came to his nipples, pale and hard in the muscled swell of his chest. I’d never been with anyone who was such a serious weight lifter. It was as if his skin fit tighter over all those muscles, so that it was harder to get a grip with my teeth, but worth the effort.

Sucking on his nipple raised his upper body off the floor, tore a yell from him. His eyes were wide, surprised, his hands reaching for something to hold on to. Someone grabbed one of those reaching hands, and I knew who it was, before Auggie drew him into my line of sight. Auggie drew Jean-Claude in to him, drew him down, as he lay back against the floor, and I worked lower on his body. I licked and bit along his stomach, as he drew Jean-Claude down for a kiss. Something I did raised Auggie up off the ground as their mouths touched, so that I had a good view of it. I had never seen two men kiss, not like that. Not with lips, and tongue. In the months that Asher had been in our bed they had moved toward each other a time or two, but stopped. I had never asked whose sensibilities they were saving, mine or theirs. Now, watching Jean-Claude cradling Auggie in his arms and kissing him so thoroughly…it tightened my body so hard and fast that it was like a mini-orgasm. I’d been told by a very smart friend that to keep saying that I didn’t like to be in bed with two men at once was a little silly. A case of the lady protesting too much. My body reacted for me; the sight of them kissing just flat did it for me. I’ve been told that it’s how a lot of men feel about seeing two women kiss. Why should I be any different?

I worked my way down Auggie’s body, eyes rolled upward so I could watch them. I came to the long, hard, curve of Auggie’s body. Not straight, but truly curved, so that the grace of that hard flesh curled in against his own body. He was hard enough that the head was naked above the silky foreskin. I rolled my mouth over that head, then shoved as much of him into my mouth as I could, as fast and hard as I could. It made me come up choking, but it also tore him away from Jean-Claude’s mouth. Made Auggie stare down at me with wild eyes. I went down on him again, slower, lingering over the feel of him in my mouth, so ripe, so thick, and how the hard line of that curve felt going down my throat. I watched them both watch me as I did it. Auggie’s eyes wild with sensation; Jean-Claude’s face full of pleasure, yes, but also pride. His own vampire marks were open enough for me to know that he was thinking how long and how hard he had worked to get to this point. He started to close the marks as much as the ardeur would let him, but I rose up from Auggie’s body and said, “Don’t, don’t close down. Let’s do this. Do it all. He started this fight, not us, let’s finish it.”

“Do you know what you are asking, ma petite?”

I nodded, then shook my head, my hand still wrapped around the base of Auggie’s body. “I don’t know, but I won’t blame you later.”

“Please,” Auggie said, his voice full of such pleading, “please, don’t stop. God, don’t stop.”

Jean-Claude and I looked at each other. We had a moment where he weighed me with his eyes. Then he gave a small nod, and said, “As you like, ma petite. For you are correct, he overstepped the bounds of hospitality.” He looked down at Auggie. “Bad Augustine, to force the ardeur on ma petite.”

Auggie nodded, his hand gripping Jean-Claude’s arm. “It’s been so long, Jean-Claude, so long, and there is no going back to her.”

“We must feed on you, Augustine, in such a way that no other visiting master will dare this.”

He nodded, though I wasn’t certain he really understood what Jean-Claude had meant. Jean-Claude was holding the ardeur back, just enough. Enough so we could think, a little. When he let it go, it would sweep us away, and there would be no second-chance decisions.

“He has to be our message to the other visitors, Jean-Claude, or we won’t survive this little gathering. These are your friends, and they nearly rolled us.” I looked at him, and I felt the part of me that allowed me to kill, to do what was necessary. This was, in its odd way, a business decision. A political decision, a survival decision. I knew we could roll Auggie; he was more powerful than Jean-Claude, but I could feel it. Feel that we could feed on him in such a way that it wouldn’t matter. Not kill him, but take him, make him ours in a way that I couldn’t even explain in words.

Jean-Claude spoke as if he’d read my mind, which he probably had. “I feel it also, ma petite, but…”

“No buts,” I said, “we can take him, I can feel it.”

“Perhaps Belle Morte is too much in your mind still.”

It was Asher’s voice, strangled with effort. It drew our eyes to him. His hands trembled in the air as if he were holding some great weight. “Hurry, Jean-Claude, hurry. We cannot hold the circle much longer.”

“He began this fight,” Requiem said, “let us finish it.” His hands weren’t shaking, but there was a thread of strain in his voice.

Jean-Claude looked down at Auggie. “Understand this, Augustine, we have never fed like this. I do not entirely know what will happen. Are you content with such a gamble, for it is you who will suffer if it goes badly?”

I slid my mouth over him, playing my tongue along the foreskin. He shivered, and simply said, “Yes.”

“Ma petite, stop that, or he will not be able to think.”

I went back on my knees, and stopped touching him. I put my hands in my lap and behaved. I guess it was cheating.

“Augustine, do you agree to this?”

He nodded, hands reaching for Jean-Claude. “Yes, yes, God, yes, the two of you both, yes, yes!” His grip on Jean-Claude’s arm looked almost painful.

Jean-Claude stroked his hair, soothing him. “Then we will do as you ask.” He looked at me, and it was as if a door opened in my mind. Some inner guard that he must have used almost constantly to keep the marks from being in full force was gone. It staggered me for a moment, made me reach out to Auggie’s thigh to steady myself. The moment I touched him, the ardeur roared back, but this time I could feel Jean-Claude at the other end of his body. I could feel the two different ardeurs like different flavors of fire, and Auggie was our only wood. We’d burn him up, and he wanted us to do it.

I heard Jean-Claude in my mind, whispering, “I am letting go of my control, ma petite, are you ready?”

I nodded. He let go, and I fell screaming into the abyss. An abyss of skin and hands and mouths, and bodies. My own body was one huge throbbing need. And I didn’t particularly care how that need got met.

I ended up on the floor with Augustine on top of me. All that curved hardness going in and out of my body, so that I screamed for him. Screamed my need, my pleasure, and my eagerness. He began propped on his arms so I could watch his flesh slide into mine, but then Jean-Claude joined us, and the angle had to change.

We had never put anyone in the middle of us when we both fed the ardeur. All these months with Asher, Micah, Nathaniel, Richard, and Jason, and I’d always been the one in the middle. Jean-Claude and I had fed from each other. He had fed from me while I fed at the man, or men, touching me, but never in all those nights had Jean-Claude been touched by someone other than me when we were all naked together. With the marks roaring open between us, I knew how much that had cost Jean-Claude. How horribly careful he had had to be in the middle of the one moment when you should be able to lose all control. So careful, so afraid of scaring me, disgusting me, making me turn away. So afraid of what the other men might say with a badly placed hand, or caress. So careful, so terribly careful, and now suddenly he didn’t have to be careful. I felt the horrible tension in the center of his being relax, like a long-held breath released.

He explored Auggie first with fingers, and used the wetness of my body to lubricate other places that didn’t normally lubricate themselves. The marks were wide open, so I got flashes of memory, of other men, and other times. Random images as they occurred to him, but even here he chased them away, still afraid of what I’d think. But Auggie’s body was already inside mine, and I felt his eagerness at every probe, every touch. Everything that Jean-Claude did urged him on to more with me, so that all I could think was how would it feel to have Auggie thrusting inside me while Jean-Claude rode him.

Jean-Claude entered him slowly, and Auggie’s body stilled above mine, as he concentrated on the sensation of it. It had been a long time for Auggie. As he’d said before, he preferred girls, which meant that even here, with both of us eager, Jean-Claude had to be careful, so careful. Nothing spoils great sex like unintentional pain.

But finally he had everything in he was getting in, and Auggie’s body relaxed above me. Relaxed into the rhythm that Jean-Claude found on top of us both. They both found a rhythm, Auggie’s body pushing in and out of mine, slowly, ramming home at the end, so that I made small sounds at the height of every stroke.

The two of them found a rhythm together so that the height of one stroke was the height of the other. So that Auggie and I cried out together, and Jean-Claude rode us both. I tried to move with them, but the combined weight pinned me to the floor, so that the best I could do was squeezing Auggie as he came and went inside me. My legs were wrapped around them both, as much as I could, so that Jean-Claude’s body brushed against my foot as he moved. I felt that heavy, delicious weight begin to grow between my legs. I knew that orgasm was coming and that this one couldn’t afford to be a surprise. But I didn’t have to tell Jean-Claude, he knew.

He stared down at me over Augustine’s shoulder, his eyes all drowning blue fire, as if a midnight sky could burn. His hair had come loose, strands of it sticking to the sweat on his face. I knew that my eyes were dark brown flame, as if I were a vampire. It had happened before. We stared at each other over Augustine’s shoulder, and I felt that weight growing, growing, growing.

Augustine whispered, “Your breathing’s changed.”

I came screaming, and it was as if that had been the moment both men had been waiting for, as if they had fought long and hard not to go, and suddenly they could.

Augustine shoved himself twice, three times as fast and hard as he could inside me. He brought me again, screaming and writhing on the floor, and only then did he go inside me. His body spasming above me, his body trying to dig deeper inside me, so that I cried out. Jean-Claude’s head went back, eyes closed, his body bowed above us both, and we fed.

We didn’t just feed off Augustine, we fed off all his people in our territory. I felt Haven, the werelion, spasm against the floor, where he still lay in the fallen curtains. I felt Benny, behind the wheel of a car, lose control and have to screech to the side of the highway. Pierce fell against a wall and slid to the floor, his body spasming. Octavius collapsed on the stairs, choking, clawing at the stone, breaking his nails to bloody bits to try to keep it from happening. But nothing could save them, any of them. If we’d been in Chicago we could have fed off every beast and vamp that owed allegiance to Auggie, and he would have let us. For this pleasure he would have sold what was left of his soul and the souls of everyone who worked for him.

We drank them down, all of them; we fed, and fed, and fed, and while we fed Augustine’s body kept spasming, and every thrust of pleasure brought me again, which brought Jean-Claude. We fed and orgasmed until Augustine went still between us, collapsed, body twitching. Jean-Claude looked down at me over Auggie’s sweating body, a fierce smile on his face. He stared down at me with his eyes gone to blue fire so bright that the skin of his face glowed with it. He glowed with the power we had drunk. So much power, so very much power. I felt like a distant echo that Richard was leaning against a wall somewhere, staggered by the power we’d taken, and shared.

A thought was enough. Micah and Nathaniel were sitting just outside, one against the wall, the other sitting on the floor. Nathaniel laughed with the power rush of it all. We’d shared the power with all our people, all of them. Good, bad, indifferent, everyone with a connection to us was power drunk and glowing tonight. If there had been a metaphysical satellite up there in the sky, our territory would have glowed from orbit.

10

IT TOOK ABOUT an hour to get everyone separated to places where they could clean up. Claudia had sent for reinforcements, so that the wrecked living room was nearly a solid wall of black-shirted guards. Werewolves, wererats, and werehyenas, the people we had treaties with for guard work, all stood around while Octavius had hysterics. If he’d had more guards with him, and we’d had less, it could have gotten violent, but when you’re outnumbered, outmuscled, and your master is saying, Let it go, well, Octavius had to eat it. He didn’t like it, neither did Pierce, but Haven, of the Cookie-Monster-blue hair, was voting with Auggie. They both liked us just fine.

Jean-Claude and I lay back in his huge bathtub. My clothes were ruined but I had my knife and gun on the edge of the tub. Nothing else had been salvageable. We’d scrubbed and cleaned, and now were just soaking in the hot water. Auggie had probably already finished in the showers down the hall, but Requiem and Asher were in charge of seeing that our guests didn’t do anything unfortunate. They were both master vampires over four hundred years old, they could handle it. We’d handled everything I wanted to handle for one night.

Jean-Claude lay back against the edge of the tub, and I lay in his arms, the back of my body cradled against the front of his. He trailed his hand down my arm, and hugged me tighter against him. His body was quiet, pressed against my body. I think we’d both had all we could handle for one night.

His voice came lazy, with that edge that sleep can give it. “What are you thinking about, ma petite?”

“If you hadn’t shut the marks down so tight, you might not have to ask.” I snuggled my head into the hollow of his shoulder and chest. “You shut them down as soon as we were finished with Auggie. Why?”

His body tensed against me, even his arms where they were wrapped around me, not so comforting anymore. “Perhaps I was afraid of what you would find in my thoughts.” His voice wasn’t sleepy now, but had that bland emptiness that he used to hide behind.

“What would I have found?” I asked, but I wasn’t cuddling now. Tension is contagious.

“If I had wanted you to know the answer to that question, I would not have shut the marks down.”

I started to protest, but another thought stopped me. With the marks that wide open, it had only been chance that I hadn’t thought of the baby question. Chance and the fact that the ardeur tended to wipe out anything that wasn’t pertinent to the moment. Now the fear came crawling back, tightening my stomach, tensing my muscles. Please, God, don’t let me be pregnant.

“What is wrong, ma petite?” he asked.

I let out a breath that shook around the edges and said, “You know, Jean-Claude, normally I’d push for honesty, but I think I’ve had all the revelations I can handle for one night. It’s okay, whatever you thought, it’s okay.”

“It is okay without your ever knowing what the thought was?” he asked.

I settled back into his arms, willing the hot water and the touch of his body to take away that awful tension. “Yes,” I said, “yes.”

He moved me to the side, holding me in the water, so he could see my face. “Yes, just like that?” His face showed his skepticism.

I stared up into him; his hair was wet and slicked back from his face, so that nothing took away from it. Those eyes a blue as dark as blue could be and hold no touch of black. His lashes thick and black—it had taken me months in his bed to see his upper lashes by candlelight and realize that he had a double row of upper lashes. Him and Elizabeth Taylor. You only saw it if the light was just right, and his head turned just right. Until then, they were just this unbelievable lace around his eyes. I traced the lines and curves of his face, down to the grace of his lips. I let him see in my eyes what I saw, what I felt, gazing at him.

He leaned in, and laid a kiss upon my lips. Then he cuddled me back against him, as we’d been before the questions started. No more personal questions tonight, but there were other questions I wanted answered. “Why did Requiem look like someone had pounded his face into a wall?”

“Because someone had.”

That made me turn enough to look at him. “Who?”

“Meng Die,” he said, voice soft, face solemn.

“Was that the emergency?”

“Oui. Thank you for sending the extra guards, ma petite, it was wise of you.”

I shrugged, and turned so that I was sitting across his legs, my hands against his chest, his arms around me still, but I could see his face now. “How did it get so out of hand?”

“I was called in rather late, ma petite. In truth, I do not know exactly how Requiem and Meng Die allowed their spat to get so terribly out of hand, and so terribly public. Asher, as manager of the Circus, came down to stop it, or take it to a backstage area. That should have been the end of it.” His face was closing down, hiding what he thought of the fight, and the aftermath.

“Why wasn’t that the end of it?”

“Because Meng Die decided to fight them both.”

I sat up in his lap. “Why fight Asher? She’s never been his lover.”

“But he is your lover.”

I frowned at him. “So what?”

“I believe that if a master vampire had appeared who wasn’t in your bed, had never been in your bed, the fight might have calmed instead of escalating.”

“I’m totally lost here, Jean-Claude.”

He looked directly at me, but his face was empty enough that it gave me nothing. “You have not asked the right question yet, ma petite.”

“What is the right question?”

“What the fight was about.”

I frowned harder, and said, “Okay, I give, what was the fight about?”

“You.”

Now I was really lost. “What?”

“They were arguing about you.”

“What about me?”

“Meng Die thinks you have stolen Requiem from her.”

I pushed back enough in the water so I was kneeling, and not cuddled. The water was deep enough that it came to my shoulders. “Requiem isn’t my lover. I’ve worked really hard to make sure he isn’t my lover.”

“But you have fed the ardeur from him.”

“In an emergency, yes. It was to feed, or I was about to suck Damian’s life away. I had to feed, but we didn’t have intercourse, we didn’t even take our clothes off.” I thought about it, and added, “Not all of our clothes. I mean, Requiem was fully clothed.” I started blushing and couldn’t prevent it. I had to stop explaining before it sounded worse and worse.

“He has offered to feed you more completely.”

“I know.”

“Why have you refused him?”

I looked at Jean-Claude, trying to see behind that perfect mask of a face. “I think I was under the impression that I’m having sex with enough men.”

His lips twitched. He was fighting not to smile.

“This isn’t funny.”

He let himself smile. “Ma petite, there have been women over the centuries who traded lands, titles, their honor, everything, for one more night in Requiem’s bed. His master in London used him much as Belle Morte used Asher and me. Though because Requiem only did women, he wasn’t as flexible as we.”

I let that last part go. I still wasn’t completely sure how I felt about Jean-Claude doing Auggie. At the time I hadn’t minded—in fact, I’d liked it. I’d liked us both doing him at the same time. We’d fucked him in every way possible, physically and metaphysically, and it had felt a-fucking-mazing. That last part was probably going to bug me the most. But one disaster at a time.

“Are you saying you’re surprised I turned him down?”

“No, it is typical of you to turn a man down at first.”

“At first?” I said, and sounded a little outraged.

He laughed, and it was that touchable sound, as if it were the sound of pure sex, and it went through my head and all the way down my body. “Stop that,” I said.

He smiled, face lit with suppressed laughter, but he stopped. “To my knowledge, the only man you have never said no to is your Nimir-Raj, Micah. But the ardeur was newly woken, and so I do not think we can count that one completely. It was your exception, not your rule.”

“Fine, but I’m still lost. I have avoided Requiem. Graham made some remark that Requiem was refusing Meng Die’s bed and somehow that was my fault.”

“Apparently, Requiem told Meng Die that he would not be her lover any longer, because you do not share your men with other women. He seemed to believe that his being in her bed was what kept you from accepting his offer to be your new pomme de sang.”

I shook my head. “He shouldn’t have assumed that.”

He nodded. “Because that isn’t why you refused him, is it?”

I shook my head hard enough to move the water around my body. “No. And if Requiem had asked me why I was saying no, I would have told him it wasn’t because he was screwing Meng Die.”

“Then why?”

“What does it matter?”

“Because he has left his lover’s bed in the hope that you will take him to your bed. He is third in rank among my vampires, and second, or perhaps third, in power. Meng Die is powerful enough to be my second-in-command, but her temperament is not suited to it. As she demonstrated today. You have set two of my most powerful vampires at each other’s throats, ma petite. I need to know why.”

“I did not start that fight,” I said.

“No, but you were the cause of it, and if you are to convince Requiem that you will not take him as your pomme de sang, then you must give him a reason that does not include his being Meng Die’s lover. His reasoning was sound, ma petite. You have refused all the pomme de sang candidates who have a female lover.”

“Graham, Clay, and Requiem are all Meng Die’s lovers,” I said.

He gave that wonderful Gallic shrug that meant everything and nothing. “So. Is it that you will not take Meng Die’s seconds?”

I shook my head. “No, that’s not it. You know why not Graham; he might do for a meal, but he’d be a disaster as a permanent member of the household.”

“Agreed,” he said.

“Clay is in love with Meng Die, she’s just about broken his heart, but he wants her, and I say more power to him.”

“And Requiem?”

I leaned back against the side of the tub, out of reach. The bath had stopped being comforting. “Did we have to do this tonight?”

“Meng Die threw both Requiem and Asher around like dolls in front of humans. We will be lucky if your police do not come calling and asking questions. She tried to kill Requiem, ma petite, not wound him. She did not care that there was an audience, but Requiem and Asher did not want to kill her in front of an audience. I had the same problem when I arrived on the scene.” He was angry now, the first thread of it filling his eyes with light. “She is even now locked in a cross-wrapped coffin. But it is a temporary measure. I must let her out tomorrow night, or kill her. She will see one night as a fit punishment, but beyond that it will be an insult, and she is too powerful to eat such an insult.” He fixed those brilliant eyes on me. “So, I ask again, what will you tell Requiem when he tells you that he is free of Meng Die? What excuse will you give?”

“I’m dating three men, living with two more, and having occasional sex with two others. That’s seven men. I’m like a pornographic Snow White. I think seven is plenty.”

“But it is not, ma petite. Emotionally it may be too many, but metaphysically, and for the sake of our power base, seven is not enough. You must add a lover who is not metaphysically connected to you, and you must pick a new pomme de sang now that Nathaniel is your animal to call.”

“I thought this was optional—you’re making it sound like it’s almost an emergency. And wait, did you say add a lover and a pomme de sang? I thought I was adding just one, if I added anybody.”

“I tasted your power tonight, ma petite; it needs to be fed and fed well. You are like one of those dieting women that thinks she can survive on lettuce leaves and water. It may feel like food, but your body dies anyway.”

“I’m not dying,” I said.

“No, but your power is seeking a new pomme de sang. Don’t you understand what is happening, ma petite? The ardeur is seeking for you.”

“Okay, I’m confused now.”

“It is not like Augustine to lose control. He is over two thousand years old, ma petite; one of the first vampires Belle made. You do not thrive for so long if you make such mistakes as he did this night.”

“Belle messed with him, and with me.”

He shook his head. “He raised your ardeur first, before she appeared, did he not?”

“Yeah, he said now he could do what he’d wanted to do all along, and no one could be mad at him.”

Jean-Claude laughed, and it was just humor this time. He could control his laugh if he worked at it. “He doesn’t know you very well yet. But when I said Augustine is my friend, I meant it. He would not have overstepped his bounds as my guest, not without something being wrong.”

“And what’s wrong?”

“The ardeur needs more food, ma petite, and like any predator it is seeking prey.”

“It’s just a metaphysical ability, Jean-Claude, not its own entity.”

He gave me a look, and it was eloquent. “You know exactly what the ardeur is, ma petite. You know that it has a mind of its own, similar to the beasts you carry. But I believe that the ardeur can do something your beasts cannot. It is, I believe, putting out the welcome mat.”

“Welcome mat?”

He sighed, and slid down in the water until his chin touched it. “You may not like Meng Die, but she is…proficient in bed. I find it inexplicable that Requiem would leave her body, on only the chance that he might be your lover. As I find it inexplicable that Augustine would purposefully insult me by raising the ardeur in you. He, in effect, attacked you, and through you, me.”

“He told me to feed from him, because then I’d win the fight, and once you got into the room he said you’d lose.”

Jean-Claude sat up so abruptly that he sloshed water in my face. I brushed my eyes clear, while he said, “He said that?”

I blinked at him, still trying to keep water out of my eyes. “Yes.”

“Then it is as I have feared. The ardeur is seeking what it needs.”

“Are you saying that the ardeur is putting out, what, pheromones?”

“I do not know this word.”

“Pheromones, it’s a chemical or hormone that some animals give out. The scent attracts mates. I think it was first discovered in moths.”

“Yes, pheromones then, yes.”

“I’m not agreeing with you, but say it is true; why does it only seem to work on certain people? I mean, it doesn’t work on Clay, and I think Graham just wants to fuck. Why Requiem and Auggie?”

“What do they have in common?” he asked.

“They’re both vamps of Belle’s bloodline, and they’re both masters. But thanks to all our imports from London, there are a couple more vampires in town who qualify. They aren’t buzzing around me.”

“But they do not approach the power level of Augustine and Requiem.”

“Are you saying the ardeur is shopping for powerful food?”

“I offer it as an idea.”

I thought about it, but finally looked at him. “If this is what’s happening, and I’m not saying it is, then is it only vamps from Belle’s line, or any master vampire of a certain power level?”

“I do not know.”

“Then we need to know before tomorrow’s big party,” I said. “If there is even the faintest chance that the ardeur is going to do some funky shit with every master vampire above a certain power level, then no way can I go to the party tomorrow. We’re going to be neck-deep in Masters of the City. It would be bad if they all decided they wanted to be my sweetie.”

He nodded. “There is one other thing they both have in common, ma petite.”

“And that would be?”

“They have both been with vampires who held the ardeur.”

“You said vampires, plural. You don’t mean just Belle, do you?”

“Requiem had a lover who meant as much to him as Julianna did to Asher and me. Her name was Ligeia.”

“He told me that Belle killed her out of jealousy.”

“Oui. Ligeia was the only woman of her line to acquire the ardeur. It wasn’t the full ardeur that Belle, you, and I carry, but there is more: Requiem refused Belle’s bed for her.”

“And she killed her for that.”

“You have been inside Belle Morte’s head, ma petite, how can you sound surprised?”

He had a point. “It still seems pretty petty for a vampire who’s over two thousand years old,” I said.

He nodded. “Oui, but many of the old ones can be extremely petty.” He held his hand out to me.

I stared at that hand for a heartbeat, then I took it. I let him draw me through the water and in against his body. Let him press me to the front of his body, wrap his arms around me. “You’re afraid,” I said, my cheek pressed to the firmness of his chest.

“Oui, I am afraid.”

“Why?”

“There are others here who have tasted the ardeur and are masters. We need to test our theory, ma petite, but I fear we run the risk of having you tied permanently to someone, or they to you.”

“Auggie isn’t tied to me.”

“He did not want to leave our side, ma petite. If he does not recover, then he will be as Belle made her victims, hungering for us forever, willing to do anything to be back between us.”

“You sound sad.”

“He was my friend; I did not mean to enslave him as Belle would. I saw her victims give up everything, betray every vow, every trust, for the sake of her body.” He held me tight against him. “It is not a power I ever wished to possess.”

“You hold the ardeur.”

“Oui, but this is a level of the ardeur that only she possesses. We all believed that only Belle Morte could wield it at such a level.”

“You don’t want it.”

“I want to be so powerful that no one dares challenge me or our people. But I am afraid of this, and what it will mean.”

His heart was beating too fast against my ear. Had it been beating all along, or had it just started? “Mean, how?”

“There are those in Europe who already fear my growing power. Knowledge that I wielded the ardeur at the same level as Belle Morte might tip the scales in the council’s voting. They might vote to kill us all rather than risk me making a power base in America, as strong as Belle once possessed in Europe. Or the other American masters might collude to kill us, for fear that we would become like the tyrants of the European council.”

“How likely is all this?” I asked.

“Possible.”

“How possible?” I asked, suddenly realizing that an accidental pregnancy might not be the worst disaster we could have.

“We must understand these new powers, and quickly, ma petite. We must experiment with a master we trust before I allow you to go to the party tomorrow. We must know what we are dealing with, if we can.”

Raised voices on the other side of the door. Claudia yelling, “You can’t just go in there!”

Richard’s voice, angry. “Watch me.”

Jean-Claude sighed, and I settled lower in the water. I did not want to fight with Richard tonight. But from the feel of him through the door, we weren’t going to have a choice.

Jean-Claude called, “Let him in, Claudia.”

The door opened, but Claudia came first, as if she didn’t trust Richard in there with us. His power rode through the door like the heat edge of a forest fire, something that should have choked and killed anything in its path. We’d raised his power level along with ours, and we were about to find out how sorry that was going to make us.

11

CLAUDIA STOOD BETWEEN him and the tub, and because she was about five inches taller, she blocked our view of him. Of some of him. She was the more serious bodybuilder, but he had broader shoulders. His shoulders and what I could glimpse of his lower body let me know he was wearing blue jeans and a red shirt. There was a herd of black in the door, where the other guards waited to figure out what to do. Some of them were werewolves and he was their Ulfric; you don’t stand in the way of your king, not and survive.

His power swirled through the room like invisible fire, as if the water should have boiled with it. Then I realized, it wasn’t just Richard’s power. Claudia had been my bodyguard off and on for months, maybe a year, but until this moment I hadn’t really understood how much power was in that tall, muscular body. It was her power, too, burning down the room. She wasn’t just physical muscle. The air was hard to breathe, as if it were too hot to pass over my lips, like coffee that you want to blow on before you drink it. I don’t know what Richard had done outside, but it had made Claudia drop all her pretenses and show her power, like a preview, or a warning.

Her voice echoed in the room. “No farther, until you prove you’ve got your shit under control.” Her legs bent, her body going into that partial crouch, legs moving in the space she had between the raised tub and him. It was a fighting stance. Jesus.

“Move!” Richard shouted it, in a voice gone bass with growling. Not good.

Jean-Claude and I exchanged looks. He gave a small shrug. I tried. “Richard.” I had to raise my voice, and say his name three times, before he answered.

“Tell her to move, Anita,” he growled.

“What will you do if she moves?” I asked.

I felt some of that burning power hesitate, grow weaker. His voice was still growly, but less sure of itself. “I don’t know.” He said it as if he hadn’t thought beyond getting to us. That wasn’t like Richard, to have no idea what he planned to do.

“Are you going to try to hurt us?” I asked, sitting up in the water enough to peer around Claudia’s body. I caught a glimpse of his face. His hair was a foamy mass of waves, all brown and gold. In sunlight there would be more gold to his brown, and strands of coppery red. His hair was brown, but as if it could never quite decide if it might be blond, or auburn instead. It had finally grown back to brush the tops of his broad shoulders. The bright crimson T-shirt strained around his upper arms, because he was holding his hands in tight, tight fists. It looked as if the seams of the shirt weren’t going to hold the muscles’ strain. His summer tan was dark against the red of the shirt. He looked at me then, the full force of his eyes, and the shock of it thrilled down my spine. His eyes were wolf eyes: amber, gold, and no longer human. It was the beginning of the change. No wonder Claudia was on alert.

The dimple in his chin usually softened the sharp perfection of his cheekbones, and the utterly masculine beauty of his face. He, more than almost any other man in my life, was handsome, not pretty. Nothing would ever make you mistake Richard for a girl, not even from the back, not even with the hair. The body was too masculine to be anything else. Tonight the dimple didn’t soften anything, because the anger in his face was too raw. Had the anger fed his power, or the other way around? Who knew; who cared? Dangerous either way.

“Control yourself, Ulfric,” Claudia said.

He turned those golden-amber eyes to her. “If I don’t, what then?” For the first time since I’d known him I realized he was spoiling for a fight. It wasn’t like him. It was like me.

Jean-Claude and I both started to climb out of the tub at the same moment. He went for one of the huge fluffy white towels, wrapping it around his waist as he cleared the water. Shapeshifters aren’t usually bothered by nudity, but tonight he might be, at least by Jean-Claude. Richard was a touch homophobic; what he’d felt us do tonight wouldn’t help that.

I left the knife and the gun on the edge of the tub. I wouldn’t kill him, and he knew it. One, there was a chance that if one of us died, the vampire marks would kill us all; two, most of the time I loved him too much to want him dead. Right at that moment was not one of those times. That moment was one of those times when I wished he had fewer hang-ups, and had had more therapy. He was in therapy, but not enough therapy for what he’d felt Jean-Claude and me do tonight. He was the last third of our triumvirate. Of all the ones we’d shared power with, Richard would have gotten more sensations, more real physical feedback of what we were doing. He was the one who would hate it the most and he got the most complete ride. Unfair, but true.

Jean-Claude stayed near the back wall with its mirror. It was the largest place to stand. He handed me a towel but I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I stood there, framed by the black marble, nude, water dripping down my body, glistening in the light. My hair plastered to my face, leaving my eyes huge and dark in the paleness of my face. I could almost never resist any of my men fresh from the tub or shower. There was something about water streaming down naked skin that was just yummy. Here was hoping that Richard felt the same way.

“I won’t ask you again, move!”

“She is doing her job, mon ami.”

“Shut up,” he screamed, “shut up, I don’t want to hear you right now.”

Oh, boy. I moved around the narrow edge between tub and wall on the closest side to the door. I stopped on the raised platform so I was totally framed by the cool black marble with its white and silver streaks. My pulse was in my throat, because even a few inches closer made their power hotter, like moving closer to that open flame when your skin is crying out, Hot, hot, don’t touch.

“Richard.” I whispered it, but he heard me.

He looked at me with that rage-filled face, and the moment he saw me, his eyes filled with such pain, as if the sight of me like that was a knife blow straight through his heart. I was sorry for the pain, but happy about the reaction. Almost any emotion is better for a shapeshifter than anger. Anger feeds their beasts quicker. We needed to slow things down.

“How could you do that? How could you do that with him?” I thought he meant Auggie, until he pointed a finger at Jean-Claude.

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘that,’ Richard.”

“Don’t play me, Anita,” and this was a yell. He covered his face with his hands, and staggered back a step. He screamed, wordless, and so full of pain. He dropped to his knees, and screamed again. His power filled the room as if we’d all been plunged into boiling water. It felt as if my skin were being cooked. I’d felt Richard’s power before, but nothing like this. How much power had he gained from our feed on Auggie?

Claudia stayed in a fighting stance, and I didn’t blame her. Graham was just inside the door, rubbing his bare arms, looking conflicted. He owed Richard his allegiance, but he was paid to keep us safe. He also knew that Richard would never forgive any of the wolves that allowed him to hurt me. Jean-Claude I wasn’t so sure about, but me, he’d regret it later, and his regret had a way of raining all over everybody. Lisandro was in the room too, near the sinks. There was no conflict on his dark face. He was tall, dark, and handsome, with the longest hair of any of the male wererats. If Claudia said jump, he’d do it.

Clay was in the doorway, as tormented as Graham. We needed fewer wolves in here, and more wererats, or werehyenas, anything but people who would hesitate.

Richard lowered his hands, and his eyes were pure chocolate brown. He’d swallowed some of that awful, burning power. “You helped him rape the Master of Chicago.” He wasn’t yelling now, and I almost wished he had. It would have been easier to hear than the anguish in his voice.

But what he said made no sense to me. “It wasn’t rape, Richard. You know that. You felt some of what Auggie was feeling. Hell, Richard, Auggie started the ball rolling. He raised my ardeur on purpose, picked a fight with me.”

Richard looked at me, and I watched him want to believe me, but be afraid to. “Do you really think I’d rape someone?”

He shook his head. “No, but he would.” He pointed toward Jean-Claude, who was standing very still behind me.

His voice came neutral, as empty as he could make it. “I have done many things over the centuries, Richard, but rape has never been to my taste.”

I remembered Jean-Claude’s memories with Auggie. Belle had wanted him to rape Auggie, and Jean-Claude had changed it to something gentler, or as gentle as he could make it with Belle watching. I opened my mouth to say something, but knew somehow that telling about the other two times that Jean-Claude and Auggie had had sex wouldn’t help us.

“See, Anita, you can’t defend him either.”

“I do defend him. Jean-Claude has a lot of faults; rape isn’t one of them.”

“That wasn’t what you started to say a second ago.” He was still kneeling on the floor, but he was calming, swallowing that choking power. He was showing the control that had helped make him Ulfric of the Thronnos Rokke Clan.

Claudia moved to one side, so she could see him as she glanced at me. I gave her a small nod, but added, “I think Clay and Graham have something else they need to be doing.”

She nodded, and ordered them out, and replaced them with two guards who wouldn’t feel conflicted. She’d understood what I’d meant. If Richard understood what I’d done, he didn’t show it, not even by a flicker of his eyes.

“I’m trying to decide what I can say that won’t piss you off, Richard. That’s all.”

He took in a breath so deep it made his shoulders shake. “Fair enough.” His voice sounded like his own now, not all growling deep. “Did the other master really pick a fight with you?”

I nodded. We’d leave the whole theory as to why he might have picked it until we were alone. “You felt his power, Richard—if it had come down to a fight, a true fight, vampire on vampire, would we have won?”

He looked down at his hands where they lay still and open on his thighs. “I don’t think so.”

“He raised the ardeur. If I feed off him, then he loses.”

Richard nodded. “Food can’t be dominant. I know.” He looked past me to Jean-Claude. “Why would he raise the ardeur? Why would he pick the one way that he could lose?”

“I do not believe he wished to win,” Jean-Claude said.

“That makes no sense,” Richard said.

“He is already master of one territory. It is against our laws to rule a second that does not touch your own. There are lands in between our territories, so defeating me would win him nothing. But losing to the ardeur would give him…”

“Anita.”

“A woman of Belle Morte’s line who holds the ardeur, oui.”

“I thought you said he was your friend,” Richard said.

“I believe he is.” Jean-Claude sighed and said, “We need privacy for this discussion, Claudia, if you would leave us?”

She looked at me, not at the men. I liked Claudia. “It’s okay.”

She sighed. “We’ll be right outside the door, but if the power level rises again, we are back in here.”

“No arguments,” I said.

“I’ll control myself,” Richard said.

“Sure,” she said, and went for the door. Lisandro stared back at us as the door closed, and it wasn’t a bodyguard look. It was a man’s look at a naked woman that he’d never seen naked before. Until that moment I hadn’t even thought about any of the other men in the room. Richard had been all I thought of; the rest of them might as well have been eunuchs as far as I’d been concerned. But with that one look Lisandro broke two rules. First, shapeshifters didn’t notice nudity; they did it too much. It would be like your cat thinking about not wearing pants. Second, it was against the bodyguard code to let clients see that you thought about them in any way other than as a target to keep safe. You did not let a female client see that you lusted after her, even if she paraded naked. That was her problem, not yours. You do not fuck those you guard, because you can’t guard them while you’re fucking. I guess there are exceptions to the above rules, but Lisandro hadn’t earned those exceptions.

I gave him a look that let him know I’d seen his look. He just smiled, not a smidge of regret. Great, just great.

The door closed behind the guard, and we were alone. None of us moved, as if now that it was just us, we weren’t certain what to do.

Richard spoke into the sudden heavy silence. “I need you to put on a towel, at least, Anita, please.” He added the please like it hurt him to ask politely. I guess he was still angry. But he had swallowed all that rage the way he’d learned to swallow his beast. Part of me was beginning to wonder if there would come a day when he couldn’t swallow all the rage, and what would happen when that day came. Once I’d thought Richard would never hurt me; now I knew better. He wouldn’t hurt me on purpose, but purpose wasn’t always what drove him.

Jean-Claude handed me a towel. His face was empty as he did it, nothing to help me, or give me a hint, but nothing on his face for Richard to take offense at either. I guess we were both being as careful of him as we could.

It was a big towel. I ended up covered from armpits to nearly my ankles. I tucked the end of the towel securely under and over, and voilà, I was dressed.

“Thank you,” Richard said.

“You’re welcome,” I said, and sat down on the edge of the marble, smoothing the towel under me. Marble can be very cold to sit on bare.

Jean-Claude handed me another slightly smaller towel. I took it, and watched as he began to wrap an identical towel around his wet hair. He was right; if I didn’t dry my hair well, it would be a mess tomorrow.

“How can the two of you do that?” he asked.

I looked at him from underneath the towel, while I wrapped it around my head. “What are we doing now?”

“Taking care of your hair like nothing’s wrong.”

I got the towel fixed in place and turned to meet Jean-Claude’s look. He took the hint. “If we let our hair dry badly, it will not change what has happened, Richard. The practicalities of life do not cease needing to be done just because other things are going wrong.”

Richard moved so he was sitting on the floor, rather than kneeling. He hugged his knees to him, and it was something that Nathaniel might have done, not my dominant Richard. Whatever he had experienced with us tonight, it had shaken him.

Jean-Claude came to sit beside me on the edge of the marble tub. He was careful not to touch me, only the faintest edge of our hips touching through the towels. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me, but he was probably right. Richard didn’t always like to see us cuddle.

“You wanted privacy for this talk, so talk,” he said. One of the side effects of the vampire marks was that we seemed to be sharing bits of our personalities. He seemed to have inherited some of my impatience and lack of anger management. A bad combination for a werewolf. But we didn’t get to pick and choose what we got.

“Ma petite, if you will tell him, and me, what happened before I arrived.” I told the shortest complete version I could of all that had happened before Jean-Claude showed up. Somewhere during the talk, I leaned in against Jean-Claude’s body. It just seemed wrong to be this close and not touch. He put his arm along my shoulder.

Richard didn’t seem to notice. “I thought this Samuel and Augustine were your friends?” he said.

“They are.”

Then Richard said what I’d thought earlier. “If these are your friends, Jean-Claude, what are the other masters going to be like?”

“I’d thought of that, too,” I said. “I mean, if these are your friends, your enemies are going to kill us.”

“One of the reasons for tonight’s little meeting was to see how ma petite reacted to other Masters of the City.”

“Badly,” Richard said.

“Not necessarily,” Jean-Claude said. He leaned forward, curving me more into his arm to keep from knocking me off the edge. Jean-Claude started to tell his part in tonight’s little drama, but Richard stopped him.

“I felt most of what happened after you touched Anita. I don’t need a reminder.”

“As you like,” Jean-Claude said, “but the point is we may have rolled Augustine as thoroughly as Belle Morte could have done.”

“I wouldn’t brag about that,” Richard said. He’d moved to lean his shoulder against the marble around the tub, so that he was close enough to have reached out and touched us, but he didn’t try to close the distance. And because he didn’t, we didn’t.

“If Augustine is truly ours in the way that Belle made allies, than none of the other masters will try us. They will fear us, Richard. Fear even the touch of our hands.”

Richard frowned at us. I wanted to touch the thick waves of his hair, but kept my hand around Jean-Claude’s waist, and the other hand in my lap. “But you told us, before we agreed to this gathering of masters, that everyone would behave. Especially if they thought one of their people would be Anita’s new pomme de sang. Now, the first two masters who touch her are breaking all the rules.”

“I believe there is a reason for that.”

He gave us a skeptical look that was like a mirror of my own. “What reason?”

Jean-Claude told him about his theory that the ardeur was hunting powerful prey.

“But that means that any Master of the City who comes into contact with her will be, what, compelled to try to mind-roll her?”

“Not just Masters of the City,” he said, and he told about Meng Die and Requiem. “It may have been only that these two are of our bloodline, and both had tasted the ardeur more than once.”

“So has Asher, and he’s not crazed.”

“Asher was drawn to ma petite from the moment he came to us.”

“He saw her as a way of duplicating what you and he and Julianna had,” Richard said. He had moved almost as close as he could without actually touching us. I wondered if he was even aware of it.

“That, and the only way back into my bed was through Anita. But what if it was more than that, Richard?”

I had to add now, “Requiem isn’t the only one of the new London vamps that had tasted the ardeur, and they’re all of Belle’s line. They don’t seem particularly drawn to me.”

“Perhaps they must get at least a small taste of the ardeur from you before it is triggered?”

“Or maybe you’re wrong,” Richard said, “maybe you just don’t have any friends. How long has it been since you saw these guys?”

Jean-Claude gave that graceful shrug. “Almost a century for Augustine, and not since I entered this country for Samuel.”

I looked at him. “Jean-Claude, just because someone was your friend a century ago doesn’t mean he hasn’t changed.”

He nodded, as if I’d made a point. “Perhaps, but I felt something when we were with Augustine. It was such power. I believe that the ardeur is reaching some new power, evolving into something new, or at the very least new to us.”

“What if Auggie isn’t rolled completely?” I asked.

“Then what we did tonight will not be as large a deterrent.”

“Tell Richard the other part, that if we really did roll another Master of the City, you’re wondering if the council in Europe will use this as an excuse to kill us. Or maybe our American neighbors will decide to kill us before we try to take them all over.”

Richard looked at us with that flat I-don’t-believe-it look. “Well, this is a lose-lose situation. Why did you bring them all here, Jean-Claude?”

“Because their presence makes an important event of my evening of dance. It is unfair that just because an artist becomes a vampire he is no longer allowed on the stage. I want my kind to be able to pursue passions that have nothing to do with blood and power. I hope, as you for your wolves, that we can be more than just monsters.”

I’d been thinking about what he said about the taste of the ardeur too much to be sidetracked into talking about ballet. “You know I fed the ardeur off Byron, too. He’s not besotted with me.”

“But he is not a master vampire, ma petite, nor will he ever be a master. He accepts that.”

“If Anita has this effect only on your bloodline, we’re safe for tomorrow, because there are no other Masters of the City from that line.”

“But there are master vampires of Belle’s line scattered throughout this country. Some will be there tomorrow. Some are part of the ballet troupe itself.”

“So I stay home,” I said.

“Cinderella must come to the ball, ma petite.”

“Nathaniel says I’m not Cinderella, I’m Prince Charming.”

He smiled, and gave me a little hug. “Of course, ma petite, whatever you say.” Yeah, he was humoring me, but I let him. “But the point remains, you must go to the party tomorrow night.”

Richard’s knee touched my leg, his hands still clasped around his legs. His hands were mottled with the tightness of his own hold. “She can’t go, not if she’s going to get jumped by all of them.” His hand started to reach for my leg, then he stopped himself, and went back to holding his own hand. He was fighting so hard not to touch me, to touch us. The vampire marks, at least for Belle’s line, made you want to touch each other. It didn’t have to be about sex, just about feeling more complete when you touched. I know Richard felt almost compelled to touch me, but I’d never had the courage to ask if he felt the same way around Jean-Claude. If he did, it might explain some of why he was so enraged about Augustine.

“We have in our camp other masters of similar power to Requiem, who have tasted the ardeur. One is even of Belle’s line.”

I shook my head. “If you’re talking about London, forget it. He seriously creeps me.”

Richard was shaking his head, too. “No.”

“Frankly, Jean-Claude, I don’t know why you agreed to take him. I mean, his own kiss nicknamed him ‘the Dark Knight.’ I think that says something.”

He sighed and leaned his back against the wall. “You know that Belle Morte tried to demand all her bloodline back, when their master was executed. How could I refuse to save them from her?”

“Yeah, but I’d think Belle’s court would be right up London’s alley. A nice dark alley.”

“He did not wish to go back to her. He spoke to me over the phone, he begged me not to let him go back to her court. You see, ma petite, Richard, London was traded to Belle for several years, then she exiled him. She tried to recall him, but he got his new master to intercede.”

“Why?” Richard asked. “Auggie would give anything to go back. I felt how much he misses her.” Richard shuddered. “It’s like some sort of addiction.”

“Oui, mon ami, exactement, that is precisely why London does not wish to go back. He is like an alcoholic that has become a teetotaler. He knows he has another drunken binge in him, but he does not know whether he has the strength to stop again. How could I leave him to her?”

“That’s awfully sentimental for you, isn’t it?” Richard said.

Jean-Claude gave him an unfriendly look. “I try for kindness when I can, Richard.”

Richard sighed, and leaned his forehead on his knees. “God, this is a mess.”

“You said we had other master vamps who had tasted the ardeur but who weren’t of Belle’s line—who are they?” Our list of non-Belle masters was pretty damn slim.

“Wicked and Truth,” he said.

It was Richard who raised his face and said, “No, absolutely no.” Then he seemed to think about it. “Not Wicked.”

“Truth would be acceptable?” Jean-Claude asked.

Richard’s shoulders hunched, and I thought he might break his own hands holding on so tight. “You’re asking me to share her with another man. How can you ask me to help pick who it’s going to be?”

“How many women have you lain with in the last month, Richard?”

Richard’s power flared like a burst of fire through an innocent-looking wall. We were suddenly bathed in the biting heat of his power.

“You all right in there?” Claudia called through the door.

I looked at Richard. He gave the tiniest nod.

“We’re fine,” I said.

“You sure?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Silence from the other side of the door.

Richard said, “Thank you,” then got back to the fight. I didn’t have to see his face to know he was angry. “We all agreed that I’d keep dating. Anita will be my lupa and my Bolverk, but she doesn’t want to marry, or have kids, or any of that. I do. We all agreed to this, don’t throw it up in my face now.”

“You’re going to hurt yourself, Richard,” I said, softly, staring at his hands, and all the not-so-pretty colors they were turning.

He let go of his hands with a breath that held pain in it. He finally let himself wrap his hand around my calf. His power ran over my skin like a thousand tiny insects biting.

“Ow,” I said.

He leaned his face on my towel-covered knee, and said, “Sorry, I’m sorry.” The energy calmed, still warm, raising sweat along my spine, but it stopped hurting. He spoke with his face still on my knee. “Your feeding on Auggie raised my power level—oh God, it did. The power rush felt so good, so incredibly good, even after I knew what you’d done to get it. It still felt wonderful.” His shoulders started to shake, and I realized he was crying.

I touched his hair, letting my fingers comb through those thick waves. “Richard, oh, Richard.”

He wrapped his arms around my legs, holding on, putting his face in my lap, letting me touch him. Jean-Claude laid a tentative hand on his back, and when Richard didn’t say no, he stroked his back. That useless stroking that you’ll do for good friends and loved ones. Those endless, useless circles, where you try to say with your hands that it will be all right. I stroked his hair and brushed the tears from his face. We comforted him as his friends, his very good friends. Whatever else we were to each other, we were at least that.

12

WE ENDED UP on the floor with Richard cradled in my lap, while I sat against Jean-Claude’s bare upper body as if he were a warm, silken chair. Richard’s shirt was gone, so the warm muscled smoothness of his chest and shoulders lay across the pooled towel in my lap. My upper body was as bare as his; the towel just couldn’t hold on during that much cuddling. Richard lay on his back, eyes peaceful, his hair like a brown and gold halo around his face.

My hands stroked his bare chest, not for sex, but for comfort. All the lycanthropes were like that; touch was good, touch was even necessary to stay sane. It was as if they had the normal human skin hunger except more, orders of magnitude more. His arm was raised along the line of my body, his hand playing with my hair, which had begun to dry in tight, frizzy curls. Jean-Claude’s hand played along Richard’s raised arm, stroking up and down the muscled length of it.

There were no words, just the comfort of the touching. Jean-Claude’s other hand was stroking my shoulder and arm, almost mirroring what he was doing to Richard. I think we’d all been surprised that Richard let Jean-Claude touch so much as a fingertip to him, after the way he’d entered the room. I’d seen plenty of lycanthropes pet each other regardless of sexual orientation—a cuddle was a cuddle to most of them—but Richard had issues with Jean-Claude that he didn’t have with the people I’d seen him be so casual with.

Richard’s eyes shifted and I knew he was looking past me to the other man. “Your hair is almost as curly as Anita’s.”

The comment made me turn so I could see his face more clearly, too. Richard was right, Jean-Claude’s hair was a mass of black curls. Not the relaxed, almost wavy curls that he always had, but something closer to mine. But his hair drying naturally was about where mine was with hair care products, not the black foam mine had turned into. “Have I never seen your natural hair texture?” I asked, staring at all those curls.

He smiled, and if it had been almost anyone else I’d have said he was embarrassed, but it just didn’t quite fly for Jean-Claude. “I suppose not.”

Richard moved his hand from my hair to Jean-Claude’s. He rubbed the curls between his fingers, then went back to mine, comparing. “Your hair is still softer textured than Anita’s, or mine, for that matter.” He knelt, and took a handful of both of our hair, as if he were testing how much it weighed. “Normally your hair just looks silkier, but now, you have to touch it to feel how much difference in texture there is between you and Anita.”

Jean-Claude had gone very still against my body. I think he stopped breathing, and the heartbeat that had been chugging along like any human’s heart slowed. I knew he’d gone still because Richard was touching him voluntarily, and he didn’t want to spook him. But I also think that in that moment he didn’t know what to do. A man who had been a great lover for over four hundred years did not know what to do because someone was playing with his hair.

He didn’t want to be too bold and raise that anger again, or frighten him with a homophobic possibility. If Richard had been a woman, he’d have taken it as foreplay. If Richard hadn’t been a shapeshifter, he might still have taken it as an invitation of sorts. But shapeshifters were tactile junkies; touching didn’t mean sex to them, any more than it did when a dog started licking the sweat off your skin. You tasted good, and they liked you, nothing sexual. But it is personal. If they didn’t like you, they wouldn’t touch you.

He sat pressed against my body, and I knew by his very stillness how much it meant to him that Richard was touching him. The stillness also told me he had no idea what to do about it. What does it say when a vampire who has been a great lover and seducer for centuries chooses, as his metaphysical sweeties, maybe the only two people in his territory who are going to puzzle him?

There was a knock at the door. Those of us with a heartbeat jumped. Richard’s hands fell away from both of us as he turned to face the door, still on his knees.

Movement came back to Jean-Claude’s body the way a human would take a breath. “Yes,” he said, and his voice held just a touch of impatience.

Claudia’s voice came, “It’s the Master of Cape Cod and his oldest son.”

Jean-Claude and I exchanged glances. Richard just frowned. “Why is he back?” Richard asked.

“We can but ask,” Jean-Claude said, his voice back to almost its normal silky emptiness. The voice he used when he was hiding things, but trying not to seem like it. Samuel would know what a totally empty voice meant. Hiding, or fear, weakness. So Jean-Claude compromised with his voice, hiding from Richard and maybe from me, and not seeming to hide from Samuel. We were so not going to make it through this weekend without another disaster. The combination of metaphysics and politics was just too hard.

“We’ll be right out,” I yelled at the door. We all got up off the floor. Richard reached for his shirt and slipped it over his head. Jean-Claude and I had robes hanging on the back of the door. Jean-Claude’s was one I’d seen and enjoyed before: heavy black brocade with black fur at the collar and lapel so that it framed a triangle of his pale chest. There was more fur at the wide cuffs, and I’d felt that fur rub down my body before. Just seeing him in the robe made me shiver.

He gave me a smile that said he’d noticed. Richard either didn’t understand or ignored it.

My robe was black silk, no embroidery, no fur, just plain unrelieved black.

We had to walk in front of the mirror to get to the door, and Richard stopped us with a hand on either of our shoulders. He turned us toward our reflections, so that he stood between us. We were all black cloth and white skin, sharp contrasts. Then there he stood, in his bright red shirt, blue jeans, his hair all brown and gold. His tan, darker in contrast with how pale we were. “Which of these things does not belong?” he asked in a low voice. There was that shadow in his eyes again.

I slid my arm around his waist, hugged him, but even to me it looked like something carved of bone and darkness clinging to all that life.

“Jean-Claude, Anita, you coming?” Claudia asked, voice a little hesitant, which you didn’t hear much from her.

“We’re coming,” I called.

“If I could set you free, mon ami, I would.”

Richard hugged me so tight it almost hurt, then he relaxed against me, and looked at Jean-Claude. “If you had that kind of magic wand I’d let you use it, but you don’t.” He turned, keeping one arm around my shoulders, and reaching the other until he touched Jean-Claude’s shoulder. He did that guy grip on the shoulder that some macho guys do instead of hugging another guy. “Some nights I hate you, Jean-Claude, but if I’d been with Anita tonight, touching her, Augustine wouldn’t have been able to roll her. If I’d been where I should have been, none of the crap that I hated tonight would have happened. I know that. I felt it, while it was happening. I was miles away, and I felt the fight, but I didn’t reach out and help. It was vampire politics, and that’s not my problem.” He shook his head hard enough to send his hair flying around his face. “No more lying to myself. I am your animal to call, and I hate it, and sometimes I hate you, and sometimes I hate Anita, and most of the time I hate myself. No more lies, and no more crippling us.”

Jean-Claude’s face was as careful as I’d ever seen it. “And what do these so-wise statements mean, mon ami?”

“It means when you meet with Samuel I’ll be at your side, where I should have been earlier tonight.” He hugged me tight with one arm, and squeezed Jean-Claude’s shoulder again. “I wasn’t even willing to offer up energy to help Anita. She had Micah and Nathaniel with her; I thought she didn’t need another animal to call. But she did, you did. If you and Anita hadn’t pulled a metaphysical miracle out of thin air, the Master of Chicago would have defeated you. Maybe he couldn’t take your territory, but if one master defeats you, then it’s like blood in the water; the sharks come and feed. If we’d proved weak, then not tonight, but some night soon, someone would come and kill us all.”

“I agree with everything you’re saying,” I said, slowly, “but it doesn’t sound like you.”

“No, I guess it doesn’t.” He looked at Jean-Claude, and I felt that first warm trickle of his energy. “Are you playing puppet with me again?”

“I swear to you that I am not, not knowingly, but these are all things I have longed to hear you say. With you at our side, Richard, I fear no one who has come to our territory. With one third of our triumvirate absent, or unwilling…tonight has made me doubt my decision to invite others to our lands.”

He dropped his hand from Jean-Claude’s shoulder. “Then let’s go have this meeting. I can’t promise that I won’t freak again. I can’t promise to like any of this, but I promise to try harder not to run away.” He started walking toward the door, still holding me. I looked back at Jean-Claude, and the look must have shown what I was thinking, because he shrugged, as if he didn’t know what the hell had happened to Richard either. It wasn’t that we weren’t happy with a more reasonable response from him, but it just didn’t seem real. It didn’t feel like the quiet rush after the storm has passed; no, this felt more like that false calm you sometimes get where the world is hushed and waiting. It feels quiet, but the air is charged and waiting, waiting for the storm to come. That’s what Richard’s new attitude felt like, like it was brittle and waiting to break. I applauded the effort, and the sentiment, but the pit of my stomach was afraid of what would happen when the new attitude met the old issues.

13

SOMEONE HAD CLEANED up the living room. The torn drapes were gone, and the remaining ones had been moved to make long swags of cloth against the stone walls. It didn’t make cloth walls now, but it was pretty, and helped give the illusion that the carpeted area was its own space, and not part of the larger rock room. The electric lights seemed odd now that you could see the torches in the hallway.

We walked up hand in hand, me in the middle of the men. Richard’s hand was oh-so-slightly damp. He was nervous, but it didn’t show on his face. I wished I could have asked what exactly was making him nervous. But even if there hadn’t been company I wouldn’t have asked. He was being brave and cooperative, and I wasn’t going to poke at it. Honest.

Asher rose from the chair where he’d sat and entertained our guests. There were half a dozen black-garbed guards scattered throughout the room. Claudia and her crew followed behind us like an honor guard. I think she’d decided no more taking chances tonight. We had enough manpower to fill a room, so she was going to do it. None of us were going to argue.

Asher glided toward us, and it was almost as if his feet didn’t touch the ground, as if he were floating. He was always graceful, but not like that. He was one of the best at levitating that I’d ever seen, so that he could do what the legends say: Asher could fly. Tonight it was as if he could barely force himself to walk when he knew he had wings and longed to use them. He was like some earthbound angel waiting to fling himself skyward. His clothes helped the angelic illusion. He was all in white with gold and copper thread worked through the frock coat, and along a pair of silk pants that ended at his knees, where white hose took up, and ended in white high heels with golden buckles. The shoes reminded me that the original high heel was meant for men.

His hair was the color of the gold thread in his clothes, as if the seamstress had used his own hair to decorate the cloth. He used that hair like a shield, to hide the scars on the right side of his face. He’d been so worried about what the other masters, many of whom knew him before the scarring, would think of him, that he had requested we take down all the paintings that showed him before. The side of the face that showed beside that fall of truly golden hair was the face of some medieval angel, if you liked your angels sensuous, and a little fallen. That full, kissable mouth smiled at us all. His eyes managed to be both pale blue, and a vibrant color, as if a winter sky could burn with pale, clear blue. Only one eye showed clear; the other one seemed to wink and burn when glimpsed through the hair, as if light were glancing off glass.

He offered his hand first to Jean-Claude, and said what Jean-Claude usually didn’t like to hear. “Master, our friend from Cape Cod begs a word.” His words were utterly polite, but his face glowed with some suppressed excitement. Something had filled our usually solemn Asher with delight, but what?

Jean-Claude arched an eyebrow, as if he wanted to ask what was up, too.

Asher’s voice floated through my mind. “The new power level is amazing.”

I felt Richard jerk, as if he’d been hit.

I looked at him, and saw from his wide eyes that he’d probably heard it, too. The next mind whisper held a trace of laughter to it. “My apologies. I only meant Jean-Claude to hear, but I confess to having some trouble controlling all the new abilities.”

Jean-Claude squeezed my hand, and it was his voice that came next. “Calm, we must all be calm for our guests.”

Richard let his breath out slow, and gave a small nod. His abilities didn’t lie with the dead, so he wasn’t used to vamps, other than Jean-Claude, talking mind-to-mind with him. Even I wasn’t used to them doing it by accident. How much power had he gained from this one feeding, and how much had others of our vampires gained? There were one or two I wasn’t sure I wanted more powerful than they already were. Meng Die, for one.

Samuel and Sampson stood in front of the love seat. Asher led us to the couch across from them. The white carpet seemed emptier than normal. Oh, the coffee table was missing. Had we broken it after the ardeur rose? I couldn’t remember.

I had my best professional smile plastered on my face, the one that’s bright and cheery as a lightbulb, and about as warm. But it was the best I could do. I’d had about all the out-of-town visitors I could deal with for one night.

“Samuel, Sampson, you have not met our Richard.”

Samuel bowed toward us. “Ulfric, it is good to meet you at last.”

Sampson bowed a little lower than his father, and let him do the talking. They both looked way too solemn for my tastes, as if something else had gone wrong.

“Samuel, what brings you back to us tonight?” Jean-Claude asked. If he was tired of visitors it didn’t show in his voice. He sounded pleasant, welcoming, the perfect host.

“First, the apology I owe you on behalf of my wife. I worry that something about her nature affected your servant, and may have helped cause what happened tonight.”

I blinked at him, felt my smile slip a notch. Was this all someone else’s fault? Was I going to have someone else to blame? Goody.

Jean-Claude sat down on the white couch, not so much pulling me down with him as leading, as you do in a dance. He sat, and I followed his lead, and Richard followed mine. Jean-Claude kept my hand in his, but Richard let go, and put his arm along the back of the couch. He was touching mostly me, but his hand moved along Jean-Claude’s back, and ended lost in the thick curls of his hair.

“Where is your lovely wife, and your other sons?” Jean-Claude asked.

Asher sat in the overstuffed chair closest to us. He matched the chair and pillows perfectly, all white and gold. He still looked entirely too pleased with himself, like the proverbial cat with cream.

Samuel sat down on the love seat, and Sampson followed his father’s lead. “They are at a hotel along with our two guards. I did not feel it wise to bring Thea and Anita together again tonight.”

“What did she think of the show?” I asked.

Jean-Claude’s hand tightened on my hand, where he held it in his lap. The squeeze was enough: Be nice, he was saying. I’d be nice. My version of it.

Richard had gone very quiet beside me, his arm tensed against my back. But it wasn’t a warning to be careful, because his body temperature went up, as if he was thinking what I was thinking: was there someone else to get angry with, someone besides ourselves? Richard and I both preferred to be angry at other people.

“Thea was much impressed,” he said, and his voice was mild, empty. His tone told nothing.

“If she was so impressed,” I said, “then why isn’t she here?”

Sampson smiled, and had to turn away to hide it.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

His father gave him an unfriendly look. Sampson fought to control his face, but finally burst out laughing. Samuel gave him his best ancient vampire disdain. “I’m sorry, Father,” Sampson said in a voice still choked with laughter, “but you must admit it is funny. ‘Impressed’ does not begin to cover Mother’s reaction to what Anita and Jean-Claude did tonight.”

His father gave him a stony face, until the laughter faded round the edges. Then Samuel said in a voice that held an edge of injured dignity, “My son has been indiscreet, but he is accurate. You ask why Thea and my other sons are not here; simply put, I did not trust her near the two of you.”

“She liked the show,” I said.

Samuel shook his head, gave his son another disapproving look. “More than liked, Anita. She is all ablaze with speculative plans. Would it be possible for her and I to do what the two of you did? I find that unlikely, for though Thea carries something similar to the ardeur, I do not. I believe what you did to Augustine required similar gifts between the two of you.”

Jean-Claude gave a small nod, face still empty. “I believe so.”

“She is now convinced that Anita could bring our sons into the full strength of their siren’s powers.” Something crossed his face, too faint to read, but with such an empty face, it was strangely noticeable. “I do not share her certainty. What I felt from you tonight, Anita, is a different element of passion. It is like the difference between fire and water. They will both consume you, but in very different manners.”

I looked at Sampson’s face, still softly amused. “What did your mother actually say?” I asked.

He glanced at his father before he answered. Samuel sighed, then nodded. Sampson grinned at me, and said, “I don’t think you really want to know what she said, but what she meant was that if she had her way, Tom and Cris would both be here. She’d be here, too. She’d be offering us all to you any way you wanted us.” His face sobered around the edges. “She can get carried away sometimes, our mother. She means well, but she doesn’t think entirely like a human being, do you understand?”

“I hang around with vampires, so yeah.”

He shook his head, his hands clasped on his knees. “No, Anita, vampires start out human, as do shapeshifters, and necromancers”—he said that with a smile—“but Mother was never human. She thinks like…” He seemed unsure what to say.

Samuel finished for him. “Thea is other, and she reasons in ways that do not always make much sense to those of us who began life as human beings.” He didn’t sound entirely happy about it, but he stated it as truth.

“That must make life interesting,” Richard said.

Samuel gave him cool eyes, but Sampson nodded, smiling. “You have no idea.”

“What did you think of the show, Samuel?” Jean-Claude asked.

The other vampire thought about it, face careful, and his voice was just as careful when he answered, “I thought it was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen. I think it is the kind of power that made me flee the great courts, and it is exactly the sort of power that made me avoid Belle Morte’s court. It is the kind of display that made me flee Europe for fear of becoming nothing but a vassal of some great vampiric lord.”

“Do you fear us now?” Jean-Claude asked.

Samuel nodded. “I do.”

“I would not harm you deliberately,” Jean-Claude said.

“No, but your power is growing, and growing power is a wild and capricious thing. I do not want my people, or my sons, near you while your power finds its way. I think you will be incredibly dangerous, by accident, for years to come.”

“Yet, you come before me with your son. Why? Why not leave my lands, if we are so dangerous?”

“Because Thea is right in one way. If she and I could by some chance duplicate what the two of you did, it would be”—he licked his lips—“worth the risk. I also agree that there is a chance that your Anita could bring my sons into their powers, if they have them.”

“Do you believe your sons are so human?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Sampson is well over seventy in human years, so no, not so very human.”

I looked at Sampson. He looked somewhere in his early twenties, maybe thirty at most. By no stretch of the imagination did he look seventy. “My,” I said, “you’re holding up well.”

He grinned at me, and I liked the grin. He seemed to find the whole power game a little embarrassing, a little funny. “Clean living,” he said, still grinning.

Richard moved beside me, a small, uncomfortable movement. I glanced at him, and his face was beginning to darken. One of Richard’s biggest problems with our new lifestyle was jealousy. Of all the men trying to be in my life, he was the only one who found jealousy a real problem. Until I saw that look on his face, I’d been able to ignore that they were still talking about Sampson and me being lovers. I’d gotten better at pushing away the uncomfortable bits until I had to deal with them. Richard was still working on that.

“Thomas and Cristos seem to be aging at a more normal rate.”

“They are only seventeen,” Jean-Claude said, “too young to be certain, surely.”

Samuel shrugged, a normal shrug, not that graceful Gallic movement. “But for this, I think they are too young, too human, whatever Thea may wish.”

“He’s afraid you’d break them,” Sampson said.

I couldn’t help smiling. Richard’s frown got deeper. “And your dad isn’t worried about you?” I asked.

“He is my oldest,” Samuel said, as if that meant more to him than it did to me.

“If you break me, he has two sons left,” Sampson said, smiling to take the bite out of it.

Samuel touched his son’s arm. “I hold all my children precious, you know that.”

He smiled at his father, patted his hand where it lay on his arm. “I know that, Father, but for this kind of power you’d risk one of us, and I’m the most likely to survive without becoming her slave.”

“My slave?” I made it a question. “I don’t do slaves.”

Sampson looked at me as if he were studying me, a shadow of his father’s penetrating stare. “If Augustine is not your slave it will only be because he is powerful enough to recover. Not for lack of trying on your part, and I am not nearly as powerful as a Master of the City.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, not sure what to say. I finally said, “I don’t want anyone to be my slave.”

“Then what did you want?” He kept his suddenly serious eyes on me.

I just blinked at him, trying to think. What had I wanted? What had I intended to do to Auggie? “Win,” I said.

“What?” Sampson asked.

“Win. I wanted to win. Auggie and your father are supposed to be Jean-Claude’s friends. But your mother had almost rolled me. She’d tried to raise the ardeur and make me fuck your brother, your little brother. Then Auggie raised the ardeur, and used his bloodline’s special ability on me. If this is what Jean-Claude’s friends do to us, then what are the other Masters of the City going to do?” I shook my head, leaning forward on the couch, still holding Jean-Claude’s hand, but having to put my hand on Richard’s thigh to keep touching him, too. “We had to win this fight. Had to.”

“You had to win in such a way that the rest of us would not try your strength,” Samuel said.

I nodded. “Yes.”

He looked past us to the hallway beyond, so searching a look that it made Richard and me look behind us. Neither Jean-Claude, nor the silent Asher, bothered, as if they knew there was no one there.

“I believe you have succeeded, Anita. If Augustine follows you and Jean-Claude about like a lovesick puppy, then the rest will fear you. Some may even take back their offers of pomme de sang for fear of having you feed off them the way you fed off Augustine’s people.”

“We fed from Augustine’s people because he is their master,” Jean-Claude said. “No others offer themselves to ma petite’s bed.”

“Perhaps,” Samuel said, “but I think if they did know what has happened with Augustine, they might be tempted. There is something about her that draws one. Even I feel it, and I am not of Belle’s line.”

“How strongly drawn?” Jean-Claude asked in that careful voice.

The two vampires looked at each other. There was suddenly something between them, not magic, but almost as if willpower could be something touchable.

“That is an odd question,” Samuel said.

“Is it?” Jean-Claude asked, and his voice held a lilt at the end that sounded strangely chiding.

Samuel settled back against the love seat, as if he was going to be there for a while. Somehow they both knew they were negotiating. “It was surprisingly bad manners for Augustine to have started a fight with your human servant.”

“Yes,” Jean-Claude said, “it seemed out of character for him, don’t you think?”

Samuel nodded. “I do.”

Richard’s free hand found mine where it rested on his leg. He began to run his thumb over my knuckles, as if he’d picked up the tension, too. Something was up, but what? What was Jean-Claude up to? I wasn’t used to being shut out by both of the men, especially when we were touching, but whatever was happening tonight, Jean-Claude was holding us tight shut against each other. He usually only did that when he was afraid of what would happen if the marks opened. After our little show-down with Auggie I wasn’t going to argue, but it made me head-blind around them, and I wasn’t used to that. I hadn’t realized that I’d started counting on getting hints from both their minds.

“I need advice, Samuel, advice from another Master of the City.”

“What could I possibly advise you on? You are a sourdre de sang. I am but an ordinary Master of the City.”

“I crave your wisdom, not your power.”

The two of them stared at each other, and neither face showed a damn thing. Note to self, never play poker with master vamps. “I am always glad to share my wisdom with my friends.”

“I need your trust, as well, Samuel.”

“Friends must always trust each other.”

I had a moment to wonder if “friends” meant for them what it had meant for Augustine and Jean-Claude. Not the time to ask.

“I trusted you tonight, Samuel, but Thea tried to force herself, and your Thomas, on my human servant. That is not the way a trusted friend behaves.”

“I can only give you my deepest apologies, Jean-Claude. Thea is sometimes overly enthusiastic in her pursuit of our sons’ powers.”

Sampson and I both laughed at the same time. The vampires looked at us. “Sorry,” I said, “but I think you’re understating it.”

“Mother, overly enthusiastic in pursuit of her children’s destiny,” Sampson laughed again, shaking his head.

Samuel frowned at him. Then he sighed and turned back to Jean-Claude. “Once I helped you, not for money, but because Augustine was my friend, and he asked a favor.”

“Your ship was my escape to the new world,” Jean-Claude said.

I remembered Auggie, in Jean-Claude’s memory, saying something about a ship and a captain he trusted. Had that been Samuel?

“I propose that we put aside mistrust, and speak plainly. I propose that we act as true friends and not adversaries.”

“All master vampires are adversaries,” Jean-Claude said.

Samuel smiled. “You speak what you have been told, not what you believe.” He looked at Asher. “He is master enough to have his own territory, but he stays with you out of love. You do not fear each other.”

“No, but you and I have never been close in the way of lovers.”

Samuel waved his hand in the air as if Jean-Claude had missed his point. “I do not covet your lands. Do you covet mine?”

Jean-Claude smiled. “No.”

“I do not covet your lady, do you covet mine?”

Jean-Claude shook his head. “No.”

“We have different animals to call, so that cannot even be shared. We are no threat to each other, Jean-Claude, our powers are too different. Let us help each other, and leave off this game playing. Let us come in honesty and friendship.”

Jean-Claude gave one brief nod. “Agreed.” Then he gave a wide smile. “You first.”

Samuel laughed, sudden and wide enough to flash fangs. It was an echo of Sampson’s laughter, as if when human he’d been even more like his son.

The thought made me wonder: if I was pregnant, who would the baby be like? Would it be a little carbon copy of someone? Would there be a little Jean-Claude running around? The thought of a baby was terrifying, but the thought of a little living version of Jean-Claude wasn’t horrible. I shook my head, hard enough that they all looked at me.

“What is wrong, ma petite?”

“Sorry, thinking too hard. Maybe I’ve never seen master vamps talk about honesty and friendship. Takes some getting used to.”

Samuel smiled at me. “I suppose for the Executioner, it would be a very alien concept.”

I shook my head. “No, as Jean-Claude’s human servant, that is where it gets weird. As the Executioner I just kill people, I don’t talk to them.”

He looked at me with those brown-green eyes, a long, considering look. He turned the look back to Jean-Claude. “I think we can help each other, Jean-Claude. I will begin.” He gave a long sigh. “When Sampson said that Thea does not think like a human, he is quite right. She is the last of the sirens, and it preys upon her mind. She sees the promise of power in our boys, and she is determined that it be brought out.” Samuel hesitated, and even through centuries of control he seemed uncomfortable. “Thea comes from a time and a people where close family relationships were not a hindrance to sex, or even marriage. Her people were worshipped as gods and goddesses. Are you familiar with the Greek mythos?”

“Anyone who is classically educated is familiar with the myths,” Jean-Claude said.

“You’re making this a long story, Father.”

Samuel looked at him. “I admit that now that the time has come to be honest, I am having second thoughts.”

Sampson touched his father’s hand. “Let me, then.”

He shook his head. “No, I am master, and father, and I will do it.” He looked back at Jean-Claude. “Thea tried to bring Sampson into his powers as a siren.”

Jean-Claude and I just blinked at him. Richard was lost, because we hadn’t given him the whole story about how sirens come into their power. Or had we? I couldn’t remember anymore. I was the one who said, “Do you mean that your wife tried to seduce your son?”

He nodded. “Sampson came to me, and I told her, in no uncertain terms, that if she ever tried to do it again I would kill her. When the twins began to exhibit faint signs of power, I gave her the talk again.”

“Would you truly slay her?” Jean-Claude asked.

The polite mask dropped, and Samuel’s eyes blazed for a second, before he lowered his eyes, and hid the anger. “I love my wife, but I love my sons, and they are children and cannot protect themselves against her.”

“In my mother’s defense,” Sampson said, “when I said no, she took no for an answer. She didn’t have to. I’m her son, but I’m not a siren yet; if she’d pushed her powers, then I wouldn’t have had a choice. She stopped when she realized I was horrified. She didn’t understand why it bothered me, but she accepted it.”

Richard and I exchanged glances, and for the first time I think we were both thinking, Gee, it could be worse. That there was a vampire out there sexually more disturbing than Jean-Claude and Belle Morte. EEEK!

“I fear,” Samuel said, “that Thea’s restraint will not be perfect. The twins are seventeen, old enough to marry, old enough for much. I fear that she will be tempted to push with them, and they are not as strong of will as Sampson. It might take less to cloud their minds and lusts.”

“And would you do as you threatened?” Jean-Claude asked. “Even if the sex were to make them full sirens?” His face and voice were back to being very neutral.

“They would come into their powers, but I am not certain that their sanity would survive it. Can you imagine someone with Thea’s powers, or even more powerful because of my bloodline, but mad, completely broken in the mind? I do not wish to be forced to either imprison or kill my own child, Jean-Claude, and that is what we might have to do.” He shook his head, and the worry on his face was like scars, so deep, as if he had carried this burden for a very long time.

“It would be a terrible choice,” Jean-Claude said.

Samuel gathered himself, and his face was back to being neutral, hail-fellow-well-met, boy-next-door-handsome. “But if we can find a way to bring them into their powers without Thea being involved, then the choices are not horrible. The choices are wonderous, powerful, and I would be in your debt.”

“It is by no means certain that sex with ma petite will do for your sons what you wish.”

I opened my mouth to protest that I hadn’t agreed to sex with any of them, but he squeezed my hand, as if, wait.

“Perhaps not, but I believe that I could convince Thea that if Anita could not make them full sirens, none could, not even Thea herself. If Anita tries and fails, then I believe that Thea would accept that they are not sirens.”

Jean-Claude looked at me, then. “If you have questions, ma petite, Richard, now is the time for them.”

Richard said, “Did you say seventeen?”

Samuel nodded.

Richard looked at me, and the look was eloquent.

“I’ve already turned them down as too young, Richard. You don’t need the look, thanks.” I took my hand out of his, because I hadn’t deserved the look he gave me.

“But you’ll fuck Sampson.”

I stood up, letting go of both of them, and stared down at him. “Apologize to me, Richard. Apologize to me, now.”

Embarrassment was on his face, but so was anger. “I shouldn’t have said it, and I’m sorry I said it, but don’t expect me to be happy that you’re adding another man to your list of lovers. I’m not going to be happy about it, Anita, I’m just not.”

“Do I ask how many women you’ve slept with this week?”

“No, but you don’t have to meet them, either.”

I couldn’t argue that. “Fine, you’re right. It would probably bug me to meet your dates.” I threw my hands up in the air. “Damn it, Richard, do you have an opinion on this that isn’t based on jealousy?”

He looked down, then got up from the couch, and paced away to the edge of the carpet. “All I can see when I look at Sampson is that he’s not bad looking, and he’s about my height, and…I don’t want you fucking him. But then I don’t want you fucking anyone but me, so—” He spread his hands wide, and shrugged.

“Have I raised a sore point?” Samuel asked.

“An ongoing disagreement,” Jean-Claude said.

“If this is a problem,” Sampson said, “then forget it. We were under the impression that everyone was okay with Anita adding to her list of men.”

Richard crossed his arms across his chest, and said, “And if we don’t do this, because I’m not happy about it, and your mother…” He closed his eyes, his face struggling with so many emotions. “God help me, but you and your brothers are actually in a more perverted sexual mess than we are. If I say no, and the worst happens…” He paced the edge of the white carpet as if the walls were still there. “I don’t want to watch, but it has to be Anita’s call. I won’t say no. Neither of us is monogamous, so why should I bitch?” He stood there arms crossed, shoulders hunched as if something hurt.

“Anita,” Samuel said.

I looked at him, still standing. I sighed. “I’d rather not add to my list of men either, truthfully, but as Jean-Claude has explained to me, I need a new pomme de sang sooner rather than later. I’m not promising, but I’ll agree to try.” I couldn’t look at anyone when I said it, because it felt squeechy. To agree to try to take another lover, in front of three men I was already sleeping with.

“Good,” Samuel said, and there was such relief in that one word that I looked at him. He was smiling, his eyes sparkling with happiness, and tears. Unshed tears glittered in his eyes. In that moment I realized that he had accepted that his wife would seduce one of their sons, and he would kill her, and the son would be mad, and he would have to kill him, and…too Oedipal for words. Samuel had accepted that someday the worst would happen, and suddenly he was saved. He looked like a man who had thought the executioner was coming, and the governor called instead.

I still wasn’t sure how I felt about adding to my men, but it was nice, for a change, to be someone’s salvation instead of their doom. Yeah, being the savior instead of the executioner, that sounded pretty damn good.

14

SAMUEL SMILED AT Jean-Claude, and it was like a lot about Samuel, a very human smile. I realized that he, like Auggie, could be more “normal” than most vamps I’d ever seen. Was it a vamp trick like Auggie’s had been? Maybe. Was it any of my business to mess with it, and reveal his secret? Nope. No more grand revelations tonight, not that were my fault anyway. I wasn’t messing with anyone or anything tonight if I could help it. My goal was simply to get through the rest of this interview without anything bad happening. Why was I so worried? I’d sat back down beside Jean-Claude, but Richard hadn’t. Richard was still standing, arms folded, shoulders rounded as if with pain. I knew the look on his face, it was the look that usually meant we were going to have a really bad fight. I didn’t want to fight tonight, not with anyone, but especially not with Richard.

Jean-Claude touched my hand. It made me jump, and turn startled to him. “What is wrong, ma petite?”

I gave him a look, and rolled my eyes back to our other third. “Ah,” he said.

I gripped Jean-Claude’s hand tight, and tried to head this fight off. “Richard?” I made his name a question.

He turned those smoldering brown eyes to me. “What?” That one word was so angry that even he flinched. “I’m sorry, what is it, Anita?”

“You don’t have to pick a fight with me to leave.” There, that was as honest and as calm as I could make it.

He frowned at me. “What does that mean?”

“It means that ever since we started talking to Samuel about his sons and their problem, your tension level has done nothing but rise.”

“And if we were talking about me having sex with three new women, two of them seventeen years old, wouldn’t you be angry?”

I thought about it, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Then don’t expect me to be happy about it.”

“What am I supposed to do, Richard, apologize? I wouldn’t even be sure what I was apologizing about. Anyway, I’ve told you that my answer was no on the seventeen-year-old.”

“I think, Jean-Claude, Sampson and I will leave you all for the night.” Samuel stood. “You seem to have much to discuss.”

Sampson stood alongside his father. He was about two inches taller than Samuel, as if he’d gained height from his mother’s genetics. I wondered what else he might have gained. I really didn’t know much about mermaids, or sirens. I probably needed to remedy that before I got too up close and personal with any of them.

“Not yet, my friend, please,” Jean-Claude said. He looked at Richard, giving a peaceful face to the unhappy one. “We need some riddles answered before we dare take ma petite among our brethren tomorrow night.”

Samuel nodded, and sat back down. “You’re wondering, if you take her among nearly a dozen Masters of the City, whether the night will be even more interesting than this one.”

Jean-Claude nodded. “Exactement.”

“Are these questions that only a vampire can answer?” Sampson asked.

“It is from a master like your father that I need advice,” Jean-Claude said.

“Then, I could go back to the hotel and check on Mother and the twins.”

“I think they have enough watchdogs, Sampson,” his father said.

Sampson gave his father a look like he was trying to say something with his eyes, and his father wasn’t getting it.

“You’re leaving because you think it will make me less upset,” Richard said.

Sampson looked at him, with that open, honest face, and nodded.

“That’s…” Richard’s face struggled with his emotions, because a friendly gesture, honestly given, always touched him. “That’s really…good of you.”

“You obviously don’t like sharing Anita, and now here I am asking you to share her again. We need her to help us. I don’t want to lose my mother and one, or both, of my little brothers.” Sampson shook his head, eyes staring off into space, but not seeing anything in this room. The look in his eyes was haunted as if he, like his father, had given up on avoiding the tragedy. As if he’d been picturing it all in his head for months, trying to make peace with it, and failing.

He looked up at Richard. “I won’t give up this chance to save my family, but I am sorry that it’s causing you pain.” He came out into the middle of the room, facing Richard. “If my going will make you feel better, I can do that.”

Richard hung his head, his newly long hair hiding most of his face. When he raised it again he looked like a man coming out of deep water, shaking his hair back from his face. “Insult to injury, damn it.”

“Did I say something wrong?” Sampson asked.

“No, nothing wrong,” Richard said. He sighed, and his arms started to unfold, stiffly, as if it hurt him to let go of the anger. “No, I just didn’t want to like you.”

Sampson looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

“If I can hate you, I can get angry, and storm out. If you’d acted like some kind of lustful asshole, I could have just gone. Wrapped my injured righteousness around me, and gotten the hell out of here.”

I stood up and faced him; Jean-Claude kept my hand lightly in his. “I’ve already told you, Richard,” I said, “you don’t have to pick a fight to leave.”

“Yes,” he said, “I do. Because I know that I cripple us as a power by simply not being here when you need me. If I’d been here, Auggie wouldn’t have rolled you. I have no one but myself to blame that you and Jean-Claude fucked Auggie.” His voice held the edge of warmth, and the first bite of his power flickered through the room.

I took a few steps, leaving Jean-Claude’s hand behind. “Why are you responsible for everything?” I asked. “I deal with more undead than you do; I should have been able to protect myself. And maybe I should have seen it coming, but I’m not beating myself up about it. It happened, and now we deal with it.”

“Is it really that easy for you, Anita? It happened, now we deal with it, we move on?”

I thought about it, then nodded. “Yes, it is, because it has to be. My life wouldn’t work if I wallowed in every disaster, every moral quandary. I can’t afford the luxury of self-doubt, not to that degree.”

“Luxury,” Richard said. “This isn’t luxury, Anita, it’s morality. It’s your conscience. That’s not a luxury item, that’s what separates us from the animals.”

Here we go again, I thought. Out loud I said, “I have a conscience, Richard, and my own set of morals. Do I ever worry that I’m a bad guy? Yeah, sometimes I do. Do I wonder if I’ve traded away pieces of my soul, just to survive? Yeah.” I shrugged. “It’s the price of doing business in the real world, Richard.”

“This isn’t the real world, Anita. This isn’t the normal workaday world.”

“No, but it’s our world.” I was facing him now, almost close enough to touch. He was controlling himself, because his power was only a warm pressure in the air.

He waved his hands around the room. “This is not where I want to be, Anita. I don’t want to live where my choices are sharing you with other men, or having people die. I don’t want those choices.”

I sighed, and let him see that I was tired, and sad, and sorry. “There was a time when I would have agreed with you, but I like parts of my life a lot, Richard. I hate the ardeur, but I don’t hate everything it’s brought into my life. I’d have liked to try that whole picket-fence thing, but I think even without the ardeur and the vampire marks, that it wouldn’t have been my gig.”

“I think it would have been,” he said.

“Richard, I don’t think you see me. I don’t think you see who I am.”

“How can you say that to me? If I don’t shield I share your dreams, and your nightmares.”

“But you’re still trying to shove me in a box that I don’t think fit me even when we met. Just like you’re trying to shove yourself into a box that doesn’t fit you, either.”

He was shaking his head. “That’s not true. That’s not true.”

“Which part?” I asked.

“I think we could have made it, our version of the white picket fence, without him,” and he pointed at Jean-Claude.

Jean-Claude was giving his most peaceful, empty face, as if he were afraid to do or say anything.

“Don’t try to blame all our problems on Jean-Claude.”

“Why not, it’s true. If he had left us alone, not marked us.”

“You’d be dead,” I said.

He frowned at me. “What?”

“Without the extra power of the marks with Jean-Claude you’d never have had the power to kill Marcus and keep the pack.”

“That’s not true.”

I just stared at him. “Yeah, Richard, I was there, it is true. You’d be dead, and I’d still be living alone sleeping with my stuffed toys and guns. You’d be dead and I’d be dead inside, dying of loneliness, not just because you would be gone, but because my life was empty before. I was like a lot of people who do police work. I was my job. I had nothing else. My life was full of death, and horror, and trying to stay ahead of the next horror. But I was losing the battle, Richard, losing myself, long before Jean-Claude marked me.”

“I asked you to give up the police work. I told you it was eating you up.”

I shook my head. “You’re not listening to me, Richard, or you’re not hearing me.”

“Maybe I don’t want to hear you. Or maybe I’m right, and you’re not listening.”

We stood barely two feet apart, but it might as well have been a thousand miles. Some distances are made out of things bigger and harder to travel across than mere miles. We stood and stared at each other across a chasm of misunderstanding, and pain, and love.

I tried one last time. “Say you’re right. Say if Jean-Claude had left us alone you could have your perfect picture. I still wouldn’t have given up the police work.”

“You just said, it was destroying you.”

I nodded. “Just because something’s hard doesn’t mean you give up on it.” Somehow I thought I was talking about more than just police work.

“You said I was right.”

“I said, say you’re right. Let’s just pretend that without Jean-Claude here, we would have found a way. But we are bound to him, Richard. We are a triumvirate of power. What we would change if life were totally different doesn’t really matter.”

“How can you say that?”

“What matters, Richard, is that we deal with the reality of our now, this minute. There are things we can’t undo, and we all have to work together to make the best of what’s true in our lives.”

His face was cold with his anger. I hated his face like this, because it was both frightening and more beautiful, as if the anger cleaned away something that distracted the eye from realizing just how amazingly handsome he was. “And what is true in our lives?” His power began to flow through the room, hot water, hotter than you’d want in the bath. The guards around the room shifted uneasily.

“I am Jean-Claude’s human servant. You are his animal to call. We are a triumvirate of power. We can’t change that. Jean-Claude and I both carry the ardeur. We both need to feed the hunger, and that’s not going to change.”

“I thought you were hoping to be able to feed from a distance at the clubs, the way Jean-Claude did under Nikolaos.”

“It crippled his power, which is what the ex–Master of the City wanted to do. I’m not going to cripple us magically because I’m squeamish. No more hiding, Richard. The ardeur is here to stay, and I need to feed it.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“No, what?”

He let down his shields. I don’t know if it was on purpose, or his emotions got the better of him. Whatever the cause I suddenly heard his thoughts like clear bells in my head: he thought that once I got the ardeur under control I’d dump Micah and Nathaniel and live with him. Be with him. He still hoped, seriously, that some day we’d be a nice little monogamous pair.

It took only seconds for me to get all of it, but his shields coming down had brought mine down, too, and he felt my shock. My disbelief that he still thought, seriously, that that would ever happen.

I felt the next thought forming, and tried to stop it, tried to keep it half-formed, or to shut him out, but the emotions were too raw, and I wasn’t fast enough. The thought was, Even if I am pregnant, it would never work.

Richard’s face showed the shock now. He gaped at me, and whispered, “Pregnant.”

I said the only thing that came to mind. “Fuck.”

15

I SLAMMED EVERY shield I had in place, shut, tight, metal, closed. I thought metal, smooth and thick and impenetrable. I stared at the floor, afraid to meet anyone’s eyes. Afraid of what I’d see in their faces, or what I wouldn’t.

“Anita,” Richard said, and his hand reached for me.

I stepped out of reach. I was shaking my head. I didn’t know what I wanted out of this moment, didn’t know what reaction would please me, and which one would piss me off. I’d hoped to keep it secret until I knew for sure. I did not want to open this can of emotional worms until it was a done deal.

It was Samuel who broke the silence. “Congratulations to both of you. A baby, joyous news indeed.”

I turned slowly to look at him, because of anyone in the room I cared least what he thought about the news. Him, I could look at. Him, I could be angry with.

Sampson was already touching his father’s shoulder. “Father, I think we should leave now.”

Samuel was looking from his son, to me, to Jean-Claude, to most of the people around the room. He looked utterly confused. “But this is wonderful news, and you’re all acting as if someone has died.”

“Father,” Sampson said, soft and warningly. He was looking at my face, and whatever he saw there made him grab his father’s elbow and try to get him on his feet.

He stared at his son’s hand until Sampson let it drop away. Samuel then met my gaze. His eyes didn’t look friendly now. They looked older, full of some deep knowledge, and sad around the edges, and angry. “Why such anger, Anita?”

I started to count to twenty, knew it wouldn’t be enough, and just said it, in a voice that was choking with anger, confusion. “Don’t tell me how to feel, Samuel, you don’t have that right.”

He stood up, and pushed his son’s hands away from him. “Think how powerful a child you and Jean-Claude could have.”

“There’s no guarantee it’s his,” I said.

“The odds are that if you are pregnant, it won’t be any of the vampires,” Richard said. His voice was low and careful, but there was something underneath all that that I hadn’t wanted to hear—eagerness.

I turned to him, and I don’t know what I would have said, or even done, because Jean-Claude was just suddenly there between us. “Do not do anything rash, ma petite.”

“Rash, don’t do anything rash!” I pulled away from him. “He’s not unhappy about this and you’re locked down so tight I don’t know what you’re feeling.”

“I feel that anything I say, or do, in this moment, will upset you.” It was the most diplomatic way I’d ever been told that I was a pain in the ass.

I fought the urge to scream at him. I managed a voice that was strangled low and tense with the effort not to yell. “Say something,” I said.

“Are you with child?” he asked in that neutral, pleasant voice of his.

“I don’t know, but I missed October.”

Richard came closer and he tried for neutral, failed, but he tried. “Have you ever missed a whole month before?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Emotions fought on his face, and finally he had to turn away, as if whatever expression he had, he was sure I wouldn’t want to see it.

“Don’t you dare be happy about this, damn it!”

He turned back, face mostly under control, but his eyes held that look. That soft I-love-you look that once was meant just for me, but which lately I hadn’t seen much of. I’d seen lust, but not this.

“Would you prefer me to be angry, or sad?” he asked.

“No, yes, I don’t know.” There, that was the truth. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he looked it around the edges. “Sorry if I’m making this harder, but how could I be completely unhappy if we made a child together?”

He would pick the very worst way to say it. The way most guaranteed to panic me. “It’s not a child, yet. It’s a bunch of cells smaller than my thumb.”

His eyes got more careful. “What are you saying, Anita?”

I hugged myself tight and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “I don’t know what I’m saying.” But I was beginning to have more sympathy with Ronnie’s idea about just going away and making the choice without any of the men.

“Would you really be able to kill our baby?” he asked, and I didn’t have to see his face to know he looked hurt; I could hear it in his voice.

“Mon ami, you put the cart before the horse. Let her find out if she is pregnant before we make plans.” Jean-Claude tried to move between us again, tried to block my view of Richard, as if that would help.

Richard moved around him, so he could still see me. “Anita, could you really kill our baby?”

I wanted to scream yes, just to see the pain on his face, but on this I couldn’t lie. I already knew the answer, I just didn’t like it. “NO!” I yelled it, and the sound echoed against the stones without the hanging drapes to soften it.

Richard’s face softened and he started to walk toward me, around Jean-Claude. The look on his face was almost beatific, as if all his dreams had come true. I felt as if I were suffocating in a nightmare, and he looked like that. I had to wipe that look off his face, I had to.

“What if it’s not yours?” I asked, and my voice was ugly. I wanted it to hurt.

He hesitated, then got a look that was almost smug. “The odds are in my favor, Anita.” He looked entirely too pleased with himself.

“Why, just because Jean-Claude and Asher, and hell, Damian are several hundred years old? That doesn’t mean it’s not theirs; look at Samuel. He has three sons, two separate pregnancies.”

Richard started to frown. He wasn’t walking closer now. Good.

Jean-Claude sighed, and stepped back as if he’d given up trying to stop the fight.

“And what about Micah and Nathaniel?” I asked. “They’re not vampires and I’ve had more sex with them in the last two months than with you.” I was happy when he flinched. Ugly, but true.

“Micah’s fixed,” he said, and his face darkened. “That leaves Nathaniel.” There was such anger in those three words, that I wished I’d left it alone.

As if on cue, Micah and Nathaniel came out of the far hallway. They looked at all of us and Micah said, “Is this about what I think it’s about?”

“You knew about the baby?” Richard asked.

“Are we sure?” Nathaniel asked.

“No,” I said.

“You both knew?” Richard said, and his power started up again. I was suddenly standing too close to the metaphorical fire.

“Yes, we knew,” Micah said.

“You told them before you told us?” Richard said, and he gestured at Jean-Claude.

“They live with me, Richard, it’s harder to keep a secret from them. I didn’t want any of you to know until I did a test. I didn’t want to deal with all this crap, if I didn’t have to.”

“Let us calm down until we know for certain,” Jean-Claude said.

“Doesn’t it bother you that she told them before us?” Richard said.

“No, mon ami, it does not.”

Richard glared at Micah and Nathaniel, but his gaze finally settled on Nathaniel. Not good. “You know that if she is pregnant, it’s probably you, or me,” Richard said. The words were neutral; the tone wasn’t. The tone was a warning as clear as the heat rolling off his body.

Nathaniel had one of the most careful looks I’d ever seen on his face. He looked blank, pleasant, but not sorry, not submissive. Always before when dealing with Richard, Nathaniel had given off subservient vibes. Now, suddenly, there was nothing subservient about him. He might still bottom to me, but his days of doing it for Richard were over. It was there in the set of his shoulders, the eye contact he gave the bigger man. He wasn’t being aggressive, but he wasn’t giving off those subtle submissive signals either. His attitude said, clearly, he wasn’t backing down. On one hand I was happy to see it, on the other hand it scared me. I’d seen Richard fight and I’d seen Nathaniel fight. I knew who would win.

Of course, if Richard started the fight, he would win the slugfest, but he’d lose the girl. I hoped he understood that.

16

I DON’T KNOW what would have happened. Something bad, almost certainly, but help came. “You guys are all being assholes.” It was Claudia.

Everyone turned to look at her.

“How dare you make this about some macho ego shit. Can’t you see she’s scared?” She gestured in my direction. “Ulfric, if you think a baby will make her give up the police work and the execution work, or the zombie raising, you’re wrong. Do you see a baby fitting into Anita’s life? Are you going to quit work and stay home and play nanny, because Anita sure isn’t.”

We all looked at Richard. He was scowling at her.

“Well,” she said, “are you? Are you willing to completely disrupt your life if it’s yours?”

He scowled harder. “I don’t know,” he said, finally.

“I will.” Nathaniel’s voice, turning us all back to him. “I’m already the wife, why not the mother?”

“Have you ever taken care of a baby?” Claudia asked.

He shrugged. “No.”

“I had four younger brothers, trust me, it’s harder than it looks.”

“I will,” Micah said. “Whatever Anita wants, or needs.”

“Stop being perfect,” Richard said.

“You work days, Richard,” Nathaniel said, “and you work a regular weekday. I can make more part-time at Guilty Pleasures than any teacher’s salary I’ve ever heard of.”

“So you’d be a good provider,” Richard said, and his voice was full of scorn.

Nathaniel smiled, and shook his head. “Anita provides for herself just fine. She doesn’t need my money. What I meant was that dropping my work hours down won’t affect my job that much. It would ruin yours.”

Richard didn’t want to be mollified. He wanted to be angry, so he turned to Micah. “And what about you? You work as many hours as Anita does.”

“I would need more help running the hotline and the coalition. We would have nearly a year to train someone to help me, or even replace me, if that’s what was needed.”

“It can’t be your baby,” Richard said.

“Genetically, no.”

“What does that mean, genetically?”

“It means that just because it’s not blood of my blood doesn’t mean it’s not mine. Ours.”

“Yours and Anita’s,” and the words singed along my skin. So much power, so much anger, it actually hurt.

“No,” Micah said, “Anita’s and Nathaniel’s, and Jean-Claude’s, and Asher’s and Damian’s and yours, and mine. Leaving a little bit of sperm behind doesn’t make you a father. It’s what you do afterward, Richard.”

“You can’t bring up a baby with seven fathers.”

“Call it what you like,” Micah said, “but the only two men in this room able to totally disrupt their lives if there is a baby are Nathaniel and me.” He looked at Jean-Claude. “Or am I wrong?”

Jean-Claude smiled at him. “No, mon chat, you are not. I do not believe that a baby could spend all its time in the underground of the Circus of the Damned and be”—he seemed to search for a word—“well-balanced. Visits, oui, many visits, but the world I have built here is not”—again he searched for a word—“conducive to the upbringing of small children.”

“I’m a small child,” came a small sweet voice from behind us. Apparently we’d all been so caught up that we hadn’t heard the approach of the tiny girl. Of course, Valentina was a vampire, and the undead are quiet bastards.

Her dark hair curled just below her ears. She’d cut it recently, to look more modern. Her face was round, and soft, not long past being a baby. She was five, and would always be five, at least physically. She was wearing a red dress with white tights, and little white patent leather shoes. When she came to us she’d worn nothing designed after 1800. She still wouldn’t wear pants or shorts, because it wasn’t ladylike, but she had arrived in the twentieth century, at least in fashion. She blinked large dark eyes at us, her face perfectly innocent. At Belle’s court she had tortured people for information, for punishment, and because she enjoyed it. Jean-Claude told me that all the child vampires go mad eventually. It was why it was against their laws to bring anyone over before puberty.

Valentina had been made by a pedophile who happened to be a vampire. He had been given an isolated territory, and there he had made his own special playmates for almost fifty years before someone discovered what he was doing. Valentina had been one of the lucky ones. He’d brought her over, but hadn’t made her one of his brides, yet. Most of his “brides” and “grooms” had to be destroyed. Too mad, too savage, for anything else. That one of “her” vampires had done such things was one of her few things that Belle Morte seemed to feel guilty about.

“Yes,” Jean-Claude said, “of course you are. You are our petite fleur.” He moved forward as if he would herd her out of earshot of the grown-up talk. She may have looked five, but she was over three hundred years old. The body was a child’s, the mind was not. But unless we were careful, most of us had a tendency to treat her like she looked, not like she thought.

She turned that tiny face to mine, with those solemn eyes. “Are you going to have a baby?”

“Maybe,” I said.

She smiled, flashing fangs as delicate as needles. “I would have someone to play with.”

Jean-Claude started to take her hand, then hesitated in midgesture. He had suffered at Valentina’s hands more than once. He never truly forgot she was a monster. He said, “Where is Bartolome? He’s supposed to be watching you today, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know where he is,” she said, gazing up at Jean-Claude.

He laid the barest touch on her shoulder. She looked past him to me. The look in those eyes had nothing to do with childhood.

“She’s over three hundred years old, Jean-Claude, don’t shush her away like she’s really five.”

He looked at me. “Valentina prefers to be treated as a child, it is her choice.” He gazed down at her. “Don’t you, ma dulce?” He lied with his voice, but he did not touch her as if she were a child.

She nodded, but those eyes gazed at me. Those eyes that held centuries of power trapped in a body too delicate to do most of the things in her mind. There were nights when I felt sorry for her; then there were moments, like now, when I wasn’t certain that she’d have been sane even if she’d come over as an adult. There was simply something in her that wasn’t quite right. It was sort of a chicken/egg question on Valentina’s sanity. She’d never hurt me. Never done anything to purposefully frighten me. But she was on my short list of people that I wouldn’t have trusted if I’d been helpless and alone with her. It had taken me months to realize that the reason she creeped me out was only partly the whole trapped-in-a-child’s-body thing. Months to admit to myself that I was more afraid of Valentina than any other vamp who called Jean-Claude master.

“I think having a baby around would be fun,” she said.

“Fun, how?” I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“I wouldn’t be the smallest anymore,” she said. It should have been an innocent statement, so why did I suddenly have the urge to tell her that if she tried to change my baby over into a vampire littler than herself, I would fucking kill her? Paranoid, or just cautious? So hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Richard moved closer to me, and I let him. I wasn’t the only one who felt something was terribly wrong with her. He put his arm across my shoulders, and I let him do that, too. Staring into Valentina’s eyes I would have let almost anyone comfort me.

“No,” I said, slowly, “no, not too much time at the Circus.”

Micah moved closer to us, not touching me, because Richard never seemed to like that. He’d tolerate Jean-Claude touching me with him, but almost no one else. But I wasn’t the only one weirded out by the “little girl.”

Jean-Claude looked back at us, still touching her shoulder. “I must find Bartolome, and chastise him for not watching her better.”

Valentina pulled away from Jean-Claude, and he let her go. She started walking farther into the room. Richard drew me in tighter against his body. Micah moved so that he was standing almost in front of me, blocking her from coming closer to me. Normally, I might have told him it wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t like how interested she’d been in the whole idea of the baby.

Valentina walked around us. The tension in my shoulders eased. Richard’s breath eased out in something like a sigh. Micah didn’t relax. He stayed tense just in front of us, as if he didn’t trust she wouldn’t circle back. She walked toward Samuel and Sampson.

“What are you doing, little one?” Jean-Claude said.

She gave a perfect, and very low, curtsey, holding her little dress out with her hands, ankles crossing as she went down. “Greetings, Samuel, Master of Cape Cod.”

“Greetings, Valentina,” he said.

She offered him her hand. He took the tiny hand in his, and laid the barest touch of his mouth upon her wrist. It was all protocol, perfectly acceptable, but the gesture showed better than any words that he wasn’t comfy with her either.

She turned to Sampson. She gazed up at him, her head tilted back, very childlike, but I would have bet anything I had that the searching look on her face wouldn’t be childlike. I’d had her stare at me before, and knew that the face didn’t match the intensity and personality in the eyes. “Is this your son?”

“Yes, his name is Sampson.”

She held her tiny hand out to him, too. He took it, but seemed unsure what to do with it. “I am not a vampire,” he said, “nor anyone’s servant, or animal to call.”

“But you are his son, his heir. I am just one more vampire. I am not even a true master.” She was saying that he outranked her.

Sampson glanced at his father, who must have given him some look, because he raised the tiny hand to his mouth. He, like his father, did the minimum touch he could get away with. He, like his father, kept eye contact with her while he did it. It reminded me of how you bow on the mat in judo. You keep your eyes up as you do it, never looking away from your opponent, just in case. But there was a difference between the two men. One was a very master vampire. The other was not. He was part human and part mermaid, and maybe someday he would be more, but tonight, he wasn’t.

“Pick me up,” she said, in that high little-girl voice.

He picked her up and sat her in his lap. She cuddled against him. He was blinking out at the room, frowning. His face looked almost like he was in pain.

“Shit,” I said softly. She had rolled him, rolled him with her eyes.

Jean-Claude said, “Valentina, he is our guest.”

Samuel raised a hand up. “I run my kiss in the old way. He is my son, my eldest; if he cannot win free of a vampire who is not even a master…” He left the sentence unfinished.

“You make him earn his place constantly,” Jean-Claude said.

Samuel nodded.

I’d never even heard of the rule he was talking about. I said so. “I don’t even know this rule.”

“It is a version of survival of the fittest, ma petite. If Sampson is not strong enough to break free, or avoid Valentina’s trickery, then he is a little less worthy in his master’s eyes. It is a way that some Masters of the City separate the weak from the strong. Those who fail these tests often are demoted, traded to other lands, or killed.” His voice was matter-of-fact, but I knew him well enough to taste the faint disapproval. “Very few American masters run their lands with this rule.”

“I am older than most of the American masters,” Samuel said.

I looked at Jean-Claude and he met my look. “But she’s our vampire, and we don’t live by this rule.”

Richard hugged me, one-armed, as if he were afraid of what I’d do, or say.

“If his father decrees that Sampson must break free of her gaze by himself, then it is so, but we will make it very clear to all our vampires that this gaze is illegal in our country. It is seen as coercion.” He stared at Valentina as he said it.

She pouted her lower lip out at him, and snuggled in tighter to Sampson. He put his arms around her, as if in response to the cuddling, or maybe she’d used mind tricks. If she’d rolled him enough not to need words to boss him around, we were in deeper trouble than I’d thought. Because once vampires roll you that much, they own you. They can reclaim their victims at any time. They can stand under their windows and call them out into the night. Hell, some of them can call their victims across town like sleepwalkers. If Valentina had rolled him that badly, he’d give her blood anytime she asked. He’d have no choice.

I don’t know what I would have done, but suddenly there was new energy in the room. The air smelled fresher, faintly of salt and sea. Sampson’s eyes cleared, that confused, bemused look fading. His eyes changed from the hazel of his father’s to the flat black of his mother’s. He stared down at the vampire in his lap, and his face had a look that I’d seen before. It was a look that said his seemingly youthful face held wisdom decades beyond the outside packaging. He gazed down at Valentina with a face that showed he had lived every day of seventy years. That he was no more his twenty-something, nice-guy-next-door package than Valentina was a child.

He tried to lift her out of his lap, but she clung to him, playing the child for all she was worth. “Don’t you like me, Sampson?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I do not like you.”

She pouted at him, even managing to feign tears, as if he’d hurt her feelings. Maybe he had. Valentina was hard to figure.

He drew her away from his body, and set her firmly on the ground. “You will not be able to trick me again, for I felt your mind. You are not a child, Valentina. You do not think as a child.” He shivered, rubbing his hands up and down his arms as if to cleanse them from the feel of holding her. “I saw what you wanted to do to me. What you tried to persuade me I wanted to do.” He shivered again. “Your mind has begun to want things beyond your body’s years. Pain is your substitute for sex.”

She put her hands on her hips, and stomped her little foot. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Perhaps it is you that desires such things.” Then she turned to Jean-Claude. “Master, can you not find one among all the visitors who would let me hurt him? I miss it.” She said it as if there were no contradiction in telling Sampson he was the pervert, and then asking to do what he’d accused her of wanting to do.

Jean-Claude sighed. “Asher, if you would take her back to Bartolome.”

Asher pushed himself up from the chair where he’d gone nearly motionless during all the hoopla. But Nathaniel said, “I’ll take her.”

We all looked at him.

He smiled. “You need to talk vampire business with Samuel. Asher will be more useful for that than I will.” He walked toward us to say good night, and Micah moved out of the way, so he could lean in toward me. Richard’s arm was still holding me close to his body. He tensed, and moved as if he’d take me out of Nathaniel’s reach.

Nathaniel touched his arm, and Richard froze. His power lashed out like lightning scoring along my skin.

“Ouch, Richard, that fucking hurt.”

Nathaniel shivered. “That really did hurt.” But his voice didn’t sound like a complaint.

“Back up,” Richard said, his voice holding an edge of growl. He was controlling his power enough so it didn’t actively hurt me, but it was like cuddling next to a stove that you just knew was going to get too hot to touch soon.

Nathaniel smiled and pushed in against us both, pressing his chest against Richard’s arm. Richard moved away, but he tried to take me with him, and frankly, I just didn’t want to be in the middle of it. So I stopped moving, but Nathaniel was so close I couldn’t step forward either. Richard had choices: pick me up, or hurt me to move me, or let me go, or move away without me, or stay where he was, with Nathaniel touching him.

Richard tried to move back, while I tried not to move, and Nathaniel just watched us, from an inch away. Richard wasn’t willing to move without me, or leave me alone with Nathaniel. The symbolism was too raw for words.

Nathaniel spoke low and soft, his lavender eyes raised to the taller man’s face, his chest almost pinning Richard’s arm between us. “You’re like a dog marking your territory. Maybe you should piss on her, so we’ll all know she’s yours.”

I froze between them, because this was going to be bad.

Richard growled low and deep, the sound of it vibrating over my skin, and into Nathaniel’s body. We both shivered, but I don’t think it was for the same reasons.

“Stop it, both of you,” I said.

“She’s not a bone, that only one of us can have,” Nathaniel said.

Richard growled again and this time Richard’s power rippled along my skin like little slaps of electricity. Nathaniel and I spoke at the same time. I said, “That hurts” Nathaniel said, “Yummy.”

“You are such a freak,” Richard said, almost a yell.

“Maybe, but this freak is willing to do for the woman he loves and his baby what you won’t do.”

Richard jerked away so suddenly, it made me stumble. Nathaniel caught me. But Richard backed up. Nathaniel backed him down not with power, but with truth.

Nathaniel held me, and I let him, because if I’d pulled away now, the whole show would have been wasted. I’d hung around the lycanthropes long enough to understand what was happening. Nathaniel, my submissive Nathaniel, was stepping up to bat. He was showing the most dominant person in my bed that he was a force to be reckoned with. Why tonight? Why did Nathaniel have to draw his line in the sand tonight? The baby, of course, the baby. Something about the whole baby question had made Nathaniel feel like he had to be more dominant. Or maybe he, like me, was just tired of watching Richard say he was the dominant sweetie in my life, but acting like he was my fuck buddy. Nothing wrong with a fuck buddy, but you can’t be the love of someone’s life and a fuck buddy. They are mutually exclusive.

Nathaniel held me, and I wrapped my arms around him, hidng my face against his chest, because I wasn’t sure what expression was on my face. Nathaniel had stood up to Richard and won. What else was going to change just because of the possibility of a baby?

“I’ll take Valentina. You guys stay and talk business.”

“You’re part of the business,” Micah said from behind us.

“But you can fill me in later, and I’m not really going to have an opinion on the vampire stuff.” He grinned. “I’m also the least likely to object to anyone Anita is willing to take as a pomme, or a lover.” He kissed me on the forehead, and whispered, “Besides, Valentina doesn’t bother me.”

I looked up at him. “And that bothers me a little, that you’re not creeped.”

The grin softened to a smile. “I know.” He kissed me on the mouth, soft, gentle. He pulled away, and I let him go, still not sure what had changed in him.

Valentina came to him, and he took her hand. He began to lead her toward the far hallway. She looked back and stuck her tongue out at us.

Claudia sent Lisandro to accompany them. Aloud, she said, “Make sure Bartolome isn’t doing anything he shouldn’t.” But I was pretty sure after Valentina’s show with Sampson, she just didn’t trust any of the non-vamps alone with her. Me, either.

17

“HOW CAN YOU love him?” Richard asked.

I turned to look at him. He stood, shoulders hunched, rubbing his hands up and down his arms, as if he were cold. But I knew he wasn’t cold, or at least not the kind of cold that blankets and skin warmth could fix. It was a coldness of the heart, or the soul, or the mind. That cold that eats a hole through the middle of who you are, and leaves something dark and awful behind.

I looked at him, and wondered how to answer his question. How to answer without making the pain in his body worse. I sighed, and finally realized that the only thing I could give him was the truth. Whatever we were to each other, whatever else we might someday be to each other, truth, at least truth, was between us.

“I asked you a question,” he said, and his power warmed the room like opening an oven to peek inside. The heat dissipated almost as soon as I’d felt it. He was trying to control himself.

“Why do I love Nathaniel?” I asked.

“That’s what I asked,” he said, in that angry voice.

“Because he never makes me feel like a freak.”

“Because he is a freak,” Richard snarled. “Anyone looks sane beside him.”

I felt my face shutting down. Felt that flatness that I used when I was really pissed and trying to control it.

“Perhaps this is not the time for this conversation,” Jean-Claude said in a careful voice.

We both ignored him.

“First,” I said in a very tight, careful voice, “Nathaniel is not a freak. Second, he’s willing to disrupt his entire life if he got me pregnant, and you’re not. So I’d be careful before you throw stones at his character.”

“If you’re pregnant, I’ll marry you.”

The room was suddenly full of one of those silences so thick you should have been able to walk across it. I stared at him for a second, or two, then said, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Richard, is that all you think it takes to fix this? Marry me so the baby won’t be a bastard, and it’s all better?”

“I don’t see anyone else offering marriage,” he said.

“It’s because they know I’ll say no. Every other man in my life understands that this isn’t about marriage. It’s about the fact that we may have created a little person. And we need to do whatever is best for that person. How will marrying anyone make this work better?”

He looked at me, and there was such pain in his face, such struggle, as if I’d said something incomprehensible. “If you get a woman pregnant, you marry her, Anita. It’s called taking responsibility for your actions.”

“And if it’s not your baby? Could you really raise someone else’s baby? Could you really stay married to me, and play Daddy, as you watched the baby grow to look like someone else?”

He covered his face with his hands, and he screamed, “No!” He showed me a face ravaged by rage. The room was suddenly hot again, as if his power were raising the actual temperature. “No, I’d go crazy. Is that what you wanted to hear? Is it?”

“No,” I said, “but you needed to hear it.”

He frowned at me. “What?”

“I appreciate the offer, Richard. Really, I do, but if I was going to marry anyone, it would have to be someone who would be okay no matter who turned out to be the father.”

“So, you’ll marry Nathaniel, or Micah?” The heat bit along my skin.

“I am not going to marry anyone, don’t you get that?”

“You just said—”

I cut him off. “No, that isn’t what I said, or what I meant. It’s what you heard.”

“You’re pregnant, Anita.”

“Maybe I’m pregnant,” I said.

“Don’t you want a father for your baby?”

I stared at him, wondering what could I say that he’d actually hear and understand.

Jean-Claude stepped close to us, not between us, but as if the three of us were a shallow triangle. “I believe what ma petite is saying, Richard, is that marriage is not part of her plans, and that having a baby will not change that.” His voice was his pleasantly neutral one, the one that he used when he was trying to persuade, or calm, and not make things worse.

“And if it’s my baby, then I’m just supposed to be okay with Nathaniel and Micah raising it?”

I hung my head. What could I say to that?

“Ulfric,” Claudia said, yelling that one word, the way a drill sergeant yells at a bad recruit.

He looked at her. “What?” His power bit along my skin again.

“First, control your power, it’s biting along everyone’s skin. You’re the wolf king, you need to set a better example.”

“What I set for my people is my business, rat.”

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Second, you’re making Anita feel worse than she already does.”

He made a wordless sound, almost a yell. His power went back to just being heat, but not painful. His voice came careful, each word thick with suppressed rage. He was swallowing it, but it was still there. “I don’t want to make Anita feel worse, but if she’s pregnant then she has to know that she can’t keep living the life she’s living.”

“You still want to trap her,” Claudia said, “trap her and put her in some kind of 1950s cage.”

“Marriage is not a trap,” he said. “You make it sound like I want her barefoot and pregnant.”

“Don’t you?” she asked, and her anger was softer now, as if she finally understood he wasn’t being a jerk, he just didn’t understand himself.

“No,” he said, and he meant it. He turned back to me. “You said it yourself, Anita, whatever’s best for this little person. Do you really think being a federal marshal, and dealing with all kinds of violent crime and monsters, is the kind of life that a baby needs?”

“Jesus, Richard,” I said, “you’re still trying to take away my life. To take away what makes me who I am. You love me, but not who I am. You love who you want me to be.”

“Isn’t that what you want from me?” he said. “Don’t you want me to change who I am, too?”

I started to say no, then stopped myself. I thought about it. Was I asking him to change as much as he was asking me? “I want you to embrace the life you already have, and be happy in it, Richard. You want me to totally change my life, and try to fit in some white-picket-fence picture that doesn’t match your life, or mine.”

“I am so sick of you accusing me of wanting to put you behind a white picket fence.”

“I may be pregnant, and suddenly you want me to marry you, and give up being a federal agent. We aren’t even sure there is a baby, and you’re already trying to impose your idea of what our life should be on me.”

“Could you really keep working on serial killer cases, and killing monsters, after you have a baby?”

I stared at him. “What do you think having a baby will do to me, Richard? Do you think just because I have a baby I’ll become this other person? This softer, gentler person? Is that what you think?”

“May I add something to this discussion?” Samuel asked.

Richard and I said no; Jean-Claude said yes. Samuel ignored us and did what Jean-Claude said.

“If my wife is any example of having children in these rather extraordinary circumstances, then softer is not what will happen. Thea was gentle with the children. There was indeed a new softness that I had never seen, but with everyone else…” He shook his head. “I had never seen her so ruthless as after Sampson was born. She was more determined than ever to make our base of power strong and secure. Any threat to us was destroyed immediately. Even with the help of servants she insisted on caring for him herself, and with the feedings, well”—he shrugged with hands up—“having to wake every two hours to breast-feed meant very little sleep. Lack of sleep makes anyone’s temper worse, and makes the most expedient solution look good.”

I was thinking, Breast-feeding? Oh, no, so not my gig.

Richard said, “You’re saying that to make me feel what—worse, better?”

“Ask someone you trust then,” Samuel said. “Ask a woman how exhausting and overwhelming a new baby can be. I have three children, two of them twins. I did what many fathers do when they have children later in life; I did more of the baby care with the twins than I did with Sampson. My power base was more secure, and there was less…business to occupy me. I think I had been too exposed to modern America. I had this odd idea that I should be very involved with the twins. It gave me a new respect for what Thea went through with Sampson, when I was more occupied with business. A child is a great blessing”—he patted his son’s leg when he said it—“but like other great blessings, they require a great deal of time, attention, and energy.”

I shook my head, waving my hands in the air as if to erase all of this. “I can’t deal with this now. We’ve got to change topic, at least until I take the test and find out for sure. If the test’s positive then we can talk, but until we know for sure, this topic is closed.”

“You can’t just change the topic,” Richard said.

“Yes,” Jean-Claude said, “she can.”

“What if I don’t want to change the topic?” Again I got the impression that Richard was spoiling for a fight.

Micah finally said something. “Anita is only asking to change the topic until we know for sure, Richard. That makes sense.”

“You stay out of this!” Richard yelled it at him.

“Don’t yell at Micah!” I yelled at him.

“I’ll yell at whoever I want to yell at,” he yelled.

Claudia yelled us both to silence. A huge, deep sound that made us all look at her. “Are your hurt feelings the only thing that matters here, Ulfric?” She shook her head. “Nathaniel’s right, you’d piss on her if you could, if that would make her yours and yours alone.”

He growled and took a step toward her.

“No,” Jean-Claude said, “no, Richard.”

“Are you picking a fight with him?” Micah asked. He sounded puzzled. He was right, it wasn’t like Claudia to start the fight. She’d finish the fight, but not start it.

She actually looked at the floor. I think she was counting to ten. “I don’t want to start a fight with anyone, but I’m tired of the attitude.”

“What attitude?” I asked.

She pointed at Richard. “His attitude.”

She wasn’t the only one, but out loud, I said, “I don’t think your starting a fight with Richard will make me feel better.”

“I’m sorry for that.” Then she gave Richard a completely hostile look. “But he’s like so many men. He thinks that if he could just get you pregnant, just get you married, you’d be the perfect little woman.”

“I do not think that,” Richard said.

“You don’t?” she said.

“No,” he said.

“Then what’s with the proposal?”

“You’re supposed to propose if you’ve got someone pregnant.”

She gave a nod. “And what’s with Anita not being a federal marshal, or a vampire executioner?”

“The life she’s living right now just doesn’t seem like the kind of life that would be good for a baby.”

“No,” I said, “it doesn’t.”

He turned and looked at me. “You agree with me.”

“Yes, of course, I agree that my life won’t work with a baby. But this is the only life I have, Richard. This is who I am. I can’t remake myself just because there may be a baby.”

“Yes,” he said, “you can. If you want to badly enough, you can change.”

“Are you going to give up being a teacher?”

He looked away, and shook his head. “I love being a teacher.”

“And I love being a federal marshal.”

“You hate it, too.”

“Yeah, sometimes I hate it, and maybe I’ll burn out on all the violent cases. Maybe I’ll reach a point where I can’t do it anymore. But I do enjoy the police work, and I’m good at it.”

“You enjoy seeing mutilated corpses?”

I shook my head. “Get out.”

“What?”

“Ma petite, please,” Jean-Claude said, and came to hold me. I didn’t pull away, but I stayed stiff and unyielding in his arms. I was so angry I couldn’t even think. All I knew for certain was that I needed Richard to be somewhere else, because if he stayed here saying stupid shit, I was going to say something unforgivable, or he was. We were close to the kind of fight that there is no fix for.

Samuel’s pleasant and oh-so-reasonable voice came. “Perhaps we should discuss the topics that will allow all of you to survive this weekend, and keep sovereignty of your own territory in your own hands.”

That got everyone’s attention, even Richard’s. “What are you talking about?” he said.

“If Anita’s powers are as disruptive to other Masters of the City as they have been to Augustine, then what will you do? What will the other masters do when they see Augustine follow her and Jean-Claude around like a lovesick dog? She ordered Augustine around, she exhibited necromancy that controlled a Master of the City. That is legend among us, Ulfric, but not present reality. I saw Augustine strain against her compulsion. I do not know, even now, whether he used his full powers on Anita because he wished for sex with a woman of the ardeur once more, or to keep her from bespelling him completely. Better to be tied to her by love and lust than by blind obedience. In truth, I am not certain that Augustine himself knows why he did it, or what might have happened if he had chosen another defense.” Samuel sighed. “You cannot take her to the ballet tomorrow without knowing if her attraction is universal, or whether it is mainly Belle’s line that is susceptible to it.”

“Were you drawn to her?” Jean-Claude asked.

“I feel some attraction, yes, but not to the degree that Augustine did. I am not fighting to keep from touching her, or doing what she says. I sense her power, and when she was using her necromancy, it was most impressive, but no, I did not feel compelled.”

“Then is it just Belle’s line?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Or perhaps only vampires that have experienced Belle’s ardeur are strongly drawn.”

I was finally relaxing into Jean-Claude’s arms. “That would explain it.” He didn’t sound like he believed it was that simple.

“But, Jean-Claude, you must understand that I feel her power. I am over a thousand years old, and a Master of the City. I have as my animal to call a siren. I am not a small power, yet she does have a certain”—he seemed to search for a word—“attraction even to me. I am not burdened by it, but it is there. You said you wished my advice.”

“I do.”

“I advise that you find a way to test her powers before she meets the larger party.”

“How?”

“I know that Maximillian of Vegas has one of Belle’s line as his pomme de sang candidate. He would be thrilled if you asked to see one of his candidates early. He will see it as a point of favor.”

“We would have to see at least one candidate from each of the masters, then, in private.”

“But if it goes wrong?” I said. “Aren’t we running the risk that whoever we ‘experiment’ on may be metaphysically bound to me forever?”

Samuel nodded. “Yes.” He looked at me like What’s wrong with that?

“It wouldn’t be fair. I can’t experiment on them, run the risk of binding them to me, if they don’t know what the risks are.”

“But they have come hoping to be your new pomme de sang,” Samuel said. “They have come hoping to bind themselves to you.”

“Jason has been Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang for years, but if he decided to go back to college, or change jobs, or fell in love, and didn’t want to keep being a pomme de sang, he could do that. We’d miss him, and I think he’d miss Jean-Claude, but he has choices. He isn’t trapped into being Jean-Claude’s pomme forever.” I moved away from Jean-Claude and faced Samuel. “What you’re suggesting takes away their options. It’s like making them a slave without asking first if that’s what they want.”

Samuel smiled at me. “Freedom and fairness are very important to you, aren’t they?”

I nodded, and frowned. “They’re important to everybody.”

He laughed. “Oh, no, Anita, you would be amazed at the number of people who try to give away their freedom at every opportunity. They much prefer that someone else make their decisions. As for fairness, you said it earlier, life isn’t fair.”

“No, life isn’t fair, but I try to be.”

He nodded, and stood, clapping his hands together. “She is a rare find, Jean-Claude.”

“Thank you,” he said, as if the compliment were all for him, and none for me.

“To make these experiments with their knowledge, Anita,” Samuel said, “needs Jean-Claude to admit to the other masters that you, all of you, have no idea what the extent of your powers are. You would have to admit weakness, and confusion, when what you must have this weekend is strength, surety, and unassailable power.”

“No one’s power is unassailable,” I said.

He gave a small bow. “Touché, but my point is still valid. To expose that much of your uncertainty to some of the masters would be nearly suicidal.” He came to stand in front of me. “Think upon this, Anita: if you are with child, then it is no longer just your life you risk. Is your sense of fair play worth the risk of letting the other Masters of the City see your weaknesses? For what will they think, if you admit to this being a new power? Might they think that they should destroy you before you enslave us all?”

Jean-Claude moved to my side. Micah came to my other side. I just stared at Samuel.

“I mean you no harm, Anita, but I am not as insecure as some. The insecure ones will be your danger.”

“If we can’t tell the truth, what do you propose?” I asked.

“You couldn’t simply lie?” he asked.

“I’m not very good at it,” I said.

He smiled and looked at Jean-Claude. “How have you managed with her and the Ulfric? They are both most unwieldy.”

“You have no idea,” Jean-Claude said.

Samuel laughed again, then his face stilled, as if the laughter had been a trick of the eye. “Tell the masters that you wish to see how powerful their candidates are, and whether they can withstand your full powers. Tell them that if their candidates are too weak, they may be enslaved as any servant, for Jean-Claude is so powerful that that has happened with some lesser vampires of the Church of Eternal Life.”

“That actually did happen with some of the church members,” I said.

He smiled again, but it never reached his eyes. “So I had heard.”

I glanced at Jean-Claude. “Did you tell him?”

“No.”

“You have spies in your lands, Anita. You are too great a power not to have spies from all the masters that agreed to come here. None of us would have come to your lands without some intelligence of our own finding. None of us trust any of us that much.”

“Great,” I said.

“But it sets up the situation perfectly, Anita. You can tell the truth, that you wish to see if the candidates are strong enough to withstand your powers, for a true pomme de sang, as you so accurately stated, is not so closely bound to you metaphysically. To eat only from those who are already bound to you is like eating your own arm. It may fill your stomach, but it takes more energy from you then it gives to you.”

“It took us a little while to figure that out,” I said.

He gave another small bow. “Your new pomme de sang must be independent, and strong enough to play his part. It is a reasonable request.”

“It is a good plan,” Jean-Claude said.

“And what if they all fall under my, whatever, spell? What if I’m too much necromancer for any of them?”

“Then the ball is canceled,” Samuel said. “You cannot play Cinderella if all the princes will want you.”

“I’m not Cinderella,” I said, “I’m the prince.”

He smiled, but again it didn’t reach his eyes. “Very well, Prince Charming, but the point remains the same. You cannot play Prince Charming if all the princesses want you, because as good as you may be, no one is that good.” He looked at Jean-Claude then. “Not even Jean-Claude.”

That look, and that comment, made me wonder if they really were “friends” the way that Jean-Claude and Augustine had been. They said that they weren’t, but the look meant something.

“We will do as you suggest, Samuel. I know that I can rely on your discretion not to share any of this.”

“You have my word,” he said, then he looked back at me. “I would never endanger you. I want you to try to bring Sampson into his power, Anita. I would not insist it be done first, but I would prefer sooner to later.”

“I know it won’t be tonight,” I said.

He smiled and this time it filled his eyes with soft humor. “No, not tonight. I think your plate is quite full enough without adding Sampson to it.”

He bowed to Jean-Claude. Sampson followed suit. They turned on their heels and left.

Claudia’s voice broke the silence. “Do you want me to go out and get a pregnancy test?”

“We have two of them in the overnight case,” Micah said.

My throat was suddenly so tight I couldn’t breathe.

Nathaniel and Lisandro came through the far hallway. “What did I miss?”

I looked at him, and the look on my face must have been a bad one, because he came to me, and wrapped his arms around me, and I let him.

“She’s missed a month; you don’t have to wait until morning to take the test,” Claudia said.

I wanted to tell her to stop. Stop talking, stop helping, but she was right. I wasn’t just two weeks late like I’d told Ronnie. My period could move around by up to two weeks, later or earlier, depending on my hormone cycle, I guess. If I used the count that most women did, I was nearly four weeks late, not two. Two weeks into the month of November, but four weeks past when I should have bled. Four weeks, yeah, the test should work.

18

A PREGNANCY TEST is just this flat piece of plastic with little windows in it. So small, it fit in my hand with room left over, and my hands aren’t that big. Such a small thing to have so many people so upset. But then, if I was pregnant, the baby would be smaller than the pregnancy test. Tiny bits of plastic, and even tinier bits of cells, and my whole life rested on them. Okay, I wouldn’t die if it was a yes, but it sort of felt like I would.

First, there’s no dignity to it. You have to pee on the little stick. Or pee in a cup, then put the stick in it. Then you put the cap on, and wait for lines to appear. One line: not pregnant. Two lines: pregnant. It seemed simple enough.

I prayed not to be pregnant. I prayed, and I bargained. I’d be more careful. I’d use condoms and not trust just to the pill. I’d, well, you get the idea. I’m sure I wasn’t the first single woman to sit in a bathroom wishing, hoping, praying, bargaining with God, that if this mess passes me by, I’ll be better. Shit.

I didn’t want to sit in the bathroom for the entire three minutes. But I didn’t want to go outside and face the men either. I compromised; I paced inside the bathroom. It was ten steps from the door to the edge of the tub’s raised marble. Ten steps, back and forth. Marble is cold on bare feet, but I usually didn’t spend this much time walking on it. I was either coming in and out, or sitting in hot water in the tub. I concentrated on anything, everything, but that little piece of plastic where it sat on the side of the sink. I tried not to look at it. If you peek early, it may not be conclusive. I was carrying a man’s watch in my hands. Micah’s watch. He’d taken it off his wrist and handed it to me, because mine was still sitting on the nightstand beside our bed.

I tried putting the watch in the pocket of the robe, but that made me nervous, as though if I couldn’t see the watch I’d screw the time up. I tried sitting on the edge of the tub staring at the second hand, but that made the time go even slower. Now that I was only minutes away from knowing, I wanted to know. No more guesswork. I needed to know, one way or the other. I needed to know.

What I didn’t know was that Micah had set an alarm on the watch. It beeped at me, and scared me. I gave that little eep scream that only girls seem to do.

Claudia knocked on the door. “Anita, you all right?”

“Sorry, alarm startled me. Sorry.” I was already in the middle of the room, opposite the sink. All I had to do was turn around. I had a death grip on the watch. My heart was beating so hard I was sure that everyone outside the door could hear it. I didn’t want to look. I wanted to know, and I didn’t want to know. I wanted to have someone else look. Micah would do it, or Nathaniel. God, I was being so cowardly, and stupid, as if simply not looking would make it not true. But I had to look, I had to.

I took those last few steps to the sink, and looked down. Two lines, two fucking lines. The world swam, and I had to grab on to the sink edge to keep from sliding to one side. All I could hear was my own blood roaring in my ears. I was not going to faint, damn it. I was not going to faint.

I lowered myself to my knees, still clinging to the cabinet edges. I put my face against my arm, and waited for the dizziness to pass. Fuck.

When I thought I could do it without feeling worse, I raised my head up. The room didn’t swim. Good. But I wasn’t at all sure I trusted myself to walk to the door. I hated it, but apparently my body had decided that it just wasn’t working yet. I could either sit on the floor until I felt less weak-legged, or I could yell for help.

I knew the men were almost as tense about it as I was, so waiting seemed cruel, or maybe it wasn’t cruel. They had a few minutes more of believing the worst hadn’t happened. I hated to treat the miracle of life like a disaster but that’s how it felt.

I finally called, in a voice that almost sounded like mine, “Claudia.”

She tapped the door, and said, “Do you want me in there?”

“Yes,” I said.

She came through, and one look at me on the floor made her close the door behind her. She walked to me, looked down at the test, and said with real feeling, “Well, shit.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Who do you want to tell first?”

I shook my head and leaned back against the cabinets. “No one.”

She gave me a look.

“I can’t call them in one at a time; Richard will get pissed, or someone else will. I have to go out to them.”

She gazed around the room. “They’d all fit in here, barely.”

I tucked my knees up tight and held on. “Jesus, Claudia. Jesus.”

She knelt beside me. Her face was so sympathetic that I had to look away. My eyes were starting to burn, my throat to tighten. “Help me do this before I start to cry.”

“What can I do to help?” she asked.

“Help me stand.”

She took my offered hand and raised me effortlessly to my feet. She kept a hand on my elbow to steady me, as if she knew I needed it. I didn’t argue. We made it to the door that way, then I took my arm back, and opened the door.

I thought I had my face under control, but I must have been wrong, because they all reacted to it. Only Jean-Claude and Asher showed nothing, but their lack of reaction was reaction enough.

Micah and Richard reached me first, at almost the same time. They looked at each other, and Micah bowed out, let the other man touch me first. It was good of him, but I’d have preferred to hug him, since I was almost certain Richard would say something to make me feel worse.

He half-hugged me, so he could hold me, and still see my face. “It’s a yes?”

I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. My throat was so tight it hurt, as if I were choking.

He hugged me, and picked me up, and spun me around. When I could move my face back enough to see his, he was beaming at me. Beaming at me. He was happy! Happy about it!

“Don’t you dare be happy about this,” I said.

His smile began to fade around the edges.

Jean-Claude said, “Would you prefer he was unhappy about it?”

Richard put me down, while I looked at the other man. I glanced back up at Richard, who didn’t look happy now at all. What would I have done if he had been angry, or sad, about me being pregnant?

I hung my head, resting the top of my head against Richard’s chest. “I’m sorry, Richard, I’m sorry. I’m glad someone is happy about it.”

He touched my face, raised it so I had to look at him. “I can’t be unhappy about this, Anita. I can’t. If we made a baby…” He shrugged, and his eyes were full of happiness, worry, so many emotions.

“What do you want us to say, ma petite? If we are not to be happy, then what do you wish?”

I pulled away from Richard. I just couldn’t be happy and his being happy bugged me. “I don’t know, just be what you feel, I guess.”

Micah touched my arm. “I’m sorry you’re unhappy about it.”

I smiled at him, and the fact that I could smile at anything was probably a good sign. “How do you feel about it?”

He smiled. “I love you. How could I not love a little piece of you running around?”

I shook my head. “Don’t you feel cheated? I mean, it can’t be yours.”

He shrugged. “I knew I gave up children of my own when I had the vasectomy.”

“Why did you have yourself fixed?” Richard asked. “You’re not thirty yet, why would you do that to yourself?”

Micah wrapped his arms around me, held me close. “My old alpha, Chimera, liked pregnant shapeshifters. If one of the women came up pregnant by someone else, someone she cared for, Chimera would take her until she lost the baby. He got off on taking her from her lover, from fucking her while she was pregnant with someone else’s child, and from her losing it.”

I held him tight, held him and listened to his heartbeat speed. His voice never showed how awful it had been, but his pulse did. I had heard the story before, but Richard had not; his face showed revulsion, and something else, anger, I think.

I’d never heard a story about Chimera that made me unhappy that I’d killed him. No, that was one death I had absolutely no regrets about.

Nathaniel came up behind me, and wrapped himself against my back, holding me between the two of them. It felt so safe. Even now, even with Micah’s story still horrible and fresh, even with the news about the baby, I still felt safe. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it?

Jean-Claude came to our side. We all raised our heads from the various shoulders we were on, and looked at him.

He touched my face, ever so gently, and smiled. “Whatever happens, ma petite, we will not desert you.”

Asher walked around to the other side so I stood in a box of the four of them.

“I’m not really included, am I?” Richard said, and his voice held more sadness than anger.

Micah said, “You could be if you wanted to be, Richard. No one excludes you, but you.” He held his hand out toward Richard.

Richard stared at that hand, then looked at all the men. “I can’t, Anita. I can’t be part of this.”

“A part of what, mon ami?” Jean-Claude asked.

“All of you together,” Richard said.

Micah let his hand fall. “We’re not asking you to have sex with everyone, Richard. We’re just comforting Anita, and ourselves. You’re a shapeshifter; you understand the need for touch when you’re worried or scared.”

Richard shook his head. “It’s always about sex with him.” He pointed at Jean-Claude. “Don’t let him fool you, Micah. He’s enjoying touching you.” It seemed he’d decided that of the other men, Micah was the one most likely to understand his unease.

Micah slid his arm around Jean-Claude’s waist, pulled him in a little tighter against him and me. It forced Jean-Claude to put more of his arm across Micah’s shoulders, put the line of their bodies against each other from hip to chest. Micah kept his gaze on Richard while he got cozy.

“If he were another shapeshifter, they’d enjoy the touch, too. We’ve all had a shock. We’re all feeling insecure, Richard. We’re all wondering how much our lives must change to accommodate a baby. We’re scared, aren’t you?”

“You’re Nimir-Raj, are you saying you can’t smell when someone’s afraid?” There was derision in his voice.

“I thought you’d get angry if I told you that you smelled of fear.”

Richard’s hands made fists. His face darkening with anger, he fought for control of himself, visibly. It was almost painful to watch him fight his anger, and since his power never once warmed the room, he was controlling so much more than just his anger.

He started walking toward us, jerkily, as if his feet didn’t want to move. He moved like some reluctant robot, until he came to the edge of the knot of men. Then he stopped. He just stood there beside us, as if he didn’t know what to do next.

Jean-Claude moved, making a hole between himself and Nathaniel. It was an invitation to join the circle. Richard just stood there, eyes on the ground, hands limp at his sides. It was Nathaniel who moved even farther out, letting go of me, and only keeping Asher’s hand. Nathaniel moved so that the circle became almost half a circle. Jean-Claude took his cue from Nathaniel, and moved farther away from me, his arm still around Micah. I stood alone with the men like a backdrop.

Richard stood there, unmoved, as if he hadn’t noticed. I took a step forward, and touched fingertips to the fringe of his hair where it hid the edge of his face. He flinched, and raised his eyes to me. The pain in those brown eyes made my throat tight. Maybe I was just having an emotional night. Or maybe, if you love someone, you can never see that much pain in his eyes without wanting to fix it.

I had to go up on tiptoe to touch his face, one hand resting against his arm to steady myself. I rested my hand against the side of his face, just at the swell of his cheekbone, feeling the strength of that curve under my hand. His face was like him, strong, and outwardly perfect. Inside that nearly perfect male package there was a storm raging. It showed in his eyes, all that pain, that anger. His arm flexed under my hand. The smooth swell of muscle molding itself against the curve of my hand. I wasn’t sure if he’d done it to remind me how strong he was, or if it was the only sign that he was still flinching. From the look in his eyes, I was betting on flinching.

He began to lean in toward me, as I stretched upward to meet him. Our lips met, but it was more a touch than a kiss. His lips moved against mine, the gentlest of kisses. I kissed him back, a soft caress of lips. Then his mouth pressed against mine, and there was nothing gentle about it. He broke from the kiss with a sound that was half sob and half sigh. He fell to his knees, dragging me with him, clinging to me as if I were the last solid thing in the universe.

I held him, stroked his hair, murmured his name, “Richard, Richard,” over and over. He cried like his heart was breaking.

Jean-Claude knelt beside us. He put his hand on the back of Richard’s head. When he didn’t react to the touch, Jean-Claude put his arms around both of us. He laid his face against the side of Richard’s head, and said something in French that I didn’t catch. Whatever he said, it was low and comforting.

Nathaniel knelt on the other side opposite Jean-Claude. He touched my shoulder, but hesitated about touching Richard.

It was Clay who came and knelt at Richard’s back. He gave me worried eyes, and pressed himself along Richard’s back, his arms holding him tight. He said, “Smell the pack, and know that you are safe.” It sounded like an old saying.

With Clay’s body to protect Richard, Nathaniel hugged me and Clay, but we all hugged Richard. Clay had understood how much Richard needed the touch, but he’d also understood that he might not let leopards and vampires get that close. But another wolf of his own pack, that was safe. That one moment of understanding pushed Clay from bodyguard to friend in my book.

Micah came in at my back, hugging us close. Asher finally knelt, more by Nathaniel and me than Richard, but his hand touched Richard’s hair. We all gave what we could.

The crying began to ease, then stop. I felt the tension in his arms, his body, ease. His breath went out in a long, heavy sigh. I felt him settle into the warmth and the touch. I felt all that care and worry drift away in the press of bodies, and caring.

Then he drew in a deep, full breath, and rose up higher on his knees. It was like a man rising from deep water, except that this water was hands and bodies. He rose to his knees, then started struggling to his feet. We all moved back to let him stand.

He smiled down at me, at all of us. “Thank you, all of you. I needed it. I didn’t know how much…” He started to move out of the kneeling circle of us. Jean-Claude and Clay moved back so he could walk out.

He stopped at the foot of the bed, and took a breath so deep his body shuddered with it.

Jean-Claude stood, and helped me to my feet. I didn’t protest the help; I felt shaky. Richard wasn’t the only one who needed to be held tonight.

Everyone got to their feet, in ones and twos. We waited for Richard to say something, or for one of us to think of something worth saying.

He turned back and gave us a smile. It was his old smile, his Boy Scout smile, I used to call it. He looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in a while.

“I’ll bunk in Jason’s room tonight.”

“You don’t have to leave,” I said.

The smile slipped a little, letting some sadness through. “I can’t sleep here, Anita, not with all of them.”

“I don’t think everyone is staying,” I said.

He shrugged. “I don’t want to share you, Anita. Especially tonight. But I saw your face when Nathaniel and Micah held you. You never look that peaceful with me anymore.”

I opened my mouth, to say something comforting, but he held up a hand and stopped me. “Don’t deny it, Anita. I’m not angry, just…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do, but I know I can’t share you tonight. It will be dawn soon, and you won’t want Jean-Claude with us. He’s the only one I could stand to share you with tonight.” He shrugged again. “But you’ll want something warmer.” His face struggled to look cheerful, and almost succeeded. “It’s better if I just go. I’ll say, or do, something to upset Anita tonight. I know I will.” His frown turned into something bitter for a second. “I appreciate the comfort, I needed it, but part of me still wishes you were all gone.” With that, he turned on his heel and went for the door.

“Clay,” I said, “go with him.”

Clay didn’t argue, and when he followed him out, Richard didn’t protest. I took it as a good sign. I hoped so, anyway.

19

JEAN-CLAUDE HUGGED ME in against his body. “I am sorry, ma petite.”

Asher came and kissed me on the cheek. “I am not sorry he is gone.”

“Be nice,” I said.

He cuddled in against me, his arm going around Jean-Claude’s shoulders. “We all behaved ourselves admirably and your Ulfric still leaves in a huff.”

Nathaniel came to stand in front of me. He pushed a lock of my hair back from my face. “Honestly, Anita, I’m not sorry he’s staying somewhere else for the night. I want to hold you tonight, and Richard wouldn’t let me in the bed.”

They were both right, so why did I feel like I should defend Richard’s honor?

“Enough of this,” Jean-Claude said, “Ma petite is tired. We will leave her with Micah and Nathaniel.” He kissed my upturned face, gently, his face showing nothing. There were nights when he asked not to be sent away, but tonight he didn’t even try for it.

He let me go, and started for the door, Asher at his side.

“It seems wrong to keep kicking you out of your own bed,” Micah said.

Jean-Claude turned back, and said, “Ma petite is not comfortable when I die at dawn. We will respect her sensibilities in this tonight. She has had enough shocks for one night.”

Asher slipped his arm through Jean-Claude’s. “We’ll be in my room.” I’d seen them arm in arm a hundred times. I’d sent them off to bunk in Asher’s room dozens of times. But for the first time, I wondered what they would do once they got there. Would they have sex? Would they do with each other what Jean-Claude and I did with Auggie? Did the thought bother me? I wasn’t sure.

Micah looked at me. “Damian doesn’t die at dawn if he’s with you. Shouldn’t we find out if the same applies to Jean-Claude?”

“Don’t push me, Micah.” I felt almost frantic with the need for some kind of normality tonight. My voice didn’t sound frantic, it sounded angry.

“He can sleep on the other side of me, so if he dies at dawn, you won’t be touching him.”

I shook my head. “Why is this so important to you? Why tonight?”

“I do think we need to find out if Jean-Claude has gained some of the same powers Damian has, but truthfully, Belle Morte had a harder time controlling you once he touched you. I’d like to keep him close to you tonight, just in case.”

I blinked at him, then sighed. “Practical as always,” I said.

“Eminently practical,” Asher said. He let go of Jean-Claude’s arm. “I will go to my lonely bed.”

“Asher,” I said, “please, I can’t deal with any more hurt feelings tonight.”

He smiled at me, and came back to me. He hugged me, gently, and gave me an almost brotherly kiss on the forehead. “I will not cause either of you more distress tonight. But I would like a chance to test this theory of vampires in the day. If it works for our Jean-Claude, then perhaps it might work for me.”

“It only works for Damian if Nathaniel is in the room. I think without Richard it won’t work for Jean-Claude either.”

Asher stepped back, gave that Gallic shrug, and went for the door. He waved at us lightly, but I had too many centuries’ worth of memories of his body language, thanks to Jean-Claude’s memories. Asher was bothered. I guess I couldn’t blame him. He was the only one kicked out of the room. But I didn’t call him back. I didn’t really want to have one corpse in the bed, let alone two.

I turned back to the corpse in question. He stood there in his elegant robe. A triangle of his chest showed, so pale, surrounded by the black of the fur lapel. His hair was a foam of curls, softer than mine.

Tiredness came over me in a wave. No, it wasn’t being pregnant, it was just everything. I had had all I could handle for one night.

Micah hugged me from behind. Nathaniel came to stare down at me. He lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. He gave me the gentlest of smiles, then said, “You’re beat.”

I nodded, his fingers still under my chin.

He kissed me on the mouth, still gentle, no demand to it. He took my hand and started leading me toward the bed. Micah let his arm fall away but kept my other hand, so that Nathaniel led us both to the bed.

The bed was draped in red tonight. Crimson, from the curtains that graced the four posts to the mounds of pillows. The sheets underneath the bedspread either would match the rest perfectly, or would be some high-contrast color. Once upon a time Jean-Claude’s decoration had been exclusively black and white. I’d complained. I still remembered the first night I’d seen the bed draped in red. I’d stopped complaining about the monochrome color scheme after that, afraid of what he might do next.

Nathaniel had to let go of my hand to wiggle the coverlet out from under the mound of pillows. The sheets were black, like a splash of darkness in all that red. Some of the smaller pillows would get piled in the room’s two chairs, beside the false fireplace. Thanks to modern technology it could actually make flames, but in all the time I’d been with Jean-Claude I’d never seen anything in the fireplace but an antique fan framed behind glass.

Nathaniel and Micah went back and forth like busy ants until the seats were piled high with pillows, and there were still plenty left on the bed.

Jean-Claude had come to stand on the other side of the bed from me. We stood there staring across the expanse of red and black silk. When I say expanse, I mean it. The bed was larger than a king-size. Orgy-size is what I’d started calling it, but I hadn’t actually shared that with Jean-Claude. I didn’t mean to imply anything about what he was doing when I wasn’t here. The bed was just the biggest one I’d ever seen. Then I realized, that wasn’t entirely true. Belle’s bed was this size. I really wished I hadn’t thought of that. Suddenly I was cold.

“What is wrong, ma petite?” he asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t want to share the observation, as if talking about it would make it more true.

Micah and Nathaniel came back to the bed. Micah stopped and looked from one to the other of us. Nathaniel started unbuttoning his shirt.

“I think you might want to wait on that,” Micah said, still looking from one to the other of us.

Nathaniel kept unbuttoning. “They’ll work it out.” He slipped the shirt off, and went for the large armoire. It was dark rich wood that matched the bed. Nathaniel opened it, and started hanging up his shirt. The armoire was empty except for our extra clothes. Nathaniel’s, Micah’s, mine. Jean-Claude had a room the size of a small warehouse that was full of clothes. He’d started hanging an outfit at a time in the armoire, but he still kept his room as clean and empty as he could. He’d gotten in the habit when he used to entertain strangers on a regular basis. You don’t keep things you value in a room where you’re going to have one-night stands. Jean-Claude didn’t do one-night feedings and fucks now, but old habits die hard. Vampires, I’d found, once they have a habit, really don’t like giving it up. Old dogs, new tricks, that sort of thing.

Nathaniel came back to the bed wearing absolutely nothing. I had one of those moments of discomfort. I’d seen him nude more times than I could count. I’d seen him nude in front of Micah and Jean-Claude more times than I could count. So why was I blushing?

Nathaniel climbed into the bed, pulling the sheet up just enough to keep me from yelling at him. Left to his own devices I think Nathaniel would have been nude all the time. He lay back against the red and black pillows. His hair was still in its braid so that his face was framed by all that black and red silk. His face had started to fill out; bone structure that had only been a promise six months ago was somehow more real, more masculine. He was moving from the pretty handsomeness that some young men get, to the more handsome handsomeness that most of them grow into. He’d also grown nearly an inch taller in the six months we’d been together. At twenty he was growing into what some people hit at seventeen, or earlier. Genetics is a wonderful and confusing thing.

He smiled at me, and the smile was all male. That pleased smile that said he knew I was looking at him, and how much he liked the effect he had on me. He’d been in my bed for half a year, naked in it for about a month, and I was still staring at him as if it were the first time.

It made me blush and look away.

“Come to bed, Anita,” he said, “you know you want to.”

The anger was instantaneous. I wasn’t blushing when I raised my eyes back to him. “I don’t like being taken for granted, Nathaniel.”

He sighed, and sat up, putting his muscular arms around his knees. “Don’t let the whole baby thing push you back. You’ve made a lot of progress in your comfort zones, don’t lose ground now.”

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” I asked, hands on hips, glad to be angry. Anger was so much better than sad, or scared, or embarrassed.

His lavender eyes went all serious, not scared, or worried, but grown-up serious. “Are you really going to make us do this?”

“Do what?” I demanded.

He sighed, and said, “Why is my being nude bothering you?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and finally said, quietly, “I don’t know.” That was the truth; stupid, but the truth.

Micah came to me, touched me tentatively. I went to him, wrapped my arms around him. He hugged me close, and I turned my face in against his neck, so I could smell the warmth of him. Just the smell of his skin made something hard and cold inside me loosen. I breathed in the scent of him, and underneath the smell of clean skin and aftershave, Micah had that nose-wrinkling smell, an almost sharp smell, of leopard. The smell of home.

He spoke against my skin, “Let’s go to bed, Anita.”

I nodded, still pressed against him.

I felt his mouth move in a smile against my skin. I knew exactly the feel of it, which meant I must make him smile with his mouth pressed to me a lot. I guess I did.

He drew away and started unfastening his collar. He had a tie bar to remove. I stood there and watched him begin to reveal his tanned upper body, but instead of enjoying the show, I felt the anxiety creep back.

I touched Micah’s arm, stopped him in the middle of undoing one of his cuff links. “Stop for a minute.” He turned puzzled eyes to me.

“You’re nervous again,” Nathaniel said. “Why?”

I shook my head, then looked across the bed. Jean-Claude was still across the bed, but he was leaning on one of the big wooden posts. His arms entwined around it as he watched us. His face was neutral, but I’d been further into his head tonight than ever, in one special area.

“Shit,” I said.

“What?” Micah and Nathaniel asked together.

“I know what’s wrong.”

They both looked at me, but it was Jean-Claude that I looked at. “It’s you,” I said.

“I have seen your men nude before,” he said in that pleasant neutral voice.

“We’ve been in bed all naked and sweaty, Anita,” Nathaniel said.

“Yes, but you’ve never had sex with him. I had sex with him.”

“Jean-Claude has fed off me, Anita,” Micah said, “has had more of my blood than yours.”

I looked at Micah. “Are you saying having him take blood is the same thing as having sex with him?”

He shrugged, and I watched his face shut down to the look he wore when he wasn’t certain what look I wanted. “I’ve had sex that didn’t feel as good as Jean-Claude’s feedings.”

“Then you were doing the sex wrong,” I said.

He smiled. “I was young; I got better.”

“Yes, you did,” I said, and smiled back.

He kissed me, then moved back and gave me a searching look. He moved past me to put the first cufflink on the bedside table. He started on the other sleeve, his back to me. I glanced up and found that I wasn’t the only one watching him.

Jean-Claude’s neutral, beautiful face watched us all. We had been naked and sweaty in a bed together. Hell, some nights the pile had included Asher and Jason. It just depended on who had fed whom last. So why was I suddenly bothered by Jean-Claude watching Micah take off his shirt?

I suddenly had a smart idea. I don’t have that many of them, not about my own emotional life anyway. “I know what’s wrong,” I said again.

They all looked at me. I touched Micah’s naked back, but looked at Jean-Claude. “It was what we did tonight with Augustine.”

Jean-Claude sat on the corner of the bed, one arm still wrapped around the bedpost. “What exactly are you referring to, ma petite? We did many things with Augustine tonight.”

“I know that everyone thinks we’re all snogging each other’s brains out, but tonight was the first time I’d ever seen two men kiss. I’ve never even seen someone do…” I faltered. God, was I still such a baby? No, damn it, I was a grown-up. “I’ve never seen anal sex before, let alone between two men. Let alone between my lover and a stranger.” I took in a big breath and let it out, and went to the edge of the bed, a little closer to Jean-Claude. “Am I making any sense?”

“You were disturbed by what you saw,” he said.

“Wait,” Nathaniel said. The wait turned me to him. He was propped up on the pillows, the sheet forgotten in his lap, so that he was barely covered at all, but his face showed he wasn’t even thinking about it. “How did you feel when Jean-Claude kissed Auggie?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it, because I wasn’t sure what the answer was. How had I felt? “I didn’t mind it. It was…interesting.” That wasn’t true. I looked down at the bedspread and said, “No, I…it was interesting.”

“Interesting bad, or interesting good?” Nathaniel said.

Without looking up, I answered, “Good.”

Someone sighed, and I wasn’t sure which of them had done it. I looked up, slowly, and no one was looking at me like I’d said something awful. I don’t know why I thought anyone in this room would think it was wrong that I liked seeing Jean-Claude kiss another man, but I did think it. I was waiting for someone to tell me to be ashamed of myself. I’d seen someone I loved kiss another man, and not only hadn’t I been horrified, but I’d liked it. Was that wrong? I had waited for it to feel wrong, but it hadn’t. It had felt strangely right, as if I’d been waiting my whole life to see it. It had felt right in that way that only the things that truly speak to your heart can feel. I hadn’t felt bad when it was happening. I was feeling bad now. Why? Was it guilt? No, I felt uncomfortable, and a little squeamish, but not guilty. So what was it?

Micah touched my arm. “So many thoughts flying over your face—what are you thinking?”

“That I don’t feel bad, and shouldn’t I feel bad about it.”

He looked puzzled, frowned. “Bad about what?”

“Shouldn’t it bother me that I saw Jean-Claude kiss another man, a stranger at that?”

“Did it bother you?”

I shook my head. “Not at the time, no.”

He smiled, eyes still a little uncertain. “But it’s bothering you now. Why?”

“Did it bother you to watch us like that?”

He gave me a look. “I’ve watched you have sex with other men before, Anita.”

I suddenly felt thirteen again, embarrassed and confused about the whole thing.

“I believe, ma petite, he is asking how you felt about watching me with Augustine.”

I looked at him, happy he’d helped me, but uncomfortable that he’d had to help me.

“Did it bother you?” Micah asked me.

I shook my head. “No, it was amazing. We did him. We owned him. It was…” My breath shivered out of me. “It was a rush, power and sex all mixed up together.”

“Then it’s okay,” Micah said. “Don’t feel bad because you don’t feel bad.”

Of course, that was exactly what I was doing. “It sounds stupid when you say it out loud.”

He hugged me, and I wrapped myself around the warmth of his skin. “It’s not stupid, Anita. It’s how you feel. Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes.”

I drew back enough to see his face. “You’re okay with everything we did tonight. You don’t think we’re evil or something.”

He chucked me under the chin. “That’s Richard’s voice in your head, not mine.”

I nodded. He was right, on part of it.

He went to hang up his shirt in the armoire. Nathaniel reached a hand out to me. “Take off the robe and let me hold you all naked and warm.”

I wanted to, in fact I couldn’t think of anything better, but still I hesitated. I took his hand, but I didn’t touch my robe, and I didn’t climb on the bed.

Micah came up behind me, wrapping his body around me. His body pushed against the back of my robe. The silk was thin and parts of him were not.

I turned with a little gasp. “You’re naked.”

He frowned at me. “Yes, we always sleep naked.”

I shook my head, and said, “But…,” then I realized what was wrong. I’d sort of known before today that Jean-Claude had had male lovers. I mean, I knew that he and Asher and Julianna had been a true ménage à trois. I shared the memories to prove it. But that had been memories, and theory. It hadn’t been fact, until tonight.

I tried to put it into words. “I knew in theory you liked men as well as women,” I said, and looked at Jean-Claude while I said it. His face was as empty as I’d ever seen it, as though if I blinked, he’d vanish.

“But now you know in fact, and you think less of me,” he said, in a voice as empty as his face.

“No, not less, just…,” I tried again. “In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other’s dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy catagory for me. You don’t undress in front of people who see you as a sex object. You don’t sleep with them, or…oh, hell.” I looked up at Micah. “Won’t it weird you out to sleep nude beside him now?”

Micah laughed. “Are you worried about my virtue more now than before?”

I frowned at him. “I don’t…” I pushed him hard enough that he stumbled. “Fuck you,” I said, but I was starting to smile and that usually meant I’d lost the argument. I wasn’t even sure it was an argument.

“Not to take anything away from the attractiveness of your Nimir-Raj, ma petite, but I believe I can restrain myself.” His face held a hint of humor now.

I looked at Nathaniel, and he was trying not to grin at me. I was perilously close to being laughed at, and that was just not cool. “Stop it, all of you.”

“Stop what?” Nathaniel said in a strained voice, but his eyes were shiny with suppressed laughter.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

“Did you think that because I had tasted my first man in years that I would suddenly be some sort of rampaging beast?” Jean-Claude’s neutral face was beginning to crumble around the edges, humor was filling his eyes, tweaking at the edges of his mouth.

“No,” I said, and it sounded sullen even to me.

“Did you expect Nathaniel and me to be more shy around Jean-Claude because we saw him with Augustine?” Micah’s mouth was twitching at the edges.

I glared at them all. “Maybe.”

“Anita—” Micah said, but he had to stop and fight the smile that kept threatening to get away from him. He started over. “Anita, remember I thought I’d have to be coming across to Jean-Claude when I joined you. The entire preternatural community believed that Richard and Jean-Claude and you were a true ménage à trois. I considered this before I ever asked to be your Nimir-Raj.”

I frowned at him. “So it doesn’t bother you?”

“No. I’m not into men, but I don’t seem to have the same hang-ups that you and Richard do.”

“Don’t compare me with him,” I said, and was all set to be angry.

“If it was another woman sleeping naked with you, you’d have the same problems that he does,” Micah said.

“I’ve slept with some of the female wereleopards before.”

“But never nude, either you or them,” Micah said.

I started to deny it, then stopped. Was he right? “I don’t know, I…I might be able to sleep nude, if it’s just sleep, with another woman. I don’t think I’d like it, though. I’d rather sleep pressed between two men.”

“And that’s fine,” he said, “but if you knew for a fact that a woman saw you as a potential sex partner, you’d treat her differently.”

“Yes, she’d go in the boy box.”

“According to your thinking, Nathaniel and I should put Jean-Claude into a different box now, right?”

I thought about it, then nodded.

He smiled. “Anita, seeing him with Auggie wasn’t the first clue I had that Jean-Claude liked men.”

I looked from one to the other of them. “Have I missed something?”

“Not what you are thinking, ma petite.” Jean-Claude sat more solidly on the corner of the bed, his back against the foot of it, his knees drawn up for his arms to wrap around. “I have not seduced either of your cats behind your back.”

I hadn’t really thought he had, but…“Then what is Micah talking about?”

“Anita,” Nathaniel said, “pay more attention the next time that Jean-Claude feeds off one of us, or Asher feeds off me. You won’t have to ask.”

“But I’ve been in the bed while you guys did that. What did I miss?”

The three of them exchanged a look. “No, no looks, just tell me.”

“You said you were tired,” Micah said. “I think you don’t want to know this, or you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“Don’t want to know what?”

Again they exchanged that look.

“Stop that,” I said, and I had to fight the urge to stomp my foot at them.

“Let us cuddle together, ma petite. Let us hold you, and give you the comfort that we all need tonight. It has been a long night, a good one in many ways, but long. You are tired.”

I was tired, but the rush of anger, and confusion, had chased back the tiredness. “I am tired, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and let you hold me. But damn it, you’re all looking at each other like there’s an elephant in the room, and I can’t see it.”

Claudia spoke from the edge of the room, where she and the rest of the bodyguards were so quiet. We were close to kicking them out of the room. Okay, I was close to kicking them out. “I think I can catch this one,” she said.

I looked at her. “Go ahead,” I said.

“Jean-Claude feeds from a man the same way he feeds from a woman. Most vampires differentiate when they feed. Hetrosexual vamps take more liberties with opposite-sex victims. Homosexual vamps take more liberties with same-sex vics. Jean-Claude doesn’t differentiate, do you understand?”

“When have you seen him feed on other women?”

“Aha,” Claudia said, “and that is exactly why he doesn’t feed on women except at the clubs, in public. You’d be jealous of other women if he took them in private, but you aren’t jealous of men. You don’t see them as sexually competitive for Jean-Claude’s attention.”

My head was beginning to hurt. “You’re giving me a headache, Claudia.”

“Only because you don’t want to think this one through.”

“You’re saying that Jean-Claude likes both men and women, but because I’d be jealous of women, he takes mostly men. I get it, I get it.”

“Thank you, Claudia,” Jean-Claude said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Do I apologize to anyone, everyone?” I asked.

“Just take off the robe and get in bed,” Nathaniel said. “Silk is cold without another body to warm it up.”

I smiled at him, shook my head, and started to undo my robe. I stopped, and said, “Everyone that’s not getting in the bed, outside.”

“If it’s an invitation…,” Graham started.

“Can it, Graham,” Claudia said, and went for the door.

He hesitated, but he followed her. Lisandro was already going for the door. Claudia had sent most of the others out when things calmed earlier. Probably sent them to watch over our “guests.” The bodyguards piled out. The door shut, and we were alone.

Micah crawled onto the bed, on the other side of Nathaniel, leaving room for me. “You’re looking a little overdressed,” he said.

I undid the sash and let the robe fall to the floor. I crawled up onto the silk with the help of their hands. They pulled me down between them, so their naked bodies pressed in against me. There was a moment where I had to close my eyes. The sensation of their warm, bare skin sliding against mine was almost overwhelming. It was like wrapping myself in a favorite blanket with my favorite stuffed toy in my arms, and my gun close at hand. Sandwiched between Micah and Nathaniel was the safest, best place I’d ever known.

Nathaniel kissed me. My arms slid around his shoulders automatically. He took that as an invitation to press his upper body against mine. Micah’s hand slid across my hip, until his hand found the inside of my thigh. He stroked his hand back and forth, and without thinking about it, I moved my leg so he could reach other things if he wanted to.

My hands slid down Nathaniel’s back, found the curve where his waist met lower things, traced the two dimples in his very lower back. The kiss had grown into something more, and his body responded to that promise, swelling where he lay trapped against my hip. The feel of him hard and firm against me made me shudder into his mouth.

He drew back enough to watch my eyes fluttering open and shut. “You are my most favoritest toy.”

It was more effort than I would have admitted out loud to focus on his face. Micah’s hand kept stroking my thigh, as if he was coaxing me to open my legs for him, but I’d already done that. His fingers kept trailing on that last inch before he touched intimate parts. I wanted him to touch me. Wanted his fingers to finish that teasing promise.

“I thought you were tired,” Micah whispered, but his mouth was just above my neck, so hot, so close.

“I was.” My voice was thick, but not with sleep.

“What do you want?” he breathed against my neck. That alone made me shiver.

“Touch me.”

“I am touching you.” His fingers trailed just below where I wanted him to touch, back and forth, back and forth, but not the back and forth I wanted.

“Please, Micah. No more teasing.”

His fingers slid over me, and that first touch drew small sounds from me.

“So eager,” he said, and he rose up enough to see my face. His own face was eager, too, but there was also a soft wonder to his face. He raised his hand from between my legs to touch, lightly, along my face. “I love that look on your face,” he said.

“What look?” I whispered.

He smiled. “That look.” He leaned in for his own kiss. Nathaniel’s hand curved over my breast, as Micah’s mouth found mine. Nathaniel’s touch made me more eager at Micah’s mouth, so that the kiss was more than it would have been. I fed at Micah’s mouth, my hand running over his body. I tried to use both hands, but Nathaniel caught my hand, pressed it to the bed, so he could lower his mouth to my breast. He filled his hand with my breast, pressing it until it was just this side of pain. His tongue flicked over my nipple. Micah’s tongue slipped inside my mouth, tasting me. Nathaniel’s mouth slid over more of me, and he sucked, hard and fast. It brought me screaming off the bed, screaming my pleasure into Micah’s mouth. I tried to raise my other hand off the bed, but Nathaniel held it trapped. He bit my breast, and I raked nails down Micah’s back. Nathaniel let go of my other hand, and bit me harder. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to dance that line between pain and pleasure. I put a matching row of scratches down his back, and they let me go.

I lay gasping on the bed between them, trying to focus my eyes around the white, cottony edges of the world. Micah said, “That was fun.”

Nathaniel said, “Mmmm.” He flicked his tongue across my nipple, quick and gone.

I writhed across the bed, my hands grabbing at the silk sheets. “Oh, God!”

A hand caressed my ankle. That one quiet touch opened my eyes, made me gaze down my body to find Jean-Claude kneeling there. He was still wearing the robe, belted tight. His face was neutral, pleasant. “Micah invited me to touch you, but I’ve found that it is your invitation I need.” Translation: sometimes in the midst of all the men, I got pissy if someone touched me without my saying yes first. Just because one of the men was touching me didn’t mean that everyone got to touch me equally. A girl’s got to try to draw a line somewhere.

“You can’t have intercourse until you’ve fed again,” I said.

He smiled. “So American. There are other ways to pleasure a woman.”

“But you won’t be able to…”

His hand slid up my calf, the most delicate of touches. “I will be content, ma petite.”

“We can stop now,” Micah said, “if you want. This was fun.”

I gazed down his body and saw just how fun he thought it was. He was long, and thick, and ready, and long and thick for Micah was very long and thick indeed. I glanced down at Nathaniel, and found him just as ready. No, he wasn’t as big as Micah, but then the only one of the men who could compare was Richard. Though Richard didn’t seem as aware of it as Micah.

Nathaniel was definitely more, just not as more as Micah. Not in length anyway, but in width, well, yeah. Men are hung up on length; trust me, girls pay attention to width, too. Frankly an inch or two less length wasn’t always a bad thing; depended on what you wanted to do with it.

I ran fingertips over both of them, and just that light touch made them shudder, and me writhe. “So pretty,” I said, “seems a shame to waste them.”

“We’ll get more,” Micah said.

“I agree with Anita,” Nathaniel said, grinning.

Micah smiled at him, a bright flash of teeth in his tanned face.

“I will join Asher.” Jean-Claude began to slide off the bed.

“Don’t go,” I said.

He looked at me; it was a very searching look. “I do not have the patience of your two cats, ma petite. They have served blood for Asher and myself more than once, then watched us have our way with you.”

“We had to save them for the ardeur the next day, or next night,” I said.

“Oui, but I am not the voyeur that Asher is, and if I am not to join in completely, I would as soon leave. It is not a complaint, merely truth.”

“I still think you shouldn’t go that far away,” Micah said. “I don’t trust Belle.”

Jean-Claude smiled. “Wise, and correct.” He spread his hands wide. “If it were just sex between the three of you I could watch and be content to join the cuddling afterward. But it is the emotional content that makes it difficult to be excluded.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I know that you love me, ma petite, but my arms do not fill you with that last drop of something. I see you with Micah and Nathaniel and that last drop of emotion, or contentment, is there.” He held up a hand as if someone had started to speak. “It is the truth. I do not begrudge it, especially with the news we have had tonight. You will need that bond, but it is”—he shook his head—“discomforting to watch, and know that I am not a part of it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I mean what do you say to the man you love when he’s just told you that he realizes that you love two other men more?

“Besides, ma petite, you have expressed doubts about me now. You say you enjoyed our time with Augustine, but your actions state otherwise. I think your cats are what you need tonight, ma petite, not the memory of…” He gave that Gallic shrug, and got off the bed. He stood there adjusting his robe with smooth, nervous gestures. When he was nervous, and not policing his movements, he smoothed his clothes. It was one of the few truly human gestures that had survived centuries of being dead. I liked that he did it, and that he didn’t realize he did it, because once he noticed it, his hands went still, as still as his face.

The little bit of sex I’d had with Micah and Nathaniel had helped me clear my head. “Do you think that I think less of you for having seen you with another man?” I asked.

“You have implied it,” he said in a voice that was almost neutral.

I raised myself up on my elbows. “I guess I did, but I don’t mean it. I think I thought it should bother me, but it didn’t. I tried to talk myself into it bothering me, but the truth is—” I sat up, folding my legs tailor fashion. “The truth is, Jean-Claude, I liked seeing you kiss Auggie. I don’t know how I feel entirely about the rest, but it didn’t bother me at the time, so why should it bother me now?” I shook my head. “I’m not going to talk myself into an issue I don’t have.”

He gave a small smile, uncertain around the edges. Was it my reaction that had made him uncertain? Or was it that I’d trained him that after a major metaphysical or sexual breakthrough, I pulled back and ran? I guess either way, it was my doing, that uncertain smile. I didn’t want him uncertain. I loved him; I shouldn’t be the one making him insecure, not if I loved him. Sometimes the hardest thing about having so many men in my life wasn’t the sex; the sex we could handle, but the emotional stuff…The emotional stuff was harder. I couldn’t help Richard tonight, because his issues were things I couldn’t really help him with, but this issue, this I could fix, or I could try to.

I smiled at him, and tried to put into that smile everything a man wants to see in a woman’s smile. I watched his eyes fill up with that dark light that has nothing to do with vampires and everything to do with a man. His smile matched his eyes, confident, sure of itself, anticipatory.

“What would you have of me, ma petite?” His voice curled over my bare skin like the tickling edge of fingernails. It made me shiver.

“You’re overdressed,” I said.

“Are you certain you wish to do this, ma petite? You have never taken three of us before, and the ardeur will not rise again tonight, it has been too well fed.”

He was offering me an out, but if I said no, then he’d leave the room. I’d already watched Asher and Richard walk out; I did not want to lose another of my men tonight. I needed as many around me as I could manage. Saying it made me almost want to call Asher back, but…I’d never done the full deal with three of my guys at the same time. Four would have to wait.

“I said, you are overdressed,” and I made it a very firm statement.

Jean-Claude’s smile widened. “Easily remedied.” He undid the robe, and let it fall to the floor. He stood there pale and perfect. I had seen him nude a thousand times or more, but I never got over the shock of him. It was as if he were some amazing work of art, and I had stolen him away from the museum where they kept him roped off and safe, stolen him so I could run my hands over the smooth, flawless surface of him.

“You’re too far away,” I whispered.

He smiled wide enough to flash just a hint of fang. “That, too, is easily remedied.” He crawled up on the bed, and I watched his body, small and loose, more than his face. Until he fed, he’d be small, which meant I could indulge in something that I didn’t get to do much. By the time you get most men out of their clothes they’re not as small as they can get—no, definitely larger.

“I know what you are thinking of, ma petite.” His voice was chiding.

“Did you read my mind?”

“Non, ton visage.”

He’d said he’d read my face. I was picking up a little French here and there in self-defense.

He hesitated at my feet, and I realized he was looking at Micah. “And you, Nimir-Raj, what do you say to this?”

Micah smiled at him. “I’m here to try to make things work better, not make them worse.”

“I don’t try to make things worse,” I said.

“Shh,” Micah said, “don’t take it personally.”

I opened my mouth, realized I was going to start a squabble if not a fight, and I didn’t want to fight anymore tonight. “Fine, I won’t take it personally.”

“You’re not going to argue about it?” Nathaniel asked.

I shook my head, and lay back against the pillows. “Nope.”

Micah and Nathaniel exchanged looks.

“What?” I said.

They both shook their heads. “Nothing,” Micah said.

“Nothing,” Nathaniel said, but he was smiling.

“I don’t argue about everything.”

“Of course not,” Micah said.

“I don’t,” I said.

“Not anymore,” Nathaniel said.

I slapped his shoulder.

He grinned. “Hit me harder, if you want it to hurt.”

I didn’t hit him again. “You’d enjoy it too much.”

He grinned wider.

“I am no longer the only one who is not ready,” Jean-Claude said.

I glanced down at the other two men. He was right. They definitely weren’t ready to go.

“We’ve talked too long,” Nathaniel said.

I waited to be uncomfortable at the thought of three men and just me with no holds barred on the sex. I waited, but the discomfort didn’t come. I lay there and waited to feel overwhelmed, or uncomfortable, but…I just wasn’t.

“I think I can fix it,” I said, and started to slide lower on the bed, turning toward Nathaniel as I did it. I started kissing my way down his body, then thought of something. I looked back at Jean-Claude where he knelt on the bed. “You didn’t ask Nathaniel’s opinion.”

“Micah is your Nimir-Raj, Nathaniel is not.”

“But he’s still my sweetie.”

“It’s okay, Anita,” Nathaniel said, petting my shoulder. “Thanks for thinking of me, but I’m okay with not being asked.”

I looked up at his face with my face almost to his groin. If it seemed an odd time for a in-depth talk he didn’t complain. “Why are you okay?”

“Jean-Claude is right, I’m not anyone’s leader, and I’m okay with that. If we were all completely dominant our happy little domestic situation wouldn’t work.”

“But just because you’re not dominant doesn’t mean that your opinion doesn’t count.”

“No,” he said, and gave a little laugh, “no, but it does mean that I don’t have as many opinions.”

“But…”

“You want me to be more dominant?” he asked.

“I’d like to know how you feel about this, yeah.”

“Suck my dick, so we can fuck.” He was smiling while he said it.

I blinked at him for a second or two, then shrugged, and said, “Okay.”

20

I DID WHAT he wanted, and a lot more. I used hand and mouth to get both Micah and Nathaniel back to the smooth hardness that they had been before all the soul searching. I didn’t want any more soul searching tonight. I wanted to touch and be touched. Sex was the only time I let myself go. Let all the worries, the issues, everything wash away. When I had sex I just concentrated on the sex. It was the only time I was truly in the moment with no hesitation and no other thought.

I held them both in my hands. When I’d first tried to play with them both at the same time, I’d found that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t concentrate on both hands equally, and when you’ve got a handful of the most delicate bits on a man’s body, you want to be able to concentrate. But practice makes perfect, and I could do it now. I could hold each of them in my hand and stroke and play with them. I’d finally found something I was ambidextrous at.

Jean-Claude stayed sitting at the foot of the bed. He made no move to join us. I looked at him, that careful face. He’d made his position clear. He didn’t just want to watch. I’d never tried to entertain three of the men at once. Cuddling, blood sharing, but not for sex.

I went to him where he sat so still, his back touching the foot of the bed. He’d gone as far away as he could without leaving the bed. Had he thought I would make him watch and not touch him? The very blankness of his face said yes, he had. I had a memory, not a vision, just a memory. It just didn’t happen to be my memory, not originally. I saw Belle in her big bed, so similar to this one. She had two other vampires with her. I was watching her from the foot of the bed where she had tied me to the posts. I could feel the pull in my shoulders where the ropes were a little too high for comfort. But she didn’t want me comfortable. She wanted me punished. Tied to her bed where she had taught me, us, what true desire could be. Bound, helpless, knowing that I could not touch her, and that no one would touch me. When we’d been far away from her, we could resist wanting her, but standing there, smelling her skin and sweat, we couldn’t help but want her. She was an addiction, and the only way to save yourself was to never take another drink, another hit, another taste of her. I fought free of the memory enough to think, Jean-Claude had been tied to that bed, not me. Too tall to be my body. Too male. Not me, but the memory still burned, still had the power to make his face close down to that carefulness.

I touched his face, and I let my face show how sorry I was that all those awful things had happened to him. So sorry that I hadn’t been there to save him. We were shut down too tight behind our shields for him to read my mind, probably just as well, but he saw what I meant him to see. He came to me with a sigh that was almost a sob. He kissed me as if he would breathe me in through his lips, and I kissed him as if he were the last drop of water in the world and I were dying of thirst.

I tasted the sweet metal of blood in my mouth. It made him draw back from the kiss. “I am sorry, ma petite…”

I stopped his apology with a kiss, feeding at his mouth, and he fell into that kiss with his hands on my body, his nakedness pressed as tight to mine as it could be. The only reason his body did not respond was that it couldn’t until he fed.

I drew back from the kiss, my breathing ragged, the taste of my own blood in my mouth. A drop of blood grew and trembled on my lower lip.

He kissed that drop away, and stared down at me, as he knelt in front of me. His face was fierce and full of some wonder, as if I’d done something amazing. I hadn’t. I’d just finally decided to get out of my own way; out of everyone’s way.

I moved back along the bed, with his hand in mine. I pulled him along with me, on our knees, until we reached Micah and Nathaniel’s feet. One of the things I’d noticed in dealing with more than one man in bed at a time was there were only two ways to go about it. Choice one: the men took turns, completely separate lovemaking, except that they both got to watch each other have sex with me. Choice two: they both touched me at the same time, and they did foreplay, or more, with me at the same time. Choice two was harder to choreograph. Harder on the egos involved. It took more concentration on my part. It was just a higher level of skills needed all around, and a larger dose of secure masculinity, too. I realized now, after Auggie, that there was a choice three, but I didn’t think any of us was up to it tonight. I knew I wasn’t. I had no idea how to even raise the question to Micah and Nathaniel: would they kiss another man? I mean, when did this sound like a good conversation to have? Never, I think.

I let go of Jean-Claude’s hand, leaving him kneeling, while I lay down between the other two men. I traced a hand down their bodies until I touched the smooth heads, the skin so soft but the flesh underneath so hard, so firm.

Micah made a soft sound as my hand smoothed over the top of him. I looked up at Nathaniel and found his face intent on me. His eyes bright and eager, alit with anticipation. A gentle caress wouldn’t do it for him. I had to still my hand on Micah, to wrap my hand around Nathaniel, and squeeze hard. It fluttered his eyes shut and forced small noises from his mouth. I’d found that I could play with two at once if the pressure was the same for both hands, but if one man needed something different, I had to concentrate separately. Micah could rev up to a level that was close to Nathaniel’s preference, but it took time to get Micah in that headspace. Nathaniel came out of the box wanting rougher handling than most men ever liked.

I went back to playing with both of them at the same time, running my hand up and down the shaft of them, sliding over the head, firm, but gentle. Too hard, and most men experienced the pressure as discomfort; too gentle and it wasn’t enough stimulation. It had taken me a while to find a happy medium.

I loved the sensation of my hand running up and down and around all that velvet muscle. It made me close my eyes, arch my back with the anticipation of it. When I could focus again, I gazed up at Jean-Claude. He knelt where I’d left him, close enough to touch us, but not touching anyone.

“I want you in my mouth while I play with them.”

He looked at Micah and Nathaniel. “Does everyone agree to this, for I will have to be very close to both of you, to be in the position that she requests?”

I tightened my grip on both the men, just enough to make their eyes flutter shut.

“Non, ma petite, that is cheating. Let them go long enough for them to answer without your so-persuasive touch.”

I mumbled, “Sorry.” I put my hands on my stomach, and behaved.

Micah swallowed hard enough for me to hear it, then nodded. “I’m fine with it.”

Nathaniel smiled that lazy cat-with-cream smile that he got sometimes during sex. It usually meant he was going to suggest something that I’d never done, or that we’d never done together, or he was going to make some observation. “I just want to see if she can concentrate on all of us at once. I give it a difficulty rating of eight.”

I frowned at him. “Are you saying I’ve never attempted anything that took more skill than an eight before?”

He shrugged. “Remember I did this professionally for a while. My ten on this scale is probably stuff that you don’t even want to know is physically possible.”

I opened my mouth to ask him, Like what? but decided that he was right. I probably didn’t want to know.

“Let’s try,” I said.

Jean-Claude didn’t ask again. He simply crawled over my body. He ended with his legs over my shoulders, so that he was sitting in front of my face, which put him exactly where I wanted him. I traced my hands across the other two bodies. Nathaniel turned on his side first, and Micah followed him. That gave me a better angle, since my movement was about to become limited.

I wrapped my hands around them, and raised my mouth up to slide over Jean-Claude’s body. He was as small as he got, loose and delicate. It always amazed me how something so small could become so large. Nothing on my body could change so much—maybe that’s why it fascinated me. I loved the texture when a man was totally soft. Until we shared blood, I could roll that soft, soft flesh around my mouth, suck on it all. Normally I would have tried to draw his testicles into my mouth, too, but with both my hands busy, I didn’t dare. Too delicate a work to risk, when I wasn’t sure I could concentrate on it all. I rolled my hands up and down Micah and Nathaniel’s bodies while I sucked on Jean-Claude, drawing him harder and faster, over and over, glorying in the fact that I could take all of him in without a struggle. Like this, it was all about sensation. I could roll and flick and suck with my mouth and tongue, able to do things with his body that I could never have done with him erect.

Jean-Claude cried out, his hands clutching at the dark wood of the headboard. He looked down at me, and I rolled my eyes upward to catch that frantic look. That look that said the sensations were almost too much.

I found a rhythm for all of them, but it was the rhythm of the sucking: quick, fast, as fast as I could do it, over and over and over. I ran my hands over Nathaniel and Micah in that same frantic rhythm, pulling, firm, and quick, over and over and over.

Micah’s hand grabbed mine. “Stop, or I’m going to go.” He squeezed my hand, as if I’d made some move to keep going. “Please, Anita, please.”

I looked up at Jean-Claude. His eyes were closed, his shoulders hunched, his body shuddering above me. I realized that though he was enjoying it, it was treading that line between feels better than anything else and too much. He probably wouldn’t have said anything. He’d have let me do it as long as I wanted, but then he’d been trained by someone who was a much harsher mistress than I would ever be.

I drew back from his body. He half collapsed above me, his body spasming. He rolled to the side, and Micah gave him room. Jean-Claude lay on his back, spine bowing, hands clutching at the black sheets.

I was left with only Nathaniel in my hand. I looked at his face. Eager, happy. He leaned in toward me. “You win.” He moved in for a kiss, but I squeezed him hard and tight. It threw his head back, closed his eyes, spasmed his body. No one else in the bed would have wanted me to squeeze that tight, but he loved it.

“What do I win?” I asked. I let him go.

He gazed down at me with eyes that didn’t quite focus. “Everything.” He kissed me. It started as a slow kiss, but then he was just suddenly kissing me as deep and hard as he could. I’d forgotten that Jean-Claude had bled me earlier. I knew that part of what made him so eager at my mouth was the taste of my blood. He kissed me as if he would crawl into my mouth, his tongue searching for every last drop of that precious fluid.

His body pressed on top of mine. He was so hard, so firm, the feel of him trapped between our bodies made me make small sounds into his mouth, as he kissed me.

He drew back from the kiss. “What do you want?” he asked.

“You, inside me,” I said.

He gave me a fierce smile, and raised himself up off my body.

I grabbed at his waist and shoulders. “What are you doing?”

“You said inside, you didn’t say where inside.” He crawled over me, his body not touching me, and I knew where he was going.

“Is this more foreplay or do you want to finish here?”

“Finish,” he said.

“Without the ardeur, I don’t like to swallow.”

“I know,” he said, and straddled my chest, leaning forward using the headboard much as Jean-Claude had.

I stared up the line of his body, his face so eager, so sure of itself. I’d worked a long time to have him look like that during sex. He knew with me he could ask for what he wanted, that his pleasure was as important to me as my own. I cupped my hand under his balls. They were already tight and close to his body. The caress brought his breath in a long sigh.

I kept one hand on his balls, and spilled the other hand up and over the length of him. He smiled down at me. “What do you want Micah to do while I’m busy here?”

We’d only very recently begun having sex at the exact same time, Nathaniel, Micah, and me. I’d thought it had been my idea initially, but now, it seemed like Nathaniel initiated it more. I knew what he wanted me to say, and truthfully, dawn was going to come, and I had one other man in the bed. Whatever we were going to do, we needed to be doing it.

I kept playing lightly with Nathaniel, and called, “Micah.”

He crawled until I could see him. He just looked at me with those chartreuse eyes. His face made no demands, but his body spoke for him, so hard, so eager. “You, inside me.”

“We’ve never done this without the ardeur,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

He gave me a look, then he smiled, and crawled back down along the bed.

“Suck me while he does it.” It was more a command than a request, but I’d worked long and hard to have Nathaniel that commanding anywhere in his life. Hard to bitch about it now. Besides, he was so temptingly close, so hard, so ready. I had to mound the pillows up, a little higher, to get the angle we needed.

Micah’s hands slid over my hips.

I licked the tip of Nathaniel, slid my mouth over him, took him inch by inch into my mouth, slow, so slow, so we could both enjoy the sensation of it.

I went down about halfway, then back up. We needed him wetter, so he’d slide better. But there’s something about putting that much of a man that far inside your mouth that makes you wet, both above and below.

Micah’s hands spread my legs, his finger plunged inside me. It made me cry out, and shove all of Nathaniel inside my mouth at once.

He put his hand on the back of my head, held me against him, so that I was trapped, and had a moment of choking around him. It wasn’t a gag reflex; it was a suffocation reflex.

He let me go, and I fell back from his body gasping for breath, choking. When I could talk, I said, “Don’t do that again.”

Micah said, “Are you okay?”

I nodded, wasn’t sure he could see it, and said, “Yeah.”

“You do it with the ardeur,” Nathaniel said.

“We’re doing it without tonight.” I think the look I gave him was not entirely friendly.

“I’m sorry, but I’m used to being able to do that.”

“Twice, we’ve done that twice. Twice is not a pattern.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and that look came back to his face, that uncertain, lost look. He started to move, and I grabbed his hips to keep him from moving. He looked down at me, his face so fragile, so hurt, as if all the new bravado were only skin deep: scratch it, and it goes away. I did the only thing I could think of to chase that look from his face. I drew him back into my mouth, sucked him fast and hard, until his head went back and his eyes closed. When he looked at me again, he was smiling, but there was still a flinching around his eyes; a shadow of that hurt. There was only one thing that would take that hurt from his eyes, I had to prove I trusted him. I slipped my mouth over him again, and gave myself over to the pleasure of him filling my mouth. I let my face show just how much I enjoyed the sensation of all that velvet muscle inside my mouth. The sensation of it wet and slick from my own saliva. But I didn’t stop at the comfort point, that point where it just feels good and full. I sucked past that point where my body told me too much. I sucked until my mouth met his body, and there was no inch to spare. I sucked until he was shoved as hard and deep inside my throat as I could manage. I sucked until my body stopped complaining about needing to gag and started to complain about needing to breathe. But I’d learned to be able to fight past that, too. I stayed there, pressed tight and solid against his body, until he looked down at me, stayed until my throat convulsed, spasming around the length of him. He stared down at me, his eyes wild, eager, and something more. His hands stayed in a death grip on the headboard, as if he didn’t quite trust himself. I drew back from him, coughing, before I could get a good breath. I finally let myself swallow all that extra saliva and lay back, panting as if I were behind on my breaths and had to catch up.

His body shivered above me, a shiver of pleasure that went all the way up his body, to throw his head back, close his eyes, bow his spine, as if the memory alone were that intense, and for Nathaniel it might have been. He finally looked down at me, eyes slightly unfocused. He smiled, and said, “Thank you.” And the look on his face held something much more precious to me than passion; it held soft gratitude, wonder, love, for lack of a better word. There were men who loved me who never wore a look like that. Maybe it was his youth, or his years of therapy, or his lack of hang-ups. What Nathaniel felt he felt down to his toes, no hiding, no holding back, not once he gave himself to someone. It had been one of the things that made him such a danger to himself with the wrong person. With the right person he was magnificient in his abandon. He put the rest of us to shame with our wariness, our unease, our holding back. He was the only one of us who simply gave.

I gazed up into that face and was happier than I knew how to say that he was in my life.

I felt the bed adjust, a moment before fingers slipped inside me. Two searching, slender fingers. Those fingers found that certain spot, and began to flick back and forth, back and forth, fast and faster, until the feeling threw my head back, and tore a scream from me. There were other men who could do that to me, but no one else was that quick at it. I knew who it was, before I looked past Nathaniel’s body to see Jean-Claude kneeling between my thighs. His eyes had bled to solid blue light.

Nathaniel moved off me, and I had a moment to try to focus and find Micah, before Jean-Claude slipped his fingers back inside me and brought me again, screaming, tearing at the sheets, grabbing for the headboard, grabbing for anything to hold on to.

I found a hand, and grabbed it, nails digging into the wrist as I writhed. When I could see again, I found it was Micah. He stared down at me with such a look on his face. He spoke, staring down at me. “Wait, Jean-Claude, wait until I’m in place.”

I blinked up at him. “In place where?” My voice sounded as thick and unfocused as I felt.

He squeezed my hand tight, and said, “I want you to scream your orgasm with me in your mouth.”

I said, “Okay,” then thought enough to say, “Can’t deep-throat you from this angle.”

He put his other hand against my cheek, and turned my face to the side, toward his body. “How about now?”

The way he asked made me smile, and staring at the front of his body so thick, so ready, stole the smile and made me whisper, “Let’s try.”

“That’s our girl,” he said. He put my hand on the headboard, wrapping my fingers around it. He did that when the body part closest to me wasn’t somewhere he wanted nail marks.

Nathaniel came in from the other side; he took my free hand and put it against his hip. One telling me clearly, Don’t mark me there; the other one saying, Please, do it.

Micah turned my face back to him. Nathaniel put my hand higher up his chest, so I could get a running start on his skin. He wouldn’t be working at Guilty Pleasures this weekend, so I didn’t have to worry about marking him.

Micah slipped inside my mouth; he pushed slowly, easing his way in, but he already tasted salty, bitter, and sweet all at once. He’d been enjoying the show. That taste meant he wouldn’t last as long as he might have, not a bad thing in oral sex with someone his size. Intercourse you want to last as long as possible; orally, duration is not always an asset. Two very different skill sets.

I moved forward to meet his careful thrust, and it was as if I’d given him permission. He began to thrust into my mouth, hitting the back of my throat with every thrust, pulling out just before I would have to call uncle. I had a death grip on the headboard, and my hand was mostly just steadying myself against Nathaniel’s side, not digging in. I was concentrating too hard on doing Micah to think about doing myself.

“Now,” Micah said, and it took me a second to understand who he was talking to. Jean-Claude’s fingers slid inside me, and he found that sweet spot, found it like he knew exactly where it was. He brought me with quick, sure flexing of his fingers, quick, quicker, quickest. I screamed around Micah’s body, screamed and thrust my mouth harder and deeper onto him. I rode his body as I rode the orgasm, so that he suddenly didn’t seem too big, too wide, but just right. I screamed and thrashed, and drove my nails into Nathaniel’s hip, as if I were trying to dig my way through him.

I screamed, screamed, and screamed, screamed my pleasure, but it was a sound that would have been pain for most people. It wasn’t pain; it was release. I gave myself over to that moment, completely and utterly. Jean-Claude’s hand inside me, Micah’s body in my mouth, Nathaniel’s flesh under my nails. I let go of the headboard, and had just enough of me left to mark higher up on Micah’s back, while my other hand just kept digging at Nathaniel’s hip and ass.

I heard voices, and knew vaguely that they weren’t us. I heard Jean-Claude say, “Get out,” but I was too far gone to look, or care.

He shoved more of his hand inside me in one quick motion, and that brought me, too. He’d worked me until my body would give orgasms like a gift, so wet, so excited, so thick, so tight, swollen with pleasure.

Micah’s body was beginning to lose its rhythm, he tasted close. The apex of his thrust climbed down my throat, and back out; my own saliva poured down my mouth, because there was no time to swallow.

Jean-Claude leaned over me, with his fingers still inside, but his mouth licked between my legs, while his fingers kept going in and out of me. He couldn’t do the deep sucking that the others could—fangs got in the way—but I didn’t need deep. He’d worked me to the point where quick flicks of his tongue, back and forth, back and forth, started to bring me. That warmth building up, up inside me, as if the center of my body were a cup, filling up drop by drop with pleasure, until with one last lick, the cup spilled, and I screamed around Micah’s body. He thrust one last time, so deep that I choked, and I knew in that moment that he’d been careful, and now he wasn’t, now he finally did make me take those last two inches. I finally touched his body for longer than a second. I started to pull away. His hand went to the back of my head, as if he’d hold me in place, but he moved, and let me draw back, and drew himself out.

I watched Micah fight for control. Jean-Claude moved inches to the side, so his mouth nestled in the very upper, very inside of my thigh. Jean-Claude’s fangs plunged into me, and I was to that point where pain was pleasure, and the feel of him piercing my skin, his mouth sucking on me, brought me up off the bed, throwing my upper body upward, screaming. My body brushed against the front of Micah’s body, and it was that little bit too much. My body came back to rest on the bed, and Micah spilled himself across my breasts, hot, so hot, the liquid thick and heavy, running between my breasts, down the side of my body, pooling trickling down my stomach. The sensation of it made me cry out.

Jean-Claude raised his mouth off me. His mouth was smeared with my blood, and his body was hard and ready, full of my blood, so he could pleasure my body, and his. He usually started out slow for intercourse, but tonight he, like Micah, had done his slow. He was suddenly above me, held up on his arms like a push-up, but his lower body didn’t stay up. He thrust into me as hard and fast as I’d ever felt him, and I could watch every thrust as he moved in and out of me. Three strokes, five, and he brought me. I thrust my hips up to meet his, writhing under him. He brought me twice more, before I felt him begin to lose the rhythm of it, and with one last thrust he spilled himself inside me. He stayed above me, holding himself on shaking arms, while he gazed down at me, lips open, fighting for breath. He normally collapsed on top of me afterward, but my chest was covered in Micah’s juice. It was already growing thinner, beginning to trickle down my sides like icing melting in the heat.

He stayed above me, panting, and smiling, his mouth still smeared with my blood. He bent down, carefully, keeping his upper body and hair out of everything, but he kissed me. Kissed me with my blood like sweet copper in his mouth.

He pulled out, and left me blinking, dazed with it all. He had barely moved out of the way, and Nathaniel was there, above me. I couldn’t remember when he’d moved from the head of the bed. I’d lost track.

I stared down the line of his body, poised above me, and I thought, Didn’t I promise to start using condoms? But the worst had happened, I was already pregnant, it didn’t matter anymore. Jean-Claude had caught me by surprise, but I let Nathaniel plunge himself inside me, naked, his flesh inside mine with nothing between us.

He found that rhythm that he did sometimes, like a shuddering wave down his body, like he was dancing inside me. And with each shuddering wave, he thrust into me, thrust into me, right over that spot. Jean-Claude had given himself over to the sex, but Nathaniel was doing his usual careful job of it, as if even after all the foreplay he was going to give me my money’s worth. His emotions were raw, but his intercourse was controlled. He wouldn’t come until I did, he just wouldn’t. He’d made a game of making me come over and over, until I begged him to. It wasn’t going to take long tonight.

It didn’t. I felt that weight begin to build between my legs, slow and steady, but faster than normal because of all that had gone before. “Close,” I whispered, “close.” My hips began to rise up and down with his movements, so we danced for each other, my hips thrusting upward as his thrust down, so that we met again and again. The orgasm caught me, and there was no more dancing for me. There was just screaming, and nails along his sides, me writhing, but no rhythm, no control.

I came to myself panting, double-visioned, and found his body back in the same rhythm. He kept going in and out of me, as if he could do it all night. He damn near could. He brought me again, and this time I wound my upper body around him, pressed our chests together, dug claws into his back. He pressed his upper body against me, putting his upper chest against my mouth, while his body kept pumping away. I knew what he wanted, and I gave it to him. I bit him, bit him until I tasted blood. I held his upper body against mine, so that he wouldn’t jerk away and cause me to hurt him more than I planned. My mouth filled with blood, and his rhythm faltered. Pleasure he could fight off all night, but pain, pain would bring him faster.

But he brought me again first, and I tore my mouth away from his body, so I didn’t bite him too much. I turned my face to the side, and screamed. I wrapped my legs around his body, locked my heels at the top of his ass, and pinned him to me, so he couldn’t get the rhythm he wanted.

He raised himself up on hands and knees, with me clinging to the front of his body. He crawled us both to the head of the bed, and used one hand on my ass, and the other on the headboard, to lift me up, and put my back against the headboard. His voice came in a strangled whisper. “I want to move more.” And he did, he moved in and out of me, over and over and over, while I clung to him with my arms and legs. He brought me again, and again, and finally one more time, and then he asked, “Please, please.”

Some nights he liked to beg before I said yes, but tonight I didn’t think either of us could stand much more. I whispered it against the sweet smell of his neck, “Yes, go, go, go inside me. God, go, please!”

He stopped trying for rhythm and thrust inside me as hard and fast as he could. He brought me again; I dug my nails into his shoulders and back, and he finally thrust up inside me. Thrust as far and hard as he could. He stayed there like that for a heartbeat, forever, then he slumped lower on his knees, while I still clung to him.

Our bodies were slick with sweat, and blood, and other things. He clung with his hands to the headboard, his heart beating so fast I could see it. “God, that was good,” he said, voice breathless, and not quite like his voice at all, yet.

I tried to say yes, and couldn’t do it. It was as if I couldn’t figure out how to form words, and I still couldn’t make my eyes work. The world was still a white-edged blur, like something wrapped in cotton.

“Anita,” Micah said, “are you all right?”

I managed to give him a thumbs-up, because it was the best I could do. It wasn’t the first time that Micah and Nathaniel had fucked me wordless.

“Damn,” Micah said, “I thought with three of us we might finally fuck you unconscious.” His voice was teasing.

It took me three tries to say, in a very hoarse voice, “You need more men.”

Micah leaned in close, kissed my cheek. “I think we can arrange that.”

I managed to whisper, “Not tonight.”

He kissed my cheek again. “Not tonight.” He turned to Nathaniel. “You need help?”

Nathaniel nodded, wordlessly.

Micah and Jean-Claude helped peel us apart, then they went into the bathroom to clean up. Nathaniel and I still couldn’t move enough to leave the bed. We lay side by side, touching, but not in each other’s arms. Our bodies weren’t working well enough for that, yet.

“God, Anita, I love you,” he said, voice still breathy.

“I love you, too, Nathaniel,” I said. And I did.

21

I THOUGHT THAT Micah might protest when Jean-Claude got into bed as naked as everyone else, but he didn’t. If it had been another girl cuddling up against my naked behind I might have protested, but Micah was a lot less trouble than I was to deal with. I guess someone had to be less trouble.

I fell asleep like I did most nights with my stomach cuddled against the back of Nathaniel’s nude body, the warm curve of his ass tucked up tight against my stomach, one arm up so I could touch his hair, the other around his waist, or maybe a little lower. Micah cuddled in behind me, mirroring me almost exactly, except that his arm didn’t curve in around my body but stretched across so that he was touching a little of Nathaniel. Jean-Claude cuddled in against Micah as if he’d done it before, putting his arm across Micah so that he could touch me. His hand curved around me, and I raised the arm around Nathaniel’s waist, so I could touch Jean-Claude’s arm. Dawn was close, and that warm, living arm wouldn’t be warm or living for long. Vampires lost heat faster than a dead human. I wasn’t sure why, but they did.

I enjoyed the warm curve of him while I could. Nathaniel snuggled closer to me, as if he’d pressed his ass through me into Micah, but I didn’t mind. I liked it close. Besides, I knew he was missing me holding him tight. My fingers played on the small hairs on Jean-Claude’s arm, back and forth, tracing his skin. The feel of him like that made me regret for an instant that it wasn’t my body he was pressed up against.

I fell asleep in a nest of warm bodies and silk sheets. I’d had worse nights.

I came instantly awake in the pitch black, my heart in my throat. I didn’t know what had woken me, but it was something bad. I lay there pressed between Micah and Nathaniel, looking around the room in the dim light from the half-open bathroom door. It was the light Jean-Claude left on for us when we slept over. The room looked empty, so why was my pulse in my mouth? Bad dream, maybe.

I lay there pressed between the men, straining to hear something, but there was nothing but their quiet breathing. Jean-Claude’s arm was across Micah’s body, but it was no longer warm. Dawn had come and gone, and taken him from me again.

Then I saw a shadow. A shadow sitting on the foot of the bed. When I looked directly at it, it wasn’t there, but out of the corner of my eye I could see it: a blackness that began to take on a shape, until there was a dark outline of a woman sitting at the foot of the bed. What the hell?

I shook Micah’s arm, trying to wake him, but it didn’t work. I tried Nathaniel, and the same thing happened, nothing. Their breathing never changed. What was happening?

I couldn’t wake them. Was I dreaming and didn’t know it? I drew breath to scream. If it was a dream, it wouldn’t matter; if it wasn’t a dream then Claudia and the guards would come. But the moment I drew a sharp breath, the voice floated through my mind. “Do not scream, necromancer.”

The breath left me, as if someone had pushed on my stomach. I finally managed a whisper: “Who are you?”

“Good, this guise does not frighten you. I was hoping it would not.”

“Who…” Then I smelled it: night. Night out of doors, night some place warm and soft with the scent of jasmine on the air. I knew who it was. “Marmee Noir” was the least rude of the nicknames the vampires called her. She was the Mother of All Darkness; she was the first vampire, and the ruler of their council, though she’d been in hibernation, or a coma, for more than a thousand years. The last time I’d seen her in a dream she’d been as big as the ocean, as black as the space between the stars. She’d scared the shit out of me.

The shadow smiled, or at least that’s what it felt like. “Good.”

I struggled to sit up, and the men slept on, not even moving in their sleep. Was this a dream, or was it real? If it was real we were in deep, deep shit. If it was a dream, then I’d had powerful vamps invade my dreams before.

I put my back against the wood of the headboard. It felt real and solid. But I didn’t like sitting there naked in front of her. I wished I had a gown, and the thought was enough. I was suddenly wearing a white silk gown. Dream, because I’d been able to change it. Dream, it would be okay. It was just a dream. The knot in my gut didn’t believe me, but the rest of me tried to believe.

I thought of several questions to ask that shadow, and finally settled for, “Why are you here?”

“You interest me.”

It was like having the devil suddenly take a personal notice of you; not good. “I’ll try to be less interesting.”

“I am almost awake.”

I was suddenly cold down to my toes.

“I can taste your fear, necromancer.”

I swallowed hard, and couldn’t keep my voice from being breathy. “Why are you here, Marmee Noir?”

“I need something to wake me after such a long sleep.”

“What?”

“You, perhaps.”

I frowned at her. “I don’t understand.”

The shadow began to grow more solid, until she was a small female figure in a black cloak. I could almost see her face, almost, and I knew I did not want to. To see the face of darkness was to die.

“Jean-Claude has still not made you his, still not crossed that last line with you. Until he does, another more powerful than he can take what is his, and finish it.”

“I am bound to a vampire,” I said.

“Yes, you have a vampire servant, but that does not close the other door.” She was suddenly sitting at my feet. I tucked my feet up, and pushed myself against the headboard. It was a dream, just a dream, she couldn’t really hurt me, but I didn’t believe it.

She spread a hand wide, and the hand was carved of darkness. “I thought this guise would make me less frightening, but you cringe from me. I am wasting a great deal of energy to speak to you in dream, rather than invade your mind further, yet still you fear me.” She sighed, and the sound of it flittered through the room. “Perhaps I have lost the knack of being human, even to pretend. Perhaps if I have lost the knack, I should stop trying—what do you think, necromancer? Should I show you my true form?”

“Is this a trick question?” I asked.

I felt her frown, rather than saw it, because I couldn’t see her face yet.

“I mean, is there a good answer here? I don’t think seeing your true form would be a good thing, but I don’t really want you to keep playing humanish for me, either.”

“Then what do you want?”

I wanted Jean-Claude awake to help me answer this question. Out loud I said, “I don’t know how to answer that question.”

“Of course you do; humans always want something.”

“You to go away.”

I felt her smile. “This is not working, is it?”

“I don’t know what was supposed to work,” I said. I was hugging my knees now, because I did not want her touching me, not even in dream.

She stood, in the middle of the bed, then I realized that wasn’t exactly it. She stood, but then she kept growing, stretching up and up, like some black flame. The light reflected off whatever she was becoming, as off water, or sparkling rock. How could something gleam and give no light? How could something both reflect light and absorb it?

“If you are afraid of me anyway, then why pretend?” Her voice echoed through the room like a rush of wind. I could smell rain on the edge of that wind. “Let there be truth between us, necromancer.”

She vanished; no, she became the dark. She became the darkness in the room. One minute she was a central point, almost a body, the next she was the darkness. She hung in the dark of the room, and that darkness had weight and knowledge. I was like every other human who had ever huddled around the fire because they could feel the darkness pressing around them. Feel the darkness waiting for them. She didn’t try to talk to me now, she simply was, not words, not even images, but something I had no words for. She simply was. A summer night does not talk to you, but it exists. The dark of a moonless night does not think, but it is still alive with a thousand eyes, a thousand sounds. She was that night, with one addition: she could think. You don’t want the dark to be able to think, because it won’t think anything you want to know.

I screamed, but the darkness filled my throat, cut off my air. I was choking on the scent of night, drowning in jasmine and rain. I tried to call my necromancy, but it wouldn’t come. The darkness in my throat laughed at me like the cold twinkling of stars, beautiful and deadly. I tried for my link to Jean-Claude, but she had severed it. I tried for my link to Nathaniel and Micah, but her animal to call was all cats, both great and small. My leopards could not help me now. The darkness whispered them to sleep.

I remembered the last time she’d been this close to me metaphysically, and thought of the only thing she hadn’t been able to control. I thought of wolf. It had taken Richard’s tie to me, and Jason’s closeness, to waken my wolf in me and chase the darkness back, but we’d grown closer now, my wolf and I, and it came. A huge pale wolf with markings of darkness leapt out of the darkness, its eyes filled with brown fire. It put itself between me and the dark. It let me wrap my fingers in its fur, and the moment I touched it, I could breathe again. The scent of night was there, but it wasn’t in me.

The darkness swelled around me like some great dark ocean, building up, up, to crash upon the shore. The wolf tensed against me, so real against my body. I could feel its bones, its muscle, under the fur, pressed tight against me. I could smell its fear, but knew it would not leave me alone. It would stay, and defend me, because if I died, so did it. It wasn’t Richard’s wolf, it was mine. Not his beast, but mine.

That black ocean reared above us, so that the bed was like some tiny raft. Then it fell toward us with a sound like a thousand screams. I knew those screams—victims, eons of victims.

The wolf sprang to meet that blackness, and I felt teeth sink into flesh. I felt us bite her. I had an instant to see the room where her real body lay, all those thousands of miles away. I saw her body jerk, saw her chest rise in a sharp breath. Her breath sighed through the room. “Necromancer.”

The dream shattered, and I woke screaming.

22

JEAN-CLAUDE’S BEDROOM WAS bright with lights. Micah was on his knees looking down at me, petting my shoulder. “Anita, thank God, we couldn’t wake you.”

I had time to see Nathaniel on the other side of the bed, and Jean-Claude standing beside him. I’d been out of it long enough for Jean-Claude to die and come alive again. Hours lost to the dark. Claudia, Graham, and others were in the room. It must have been hours; the shift should have changed. I had time to see and think all that, then the wolf from my dream tried to climb out my body.

It was as though my skin were a glove, and the wolf were the hand. It filled me, impossibly long. I could feel its legs stretching out and out into my arms and legs. But its limbs and mine weren’t the same shape; it didn’t fit. The wolf tried to make me fit.

My fingers curved, tried to form paws, and when that didn’t work, it tried for claws to come out of the human fingers. I screamed, holding my hands up, trying to get breath to explain. Then I didn’t have to, because my body started to try to tear itself apart. It was as if every bone and muscle were trying to tear itself free from every other piece of me. The pain of it was indescribable. Parts of my body that were never meant to move were moving now. It was like the meat-and-bone of my body was trying to move out of the way so something else could take its place.

Micah pinned my arm and shoulder. Nathaniel had my other arm. Jean-Claude pinned one leg, and Claudia had the other. They were yelling, “She’s shifting!” “She’ll lose the baby!” Claudia yelled. “Help hold her, damn it.”

Graham put his weight across my waist. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

I heard something in my shoulder pop, a wet sound that you never want to hear from your own body. I shrieked, but my body didn’t care. It wanted to tear itself apart. It wanted to remake itself. The wolf was there, just under my skin. I felt it, pushing, pushing, trying to get out. Other bodies threw themselves on the pile, and gradually the sheer weight of them held me, but still the muscles and tendons kept writhing.

Another convulsion shook my body, forced some of them to shift their grips. An arm came close to my face, and I smelled wolf. That sweet musky smell quieted my body. My wolf sniffed at that pale skin and thought, not quite in words or in images, but somewhere in between: pack, home, safe.

The arm moved away and took that calming smell with it. The wolf tried to leap after that scent, tried to follow it, but the other smells held me down. Leopard, rat, and something not furred, not warm. Nothing that would help us.

The wolf clawed at my throat like it was an opening to be dug at, enlarged, so it could crawl out. The wolf couldn’t get out, couldn’t get out, trapped. Trapped! I tried to scream but a scream wasn’t what broke out of my throat; a low, mournful howl spilled out instead. The sound cut through the frantic voices around me, froze the pressing hands. It echoed up and up, dying in the sudden silence. Then as the last quavering echo faded another voice rose, high and sweet. A third voice joined, deeper, so that for an instant their voices entwined in glorious harmony. Then one voice fell octaves lower, breaking the harmony, but the discord had a kind of harmony of its own.

I answered them, and for a moment our voices filled the air with quavering music. The bodies pressing against me slid away. The smell of wolf pressed close. A hand touched my face and I turned in against that hand, pressed it to my face, breathed in the scent of wolf. There were other scents on that hand, a scented map of everything he had touched that day, but under it all was wolf. I tried to raise both hands to press his skin against mine, but only one of my hands would rise. Something was broken in my left shoulder, something that wouldn’t let me use that hand. Fear flared through me, and I whimpered, and that warm skin pressed closer to me. I’d never realized that you could cuddle a scent around yourself as if it were an arm. But I hugged that scent around me, smelling it so intently that it spread around me like someone taking me into their arms.

I kept his hand pressed over my nose and mouth, but rolled my eyes up along his arm until I found the black shirt and finally Clay’s face. His eyes were wolf eyes, and my wolf knew that I had done that. I had called to his wolf, and it had answered.

The bed moved beside us. I pulled my face away from Clay’s skin so I could sniff the air as I turned to look. I saw Graham, but his scent meant more than what my eyes told me. He smelled so warm, so good. I reached my good hand for him, because if I could touch him, I’d carry some of that good, warm smell with me.

My hand touched his chest and only when my hand touched bare skin did I realize he was nude. It was like the hierarchy of reporting from my senses was backward. Smell, touch, sight: primates didn’t reason that way, but canids did. Vaguely, I remembered seeing Graham’s smooth, muscled body, but he smelled safe and right. Clothes didn’t matter to safe and right. But my hand on the warm, bare hardness of his chest startled me, as if I hadn’t expected it. I wasn’t thinking straight.

I stiffened my arm, pushing against his chest, as he tried to get closer to me. Now that I was seeing him, and not just looking at him, I could see that he wasn’t unhappy to be nude in front of me. That pissed me off. I ached, my muscles burning, hurt in places that I shouldn’t even be able to feel, and he was excited about getting our nude bodies up close and personal. Damn him.

I found I still had a human voice. “No.” My voice was hoarse and abused, but it was still clear. “No.”

Claudia appeared near the head of the bed. “I told him to get undressed, Anita. You need as much skin-to-skin contact as you can get.”

I tried to shake my head, found it hurt, so just said, “No.”

She knelt beside the bed, pleading at me with her eyes. It was a look I’d never seen from her. “Anita, they’re all the wolves we have right now, please, don’t make this harder.”

I swallowed and it hurt, as if I’d damaged things in my throat that wouldn’t heal for a while. “No.”

Jean-Claude came to stand beside her kneeling figure. “Please, ma petite, do not be stubborn, not now.”

I frowned at him. What was I missing? What was I not understanding? Something. Something important, by the looks on their faces, but I just didn’t want Graham to put his naked, erect body up against my naked body. I did not want to have sex with him, and once we were naked and in bed the odds of that went up. Sure, I was hurt, and I’d supposedly fed the ardeur really well, but call me paranoid, I just didn’t want to risk it. But for my last shreds of moral dignity, Graham could have been in the running for daddy-to-be. That, more than anything else, kept my arm straight, and my lips saying no.

Claudia said, “You don’t understand, it’s not over.”

“What isn’t over?” I managed to say it, in that deep, not-me voice, and then I knew. The wolf had thought it was getting out, getting help, that the pack would help it escape, free it from this prison, but I’d kept the feel of other wolves at bay. I’d refused to let them slide wolf scent and skin over my body, so the wolf went back to trying to get out and join them.

My arm didn’t stay stiff, nothing on me did. I writhed on the bed like a bag of snakes, muscles and tendons moving in ways that should have ripped me apart. My skin should have split, and I almost wanted it to; I wanted the wolf to get out of me. To just stop hurting me. I’d thought the wolf was me; now I thought it was trying to kill me.

The smell of wolf was everywhere, thick and nose-wrinkling, sweet musk. My body lay still on the bed while tears leaked down my face, and I whimpered, not wolf sounds, but small, hurt, human ones. I thought I’d hurt before, but I’d been wrong. If you could force someone to feel this forever, they’d tell you anything, do anything, to make it stop.

I was lying between Graham and Clay. Their naked bodies were pressed as close as they could get, without putting any of their weight on top of me, as if they knew that that would hurt. They cradled me gently between them, their hands on my head, and on my good shoulder. They touched me as if I’d break, and it felt like they were right.

Graham’s eyes had bled back to brown. The look on his face was worried. What had they seen that I hadn’t? What was happening to me? Clay leaned over, pressed his lips against my cheek, and kissed me, gently. He whispered, “Change, Anita, just let it happen. It won’t hurt like this, if you just let it happen.”

He raised his face up, and I saw that he was crying.

I heard the soft click as the door opened. I wanted to turn and look, but it had hurt the last time I did it. It didn’t seem worth it. Besides, Graham’s chest was blocking my view in that direction.

“How dare you order me into your presence?” Richard’s voice, already angry.

“I tried to make it a request,” Jean-Claude said, “but you did not respond.”

“So you order me, like I’m your dog?”

“Ma petite needs your aid,” and Jean-Claude’s voice held that first hint of anger, as if he was as tired of Richard’s moods as I was.

“From what I can see,” Richard said, “it looks like Anita has plenty of help.”

Clay sat up enough to show a tear-stained face. “Help her, Ulfric. We are not strong enough.”

“If you want tips for satisfying her in bed, ask Micah; I’m really not that into sharing.”

“Are you Ulfric to her lupa, or not?” Micah came to stand at the foot of the bed, still nude, just like we’d woken up.

“That’s wolf business, kitty-cat, not yours.”

“Stop it,” Clay yelled, “stop being an asshole, Richard, and be our leader. Anita is hurt.”

Richard finally came to the edge of the bed to peer over Graham’s reclining body. His hair was sleep tousled, a thick brown-gold mass around his arrogantly handsome face. The arrogance slipped, and the guilt I’d begun to dread almost as much replaced it.

“Anita…” He made a painful sound of my name, so much pain in that one word. He crawled onto the bed, and showed that he was still wearing shorts. He’d either taken the time to dress, or slept clothed, very unlycanthrope. The other men made room for him, but they didn’t leave the bed. He started to crawl over me, but the first touch tore small pain noises from me. He went up on his hands and knees above me, keeping his weight off me, but my wolf was too close to the surface. Richard putting himself above us like that meant he thought he was superior to us and my wolf didn’t think he’d earned that. Neither did I.

I felt the wolf crouch to spring. Felt it gather itself as if it could spring from my body to Richard’s. I had a moment to realize that it could do just that. I’d felt Richard’s beast and one of mine fight once. It had hurt. I was already hurt. I did not want to do this.

“Move, Richard.” My voice was an abused whisper.

“It’s all right, Anita, I’m here.”

I put my good arm against his chest and pushed. “Move, now.”

“You’re in a dominant position over her,” Graham said, “I don’t think she likes it.”

Richard looked at him, while his body stayed over mine. “She’s not a wolf, Graham, she doesn’t think like that.”

A low growl trickled out of my throat. I didn’t mean for it to.

Richard turned his head slowly, the way you do in horror movies when you finally look behind you. He stared down at me, his hair like a thick frame around the soft astonishment of his eyes. “Anita…,” he said, but my name was a question this time, as if he wasn’t sure.

That soft, deep roll of growl vibrated across my lips again. I whispered in a voice deeper than any I’d ever had, “Move.”

“Please, Ulfric,” Clay said, “please move.”

Richard went back on his knees, still straddling me, but in a postion that a wolf couldn’t exactly duplicate. It should have been enough, but my wolf had found another way out, a hole that it could climb through. Always before when I’d shared my beast with other lycanthropes I’d only felt fur and bone, as if some great beast were walking around inside me, but this time I saw it. I saw the wolf as I’d seen it in the dream. 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. I stroked my hand across that fur, and it was…real.

I jerked so hard it hurt, made me cry out, but I could still feel the memory of fur under my good hand, as if I’d touched something solid.

“She smells real,” Graham said.

Richard had gone very still where he knelt over me. “Yes,” he said in a faraway voice, “she does.”

“Bring her wolf,” Clay said, voice soft. “Make her change, so she’ll stop hurting herself.”

“She’ll lose the baby,” Richard said, but he was staring down at me with a look on his face that I couldn’t read, or maybe didn’t want to.

“She’s going to lose the baby anyway,” Claudia said.

He looked down at me, and his eyes were lost. “I can see the wolf inside you, Anita, just behind my eyes, I can see it. We can smell it. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to bring your beast?” His voice sounded empty, as if he were already in mourning. He didn’t want to do it; that much was clear. But for once, we agreed.

“No,” I said, “don’t.”

He didn’t slump, but a tension went out of him. “You heard her. I won’t do it against her will.”

“Say that after you’ve seen the convulsions. I’ve never seen anyone fight like this, not for this long,” Claudia said. “Once someone’s this far along, they shouldn’t be able to fight the change. Even her eyes are still human.”

Richard gazed down at me, face solemn. “That’s our girl,” but he didn’t sound happy when he said it. 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.

But underneath those thoughts were others, though thoughts might be the wrong word. His beast was in there, his wolf, and it wanted me to change. It wanted me to be wolf, because then I would belong to it. Can’t be lupa and Nimir-Ra if you’re actually wolf for real.

The thought made me look across the bed, until I found Micah. I saw it in his eyes, the loss, as if he were already certain of it. No way. I would not lose him, not now. I turned to look around the room for my other leopard. Turned too fast, hurt the muscles in my left shoulder, muscles I’d torn. Nathaniel came to the side of the bed as if he understood that I was looking for him.

There were tears drying on his face, as if he’d cried, and hadn’t bothered to wipe them away. You could date outside your species, I knew that, but I remembered Richard saying once that dominants don’t. If you were high enough up in the power hierarchy, you didn’t date outside the pack. I was lupa; there was no higher-ranking female than me. I was Bolverk, which would have made me like an officer anyway. Either way you cut it, if the wolf I could touch came out for real, then I’d lose more than a surprise pregnancy.

I knew I had at least one more beast inside me. I held leopard, the way I held wolf. If I was finally going to go all the way furry, could I choose what kind of furry? Looking into Nathaniel’s face, watching Micah look away so I wouldn’t read his face, I knew I had to try.

I gazed up at Richard. I said it out loud: “You don’t want me to change, that’s why you won’t help.”

“You don’t want to be one of us, not for real.” His face was sliding back to that arrogant, angry mask.

“You’re right.”

His anger showed, almost a pleased anger, as if that one statement proved that I was no better than he was, no more comfortable in furry skin.

I looked at Micah and Nathaniel. Micah had moved so that he could hug Nathaniel. “Micah, Nathaniel, help me call leopard.”

Micah looked startled. “It’s not a choice, Anita. I can smell what you are.”

I started to shake my head, but whatever I’d done to my left shoulder made it hurt too much. “I hold four different strains. Why can’t I pick which way I go?”

Graham and Clay looked at Richard, as if wondering what he’d say. “I think you’re out of choices,” he said, “but if you want to try, I won’t stop you.” He was hurt, and his trying to hide it made it more painful to see. If I changed, he’d look elsewhere. I didn’t think he’d find someone willing to share him with what amounted to a permanent mistress, furry or not, but hey, it wasn’t my life. It was his life.

I could see the wolf in my head, like a waking dream, all subtle cream and white and black and gray. It looked at me with eyes that were an amber so dark they were almost brown. It was like looking into a piece of your soul and having it look back.

Richard slid off the bed. The wolf didn’t panic; it stood there in me, patient, waiting. Graham started to follow, sliding off. The wolf paced closer to the surface again, agitated. I grabbed his arm. “Stay.” He froze under my touch, half kneeling beside the bed.

Clay looked from me to Richard. “Stay until she says go,” Richard said, in a voice that managed to be closed, empty, and angry all at the same time.

“Micah, Nathaniel, help me raise our beast.” They didn’t argue or hesitate; they simply crawled up on the bed. They crawled toward me in that graceful way that the lycanthropes had, as if they had muscles that we mere mortals didn’t have, as if they could have balanced a cup on their backs.

Hurt as I was, watching them crawl toward me nude quickened my breathing, sped my pulse. It made the wolf start to pace in tight, agitated circles. I didn’t have a hand to touch Clay. “Clay, touch me.” He closed the small distance he’d made for Richard to straddle me. He pressed his body against the line of mine, but was careful not to touch my left shoulder. He was a quick study, and he seldom argued. It was sort of refreshing.

Micah touched my legs, but Nathaniel crawled around Clay, so he could be by my head. Micah asked, “What do you need us to do?”

I’d never tried to call one animal instead of another. We’d only learned about a month ago that I held three different kinds of lycanthropy. Wolf and leopard hadn’t been all that unexpected, but lion, that had caught me off guard. Such a delicate injury, so little blood, but sometimes a nick is enough with blood-borne diseases.

“I don’t know, yet.” I knew how to call someone else’s beast, if it matched mine. Richard had taught me the theory of that. I thought of leopard. I simply thought of it, and I felt it stir inside me. It was always the oddest sensation, as if there were some deep cave inside me, and the beast lived there until called. Now it uncurled itself, stretched, and began to rise. My body was like a dark liquid that the beast rose inside of; that was all pretty typical of being a lycanthrope. The problem was that my body lacked the switch to actually shift, and once the beast got to the surface of my body, there was no place to go. Or there hadn’t been, up until now.

But somewhere during the rising liquid feel of fur curving against places that nothing should have touched, I realized that there were two shapes rising for the surface. I’d tried to call leopard, but I was about to get double for my money.

The wolf bristled, his ruff standing up, his body stiffening. I felt his fear. He knew he was about to be outnumbered, and inside my body there was no pack to call. The wolf stood his ground, making himself look as large and fierce as he could, then the cats hit the surface of my body, and the wolf fled. I could feel him running, running back the way he had come. Like he was heading home. It was the first time I realized that my body wasn’t just a prison, but also a den, a place of safety.

The cats hit the surface together, and the force of it bowed my spine, threw my body upward, as if some great force had hit me from behind. I fell back to the bed, screaming with the pain of my abused body taking yet another hit tonight. I needed this to stop. We needed it to stop.

I saw the cats. The leopard looked small beside the lion. Small, sleek, and gleaming black. It had backed away from the larger cat. I didn’t blame it. The lioness was huge, a great, tawny beast of a cat. Maybe it would have looked smaller if I hadn’t been looking at wolf, and now leopard. The lion was staring at the leopard in a way that was patient, waiting for the leopard to decide what to do next. The lion had the confidence of several hundred pounds of extra muscle on its side.

I let go of Graham and used my good hand to reach for Nathaniel. He bent over my face so that when I touched him, his face was nearly above mine. I buried my face against the sweet warmth of his neck. He always smelled like vanilla to me, but underneath that was the scent of leopard. Sharper than the musk of wolf, less sweet, more exotic for lack of a better word. The leopard stopped being defensive, and looked up with eyes that were soft and gray, with just a hint of green in them. I didn’t call Here kitty-kitty, but I called it all the same.

The leopard rose up through me, and hit the surface of my body. It filled me like a hand sliding inside a glove, so that I felt it stretch out and out, filling me. I waited for that fullness to finally split my skin and step out, but nothing happened. I could feel fur rubbing against my skin on the wrong side; I could feel it in there. I gazed down my body, and watched things roll under the skin of my stomach like the cat was rubbing against me. The sensation left me nauseous, but that was all. It wasn’t as violent as the wolf had been, but I still wasn’t shifting.

Graham and Clay slid off the bed so that Micah could move up beside me. “It’s there, but it’s not coming out—why?”

Nathaniel slid down so that the two men framed my body with their own. “I don’t know,” Micah said.

“Give your beast to me,” Nathaniel said.

I looked up at him, and thought at the furred thing inside me. It was patient because I wasn’t afraid of it. I’d embraced it, welcomed it. Now it slid inside me, waiting for release. A release that I couldn’t give it.

“I’ve taken your beast once before,” he said.

“I remember.” I turned my head, just enough to see Micah’s face. I looked a question at him.

“Give your leopard to him, Anita.”

Nathaniel pressed his body closer to my side, so I could feel him pressed soft against my hip. He leaned over me, propping himself across my body with one arm, so he laid no weight on my upper body. He leaned in for a kiss, and I felt the leopard roll toward him like something half liquid and half solid fur. His mouth found mine, and we kissed. The last time I’d given him my beast had been almost as violent as tonight, but I’d been fighting; now I simply gave it to him, and Nathaniel didn’t fight. He kissed me hard and deep, as if he were trying to taste that furred shape, and the next moment that shape spilled up through my mouth. I felt it as never before, as if truly it slipped up and out through my mouth. I had a moment of choking, and then it was in him. My leopard smashed into his body, smashed into his beast. The force of it pushed his body off the bed, like a blow, but he fought to keep on kissing me. Fought to kiss me as thick, heavy liquid ran over my body from his. So warm, hot, as if he were bleeding to death. I opened my eyes enough to see that the liquid was clear, but had to close my eyes to keep it from getting in them. His hands were on my face, trapping us in the kiss. But I wanted the kiss, I wanted this. I wanted, needed the release, and my body couldn’t give it.

I wrapped my good arm across his back so I could feel his skin split, and the fur flow out like solid water, hot velvet under my hand. His mouth reformed against mine, so that the kiss had to change, because the mouth he had now couldn’t kiss like his human body. Not enough lip. I licked my tongue along teeth sharp enough to eat me for real. He drew back, and I was left to wipe the heavy liquid off my face, so I could see him. The face was leopard, and human, a strangely graceful mix. Leopardman worked better than wolfman, maybe because the cat had a shorter muzzle naturally.

I raised both my arms toward him, and realized that the left arm was working now. I hadn’t shifted, but something about giving him my beast had given me some of the benefits of healing that shifting would have done. Interesting.

I hugged him, and found his fur dry, though my body was covered in the clear goo that shifters “bled” when they changed. I never understood how their fur came through dry, but it always did.

I ran my hands over the unbelievable softness of his fur, felt the muscled strength of him, and felt that his body wasn’t at all unhappy to be pressed against mine. We’d made love once before when he was in this form, and at that moment it didn’t sound like an entirely bad idea, but there was someone else inside me, waiting.

The lion roared where it was still standing, patient. It let me know that it—she—was still there.

“Shit,” I whispered.

Nathaniel snuffled next to my face. “Lion.”

Micah rolled off the bed. “We need a werelion, fast, before it decides to try to tear its way out.”

“We have no lions,” Jean-Claude said.

I thought about it. I thought, I need a lion. I thought about the golden fur, the dark, orange-amber eyes. I put the call out, not for my lion, but for a lion. I felt an answer, like a distant voice. I felt two answering tugs, almost as if I held two leashes. One was reluctant, the other was eager.

“They’re coming, or at least he is,” I whispered.

“Who’s coming?” Nathaniel said in that growling voice.

“Cookie,” I said, because for the life of me I couldn’t think of his real name. All I could think of was what I’d nicknamed him in my head because of his Cookie Monster–blue hair.

We heard raised voices before anyone knocked at the door. Men’s voices, arguing just outside the door. Lisandro went to the door after Claudia nodded. He opened the door to reveal Cookie with his blue spiked hair, and the brunette werelion. Cutting—no, Pierce. His name was Pierce. Cookie was smiling as he came through the door, wearing nothing but jeans, with a gun stuck inside the waistband. As if the reason for the pants wasn’t modesty, but a place to put the gun. Pierce glowered as he came through the door. He was completely dressed, though his shirt was buttoned crookedly, and his jacket tucked badly on one side to flash the shoulder holster. The gun looked like a Beretta. Not my choice for concealed carry, but then I have small hands.

I wasn’t surprised to see them. I’d called them. I was surprised to see Octavius, Augustine’s human servant, at their heels. He was dressed as impeccably as he’d been earlier except that he had no tie, and his cuffs were loose in the sleeves of his elegant suit jacket. If the cuffs hadn’t been loose, he wouldn’t even have looked like he’d rushed.

“This is outrageous,” he said. “First you insult and humiliate my master, then you try to steal his lions. Did you think that since Augustine is asleep for the day you could simply take them?” He got a good look at me on the bed. He stopped, I think, because some of the people in the room had moved so he could see me on the bed. Me and Nathaniel. I don’t know what he thought we’d been doing, but I suddenly saw it through an outsider’s eyes. Me, nude on the bed covered in clear, sticky liquid. Nathaniel nude and excited in leopardman form cuddled in my arms. Other men in the room already nude. What would I have thought if I’d walked in on all this? Probably the same thing Octavius was thinking.

The look on Cookie’s face showed that he was thinking the same thing, but he was happy about it. He started toward the bed, but Pierce grabbed his arm, held him. Cookie growled at him, and that one trickle of sound made the lion inside me tense.

“Don’t let her mind-fuck you,” Pierce said.

“You heard her call, too,” Cookie said. “You couldn’t say no, either.”

“But I don’t want to go to her. I don’t want her to use me.” He turned the other man so he was facing away from the bed. Cookie had a tattoo of Cookie Monster, as in Sesame Street, on his right shoulder. A happy little Cookie Monster eating cookies. So the hair color wasn’t an accident.

“I want her to use me.”

“Fight it,” Pierce said.

“I don’t want to fight it,” Cookie said.

“If our master were awake, you would not dare do this,” Octavius said. He walked around them both, walked closer to the bed. Claudia and Lisandro stepped between him and the bed. But it was when he saw Jean-Claude stepping out from the wall that his face fell apart. Fear, fear and confusion, chased over his face. He was totally shocked to see Jean-Claude there. He fought, and finally mastered his face. But the first look was enough, the first look and his remark that Augustine was asleep. For the first time I figured it out. It wasn’t that we’d slept the day away and Claudia and the rest were back on duty. It was that we’d barely been asleep at all, and Jean-Claude had not died at dawn. He, like Damian, did not die at dawn if he slept touching me.

Octavius gave arrogance, but shelved the anger, as if he didn’t want to start the fight. He bowed. “Jean-Claude, I did not think you would be up. I did not see you standing there. I do have better manners than this; my anger made me forget myself. Please, forgive me.” His words were clear, but he said them a little too fast. I think it was his version of babbling nervously.

“There is nothing to forgive, Octavius—if you do not hinder us, that is.”

Octavius faced him, and nothing could keep the discomfort out of the set of his shoulders. “Hinder you in what way?”

Jean-Claude stood before the man, still nude, but as comfortable as any of the shapeshifters. He wore his body as if it were the most costly robe in the world, or as if he were not aware he was naked. “Augustine said that these two werelions are supposed to be pomme de sang candidates for ma petite.”

Octavius gave a small nod. “That is true.”

“We may have been too hasty with our rejection of them earlier. I believe that there were errors of etiquette on both sides, would you not say that was true?”

“Perhaps, perhaps we were all a little hasty earlier,” Octavius admitted, his voice showing that he wasn’t sure where this was going, and was trying to be cautious without being insulting. I think if Jean-Claude hadn’t been standing there, and his own master dead to the world, he’d have been less cautious and more angry. Hell, if it had just been me and the shapeshifters, I think he’d just have told us to go fuck ourselves, or some polite version of that.

“Ma petite would taste one of your lions now. I think in light of all that has happened it might be well to cement a stronger tie with your master. We are, after all, two of the most powerful masters in this country, and between us we are certainly the most powerful territories in the middle of this country.” I followed the phrasing. It implied, but did not say, that between the two of them they could rule the middle of this country, and wouldn’t it be better to be allies than enemies? Or maybe I was actually picking up a little of Jean-Claude’s thoughts, just a touch. He had no intention of doing some sort of war of conquest, but to imply it gave us both the leverage of fear and greed. Fear of being our enemy, and greed to take part in the spoils if we did decide to conquer. Jean-Claude played him.

Octavius licked his lips, then stood a little straighter as if he’d realized he was slumping. “Perhaps. I know that Augustine’s intent was to offer the lions as pommes de sang. Or as barter for one of your females.”

“I do not barter my people. I believe ma petite made that clear to your master.”

Octavius nodded. “Yes, very clear.” Anger threaded through his voice, and he fought it off, so that his next words were empty and unoffensive. “I think it would please my master if you found his pomme de sang candidates worthy of attention.”

Jean-Claude looked at me then. His face was empty, lovely, but it was his voice in my head, soft, the merest brush of contact, that told me what he wanted. “Call them.”

I held my hand out to them, and said, “Come to me.”

Cookie turned immediately, only Pierce’s hand on his arm stopping him. “Don’t make me fight you, Pierce.”

“If he is not strong enough to resist,” Octavius said, “release him to his fate.”

Cookie looked at Octavius. “You don’t understand; I don’t want to resist her. I want her to take me.”

Pierce tried to turn Cookie back to him. “Don’t you see, that’s wrong. She’s already rolled you, man. She’s already done you, and you don’t even know it.”

“Maybe, but if that’s what’s happening, I’m okay with it.” The edge of smile I had seen vanished, and his voice was low and serious when he said, “Take your hands off me, Pierce. I won’t ask again.”

“Let him go,” Octavius said. “That is an order, Pierce.”

Pierce gave him an angry look, but he let the other man go. He even raised his hands in the air, as if it wasn’t his fault.

There was a small part of me that wanted to see if I could force Pierce to come too, but Cookie was coming. One lion was enough, for now.

23

CLAUDIA STOPPED HIM, standing in his way, towering over him. It was probably the first time he’d met a woman tall enough and muscular enough to do that. Just seeing his reaction to it would say a lot about him.

“Call your rat off, Blake,” Cookie said.

“Give up the gun and I move,” she said.

“I was more armed than this when she touched me earlier.”

“Then you were bodyguarding your master, now you’re about to get up close and personal with one of mine.” Her voice was low and matter-of-fact. I thought it was interesting that she implied I was one of her masters. News to me.

I could see one shoulder enough to know he shrugged, then he must have handed the gun over, because Claudia moved aside.

He padded toward the bed on bare feet, the first button of his jeans already undone. Had it been before, or had he caught the gun on it as he pulled? The last would be careless. Was he careless?

I was way too calm. I watched him come toward the bed with a detachment that surprised me. It was like a type of shock, almost, or…the lion was utterly dispassionate about the man walking toward us. In some ways animals are more reactive than we are; people mistake that for emotion, but it’s not. There was no emotion from the cat in my head. She waited. Waited with a sort of cold, wary patience, as if she could have watched him forever, and felt nothing. It was his choice whether we got along, or chased him away. If he did something stupid, or weak, she wouldn’t accept him. She’d kill him before she’d accept him, but there was no passion to the decision. It was colder than any thought I’d ever had, except when I’d decided to kill. Then there is a moment of cold clarity, a moment of something that is almost peaceful. My moment of peaceful sociopathy was stretched to an eternity in the head of that big cat.

Nathaniel moved, and that made me turn to him, but the lion in my head roared at me, swiped a claw across the inside of my body. She let me know that she needed my eyes and had no interest in leopard. The pain of her claws spasmed through me. I was partially healed from what I’d done with Nathaniel, but that one swipe showed me that I was still hurt. Hurt in places that there’d be no way to bandage. Part of me wanted to fight her, and turn to Nathaniel, but I knew if I did, she’d do worse. I fought my own stubbornness for a moment, eyes closed, concentrating. Trying to decide if I’d grown up enough to let this small loss go, or if I had to win at every damn thing. If I let the lion think it could boss me around, would that set a bad precedent for later? Then a thought came to me; the lion was me. I was fighting with myself. How terribly Freudian, or would it be Jungian? Either way, how strangely me.

The thought was so me, that it opened my eyes. Cookie was standing beside the bed. His hands were at his sides. The look on his face was eager, but wary, as if he’d finally figured out that something might be wrong. His blue hair was flattened on top as if he’d been asleep when I’d called him. His eyes were very blue as he stared down at me. I could see the tattoo on his left shoulder now: the faces of Bert and Ernie. I sensed a theme.

“Any more tattoos?”

He grinned. “Yeah, want to see?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You called me,” he said, and his voice was softer, as if he wasn’t sure what was happening, and was finally not sure he was happy to be here. Cautious, at last. It pleased the cat in my head. Pleased me, too, I guess.

Micah said, “She needs to give you her beast.”

Cookie turned to him, frowning. “I don’t understand.” His nostrils flared, as he scented the air. “She smells like lion, but she smelled like leopard earlier. She smelled like wolf, too.” He shook his head, as if clearing his mind from the scent. He looked down at me, frowning, speaking softly. “What are you?”

The truth would have been, I wasn’t sure, but some of the people in this room weren’t our friends. Octavius would be our enemy if he could. I was about to try for half-truth, when Jean-Claude stepped up beside the bed and spoke. “Ma petite seems to have the ability to acquire the animals of the vampires she comes in close contact with. I knew she gained wolf through me, as some servants do. She gained leopard through contact with another. It may be her closeness with your own master that has brought lion to her.” Not a lie, but it certainly wasn’t the whole truth. But hey, I had no better suggestions.

“That would make her very dangerous,” Octavius said from near the door. He and Pierce were still close to the door as if for a quick getaway.

“It would make her powerful, yes,” Jean-Claude said.

“Dangerous,” Octavius said. “Do the other masters know that they risk seduction and the loss of their animals to you, Jean-Claude, or are we your first victims?”

Jean-Claude sighed, and the sound echoed through the room, and slid over my skin. The lioness paced, growled low and deep, and the sound slid from my lips. “Don’t,” I said.

“My apologies, ma petite,” he said. He turned to Octavius. “Truth then between us, Octavius, before you think even worse of us. I know you of old; you will spread these rumors. So I give you truth, and I will know if you tell, because no one in this room will tell but you.”

“I do not gossip.”

“You have always gossiped.” He motioned to me. “Anita holds different types of lycanthropy inside her.”

“That is not possible.”

“Nor is it possible for her to have a vampire servant, or an animal to call that is not mine, but those are true things.”

“We had heard, but we thought the servant was rumor.”

Jean-Claude shook his head. “Augustine is powerful enough to see truth. When he sees her with Damian, he would know the truth anyway. I tell you only a night early, oh, a day early.” He said it as if he had just remembered that he was up at dawn. He had so not forgotten. “I swear to you that human doctors have drawn her blood and tested it. She carries more than one strain of lycanthropy, and yet has not shifted to any. She holds the animal but seems unable to turn. They have tried to tear their way out tonight, and still she cannot shift.”

Micah added, “She’s stuck at that point where the beast is trying to get out, and you don’t know how to let it out.”

“Ouch,” Cookie said. He looked down at me, smiling. “You’ve had a hard morning.”

“You have no idea,” I said.

“Yes he does,” Nathaniel growled from beside me.

The two shapeshifters looked at each other. It was a long look. “Yeah, I remember the first time, we all do.”

“She fought, fought it to a standstill.”

He looked at me, eyes narrowing. “You can’t do that, no one can.”

“Never underestimate how stubborn Anita can be,” Richard said from across the room. “You’ll regret it, if you do.”

I looked at him. He’d taken one of the chairs near the fireplace, as far from the bed as he could get without leaving the room. He was mostly in shadow, so that I couldn’t see his face well. But then again, maybe I didn’t want to see his face right then.

“Don’t mistake force of will for stubbornness,” Micah said. “There is a difference.”

“It looks the same to me,” Richard said.

“It would,” Micah said.

A low growl trickled from Richard, and it echoed through the room, much the way Jean-Claude’s sigh had. The sound made me shiver but not with the promise of sex; it flared across my skin like heat, and the lion reacted to it. She spilled into my skin like the leopard had done, like the wolf had done. I was suddenly writhing on the bed, screaming again. I did not want to hurt again. But if I didn’t want to be wolf, I sure as hell didn’t want to be lion. I didn’t even know the lion pride here well. Shit. If sheer force of will was keeping me in human skin, my will was getting worn down. Eventually, I’d lose this fight. I didn’t want it to be now.

I reached out for Cookie. He grabbed my hand, almost by reflex. I dragged him down to me, and he didn’t fight me. He could have, but he came to me. He laid his body on top of mine while the lion tried to come out. She stretched, stretched, impossibly huge, trying to thrust claws out through my fingers and toes. She couldn’t come out, but those metaphysical claws cut through my skin. I screamed. I raised my hands up to hold him to me, and there was blood flowing down my fingers. Sweet Jesus, help me.

From far away I heard Cookie say, “What do I do?”

“Kiss her,” someone said.

He kissed me. The moment his mouth touched mine, I let the lion go. I let it plow into him. With Nathaniel I’d tried to be a little controlled, but I was all out of control today.

It hurt for it to leave me, like someone had thrust a shovel down my throat and was digging out my internal organs in one ripping, burning line. I screamed into his mouth, and he screamed back. He kept his mouth on mine, even while his body began to writhe in pain. His hands dug into the bed on either side of me, holding on, holding on, while that line of tearing, ripping, burning power ripped him open. There was no moment of bones sliding, or reshaping. One minute he was human, the next his skin had exploded outward, raining on the room in thick wet globs. The body under my hands was dry and furred, and the cheek I touched had a fringe of thick, golden mane. I had to wipe thick goo out of my eyes to be able to see. I wiped off bits of him that were thicker than clear liquid. The power had literally blown him apart. I had a moment to wonder if his tattoos would survive; then I could see his face.

His eyes were golden, in a face that was a pale gold, with a mane around his head like a furry halo. The face was that strangely graceful mix of human and cat. His shoulders were broader than the leopards’, everything more muscular. His suddenly nude body was pressed between my legs, but not happy to be there. I had a glimpse of his tail flicking behind him, then he collapsed, partially on me and partially beside me.

Where his weight hit, my body hurt. I made a small sound, and he rolled off me and lay there on the liquid-soaked sheets. He looked like some primitive golden god hunted to death. I lay where I was, covered in something I didn’t even want to see. It felt too thick, too…just too. I tried not to look at it, or think about it. I lay there covered in bits of his body, and knew I’d hurt him, badly.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice was an abused whisper.

He rolled golden eyes up to look at me. “That fucking hurt.”

Micah came to the edge of the bed. He took one of my hands in his, and looked at my fingers. “You were bleeding from under your nails. If he hadn’t taken your beast when he did,” he shrugged, “it might have been too late.”

That scared me. It tightened my stomach, and even that hurt, as if I’d abused muscles that I didn’t know I had.

“Thank you, Cookie, more than you’ll know.”

The lionman said, “Did you just call me Cookie?”

“Sorry, it’s the hair, Cookie Monster blue, and the tat.”

“Haven. My name’s Haven.” I think he smiled, but it was hard to tell on the lionish face, from the angle I had. “Though Cookie Monster works just fine.”

“I said Cookie, not Monster.”

“You haven’t seen me at my best, yet” he said, and smiled for sure.

I did not understand the comment. Micah did. “He’s implying he’s big.”

“Oh,” I said, then had to smile up at Micah. “He shouldn’t brag until he’s seen the competition.”

The lionman rolled his face to look at Micah. He wasn’t looking at his face. Micah said, “You aren’t seeing me at my best either.”

Even through the lion’s face I could see the arrogance as he looked up at me, not at Micah. “Trust me, I’ll measure up. Auggie was shopping for size, not just talent.”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to say Oh, really, Oh, goody, or Oh, boy. Under normal circumstances his assumption that he was going to get to fuck me would have pissed me off. But one, I didn’t have energy left to get pissy; two, he’d saved me. Saved us. Micah, Nathaniel, and me. I could ask for our local pride to give me some lions to follow me around, but this morning, right this moment, Haven had been the only rescue I had. I owed him. Also I’d ripped his body apart, and caused him massive amounts of pain. Oops didn’t really cover that one.

“When you can walk,” Nathaniel said, “I’ll take you to the feeding area.” Nathaniel’s fur glistened under the lights, wetter from being so close to Haven’s violent shift than from his own. He slipped off the end of the bed and padded around to join Micah, who was still holding my hand.

Micah pressed my hand to his face, and it left a wet glistening stain on his cheek. I was so going to need another bath.

“I can walk.” Haven slipped off the side of the bed, and went straight to his knees. “Shit.”

Nathaniel reached down to help him stand.

Haven asked, “Did you take her beast, too?”

“Yes.”

“It didn’t hit you this hard, did it?”

“No.” Nathaniel didn’t bother to explain that it hadn’t been as violent, and no one else did either. I wasn’t sure we were keeping Haven, but if we were then Nathaniel would need to establish some sort of dominance with the other man. That Nathaniel could take that much pain and keep on ticking would help.

Haven leaned against the bed, Nathaniel still holding his arm. Those golden lion eyes looked at me. “Don’t take this personally or anything, but the fringe benefits better be fucking amazing.”

“They are,” Nathaniel said.

“Depends on what fringe benefits you’re talking about,” I said.

“Sex,” he said, straightening up slowly, obviously still in pain. “You’re Belle Morte’s line, there is no other fringe benefit for you guys.”

I couldn’t argue with the last part, but I could with the first. “Don’t assume you’re getting sex, Haven.”

He gave me a look. “All this and you don’t think I’ve proved myself enough for sex? Damn, girl, what does a man have to do to meet your standards?”

“When you figure it out, let me know.” This from Richard. He stopped near the bed, and looked at me. “You could have been my lupa for real, but you didn’t want to be. You chose him, them, over me.”

“If I’d been lupa for real, you wouldn’t have wanted me. I saw it in your head.”

He shook his head. “You could have been my lupa at the lupanar, with the pack.”

“But I would have lost the baby.”

He wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“You can’t stand the thought that this isn’t your baby.”

“No, I can’t.”

“I’m already your lupa,” I said, “I’m already Bolverk. Nothing would have changed for you and me if I’d become wolf for real. My being wolf would have meant you looked harder for that human Ms. Right.”

He stared down at me. “You won’t even let me have the illusion of it, will you?”

I tried to sit up, and Micah had to help me. So stiff, so sore. “What illusion, Richard?”

“That we could be together as a couple, at least with the wolves.”

“And what happens to my life when the moon isn’t full?”

“Would it be so bad to be with me for real, without the others?”

I looked up into his face, and maybe I was tired, physically, mentally, emotionally. After everything I’d been through tonight, and this morning, all he could think of was himself, his problems, his pain. “Is everything about your pain, Richard, is that all you think about?”

“Answer me, Anita, answer me. Would it be so bad to have been with me for real? Just the two of us, would that be so bad?”

I tried one more time not to answer. “You don’t want me to answer that question, Richard.” I leaned in against Micah, let him hold me.

“Mon ami,” Jean-Claude said, “let it go.”

He shook his head again. “No, not this time. I had this idea that if he”—and he pointed at Jean-Claude—“hadn’t interfered we’d be a couple, we’d have been happy. But I see you with him”—he pointed at Micah—“and him”—he pointed at Nathaniel—“and I have to know. Tell me the truth, Anita. Tell me the truth. I won’t break the triumvirate. I won’t run away. But tell me the truth, so I know where I stand. I need to know how hard I need to look for Ms. Right. Tell me the truth, and maybe I can move on. I know I can’t stand watching you take another lover. That, I know I can’t stand.” He sat down on the messy edge of the bed. He gave me a solemn face. “If you’d become wolf for real, and had to live with me, give up Micah and Nathaniel, would that have been so bad?”

My throat hurt, but it wasn’t from what the beasts had done. My throat was thick and tight; my eyes burned. Why did Richard always make me want to cry? “Don’t make me do this,” I whispered.

“Just say it, Anita, just say it.”

I had to swallow twice, and the tears spilled over as I said, “Yes, it would have been bad.”

“Why? Why would the two of us living together, raising our child be so bad? If it is mine I want a place in his life.”

That was it, he’d brought the baby up, and suddenly in all the tears was the anger, never far behind for me. “You don’t see me, Richard. You see this ideal of me, but it’s not me. I don’t think it was ever me.”

“What does that mean, I don’t see you? I see you, you’re right there.”

“What do you see, Richard, tell me?”

“I see you.”

“I’m naked on a bed being held by a naked man, with two other naked men in the room who are also my lovers. You’ve just said you can’t stand to watch me take another lover, when you know I’m supposed to be looking for a new pomme de sang to feed the ardeur.”

“I thought you weren’t really going to look, just pretend.”

That should not have been said in front of our company. “I’m not sure I have a choice right now, Richard.”

“The next time the wolf comes, just don’t fight it, and you can be my lupa. We can be together, because you won’t be able to be with anyone else.”

That was it; I told him the truth. “I don’t want to be just with you, Richard. I don’t want to lose Micah and Nathaniel, or Jean-Claude.”

“So, if I said, choose, I’d lose.”

I thought, you’ve already lost me. Out loud, I said, “I can’t be with just one person, Richard, you know that.”

“Even if the ardeur cools, you’re never going to choose just one of us, are you?”

We stared at each other, and the weight of his gaze was so heavy, so heavy. In his own way, he was just as stubborn as I was, and this was one of those moments when it was about to destroy us. “No, Richard, I don’t think I am.”

He took in a lot of air, and let it out slow. He nodded, as if to himself, stood, and said, without looking at me, “That’s what I needed to hear. Not this weekend, we’ll be busy, but next weekend I’ll still want you to go to church with me, if you want to.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said, “Okay.”

“Family dinner afterward, like always,” he said as he headed for the door. He hesitated at the door, turned with his hand touching it. “I will find someone who wants the life I want.”

“I hope you do,” I whispered.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” I said, and meant it.

“I hate you, Anita,” he said, with almost no change in his voice.

“I hate you, too, Richard,” I said, and I meant it.

24

ANOTHER MESS, ANOTHER bath. Thanks to the violence of Haven’s change I wasn’t the only one with gobs of him in my hair, and other places. If a forensics team had come on the scene; God knows what they would have made of it. Jean-Claude and Micah got in the tub with me. Nathaniel had taken Haven to the feeding area, where they kept livestock, or I assumed it was livestock. Truthfully, I’d never seen the “feeding,” but Nathaniel and Jason had both told me that it was legal food, and that meant animals. Though I loved several shapeshifters, I did not want to see them eat. Some visuals I did not need.

Octavius and Pierce had tried to go back to their rooms, but Claudia had stopped them. She’d asked where the guards on their door were. Pierce said, “They tried to stop Haven and me from leaving the room.”

“That was their job,” Claudia said.

“Then they aren’t that good at their job,” he said.

“Did you kill them?”

He looked down at the floor, then back up. “They were breathing when we left them.”

That had prompted her to send Lisandro and Clay to check. She’d kept Graham with her, and made Octavius and Pierce wait for the news. Both of the wererats were alive, but hurt. Badly hurt.

Thanks to the problems we’d had with the masters of both Cape Cod and Chicago, we had extra guards. They had actually put guards on the coffin room, which was fortunate; Meng Die had cracked her coffin when she got the power rush that all of Jean-Claude’s people got from our sex with Augustine. Meng Die, more powerful, not a good thought.

Now the extra guards came in handy. Claudia put four guards on Octavius and Pierce. She sent Lisandro to supervise them, with orders to check in with Fredo, who turned out to be in charge of the coffin room detail. Claudia stayed with us, and kept Clay with her. The two of them were outside in the bedroom now, while we cleaned up. Claudia and Clay were messy, too, but would wait to clean up.

Jean-Claude drew me through the warm water, until my body rested against his. I laid my head back against his shoulder and said, “Didn’t we just do this?”

“Not precisely, ma petite,” he whispered against my wet hair.

Micah moved through the water until he knelt beside us. His hair was plastered to his head, looking straight and black. His chartreuse eyes were startling in his tanned face without the hair to distract from them. He moved in close enough that a strand of his hair touched mine, and the illusion of blackness faded, because even wet his hair was not as dark as mine, or Jean-Claude’s. Impossibly rich, dark brown, but not black.

I whispered against Micah’s cheek, “No, not precisely.”

Micah kissed me, then leaned back enough to see us clearly. “Now that we’re clean, why couldn’t we wake you and Jean-Claude?”

“I thought Jean-Claude was awake the whole time,” I said.

“Not at first; at first he was as out of it as you were.”

“How did you know he wasn’t just dead to the world like normal?”

“He was breathing.”

I felt Jean-Claude stir against me, as if that fact had startled him. “Breathing. How…interesting.” His voice was very careful.

“Shouldn’t you have been breathing?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

I turned around in his arms until I could study his face. That face showed me nothing. It was as beautiful and unreadable as a painting, as if instead of a face with movement and breath, it were just a moment caught in time, a single lovely expression. He was at his most careful, hiding, when he was like that.

“Why is your breathing more surprising than your not dying at dawn?” I asked.

“I also dreamed,” he said.

I frowned at him. “You were asleep. You dream when you’re asleep.”

“I have not dreamed in almost six hundred years.”

“What did you dream?” Micah asked.

“A very practicial question, mon chat.”

I looked from one to the other of them. “Am I missing something?”

Jean-Claude looked at me. “What did you dream, ma petite? Who did you dream of?” His voice never changed from that friendly lilt.

“You ask like you already know,” I said.

“You must say it, ma petite.”

“The Mother of All Darkness,” I said, softly, and just saying it seemed to make the room not quite bright enough.

“Marmee Noir,” he said, nodding.

“Yes,” I said. I tried to read past that pleasant exterior, and failed. “You dreamed of her, too?”

“Oui.”

“You both dreamed of the head of the vampire council?”

“She is much more than that,” Jean-Claude said. “She is the creator of our civilization. Our laws are her laws. Some say she was the first vampire, and that she truly is the mother of us all.”

I cuddled in closer to him, and he tucked me under his arm, so I could wrap my arms around his waist. Somehow, close wasn’t close enough when talking about the Mother of All Darkness.

“What did you dream, exactly?” Micah asked.

“She tried to play human for me, but, God, she was bad at it.”

“I saw her bend over you, ma petite. I saw her begin to take you away from me. But I could not reach you, the darkness held me as her figure bent over you.” He shuddered, and held me tight against his body. “I could not reach you, and her voice taunted me for my carelessness.” He kissed the top of my head. “But she also told me that if I had given you the fourth mark, that she would have killed you, for if she could not control you, then she would destroy you.”

Micah came to us, tucked himself against me, pressing Jean-Claude’s arm between us, his own arm going across Jean-Claude’s shoulders. Micah was on his knees beside me, because their heads came together over mine, and Micah wasn’t tall enough for that without some help. “But you woke before Anita,” Micah said. “Why?”

“I thought if I could break my dream, it would free ma petite. It did not, but I was able to break Marmee’s hold on my mind. That, in itself, is a surprising thing.”

“Surprising doesn’t begin to cover it,” I said. “How did you break free?”

“How did you?” he asked.

“I called the only animal I have that isn’t a cat. She only does cats. I saw her in that room, where her real body is. I saw her body jerk. My wolf bit her, for real, I think.”

The two men held me tighter, pressing me between them, as if something about what I’d said scared them. I guess it was scary, but…“Am I missing something here, guys? You’re suddenly both even more afraid.”

“The ability to send a spirit animal through dream and harm another is rare among us.”

“Among vampires, you mean,” I said.

“Oui.”

“Us, too,” Micah said, “but…” Then he stopped abruptly.

“But what?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I pulled away from them both, so I could see his face. Jean-Claude, if he wanted to, could hide anything behind his face, but Micah wasn’t that good. If I looked hard enough, I might get a hint.

He lowered his eyes, as if he knew what I was doing.

I touched his face, turned him to look at me. “What, Micah, what is it?”

“Chimera could invade your dreams.”

“Could he hurt someone that way?”

“No”—then he seemed to think about it—“not when he took over my original pard, he couldn’t. He had grown in power in the years I was with him, so maybe? Ask some of the dominants he took, who survived. Ask them if he could hurt them in their dreams.”

“It is very rare for a lycanthrope to be able to invade dreams like a vampire,” Jean-Claude said.

“Chimera was a rare kind of guy,” I said, and just thinking about him scared me. He was dead, I’d killed him, but he had been one of the scarier things I’d ever fought.

Micah looked at me, and his face held such pain, as if whatever he was thinking was something so awful.

“What?” I asked.

“We learned last month that you carry lion lycanthropy. That had to come from your fight with Chimera.”

I nodded. “He was in lionman form when he cut me up, yeah.”

Micah licked his lips, as if there were any possibility in the hot, misty tub that his lips were dry. “What if you gained more from him than just lion lycanthropy?”

I frowned at him. “I’m not following.”

“He means, ma petite, what if you gained not simply lycanthropy, but the kind of lycanthropy that Chimera held? He was not a werelion, he was a panwere. He held over a half-dozen types of lycanthropy, did he not?”

Micah nodded. “Leopard, lion, wolf, hyena, anaconda, bear, and then he took the cobra’s leader. I think if he’d lived until next full moon, he would have been cobra, too.”

“Chimera thought that once he hit his first full moon, the animals he had were all he got.”

“I don’t think that was true,” Micah said.

“Are you sure it wasn’t true?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, but it would explain what’s happening to you.”

“What do you mean, what’s happening to me?”

“Anita, you almost shifted tonight. Blood came out from under your nails. It was close.”

“We’re not sure I’m a panwere.”

“No, but if you are, then you won’t lose the leopards when you shift.”

I shook my head. “I’ll pick leopard, if I have to pick, thanks, just in case.”

“I agree,” he said, “but if you are a panwere, and you’re close to shifting…” He stopped talking, then looked down.

“You are thinking what I am thinking, mon chat, and you know she will not like it,” Jean-Claude said.

“What?” I asked.

Jean-Claude answered, “If you are to be a panwere, and there is a chance that you will gain new animals until your first change of shape, then we have the opportunity to gain great power.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you are going to shift, then wouldn’t it make sense to add more types of lycanthropy?” Micah said.

“Make sense, no,” I said, “no, it wouldn’t make sense.”

“Why not, ma petite? You called the lions, and they came to your call. You call the leopards and they come. You call wolves, and I begin to wonder if it is my power that attracts them to you, or something more.”

“You’re saying I should deliberately infect myself with other types of lycanthropy?”

They exchanged glances. “Put that way, no,” Micah said.

“It is a thought, ma petite, merely a thought.”

“Are you always thinking about how I can help you be more powerful?”

He sighed. “We must be powerful, and stable. We must show the other masters that we do not pose a threat to the council in Europe or anyone else.”

“Powerful we can do, but stable—” I shrugged. “I don’t know about that one.”

“We aren’t a threat to the council,” Micah said, “but they may not believe that.”

“They may not,” Jean-Claude said.

There was a knock on the door. “Who is it?” Jean-Claude called.

“Remus.”

“Is there something you need, Remus?”

“Claudia ordered me to check in, physically, with you for the shift change.”

Jean-Claude glanced at us. He held an arm out. “Come to me, ma petite, let us make certain you are hidden from sight, then allow him to enter.”

“I don’t see why he needs to enter,” I said.

“We will ask him.” Jean-Claude took me into the curve of his shoulder. Micah moved in front of me. I wrapped my arms around Micah’s shoulders, drawing him in against my breasts. Yeah, the water covered me, but Remus was still one of the newer guards. I didn’t know him well enough to be comfortable in the tub with him in the room.

“You may enter,” Jean-Claude said.

The door opened; Remus stepped inside, but kept his hand on the doorknob, as if he were no happier about invading our bath than I was. His eyes were green-gray, nice eyes, if he’d ever look directly at you. He never did, or at least he never did at me, or Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel. Why? Remus’s face had been broken at some point, and been put back together. There was no one thing you could point to and say, “That’s out of place,” but the overall effect was lopsided, and looked almost uncomfortable, like a ceramic mask that had been glued back together wrong.

I couldn’t make complete sense of Remus’s face, because he wouldn’t look at me. I wanted badly to tell him to just look at me, but I couldn’t without raising a subject that was probably painful, and none of my business. So I let it go.

The rest of him was dressed in the usual bodyguard black. If there were injuries under the clothes, it didn’t show when he moved. He moved like there were steel springs in the lean muscles of his body.

“Claudia ordered anyone who takes over to check with you in person, eye to eye. Her orders.”

“Did she say why?” I asked, because it was a change.

He looked up then, gave that lopsided smile. I had a moment to see disbelief on his face, before he looked away. “She filled me in on what’s been happening. She wants at least two guards in the room with you, at all times.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“That’s what I told her you’d say.” He gave another glance at me, and I had a second of those green-gray eyes, angry, then down and away again. “With Micah with you, it’s not a problem, but if it were only Jean-Claude—” he shrugged. “If you shift for the first time and it’s wolf, then he may be able to control you, but if you shift to an animal he doesn’t control, then what if you eat him?”

“He’s a Master of the City; I think he can handle it.”

“You don’t get it,” Remus said, and he came into the room a step, letting go of the doorknob. He finally looked at me, and held my gaze. Since I give absolute eye contact, it left us staring at each other. His eyes flinched, but he kept the gaze. It was a relief to be able to see his face straight on. “Jean-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 mercs. 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, merc, 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 weren’t the real deal. Narcissus found out that martial arts training doesn’t stand up to true warriors. War ain’t an Olympic event; it’s no place for amateurs.”

“And you are not an amateur,” Jean-Claude said in that pleasant, empty voice.

“No, sir,” Remus said, “I am not.”

25

I WENT TO the bathroom for a few minutes and came back out to find that Jean-Claude wasn’t the only vampire in the bedroom. Elinore stood near the bed. She was dressed in a white gown with a high lacy collar and a cream robe that managed to look graceful, and not like jammies at all. Her long blond hair fell in a pale wave around her body, like a second robe, so long. She was a vision in pale delicate colors, then she looked at me. Her eyes were a pale icy blue, the wrong color of blue for that delicate face. Her face was a near-perfect oval, dainty and unreal, as if someone had carved her from some white, pure rock, and breathed life into her. Unless she worked at it, hers was a cold beauty. If her eyes had been a brighter blue, I think it would have made her look warmer. The eyes gave the lie to the rest of her. The eyes were serious, careful, watchful. Hidden under all those clothes was a round, curvy body, soft. She didn’t believe in weight lifting, too unladylike. But she had a body that was as lovely and desirable as the face, if a little soft for my tastes. She had the blond Nordic beauty that I’d craved as a child. Craved so I’d fit in with my blond, blue-eyed father and his new family.

I’d tried to hate her, just on principle. I’d failed, why? Under that ladylike exterior she was tough, fair, and harder than a box of nails. She just hid it much better than I did. We got along. Besides, all the male vamps were prettier than me, why shouldn’t some of the female vamps be prettier, too?

“Elinore,” I said, “what…” I checked my wristwatch. “What are you doing awake before noon?”

“That is what I was asking Jean-Claude,” she said in that silky voice that matched all the lace and cream satin.

Jean-Claude looked at me from where he sat on the edge of the bed. He was in his black brocade robe with all the fur on it. They looked like opposite ends of a dream; one so pale, the other so dark.

“All our people have gained from what we did last night, ma petite.” He motioned toward Elinore. “This is proof of just how much they may have gained.”

I started walking around the end of the bed toward them. “Is this the earliest you’ve woken as a vampire?”

She nodded.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

She seemed to take the question seriously. She screwed that pretty little face up in a look of concentration. I was never sure if Elinore really had that many cute mannerisms or whether she’d spent so many centuries using them as camouflage that she couldn’t get rid of them now. Whatever, she was always doing things that made me think, little girl, doll-like, cute. Until she decided not to be cute; then she was positively frightening. I wondered how many enemies had been lured in by that softness only to find the steel dagger inside all that silk. If I’d been willing to play to my packaging, I might have pulled it off, but it just wasn’t in me to try.

“I feel fine,” she said at last.

“Have you fed?” I asked.

“Can you not tell?” she asked, giving me a very direct blue gaze.

“You always look a little ethereal to me, so no. I can’t tell with you.”

She gave a small smile. “Quite a compliment that the Executioner cannot tell whether I’ve fed.”

“Do you feel the thirst?” Jean-Claude asked.

She thought about that for a second, making the pretty little face. “No. I could feed, but I do not have to.”

I felt a stab of triumph from Jean-Claude. Triumph, and right on its heels, fear. Then he closed the leak in his shields tight.

“Why afraid? Why triumphant? Why both?” I asked.

“Jean-Claude fed the ardeur well and truly last night, and it is sustaining me. That is very impressive,” Elinore said.

“Yeah, I get that, but…” I tried to think how to form the question. “Why are you both so pleased?”

“If we wished to travel as a group in countries where we are illegal, only one of us would need to feed. It would mean Jean-Claude could take quite a large group of his own vampires into another territory without leaving much evidence behind. Certainly we could hide from the human authorities.”

“But we’re not going to invade anyone’s territory.”

“No,” Jean-Claude said, “but it is always good to have options, ma petite.”

“Where’s your sweetie? Your knight?”

“He did not wake with me,” and there was just a hint of sadness to that.

“So are you the only one who gained—” There was a knock on the door.

“Yes, Remus,” Jean-Claude called.

Remus opened the door and closed it behind him. “Requiem is out here.”

“Requiem,” Elinore said, “interesting.”

“Send him in, Remus,” Jean-Claude said.

He held Jean-Claude’s gaze for a moment, then looked down, and did his talking to the side of the face. “All right, but if anyone else shows up early like this, I will have to insist that you let two of the guards inside the room. So whatever secret shit you’re discussing, discuss fast.”

“You really think there’s going to be that many more vamps waking up this early?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think there will be.”

“We will discuss whether guards come back inside when someone else comes to my door,” Jean-Claude said. “Let Requiem pass, Remus.”

Remus’s face struggled; he didn’t like it. “I am caught between masters here. Claudia says don’t leave you guys alone. You say I can’t stay. We need a chain of command here.”

“Too many generals,” I said.

He gave me a quick, direct glance. “Yes.”

“I am sorry, Remus,” Jean-Claude said, “but Elinore’s arrival has changed things.”

“Fine, but Requiem is the last, or I’m calling Claudia and telling her I can’t guard you, because you won’t let me.”

“As you see fit, Remus.”

He gave another angry look around the room, then opened the door. A moment later Requiem glided through the door. He had his black, hooded cloak close around his body, so that the only thing that showed was the spill of his Vandyke beard framing the curve of his lips.

“How badly are you hurt, mon ami?” Jean-Claude asked.

Requiem shrugged back the hood without using his hands, the way you’d flip long hair behind your back. The hood slid down and the right side of his face was a mass of deep-purple bruises. One of his eyes was almost swollen shut, just a glimpse of that startling bright blue that had made Belle Morte try to buy Requiem from his original master. Belle had wanted to have a matching set of blue-eyed men. Asher’s were the palest blue; Jean-Claude’s the darkest; Requiem’s the brightest. His master had refused, and they had fled France.

His long, straight hair, so dark it mingled with the black cloak, made his pale skin all the paler, and helped the bruises stand out like purple ink on his face.

“Wow,” I said, “how much blood are you using to heal that?”

He looked at me then, and the look on his face said, clearly, I’d said something smart. “Much.”

“How fares the rest?” Jean-Claude asked.

Requiem spread the cloak wide with a gesture of both arms, so that it was like a curtain spilled dramatically around his body. His upper body shone like white flame against the darkness. My eyes adjusted to all that contrast and I realized that some of the whiteness was bandages. His right arm, chest, and stomach were all thick with gauze and white tape.

“Jesus, did Meng Die really do all that?”

“Yes.” He said that, and no more. Requiem rarely gave just a one-word answer to anything. He came toward us, the cloak flying out behind him, which said he was moving faster than that gliding walk appeared.

“Ma petite, if you could fetch scissors from the bathroom drawer, we can look at his wounds.”

I did it without being asked. I’d noticed the bruises last night, but hadn’t seen all the bandages under his shirt. I had had no idea how hurt he was. I hesitated in the bathroom with the scissors in my hand. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I looked sort of startled. Had he really dumped Meng Die because of me? Dumped another woman on the off chance that I might take him as a pomme de sang? I stared at myself in the mirror and just didn’t see a woman who could make a man dump someone on the possibility of sex. Elinore, maybe, but me…I just didn’t think so.

I went back to the other room, and found Requiem sitting on the bed beside Jean-Claude, who was turning his face to the light, checking his bruises.

Requiem was talking as I entered. “…she said, if she could not have my pretty face on her pillow, then no one would have it.”

Someone had brought one of the chairs by the fireplace so Elinore could sit and not be on the bed. “So she tried to ruin your face,” she said, softly.

“Yes,” he said, in that strangely clipped voice that wasn’t at all his usual.

I held the scissors out to Jean-Claude. He took them and laid them on the bedside table. “I think perhaps we can take off the tape, if you will help me, ma petite?”

I had to move Requiem’s cloak where he’d draped it on the end of the bed. The bed was tall enough that I had to make certain I was sitting far enough back from the edge so I wouldn’t slide off. Silk coverlet, silk robe, makes for slippery. I took Requiem’s hand in mine. The bandages wrapped around his hand, and up nearly to the elbow. “You didn’t get this from her hitting you,” I said.

“She had a blade,” he said, and again, his voice was clipped and to the point.

I looked up at him, and even the uninjured half of his face showed me nothing. He was lovely and empty like Jean-Claude was sometimes. Like looking at a painting of some handsome prince come back from battle. Even as I cradled his arm in my hands, he was as distant and remote as if he’d been hanging on a museum wall.

Jean-Claude was already peeling tape from around Requiem’s chest. I bent over his arm and worked on the tape there, holding his hand in mine while I started unwinding the gauze. His hand was crisscrossed with shallow and not-so-shallow slashes. I raised his hand as gently as I could, so I could keep unwrapping. The bandages fell away and I made a sound; I couldn’t help it. I put my hand at his hand and elbow, and lifted, gently. His forearm was a mass of slashing wounds. Two of them needed stitches.

I looked at his face, and he met my eyes, and for an instant there was a flash of anger in those eyes; then it went back to being empty.

“These are defensive wounds. You held your arm up in front of your face, because that’s what she was going for.”

“Not entirely, ma petite.” Jean-Claude’s voice drew me back to him, and Requiem’s now bare chest. I let out a hiss of breath, because he was right. His pale, muscular chest didn’t have as many wounds as his arm, but the ones he did have were deeper.

I traced the one under the sternum. It was deep, and I could see the mark of the blade in his flesh. I looked up at him, and it must have shown on my face.

“So shocked, Anita, why?”

“She was trying for your heart. She was really trying to kill you.”

“I told you that last night, ma petite.”

“I know you said she was trying to kill him, but…” I traced my fingers just above another wound that went between his ribs. The stab wounds were well placed. She’d tried to hack his face, and the marks on the arm showed that she just wanted damage, but the wounds on his chest and stomach, they were kills. “She knew just where to place the blade.” My respect for Meng Die went up, and so did my fear. “And she did all this where the customers could see?”

“Not all of it,” Requiem said, “but much of it, yes.”

I looked at Jean-Claude. “And no one called the cops?”

He had the grace to look away, not embarrassed, but…“What did you do?” I asked.

“Mass hypnosis is not illegal, ma petite, only personal hypnotism.”

“You bespelled the crowd,” I said.

“I, and Asher.”

I laid my hand above the wound that looked like it had come closest to his heart. I had a bad thought. “You said she attacked Asher. Is he this hurt?”

“No.”

“I think she knew that you and Jean-Claude would kill her if she slew Asher. I think she believed I was of less value to you.” Again his voice was empty, but the very emptiness of it made me look at him.

“That sounded bitter,” I said.

He looked away from me, a small smile on his face. “I meant it to sound like nothing.”

“I’ve listened to a lot of empty vampire voices, and there’s flavor even to the emptiness.”

“I was a fool to tell her in a public place, but she pressed me, asked me, and I told the truth.” He looked at me then, and I had to fight to meet his gaze, not because of vampire powers, but because the bruises looked painful, and I knew somehow, weirdly, they were my fault.

“Did you really tell Meng Die that you dumped her because you thought I’d turned you down because of her?”

“Not in those words, but yes.”

I sighed, and shook my head. “Oh, Requiem. I mean I didn’t think she’d take it this badly”—I motioned at some of his injuries—“but her pride wouldn’t let her take it lying down.”

“Pride,” he nodded, then stopped in midmotion as if it had hurt. “She has much pride, and I seem to have none.” He looked at me, and emotion filled his eyes, his face, and the emotion was too strong for me to keep looking into his face.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

He slid to the ground, went to his knees. He made a small involuntary sound. It must have hurt. He took my hand, and I let him, because pulling away seemed petty. “What must I do to be in your bed, Anita? Tell me, and I will do it.”

I looked into his face, saw the pain there, and it wasn’t the pain of bruises and cuts. I looked at Jean-Claude. “It’s the ardeur, isn’t it?”

“I fear so,” he said.

I turned back to the vampire kneeling in front of me. I had no idea what to say.

“Am I ugly to you?” he asked.

“No,” and I traced the line of his uninjured cheek. “You are very handsome, and you know it.”

He shook his head, stopped in midmotion, again as if it hurt. “If I were handsome enough, you would have taken me to your bed and not turned to these strangers.” He lowered his head, both hands gripping mine. He finally raised his face, and he was crying. “Please, Anita, please, do not cast me aside so easily. I know that you did not enjoy the attentions I gave you as much as I enjoyed the touch of your body. But I will be better, I swear it, if only you will give me another chance to show you pleasure. I was trying to be too careful of you. I did not understand. I can do better, be better.” He buried his face against my legs, and wept.

“I believe we have our answer, ma petite.”

I stroked Requiem’s hair, and didn’t know what he was talking about. I was too stunned to think. “Answer to what?” I asked.

“The effect you have on vampires that have tasted the ardeur before. I think you are addictive, as Belle was addictive.” He motioned toward Requiem, who was clutching at me, still weeping into my legs. “He is powerful enough to be a Master of a City, ma petite, not powerful in the way of Augustine, or myself, but powerful. He lacks not power, but ambition. He does not wish to rule.”

“There is no shame to that,” Elinore said.

“Non,” Jean-Claude said, “but I want ma petite to understand that her effect on Requiem is not a small thing.”

Elinore had sat back in the chair, curling her legs under her, because her feet wouldn’t have reached the ground. “I had no idea she had bespelled him like this.”

“I didn’t bespell him,” I said.

She gave me a look and motioned at the vampire at my feet. “Pick a different word if you like, Anita, but the effect is the same. We can argue semantics, but Requiem is besotted with you in a way most unnatural.”

I stroked his hair, so straight and thick, but not warm. He was cool to the touch. “He needs to feed,” I said. “Healing is going to take a lot of blood and energy.”

“I don’t think blood will cure this,” Elinore said, and her voice sounded almost accusatory.

“What do you want from me, Elinore? What do you want me to do?”

“Make him your lover,” she said.

“I have four men that I’m the only sex they’re getting, and two more that are in my bed some of the time. Hell, Jason makes it into my bed about once a month.”

“Exactly,” Elinore said, “one more will hardly make a difference.”

“If it were just sex, maybe, but it’s not just sex. It’s the emotional stuff. I don’t even know if there’s enough of me to go around for five men, plus extras. Call me crazy, but I don’t think Requiem is a low-needs item.” I stroked his hair, felt him shake against my legs. “No, I think he definitely goes in the high-maintenance category. I don’t think I have enough emotion left to do another high-needs man, okay? That’s the truth. I’m sure he’d be a wonderful lover, but I couldn’t meet his other needs.”

“What other needs?” she asked.

“Talk, emotion, sharing, love.”

Elinore shifted in her chair, turning her head to one side, her long hair spilling around her like a cornsilk dream. “You turned him down as your lover because you don’t think you can love him?”

I thought about it for a heartbeat, then shrugged, and nodded. “Yeah, sort of.”

Elinore looked at Jean-Claude. “She turned him down because she does not think she could love him.”

Jean-Claude gave that graceful shrug. “She is very young.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not sitting here,” I said.

Requiem’s crying had slowed, so that he was mostly just kneeling with his head in my lap. I kept petting his hair, the way you’d soothe a dog, or a sick child.

“We all understand, Anita, that you are Jean-Claude’s consort. We all understand that you and he and Asher are a threesome. We all understand that your triumvirate with the Ulfric and Jean-Claude must be maintained for reasons of power and safety. That maintenance includes sex, because he is of Belle Morte’s line. I admit that I thought him a fool, and weak, to have allowed you such closeness with the wereleopards, but I was wrong. Out of that closeness came your own triumvirate, which has strengthed Jean-Claude’s powers immensely. Your tie to Damian and Nathaniel is a wondrous thing. Your tie to Micah is a puzzlement, but I understand now that your powers are much like Belle’s. She collected men, too.”

“I am not like Belle Morte,” I said.

“Your power is.” She pointed at Requiem. “This is proof of that.”

“I don’t want to collect men,” I said. I stared down at the man in my lap. “I certainly don’t want them this…besotted. This a level of wanting that’s just wrong.”

“Why is it wrong?” Elinore asked.

“Because I don’t think he has a choice about it. I didn’t mean to collect Requiem.”

He looked up then, as if my saying his name had called him. The tears had dried to faint reddish lines on his face. The red didn’t help the bruises look any better.

I touched the unhurt side of his face, and he laid his cheek in my hand, as if that one touch were something wonderful. “How do I fix this?” I asked.

“You mean how do you set him free?” Elinore asked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t.”

I stared at her. “What do you mean, I don’t?”

“There is no cure, Anita. There is only going far away from you. He will still crave your touch, but he will not be able to act upon it.”

“Like an alcoholic,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“There is a cure for it,” Jean-Claude said.

I looked at him. “What?”

“Love,” he said, “true love.”

We both stared at him. “True love,” Elinore said.

He nodded. “We loved Julianna, and she freed us of the addiction of Belle Morte. Belle Morte had Requiem in her bed before Ligeia ever touched him, but she sent Requiem on a long seduction far away from her. It was necessary to seduce both halves of a noble couple, so she sent Ligeia with him.”

“I thought that Requiem’s master fled France so Belle wouldn’t keep him.”

“His master met with an accident, and Belle was able to collect all the vampires of her line that the old master had made.”

“The way you say accident makes it sound like you don’t mean accident at all,” I said.

“It was an accident,” Requiem said, softly. He spoke with his face in my lap. “The carriage we were in overturned in a storm. We were on a cliff edge, and somewhere during the fall, a piece of wood went through his heart. It was such an ordinary death.” His voice sounded relaxed, distant. “We tried removing the wood, but he did not revive. We learned later that the carriage maker was Wellsley.”

“Who’s Wellsley?” I asked.

Elinore answered, “He manufactured carriages in London for many years. He was a devout man, and hated the idea of his carriages being used for evil purposes, so he had them blessed. He would make a batch of them and have one of the local clergy bless them. When the blessing is fresh, some of them glow around us.”

“The blessing wears off?” I made it a question.

“If enough ‘evil’”—and she made quotation marks in the air with her fingers—“happens in the carriage.”

“Like a cemetery that’s been out of use for a while, or had black magic used in it too much,” I said. “You have to reconsecrate the ground.”

“The analogy will do,” she said.

I looked down at Requiem. “And when your master was dead, Belle could call you to her?”

“Yes,” he said, “and if Jean-Claude had not given me a home here, she would have done so again.”

“How did you get away from her the second time?”

“Jean-Claude has the right of it. Ligeia and I were sent far away to seduce some nobles Belle wished to control. We did her bidding, and they did what Belle wished, but Ligeia and I fell in love with each other. When we returned to Belle’s court, I was no longer drawn to her.”

“Love,” Jean-Claude said, “love is the only cure.”

“You and Asher aren’t besotted with me, not like this.”

“Jean-Claude is your master, and he holds the ardeur as well. As for Asher”—she looked at Jean-Claude—“I think love protects him.”

I looked at Jean-Claude, too, and he would not meet our gaze. I sort of assumed now that Jean-Claude and Asher were doing it like bunnies when I wasn’t around, but I’d never asked. Don’t ask, don’t tell worked just fine for me. Last night, seeing him with Auggie, made me wonder if I needed to ask, or if it was confirmed. Too complicated for me.

I literally waved the thought away, and said, “I can’t count on Requiem falling in love any time soon.”

“Non, ma petite.”

“What do I do?”

“Take him as your lover,” Elinore said.

“Easy for you to say; no one’s making you share yourself with anyone but your knight.”

“And one of the reasons I came to Jean-Claude was that he would let me be with the man I love, and not force me into the beds of others. I am more grateful for that than I can ever say.” She turned those cold blue eyes on me. “But I do not carry the ardeur. I am not an addiction.”

“Ma petite, you must meet this obligation.”

I stared at him. “Obligation?”

“You have addicted him to you. Would you be as cruel as Belle Morte herself and cast him away, with this desire riding him?” He shuddered. “I have been as one addicted, and cast out for some minor infraction. I have felt my body ache for want of her, and no amount of sex with anyone else satisfied that need.” He moved so he could lay his hand over mine where I stroked Requiem’s hair. “He is my third-in-command. He is a good and honorable man. You need more and more powerful food, ma petite. I think if you feed the ardeur well enough, it will quiet. But until you find food to its liking, it will seek its own.”

“You want me to sleep with Requiem?”

“I want you to feed the ardeur from him, oui.”

“I thought you weren’t happy sharing me with so many men. I mean, you once threatened to kill Richard.”

“I did not understand the nature of our power together then. Perhaps there is more than one reason that Belle collected lovers. Perhaps it was not merely her appetite, but more practical.”

I stared at him, feeling the weight of his hand over mine, and Requiem gone very still under our hands. “I can’t meet all his needs, Jean-Claude. I can’t add another date to my card.”

“It is not a date he needs, ma petite. He needs to be your food. Food is for eating, not for dating.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said about Nathaniel for months. It doesn’t work like that, not for me.”

“What do you propose, ma petite? Until we know the extent of your power over other vampires, we must be very careful of our visitors. We must surround you with powerful enough food that the ardeur will not keep drawing more.”

“Why isn’t your ardeur drawing in people?”

“You are his human servant,” Elinore said, “you’re taking some of the edge off his power.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“If Jean-Claude didn’t have you, then his ardeur would be doing this, and it would make it hard to run his territory. Your attracting people is less distracting to him.”

I looked at him. “Are you doing this on purpose?”

“I swear that I am not.”

“It’s the nature of the power, Anita,” Elinore said. “Human servants, animals to call, pommes de sang, they are all instruments to help their masters grow in power and control. The power will find a place to go and feed that allows the Master of the City to rule better.”

“You make the power sound alive, like it can think for itself,” I said.

She shrugged. “Perhaps it can. I know that I have seen the power work like this with other masters. Not the ardeur, but other powers.”

I sighed. “Great, so I’m the ardeur’s pinup girl because Jean-Claude would get too distracted if it were him.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Wait, Belle had the full ardeur, more full than we have now.”

“But she had no human servant, and no animal to call,” Elinore said.

I looked at Jean-Claude. “I thought every master called in help.”

“Belle does not share power,” Jean-Claude said, “not with anyone.”

“But you guys gain a lot of power from human servants and animals to call.”

“She has intimates of her animals to call, but she has not chosen among them. She makes no one special to her,” he said.

“I don’t seem to be able to choose who I get as animal to call. I know you chose Richard, but I didn’t exactly choose Nathaniel.”

“Nor Haven,” Jean-Claude said.

“Haven is not my animal to call,” I said.

“But some lion will be, and soon, I fear,” Jean-Claude said. “Joseph is bringing some of his lionmen around today so you will have more than our guests to choose from.”

“Choose for what?” and I sounded as suspicious as I felt.

“So you may bring their beasts, and hold off the change.”

That made sense. So many metaphysical problems that it was hard to keep track sometimes. But one problem at a time. I looked at the man in my lap.

“Fine, whatever. What am I going to do with you, Requiem?”

Jean-Claude and I moved our hands, and he raised his face, so he could look at me. “Make me your pomme de sang.”

“I think the pomme de sang needs to be someone who can feed me night or day,” I said.

His face filled with panic. “Please, Anita, do not cast me aside.”

I looked at Jean-Claude. “A little help here.”

“If you will not feed the ardeur from him then we must send him to another territory. He is powerful enough that many will want him as third, or even second.”

“Which will weaken your power base, because Elinore is only staying until we find her her own territory,” I said.

He gave a shrug that meant everything and nothing.

“I cannot believe that my”—and I hesitated because boyfriend seemed too junior high, lover not enough—“the man I love is encouraging me to take another lover.”

He smiled at me. “We know now that any who have tasted Belle’s ardeur are susceptible to your ardeur. I think any of her line will be too risky to taste as pommes. Agree to feed the ardeur from Requiem, ma petite, that is all. Agree, because we have two more things to know before the party tonight.”

“What two things?”

“Will you draw and be drawn to all leopards, wolves, and lions? Do the ardeur’s effects travel outside Belle’s line?”

I looked at Jean-Claude, tried to read past his face. “You’re still shielding so hard, I can’t tell how you really feel about this. Let me see inside your shields.”

He shook his head. “I think it would be no help to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because part of me is happy our powers are growing, no matter what the cost. Part of me is frightened of what the council may do about it. Do I want you to take another lover? No, but do I prefer that it is you whom the ardeur hunts to this degree, and not me, yes. I am sorry, ma petite, but that is the truth.”

I thought about it, then nodded. “If you have a human servant who can’t hold her shit together the other masters may forgive you. Like a bad marriage, not your fault. If you can’t hold your shit together, they won’t let that pass.”

“Please, Anita,” Requiem said, “please, feed the ardeur upon me, please.”

“I will.”

The look on his face was amazing, so joyous even through all the bruises. The look scared me. No one but your nearest and dearest should ever look at you like that.

“But not right now,” I said.

Some of the joy faded. “Why not now? It is morning. You have slept.”

I nodded. “Yeah, usually that does raise the ardeur.” I looked at Jean-Claude. “That’s a good question, why don’t I feel all ardeurish?”

“I, too, am well fed.”

“You feasted last night,” Requiem said, “on Augustine and his people.”

I looked back at Jean-Claude. “Is he right? Was it such a powerful meal that we’re safe for longer?”

“Perhaps.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“The ardeur is not always a predictable power, ma petite. I would need more than one feeding of such magnitude before I agreed that that was the reason.”

“Or perhaps,” Elinore said, “you should be trying to figure out how powerful a meal you would need to abate the ardeur. You cannot feast on another Master of the City and his people every night.” She leaned forward in her chair, all lace and satin, but strangely, she didn’t look cute. She looked too intent for words like cute. “Perhaps what is needed is permanent food of high power.”

“Few masters would agree to become Anita’s, or my, permanent pomme de sang. Not if they are powerful enough to rule a territory of their own.”

“What if they have no choice in the matter?” she said, indicating Requiem.

“Are you suggesting that I purposefully trap other masters the way I accidentally trapped Requiem?” I asked.

“It would solve a great many problems,” she said.

“It would be”—I groped for a word—“evil.”

“I thought you were more pragmatic than this, Anita.”

“Doing that would be no different than if we gave in to the requests we get weekly for you to join some other master’s kiss, as his mistress. We give you room to choose, Elinore. How can you ask us to take that same choice away from someone else?”

“I would not be bespelled, Anita. I would know every night as he touched me, lay on top of me, that I hated him. Requiem adores you, and he will adore you until, and if, he falls in love, true love. Until that time he will be in the bed of someone he adores, having amazing sex, and enjoying every minute of it. It is not the same thing, Anita. Trust me on that.”

“But it’s sort of a metaphysical date-rape drug, used like that. Just because you’re enjoying the abuse doesn’t make it not abuse.”

“Does it not, ma petite?”

I shook my head. “It’s too late for Requiem, I’ll accept that. I’ll try feeding the ardeur on him.”

He kissed my hand. “Thank you, mistress.”

“Not mistress,” I said, “Anita, just Anita.”

“Thank you, Anita,” he said, and kissed my hand again.

“Get up off the floor, Requiem, please.”

He stood. “I would like very much to sit beside you.”

I sighed, and nodded.

He sat on the other side of me from Jean-Claude, except that he sat close enough that his legs touched me. Great, just creepy, great.

I looked at his chest where the blades had come so close to taking his life. “What are we going to do about Meng Die? She’s just proven herself too dangerous, and so not a team player.”

“Kill her,” Elinore said.

I looked at Jean-Claude.

“I would rather find another solution, but yes, it may come to that.”

“You are overly sentimental, Jean-Claude, just because you feel guilty that you stole her mortal life. It is a great gift, not a curse.”

“I feel as I feel, Elinore.”

“Have a care that your feelings do not get us all killed.” She looked at me. “Also, I think if Anita truly is going to be a panwere…”

“News travels fast,” I said, looking at Jean-Claude.

“I wished an opinion of someone powerful enough to have an opinion.”

I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. She was the most powerful vamp in his group right now. Her waking first had proven that.

“As I was saying, if Anita is truly going to be a panwere, then it may not simply be lions, wolves, and leopards that she attracts. It may be all wereanimals, or many. Almost all the visiting masters have brought their animal to call, so we must test this theory before she is allowed near them. Augustine I believe will let the insult go, because he is besotted with you both, and he attacked you first. The breach of protocol was on his side, not ours. But if Anita entices others away from their masters, they may not be so forgiving.”

“Agreed,” Jean-Claude said, “and we still must see how master vampires outside Belle’s bloodline react to Anita’s ardeur.”

“And where are we going to get master-level vamps and other wereanimals to test these little theories on?” I asked.

There was a knock on the door. “It’s Remus, Jean-Claude.”

“Enter.”

Remus entered, closing the door behind him. He was actually looking directly at us, and he was angry, which I guess explained the direct look. “I told you if there were any more that I wouldn’t let them in without me and my guards coming in here.”

“I remember,” Jean-Claude said.

“I said any other vampire, but definitely these two are not coming in here without you having bodyguards on this side of the door.”

“What two?” I asked.

“Wicked and Truth are out here,” Remus said.

“Wicked and Truth,” Elinore said, “how interesting. They are very powerful, and they are not of Belle’s line.”

I shook my head. “Truth already got a taste of the ardeur when I bound him to Jean-Claude. He’s not following me around like this.” I jerked my thumb at Requiem.

“Did you actually feed from Truth?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Then you must try.”

“No,” I said.

“At least suggest it to them,” she said.

“No,” I said, and put more heat into the word.

“They have sworn loyalty to Jean-Claude. They are not leaving us,” Elinore said.

“No,” I said, “absolutely no.”

“Very well, then perhaps not feed, but watch you feed,” Jean-Claude said.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Samuel watched you feed and was not drawn to you, or me, that strongly. But Haven was drawn so that his companions had to drag him away, almost as they did Augustine. Perhaps if Wicked and Truth are simply in the room when you feed, that would tell us if the effect will go outside Belle’s line, or no.”

“We would need someone from Belle’s line to be in the room too, someone close in power.” I looked at Elinore.

She smiled, “I am in love, Anita, true love. It does not work on me.”

“Some types of ardeur work anyway,” I said.

“For a brief time, yes, but my being in love makes me unusable for the test.”

There was another knock on the door. Remus opened it, murmured to someone, then turned back. He didn’t look directly at us again. “London is out here, too. He’s Belle Morte’s line, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Elinore said, “he is.”

“So what, I feed the ardeur, and then they tell us how attracted they are to it?”

“It is a way of testing without impinging too far upon your morals,” Elinore said.

“Just have sex in a room while a bunch of men watch, right?”

Jean-Claude shook his head and smiled. “Simply feed the arduer, ma petite. It does not have to be sex, if you do not wish it.”

“It seems a shame to raise the ardeur on purpose when I’m not hungry,” I said.

He sighed. “Yes, it does, but it is far better to raise it now, when we can control it, than later, when visitors have arrived, and we cannot.”

Put that way, it made sense, but…“Who do I feed from?” I asked.

He gestured to Requiem. “The damage is already done to him.”

“Great, now I’m damage,” I said.

“And feeding from blood as powerful as yours will help him speed his healing.”

That was true, but…“Fine, but only if you explain the parameters of the experiment to everyone. They have to agree to it, or I won’t do it.”

“Of course, ma petite, I would not have it any other way.”

I looked into that beautiful, unreadable face, and was almost a hundred percent certain he was lying.

26

EVERYONE AGREED TO the test. Everyone seemed happier about it than I did. Okay, everyone but Remus and some of his guards. I think that was because he was pretty sure it was going to go horribly wrong and he and his people would have to pick up the pieces. I agreed with Remus.

Part of me hopes that someday I get over being so damned uncomfortable about group scenes like this; part of me hopes I don’t. It’s sort of the same part of me that mourns that I can kill without feeling bad about it, most of the time. Yeah, that same part thinks that doing metaphysical sex in front of a bunch of men, for any reason, is just another step down the slippery slope to damnation. But if the alternative is having the ardeur go off like a metaphysical bomb during the party tonight, well, what we were about to do was the lesser evil. Still it might be nice, once in a while, not to have to choose between evils. Just once, couldn’t I choose the lesser good?

Requiem lay back against the fresh sheets, his hair spilling out around his upper body like a dark halo. His day job, or would that be night job, was stripping at Guilty Pleasures. The body showed that, but all I could see was the wounds. Meng Die had come very, very close to putting out his light forever. I traced fingertips across the sternum cut. His breath came out in a shuddering sigh. I couldn’t tell if it had hurt, or felt good.

Normally I could read Requiem, but today there was nothing in his face that helped me. He gazed up at me as if I were the most wondrous thing he’d ever seen. It was a step above, or below, love. Worship was the only word I had for it. It hurt my heart to see that look on his face. There was no Requiem left in that look.

Requiem of the somber, pretty speeches. He’d earned his name because he was poetic but damned depressing. But there was no force of personality to him now, nothing but this overwhelming need.

“God, help me,” I said.

Jean-Claude came to stand next to the bed, to me. “What is wrong, ma petite?”

“Please tell me he’ll get better than this,” I said.

“Better than what, ma petite?”

“Look at him,” I said.

Jean-Claude moved close enough that the sleeve of his robe touched my robed arm. He gazed down at Requiem with me.

Requiem’s gaze flickered to him, then settled back on me, as if the other man didn’t matter. But he’d noticed him, because he said, “Will you force me to share your favors with another, Anita? Or will I be as the heavens stretched between the heat of the sun and the cold kiss of the moon? Will you do to me as you did to Augustine?”

“Well, at least he’s back to being wordy and poetic,” I said. “It’s a start.”

“Did he offer himself to both you and Anita?” Elinore asked, still curled in her chair.

“I believe so,” Jean-Claude said.

“Requiem does not embrace men,” London said from the far corner. He’d moved to the darkest, most shadowy corner he could find, as he always did. It wasn’t just his short dark curls and penchant for black clothing that got him the nickname “the Dark Knight.” “It was the one thing he fought against most strongly.”

“Yes,” Elinore said, “he was always most adamant that he did not do men.”

“Belle punished him for his refusal to service men,” Jean-Claude said. He stared down at Requiem with a solemn, lost look.

“Then he shouldn’t be offering to do it for us,” I said.

“No, he should not.” Jean-Claude looked at me, and showed for an instant what he was feeling. I felt it like a stab through my heart. Anguish, anguish that he had brought Requiem here to keep him safe, and instead had enslaved him more thoroughly than Belle ever managed.

I felt the bed move a moment before a hand touched my back through the robe. I turned, but I knew whose hand was on me. Requiem had sat up, with all the damage to his chest and stomach, and he’d sat up so he could touch me. I searched his face for something familiar. I finally said, “Requiem, are you in there?”

He touched my face. “I am here,” but he spoke the words with such emotion that they seemed to mean a great deal more than they should have.

I moved his hand away from my face, held it in mine, so maybe he would stop touching me. I looked at Jean-Claude. “This is awful. How do we fix this? Isn’t there some faster way than finding his true love?”

Requiem’s thumb began to make little circles on my hand, as if just being held wasn’t enough.

“It’s almost as if she’s bespelled him,” Elinore said, “as if she were the vampire and he the human.”

“Fine, treat it like it’s vampire mind tricks; how do I undo it?”

“A vampire’s master can sometimes break such enchantments,” Elinore said.

I looked at Jean-Claude. “Help him.”

London stepped back to the edge of the light. “But it is not Anita’s ardeur, but Jean-Claude’s ardeur through her. He cannot fix his own ardeur, can he?”

“I do not know,” Elinore said. She looked around the room and spoke toward the wall farthest from the door. “Wicked, Truth, you have been very silent through this discussion. Do you have any suggestions?”

The two brothers came forward into the stronger light near the bed. At first glance they didn’t look that alike. They were both tall and broad-shouldered, but beyond that they were opposites. Wicked’s hair was sleek and very blond, cut long so it framed a face that was all high, sculpted cheekbones, complete with a dimple in his chin deep enough that I could never decide if it looked adorable or painful. His eyes were a clear steady blue, and if I hadn’t had Jean-Claude’s and Requiem’s eyes to compare him to, I’d have said his eyes were striking. He wore a modern tailored suit of tans and creams that made him look halfway between the college professor of your dreams and an executive gigolo. Then there was Truth.

Truth had obviously slept in his clothes. The clothes were made up of bits of leather, but not fashionable club wear, no, more like boiled leather worn smooth and soft with use and wear. His pants were tucked into boots so battered that Jean-Claude had offered to replace them, but Truth wouldn’t give them up. He could have been dressed for any century from thirteenth to fifteenth. His straight brown hair was shoulder length, but stringy, as if it needed a good brushing. He didn’t exactly have a beard, just stubble, as if he hadn’t shaved for a while. But under all that disarray was the same bone structure, the same cleft chin, and the same blue eyes. Wicked’s eyes always seemed to hold a cynical joy, but Truth’s looked tired and wary, as if he was just waiting for us to disappoint him.

“What do you want from us?” Truth asked, and his voice was already defensive, as if he was ready for an argument.

Elinore uncurled from her chair and moved to stand on the other side of Jean-Claude, not quite to where London was standing, but so she could see the brothers more clearly. “You have been masterless for longer than any other master vampire. Surely, in all those centuries, some powerful vampire tried to capture the great warriors Wicked and Truth. Have you been bespelled as Requiem is?”

Wicked laughed. “Save the flattery, Elinore; we’ll help if we can, if Anita tells us plainly what she wants from us.” He turned those laughing eyes to me. Truth’s somber eyes followed his brother’s gaze.

I met their eyes. Wicked looked like it was all a big joke, which I’d finally realized was his blank face. Truth looked calmer, blanker, but he was ready to be disappointed in me. Certainty that I would not live up to his expectations was clear on his face.

“Isn’t it Jean-Claude’s order you need?” Elinore asked.

Truth shook his head. Wicked said, “No.”

“No,” Jean-Claude said.

“No,” Wicked repeated, and he allowed himself a small, tasteful smirk of satisfaction.

“Who is your master?” Elinore asked.

“They are,” and Truth motioned at both Jean-Claude and me.

“Then why is Jean-Claude’s order not good enough?” she asked.

“He hasn’t bespelled Requiem; she has,” Truth said.

“You do not agree with London that it is Jean-Claude’s ardeur flowing through Anita.”

They both shook their heads, and the movement was so well-timed that you could suddenly see how identical they almost were.

Wicked spoke for them. “Anita’s will, her intent, is what we need.” He stared at me. “What is your will, Anita?”

“To have him free of me.”

“Would you undo the blood oath and cast him back to Belle Morte?” Wicked asked.

Requiem clutched at my hand. “Please, mistress, not that.”

I patted his shoulder. “No, Requiem, you’re not going back to Belle. We would never let that happen.” He calmed almost instantly, and he shouldn’t have. That much panic shouldn’t have just vanished. It was just another sign of how far gone he was.

“Be careful with your words,” said Truth, “for they are dangerous things.”

I thought before I spoke the next time. “I want him to have choices. I don’t want all his free will sucked away like this.”

“Why?” Wicked asked. “Why is bespelling him so terrible to you?”

I looked into Requiem’s face where he sat beside me. He gave me a look of absolute adoration. My stomach clenched tight. The thought of anyone being bound to anyone else like that was wrong; that I’d done it by accident made me vaguely nauseous.

“I like Requiem. He’s a good guy, especially for a vampire. I don’t want him like this, some sort of slave, it’s just creepy.”

“Is he better off dead?” Wicked asked.

“No,” I said, quickly, “no.”

“Then what would you have us do?” Truth asked.

Requiem said, “Do I not please you?”

I grabbed his good shoulder and said, “I know you’re in there, Requiem. Come back to us. Hear me, Requiem, hear my voice, and break free of this.”

“I don’t wish to be free,” he said, simply.

I pulled away from him, and he tried to hold on. I actually slapped his hands away from me. He looked so hurt.

“Please, Anita, how have I displeased you so? I will do anything. Anything that you ask, if you will only feed the ardeur from me.”

“Anything,” I said.

“Anything, you have but to speak it, and I will do it.”

“Break free of this,” I said.

“I do not understand,” he said, and he looked as puzzled as his words.

“That’s what I want, Requiem. I want you to break free of what I’ve done to you.” The moment I said it, I knew it was true, that was what I wanted. “You’re a master vampire. You could be a Master of the City, if you were a little more ambitious. You can fight this.” I searched his face, to see if he understood what I was saying. “Come back to yourself, or I won’t feed the ardeur on you.”

“Anita, I…I don’t…”

“You said you’d do anything I asked. This is an anything, and it’s what I want you to do.”

“You may be asking something he cannot do,” Wicked said.

“I’ve felt his own version of the ardeur. Or whatever you call the other gifts of Belle’s line that aren’t exactly ardeur. He is powerful.” I looked into his face and tried to show him how much I knew he could do this. “I want to see Requiem staring at me out of these eyes, not some besotted fool. Be the strong man I know you can be. Fight free of this, enough to talk to me. I won’t touch you, ever again, unless you can give consent.” He looked so stricken, so wounded, that I went up on my knees and cradled his face between my hands. “You told me once that you considered your power rape, because it affected only the body and not the mind. Do you remember saying that, Requiem?”

He frowned, but finally whispered, “Yes.”

“If I take you like this, it’s rape, and I won’t do it.”

I watched the emotions struggle across his face. “Anita…I do not know how to break these soft chains. Once love was strong enough to break them, but without love, let me be covered in your silken chains. Tie me down, and let me drown in your sweet flesh.” He moved in for a kiss as he said the last, and I had to pull back. I slid off the bed, away from him. I wanted to run screaming with frustration. I had not meant to do this. Fuck.

“If another master had bespelled Requiem, what would you do, ma petite?” Jean-Claude said.

I thought about it, frowning. “I would try to break the spell. I would use my necromancy and try to break the spell.”

“Exactement.”

“But, I did it. I can’t break my own spell, can I?”

“Why can you not?”

I thought about it again. “Because…well.”

“It is not your necromancy that has bespelled him, ma petite, but your power through the vampire marks, through me. Use your necromancy to free him, as you used your ties to the wolf to free you from Marmee Noir.”

It made sense, but…“I don’t know.”

He spoke softly in my head. “You broke Willie McCoy free of the Traveller when he had possessed Willie’s body. You used your necromancy to drive him out.”

Willie was one of our least powerful vampires. He was manager at the Laughing Corpse, our comedy club. The Traveller was one of the vampire council. He had come to town in “person,” except that he traveled by jumping from body to body. He could use any vampire body that wasn’t strong enough to keep him out. He had possessed Willie, and tried to use him to hurt me. I had used my blood and my tie to Willie to find him in the dark where the Traveller had hidden him. Find him and bring him back to himself.

I thought carefully, because I was still not that good at the mind-to-mind thing, “I’d accidentally raised Willie from his coffin during the day once. I already had a tie to him that I don’t have to Requiem.”

He whispered through my mind, “Through the ardeur you have a bond to him that you did not have with Willie.”

“How can I use necromancy to break him free of the ardeur, if I’m counting on the ardeur to be his bond to me. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Perhaps the logic is a bit circular, but what do you have to lose, ma petite?” He spoke aloud, finally. “Look at him.”

I pressed as much of me against as much of Jean-Claude as I could, then turned and looked at Requiem. He watched us like a man who was dying of thirst, and was only inches away from a cool, soothing pool, but there was a glass wall between him and it. I finally realized something. “It’s not just the ardeur he’s craving. It’s the blood. He’s hurt and he needs blood.”

Jean-Claude ran his hands up and down my back in soothing motions. “Oui, but the ardeur overrides the other thirst.”

“I thought that wasn’t possible,” I said.

“I have seen it with Belle. I have seen her give ardeur to vampires while they neglected their blood hunger, to the point where, one night, they did not rise from their coffins.”

“She did it on purpose,” I said.

“She wished to see if the ardeur alone was enough to sustain other vampires. She had hoped to travel with us across Europe, but the marks of blood taking give us away. The ardeur leaves no trace.”

I stared at Requiem. “Nothing physical.”

“Oui, there are signs, but nothing the authorities would have recognized. Nothing that would have given away her plan.”

“But it didn’t work,” I said.

“She could share her ardeur with others, so they could feed upon it. She could sustain herself with it for long periods, as can I, but unless the ardeur is truly your gift to own, then it does not work.”

“The Traveller…” He stopped me with a hand on my mouth.

He spoke in my head, again, “Quietly, ma petite.”

I thought, “You said, no mind-to-mind, that some of the other vamp masters might overhear us.”

“They are still dead to the world, but the people in this room can hear us.”

“You don’t trust them?”

“I would not like to have it well known that you were able to force a member of the council to do anything.”

He had a point. I thought, slowly, carefully, “The Traveller was taking blood from me when I called Willie. I called him with the blood.”

“Then feed our Requiem.”

I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. “He’s fed from me once; what if drinking my blood is part of the problem? Asher thinks that any vampire who feeds from me is drawn to me.”

“You are very tasty, ma petite.”

“It’s not just that. It’s something more.”

“We want our vampires bound to us, ma petite, that is why we blood-oath them. We simply do not wish them bound to this level of slavishness.”

I was close enough in his head to feel that he believed that. He did not like to see Requiem this bespelled. “You’re almost as creeped out by this as I am, why? This strengthens our power base, right?”

“Perhaps, but I did not invite Requiem, or anyone, into my lands so I could enslave them. I wanted to give them shelter, not chains.”

“Auggie said you were too sentimental for your own good sometimes.”

Out loud he said, “Perhaps, but you have taught me that sentiment is not always a bad thing.”

I stared up at that impossibly beautiful face, and felt love swell up inside me like a physical force. It filled my body, swelling upward until it made my chest ache, my throat tighten, and my eyes burn. It sounded so stupid. But I loved him. Loved all of him, but loved him more because loving me had made him better. That he would say that I had taught him about being sentimental made me want to cry. Richard reminded me at every turn that I was bloodthirsty and cold. If that were true, then I couldn’t have taught Jean-Claude about sentimentality. You can’t learn, if you don’t have it to teach.

He kissed me. He kissed me softly, with one hand lost in the hair to the side of my face. He drew back and whispered, “I never thought to see that look upon your face, not for me.”

“I love you,” I said, and touched his hand where it lay against my face.

“I know that, but there are different kinds of love, ma petite, they are equally real, but…” He smiled, and said, “Such soft tenderness I thought you had reserved for others.”

“What others?” I asked, because I couldn’t leave it alone.

He gave me a chiding look, as if I knew the answer to the question, and I guess I did. I knew Richard was almost desperately jealous of Micah and Nathaniel, but for the first time I realized Jean-Claude was jealous, too. And jealousy always hurts. I was sorry I ever made him doubt how much I loved him. He would never hold my hand in a delivery room, or vacuum a floor, but within the parameters of his life, I could ask anything of him.

“I don’t mean to interrupt this little lovefest,” London said, in a tone of voice that said clearly he did want to interrupt, and maybe be cruel on top of it, “but could you try to free Requiem? Or did you not mean to free him, and it was all just talk?”

“London,” Elinore said, with a warning in that single word.

“I am allowed my cynicism, Elinore. I have been disappointed too many times in too many different masters.”

“Haven’t we all,” Wicked said.

Truth just nodded.

I frowned at all of them, and suddenly even cuddling with Jean-Claude wasn’t quite as comforting. “Thanks guys, no performance anxiety here.”

“We do not mean to make things more difficult for you,” Truth said, “but like most vampires who have not spent their entire existence with one master, we have been ridden hard, and cruelly, by those who were supposed to take care of us.”

“The idea of the feudal system is that the people at the top take care of the needs of those on the bottom, but I have seldom seen it work that way,” Wicked said.

“Yeah,” I said, “it’s like trickle-down economics; it only works if the people at the top are really good, decent people. The system is only as good as the people in power.”

The brothers nodded, as if I’d said a wise thing. Maybe I had.

I laid a kiss on Jean-Claude’s bare chest, caressing the slicker skin of the cross-shaped burn mark. I drew away from him and went for the bed. I prayed as I walked toward Requiem. “Let him be free, but don’t let me hurt him.”

27

I TOLD REQUIEM to lie down on the bed, and he did, without hesitation. Elinore was right. He was like a human hit by a vampire’s gaze. I knelt beside him, the robe tucked up under my knees, tied close around my waist. I stared down at him and wondered if there was anything I could ask him to do that he would refuse. Was there really no limit to it? I’d seen humans rolled by vampires who had turned on their friends in the blink of an eye, and tried to kill people they loved. Would Requiem have killed for me? For no reason than that I asked it of him? I wanted to know, and I didn’t.

I looked at Jean-Claude. “Is this just about sex, or would he do anything I asked, like a human rolled by a vamp?”

“I do not know, ma petite.”

“If you never plan to do this on purpose, what does it matter?” London asked, and he let me hear all the distrust in those words. I didn’t really blame him.

“I wouldn’t do it to any of our people on purpose, but sometimes I’m on my own in a nest of vamps that I’m supposed to kill. They get testy about stuff like that. I’m just wondering if I could raise the ardeur as a weapon? Is there a way to make it an asset instead of a disaster?”

London frowned at me, but said, “I don’t believe you, Anita.”

“London,” Elinore said, “never use that tone again with her.”

“I’ve seen what the ardeur can do, Elinore. You haven’t, not really.” His face tightened in lines of anger so raw it almost hurt to see it. “I’ve seen my face look like Requiem’s. I remember what it feels like.” His hands gripped the bedpost until the skin changed color, just a bit. The mottling would be more after he fed. The wood creaked in protest, and he dropped his hands. “Part of me still wants to feel like that. It’s like being on a drug all the time. Being pleasantly high, pleasantly happy. It may not be real happiness, but it’s hard to tell the difference when you’re in the middle of it.” He hugged himself tight. “The world is a colder, darker place without it. But with it, you’re a slave. A slave to someone who makes you do things…” He shook his head, so hard it looked dizzying.

“Maybe London should go before I start this,” I said.

“No,” he said, “no, if I can’t bear to watch you feed the ardeur on someone else, then I need to find a new master, and a new city. If I can’t bear this, then I need to go somewhere where no one carries the ardeur.”

“Jean-Claude is your master, London; you will need his permission to leave,” Elinore said.

“We have already discussed it,” Jean-Claude said.

“When?” I asked.

“He is an addict, ma petite, an addict to the ardeur. I saved him from Belle Morte, who would have addicted him again, but London and I discussed that even your ardeur, and mine, might be too much for him. If it is”—he gave that graceful shrug—“I will find him some place far away from such temptations, but it will take time to find a home for someone as potentially powerful as London. Especially someone with his bloodline, and male. If he were female, there is a waiting list.”

“But not for men,” I said.

“Non, ma petite, the female masters seem convinced they would become bespelled by males of our bloodline. The male masters seem convinced they could master the women of our line.”

“Well, isn’t that just typical,” I said. I looked back at London. “If this gets to be too much for you, promise me you’ll leave.”

“Why do you care?”

I raised a hand before Elinore could chastise him again. “Because I’m going to have enough trouble freeing Requiem’s mind; I don’t want to have to do it twice today.”

He nodded. “I swear to you that I will leave, if I feel it is too much.” The look on his face was very solemn, with none of that dark defiance, or anger.

I took a deep breath and turned back to the man on the bed. He gave me peaceful, eager eyes. It was as if the lamb wanted you to slit its throat.

I moved up beside him, so I could touch the unbruised side of his face. I cupped his face and he leaned into that touch, eyes closing for a moment as if that one innocent touch was almost too much to bear.

I called to him. “Requiem, Requiem, come back to me.”

He laid his hand against mine, pressing me tighter against his face. “I am right here, Anita, right here.”

I shook my head, because this wasn’t him. It was his body, but whatever made Requiem who he was, that wasn’t in his eyes. It was a stranger’s face. What makes people people is not just bone structure and eye color, but the force of their personalities. The years of experience painted on their faces. Them, for lack of a better word. Them.

“Oh, Requiem, come back to us.”

He gazed up at me, so puzzled. He didn’t understand that he was lost.

I closed my own eyes, so I could concentrate and not have to see his eyes, so trusting and empty. My necromancy was unlike any other power I had. Maybe because it was mine. Whatever the reason, I didn’t have to decide to use my necromancy, I just had to stop fighting it. Stop blocking the power. Blocking my necromancy was like making a fist, tight-clenched, squeezing, squeezing, so hard, so the power didn’t get away from me. I spread that metaphorical fist wide, let go all that effort and the necromancy just was. Before, with Auggie, there had been so much happening, so many different powers, that it had distracted me, but now there was nothing but the necromancy. It felt so good to finally let go. So amazingly good.

I opened my eyes and stared down at Requiem. “Come to me,” I said, “come to me.” He rose up, off the bed, arms reaching for me. I put a finger on his chest, and said, “Requiem, stop.” He stopped instantly. As if he were some sort of toy; hit one switch and he goes, another and he turns off. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, this was so wrong.

“Ma petite, ma petite, have a care.”

I turned and glanced at Jean-Claude. “I’m a little busy here,” I said, and couldn’t keep the impatience out of my voice.

“I would be more specific with your calls, if I were you. You told only Requiem to stop. The others are still compelled.” He motioned at the other vampires. London had a death grip on the bedpost. He looked panicked. Wicked and Truth were fighting at the edge of the bed. Truth wanted to get on, and Wicked was holding his brother back. Truth looked scared, and Wicked looked angry.

I found Elinore standing by her chair, holding on to it, as if only the chair’s weight kept her from coming to me.

I felt myself go pale. “I didn’t mean…”

“Your necromancy has gained in power, ma petite, as have your beasts. Be more specific on your orders; use his name.”

I looked at Elinore. “If I called you, would you have to come to me?”

She swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. “I would fight, but the compulsion would be strong. I am not yet a Master of the City. As you must be of a certain level of power to rule a city, so the ruling of it, and the oaths that are taken, the magic that binds, gains a vampire more power. I do not have those ties, yet, so I…I am not Augustine, or Samuel. I think if you forced the issue it would be difficult.”

It was my turn to swallow.

“We are all blood-oathed to Jean-Claude,” London said, through gritted teeth. “I think her call is stronger for her ties to him.”

Truth broke from his brother, and went to the chair by the fireplace. He strode to it, and hid his face in his hands. Wicked turned back to me. “He wanted to go to you. We are both blood-oathed to Jean-Claude. Why was my brother more drawn to your call?”

“He fed on ma petite, when he oathed to us,” Jean-Claude said. “You took my blood.”

“I told you when you brought him over that I had to be brought over in exactly the same way. You assured me that it wouldn’t matter.” He gestured angrily toward his brother. “This matters.”

Requiem wrapped his arms around me, and laid a kiss upon my neck. He was bending his stomach to do it. Didn’t it hurt?

I said the only thing I could think of. “I didn’t know.”

“We must always be bound the same,” Wicked said, “we must always be the same. It is our strength. It is who we are. Whatever you have done to him, you must do to me, or undo to him.”

I nodded. “I’ll try.”

“I’m beginning to understand why we used to kill necromancers on sight,” London said.

“Is that a threat?” Jean-Claude said, voice mild.

“No, no, master.”

But I understood what London meant. Requiem licked along my neck, and that one touch made me shiver, just a little. “Requiem, stop touching me.”

He froze against me, but he was still touching me. He simply stopped kissing and licking me. I guess I’d have to be careful how I worded things. I had to find Requiem. Not just a vampire, or the dead. I needed him, his individual self. I’d done something similar once in the Church of Eternal Life, when the police and I were searching for a vampire murder suspect. I’d sought the flavor of one person, and that had been someone I hadn’t known. I knew Requiem. I was holding him.

I wrapped my arms around him, moved all that thick hair to one side, so I could bury my face in the bend of his neck. I breathed in the scent of his skin. He didn’t smell warm. I could smell his cologne, the soap he used, his shampoo, but underneath all of it was the faint smell of death. Not of corpses and rot, because vampires did not do that, but the scent of long-closed rooms, vaguely like the smell of snakes. Musty, not warm, nothing that you could cuddle. Yet his arms were strong, the edges of his wounds on the one arm catching in the silk of my robe. He was real, but he wasn’t exactly alive.

I held him close, and pushed my necromancy into the body I held. Pushed it carefully, just into this one body, nowhere else. I searched not for this befuddled stranger but for that spark that was truly Requiem. I found him, in the dark, inside himself. He wasn’t afraid, but softly confused, lost. I called to him. I felt him look up, hear me, but he could not come. I could see his prison, touch the door, gaze at him through the bars, but I did not have the key. Then I realized what we needed. Blood. No matter what type of undead you’re dealing with, blood is usually the key.

I rose up from his neck, and swept my own hair to the side. “Feed, Requiem, feed from me.”

He showed me a face with eyes wide with shock, as if he couldn’t believe I would let him do it, but he didn’t ask me to repeat the order. His hand wrapped in my hair, his other hand at my back. He pressed me tight against him, holding my neck to the side, and he brought me down to him, for he was sitting and I kneeling. He brought my neck down to his mouth, the way you would do for a kiss. He could not roll me with his eyes, and he didn’t try. There would be nothing to change the pain to pleasure. I felt him tense, and I tried to relaxed, but you never relax. You tense up, just a bit, and it hurts more.

He bit me, fangs sinking in, pain sharp enough to make me push at his shoulders, as I tried to get away. I just couldn’t take that much pain out of the box without pushing against it. I felt him begin to drink me down, his throat convulsing, swallowing. Something that could be so erotic, and it just fucking hurt like this.

But it was just like beheading a chicken to raise a zombie, or spreading blood on a vampire’s lips to heal him. It was blood with a purpose, and I sent my magic down with that blood. I used it, to call Requiem. Used it to find him in the dark, and set him free.

He drew back from my throat, gasping, as if he’d been running. There was blood on his lower lip as he stared up at me. One moment he still looked dazed, the next he spilled into his eyes. They flared with blue fire, with that hint of turquoise in the center. His power danced over my skin like a cold, prickling breeze.

“I am here, Anita. You have cleared my mind. What would you have of me?”

I moved back from his arms, touching my neck, and came away with blood. Remus was already sending the young guard Cisco to the bathroom for gauze and tape.

“I wanted you free, and yourself. We’ve got that.”

He shook his head, and winced, as if only now did the bruises hurt. He leaned back against the mounded pillows, favoring his stomach and chest, holding his injured arm carefully. “It was like being on drugs; nothing hurt that badly, when you touched me. I am free, but everything hurts.”

“Isn’t that always the way,” I said, but I smiled. He was himself again.

I looked around at the other vampires. I looked at Elinore still gripping the back of her chair. I felt her. Felt her as if she were a flavor of ice cream that I could have put in a cone and licked. Mostly vanilla, but with chocolate chips. I looked at London. Not vanilla, definitely something darker, chunkier, full of hard crunchy bits. Wicked filled my mind like icing, chocolate icing to spread on skin and lick clean. I shook my head at the imagery, and looked for Truth, still huddling by the fireplace. Something fresh and clean, strawberries, maybe, strawberry ice cream to melt down the skin, and be licked away, so you could suck the cold around the nipples…

“Anita”—and it was Jean-Claude’s voice—“Anita, you must stop this.”

He never called me Anita. It made me look at him. “Why can’t I taste you?” I asked.

“Because I am your master, and not a toy for your power.”

The look on his face frightened me, because he was frightened. I licked dry lips, and said, “I guess this answers the question. I don’t touch anyone else’s vampires.”

“No,” he said, “no.” He was at the edge of the bed. “Now shut it down.”

It took me a second to realize what he meant. My necromancy, I needed to turn it off again. I closed my eyes, and drew it back in. I drew in tight and tighter, closed and squeezed that metaphysical fist tight and hard. But it was like the hand wasn’t big enough to hold it all now. I could squeeze it down, but it leaked through as if the fingers were trying to hold sand. No, not true. I didn’t want to stop. It felt so good to wander through the vampires, better than playing with zombies. The moment I realized I was the one letting the fist leak, I was able to shut it down. It almost hurt, but I did it. I could do it. But I wondered if there would come a day when there was so much power that I wouldn’t be able to shut it down completely? I needed to talk to my magical mentor, Marianne, about that, sooner rather than later.

I opened my eyes and said, “How’s that?”

“Good,” he said, but his voice was not happy.

“That was frightening,” Elinore said. “I felt your power, as if you were licking along my skin, my…” She shivered, not in a happy way.

“Sorry,” I said.

“You could roll me,” London said, “roll me the way I can roll a human. You could, I felt it.”

“You must undo to my brother what you have done to him,” Wicked said, “or bind me as you bind him.”

I nodded. “We’ll discuss it later, okay? I’ve got a full plate today.”

“You promised me,” Wicked said.

I sighed. “Look, I didn’t know that taking blood from me instead of Jean-Claude would be that big a deal, okay? I’m doing the best I can here, Wicked. Truth was dying when I offered him blood. I saved his life, if I remember correctly, so stop being so pissy about it.” I was getting angry, because I felt guilty, and that almost always led to anger for me.

“Anita can work on your problem another day,” Requiem said. “Today is mine.”

Something in the way he said it made me look at him. He lay like he hurt, but the look on his face wasn’t about pain. It was almost anticipatory.

“What are you thinking, Requiem?” I asked.

“That you still need to feed the ardeur in front of all these good people.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“The test is to see what will happen if you feed the ardeur in front of our visitors. You know not to use your necromancy in front of them now, but this question has not been decided.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I think it has.”

“I’m with Anita on this one,” London said, “no ardeur in front of the guests. No anything much in front of the other masters.”

“That is not your call to make,” Elinore said.

“Do you think I’m wrong?” he asked.

No one answered. So I did. “No, you’re not wrong. My powers are too unpredictable to use in public right now. I just have to shield like a son of a bitch.”

“Perhaps you can control the necromancy to that degree, but the ardeur is not broken to bit and bridle, yet,” Requiem said.

“She just freed you,” Wicked said. “How can you want her to enslave you again?”

“I don’t want to be enslaved, but I do want her to feed. I want it more than I’ve wanted anything in a very long time.”

I looked at Jean-Claude. “Is he free, or not?”

“You called me back so I could choose, Anita.”

I looked at Requiem. “I don’t understand.”

“You said you would never feed the ardeur on me again, unless I broke free and could choose. You said it would be like rape, unless I could choose.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d remember everything I said.”

“I remember,” he said.

“I think it’s too dangerous to feed the ardeur on you.”

“You swore that you would feed from me, if I broke free. I have broken free.”

“I broke you free.”

“Are you certain of that? Are you certain that my will did not help you some little bit?”

I started to say no, then hesitated. “I don’t…know.”

“Then I choose for you to feed.”

I was shaking my head.

“Feed, Anita, feed upon my flesh, drink deep of my will until it doth spill upon your body like blood.”

“You’re not thinking clearly.” I started to get off the bed.

He grabbed my arm, in one of those too-quick-to-see movements. He winced, showed that it had cost him. “I have not made the choice you would make, if our places were reversed. I have not said what you wished me to say, but I have chosen.”

“Let go of me, Requiem.”

He looked at me, and smiled. “I do not wish to, and I am free not to obey. I fought to come back because you said only if I did, only then would you feed from me. Would you deny me now that I have fought the battle and won?”

“What if one feeding undoes it? What if the ardeur consumes you again?”

“If I am never again to be consumed by love, then what better than to be consumed by the ardeur?”

“You sound like a junkie who’s had another taste after a long dry spell.”

“My heart has died twice. Once when my mortal life ceased and the second when Ligeia was taken from me. I have felt nothing for so very long, Anita. You make me feel again.” He sat up, drew me in toward him.

I put a hand on his chest, missing the knife wound by fractions. “The ardeur makes you feel again.”

He touched my face with his wounded hand. “No, there is something about you that has awakened my heart.”

I had a panicked feeling he was about to profess undying love. Maybe Jean-Claude did, too, because he moved forward and laid a hand on my arm.

Requiem kept his wounded hand against my cheek, but let go of my arm. He reached out to Jean-Claude, laid his hand against the other man’s waist. I knew he couldn’t feel much through the thick robe, but it was still the most intimate gesture I’d ever seen him make toward Jean-Claude.

“Always before your ardeur tasted of hers, Jean-Claude.”

He wasn’t talking about me. He meant Belle Morte, because her without appellation always meant Belle for them. “Last night, Jean-Claude, you did not taste of her. You tasted of no one’s power but your own. I knew you were a sourdre de sang, but until last night you were still a planet circling the sun of Belle Morte’s power. Last night you became the sun and she the moon.”

“Belle was the moon,” I said.

He looked at me, smiling. “No, Anita, you were the moon. ‘The moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.’”

“You’re quoting something,” I said.

“Shakespeare, ma petite. He’s quoting Timon of Athens.”

“Haven’t read that one,” I said. My pulse was in my throat, and it was making blood trickle from the wounds he’d made in my neck. “I don’t need to feed the ardeur right now, Requiem, and with everything going all weird, I think I’ll wait until I have to feed.”

“That is sense, Requiem,” London said.

Requiem gazed at the other vampire. “Would you wait?”

“With permission,” London said, “I would like to leave the room.”

“Go,” Jean-Claude said.

London didn’t run for the door, but he didn’t stroll either. Hell, if I could have run from it, I would have. But you can’t run from yourself.

“Any who wish to go, go,” Jean-Claude said.

“The test will not work if we are not here,” Elinore said.

“The test is over. We are too dangerous, and we know it.”

Elinore didn’t argue, she just walked out. Wicked took his brother by the arm, and led him out. Truth seemed to be weeping.

“What do you want us to do?” Remus asked.

“Guard us, if you can.”

“We can guard you,” he said, sounding slightly offended that Jean-Claude doubted it.

“Can you guard us from ourselves?” Jean-Claude asked.

“I don’t understand,” Remus said.

Cisco had the gauze and tape. He stood by the bed, as if unsure what to do with the bandages. I touched my neck and came away with a little blood, but it had been a clean bite. It wouldn’t bleed all that much, not if it had been done right, and knowing Requiem it had been.

“Do you need antiseptic?” Cisco asked.

Remus came to the bed, impatient. “You treat Anita like another shapeshifter.”

“Oh,” Cisco said. He started to set the first-aid supplies on the bed, then hesitated as if he didn’t want to put them between Requiem and me. He was still wearing a gun, but the confident guard had vanished, replaced by an awkward eighteen-year-old.

“Give her some gauze so she can hold it against the wound,” Remus said. “The bandage is mostly to keep the cleanup to a minimum, not really for the wound.”

Cisco nodded like he understood, but he held the gauze out to me with his eyes nowhere near my face. In fact, he was sort of studiously trying not to look at me. I finally realized part of his problem. More of my chest was showing than when I’d started. Requiem’s feeding had moved the front of the robe around, so that a lot of breast was showing. Not all, not more than a really low neckline would show, but it was distracting him. He was both trying not to stare at my chest, and staring at it, as he warred with himself.

I pressed the gauze to the bite, and closed my robe up with the other hand. I’d need two hands to retie, so all I could do was hold the robe closed. That let Cisco know I’d noticed what he’d been doing. He suddenly met my eyes, and he was embarrassed. It showed in the almost panic in his own eyes, and the dark blush that crawled up his neck. The panic turned to anger, and he looked away, as if I’d seen too far into his soul.

Remus took the first-aid stuff from him. “Go to the coffin room and tell Nazareth to send someone to take your place on this detail.”

Cisco protested, “Why?”

“You’re staring at her chest. She’s not a piece of ass, kid. When you’re on the job, you’re on the fucking job. You can notice she’s pretty, but you don’t stare, you don’t get distracted.”

“I’m sorry, Remus, it won’t happen again.”

“No, it won’t,” Remus said. “Go to the coffin room.”

“Please, Remus…”

“I gave you an order, Cisco, follow it.”

Cisco lowered his head, not a bow, but dejection. The gesture itself, at something so small, said how young he was. But he didn’t argue again. He went for the door.

When it closed behind him, Remus turned to me. “Are you still bleeding?”

I let go of the gauze; it stayed in place, pasted there by blood. “Hard to tell,” I said.

He started to touch the gauze, then stopped, letting his hand drop to his side. I actually looked down to make sure my chest was completely covered. Nothing was showing. So why did Remus seem as reluctant as Cisco to touch me?

“Can you take the gauze away?” he asked.

I didn’t argue, just pulled it off. It didn’t hurt to move it, so I wasn’t bleeding that badly. Good.

“Turn your head to the side so I can see.” He added, “Please.”

I did what he asked, which put me watching Jean-Claude. He looked way too solemn for comfort. “What’s wrong now?” I asked.

“Are you so ashamed of us that you would hide our mark of favor under bandages and tape?”

I frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

Remus touched more gauze to my neck. “Can you hold it in place while I get tape?”

I put my hand up to the gauze, automatically.

Jean-Claude motioned at my hand, at Remus, who had his back mostly to the other man.

Remus moved in to tape the gauze in place. I stopped him with a hand on his arm. He stepped back immediately, out of reach, the tape still in his fingers. I glanced up at his face, but he wouldn’t give me a direct look, so I didn’t know what was in his eyes. He’d stepped back like I’d hurt him. I hadn’t.

I turned away from the guard, to Jean-Claude. Remus’s problems were Remus’s problem, not mine. I had enough problems. “You mean why am I bandaging the bite?”

He nodded.

“I always bandage the bites.”

“Pourquoi?” he asked. Why?

I opened my mouth, closed it, and thought about it. “It’s a wound. It usually pierces a vein or artery. You smear antiseptic on it, and slap a bandage on it to keep it from getting infected.”

“Have you ever known a vampire bite to become infected?” he asked.

I frowned, and thought about it. It took me nearly a minute to say, “No.”

“Why is that, ma petite?”

“Because vampires have a natural antiseptic in their saliva. Vampires actually have fewer types of bacteria in their saliva than the average human.”

“You are quoting now,” he said.

I nodded, and stopped because the bite was a little tight. It didn’t exactly hurt, but it let me know it was there. “Yeah, they had an article in The Animator. Some doctor actually wondered why vampire bites don’t get infected like an ordinary human bite, or an animal bite. They’ve known for a while that you guys have an anticoagulant in your saliva, but this was the first study on other properties of vampire saliva.”

“So, I ask again, why are you hiding our mark of favor?”

I thought about it, then shrugged. “Habit.” I took the gauze off the bite mark. It had two small round red circles on it, but it had almost stopped bleeding. They usually did unless you were cut up. A violent vamp bite was more like a dog bite; it bled. The two neat holes stopped sooner than you’d think, and rarely re-bled without the wound being reopened. I’d known vampire junkies who tried to hide their habit by having a vampire bite the same wound several times. It didn’t really work if you knew enough about vamps to know what a bite should look like, but it fooled the tourists, or the boss at work on Monday. Repeated trauma to an area is still repeated trauma, and that was one of the few times outside of violent attacks when a vamp bite started to bruise and tear.

I handed the used gauze to Remus, who took it gingerly from me as if he didn’t want to touch my fingers. “I don’t need the bandages. Thanks anyway, Remus.”

Jean-Claude came to me, smiling. He touched the bite delicately, coming away with minute drops of blood on his fingertips. He lifted them to his mouth, and I knew what he was going to do before he licked so delicately. I watched him lick my blood off his fingertips, and wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t not enjoy it. I felt neutral about what he’d done, but why had he done it? He usually went out of his way not to spook me, not to be too vampiric.

He leaned over me, put his hands delicately around my face, and tried to raise me up for a kiss. Normally, I would have met him halfway, but I didn’t do it this time. I stayed sitting, forcing him to bend down for me. I kept my hand on the robe, holding it in place, and watched him bend lower. He stopped just before he would have kissed me, and drew back enough so I could see his face clearly. “You have kissed me many times with the taste of your sweet blood upon my lips, but now, I see reluctance on your face, feel it in your body. Why?” He searched my face, though I knew he could drop his shields and know exactly what I was thinking. Maybe he was afraid of what he’d find.

Why, he’d asked? Because he’d licked my blood off his fingers? I’d kissed him when he’d come directly off my vein. I’d kissed him when one mouth or the other had gotten nicked on his fangs. I’d learned to think of a little sweet copper taste as almost an aphrodisiac, because I’d begun to associate it with him, and others. Even Richard liked a little taste of blood; he hated that he liked it, but he did.

Jean-Claude drew back, letting my face slide between his hands as he stood. A look of such sadness came over his face. I grabbed his arm. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what, ma petite? Don’t stop hiding what I am? I cannot be human, ma petite, not even for you. I thought the worst of playing human for each other, you and I, was the crippling of our power, but that is not what hurts my heart.”

I let go of his arm. I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I knew I had to, or be branded a coward. I swallowed hard enough that it hurt, and asked, “What hurts your heart?” It was a whisper, but I asked it. Brownie points for me.

“That you turn away from me, for such a small thing. I licked your blood off my fingertips and now you will not kiss me.”

“I would have kissed you.”

He shook his head. “But you did not wish to.”

That I couldn’t argue with. Part of me wished I could have, part of me didn’t. “What do you want me to say?” I asked.

“I want you and Richard to embrace yourselves, and I am out of time to await this miracle.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You promised to feed the ardeur from Requiem, if he fought free of your power. Will you go back on your word?”

I glanced at the other vampire, lying on the mounded pillows, then back to Jean-Claude. “The ardeur hasn’t risen for either of us, yet. I think we should use the time we have before it does to plan strategy.”

“Strategy for what, ma petite? This is not a battle of guns and knives. This is battle of a softer sort, though no less dangerous in the end.”

I was shaking my head, and felt the first little trickle of blood down my throat. It wasn’t the shaking that was making me bleed a little more, but the fact that my pulse was speeding up. “We are not going to feed the ardeur before we have to.”

“Your power rises, and you are more like Belle Morte,” Requiem said, and he sounded sad.

I glanced at him. “What are you talking about?”

Requiem answered, “Belle used to promise to feed the ardeur on us, then say she had not meant right this moment, but later, always later. Later could be very late indeed when she wished to play cruel games.”

“I’m not playing,” I said, “I’m scared.”

“If you feed from him, and he becomes besotted again, then you cannot feed off any of the pomme de sang candidates. We will show them Requiem’s state of mind and tell them you have grown too powerful for such games.”

“And if he doesn’t fall under my spell again?” I asked.

“Then you may taste some of the candidates without sex.”

I was shaking my head.

“The ardeur is growing, ma petite, you must accept that. What we have seen today and last night proves that pretending will no longer work.”

“I’m not pretending,” I said.

“You are pretending.”

“Pretending what?” I asked.

“I am sorry, ma petite, so sorry, but we must accept the truth.”

I had crawled to the foot of the bed. Blood was trickling down my throat, like tickling fingers. I was so scared I could taste metal on my tongue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You are succubus to my incubus, ma petite. You feed as a vampire feeds, but on sex instead of blood.”

“I know that,” I said, and sounded angry, because I didn’t want to sound scared.

“You say you know, but you know here”—and he touched his forehead—“not here”—and touched his heart. “You do not truly believe you are vampire.”

“I’m not a vampire.”

“Not in the traditional sense, non, but only because you have Damian and Nathaniel to draw upon. Without them to draw energy from, when you did not feed the ardeur in a timely fashion, your own body would feel the weakness.”

“You went for years without feeding the ardeur for real. The old Master of St. Louis wouldn’t let you feed the ardeur, not completely.”

“Oui, Nikolaos feared what I would become if she allowed my powers full rein. The Master of the City that traded me to her feared me, as well. He sent me to Nikolaos because he knew that her child’s body would not be something I would willingly seduce.”

“She looked about twelve or thirteen; that’s legal in some places.”

He shook his head. “Not for me,” he said, then he shivered. “You met her, ma petite; could you ever see me purposefully doing anything to draw her attention to me in that way?”

I shook my head. “No, she was creepy as hell, and not in a fun way.”

He nodded. “Oui, creepy will do as an appellation, though there are other words.” He shook his head, as if to clear his mind from such thoughts. “If you were a different woman, one of more casual lusts, then your being succubus to my incubus would not be a hardship. You would simply feed from whomever you wished. You are human, so your use of vampire trickery is not illegal.”

“Not true,” I said, “it is illegal to use magic or psychic ability to induce, or bespell, into sexual acts. It’s looked on like a date-rape drug.”

He nodded. “I had not realized the law had been broadened to include that.”

I shrugged. “I keep track of the new laws, part of my job.”

He nodded again. “But still, ma petite, there are many who would come eagerly to your body. You would not lack for food, if you were willing to feed on strangers.”

I frowned at him.

He gave a small smile. “Do not frown so, ma petite, I know you do not do casual. In fact, you are the least casual person that I have ever met. So serious, you are, so deadly serious about everything.”

“Is that a complaint?” I asked.

“No, but it is the truth.”

I nodded, and put a hand to my throat to try to stop the blood from getting onto the silk robe. I looked for Remus. “Gauze, please, or this will have to be dry-cleaned.”

Remus handed the gauze over without a word. I tried to stop the blood, but my pulse was pushing it out. I couldn’t seem to calm myself enough to slow my pulse. So much for the meditation practice I’d been working on.

“What’s your point?” I asked.

“That you need food that you know, and are comfortable with. A pomme de sang is never meant to be the only food for a vampire. It is more like food you always know is on hand. But it is assumed that the vampire will feed off many humans.”

“Casually feed, you mean?”

“Oui.”

“I don’t do casual, sorry.”

“True, and that is why the pomme de sang candidates are even more important for you than for a normal vampire.”

“I’m not following you,” I said.

“You must pick pommes de sang, and other food. You must choose enough food that you are not a danger to others.”

“You’re babbling.”

He came around the bed so he could touch me, but I moved out of reach. “If you bespell Requiem again, then you cannot seek a pomme de sang among our visitors. Your food will have to be chosen even more carefully, and quietly, behind the scenes, from the very few masters I trust. But it would be better to do it now, while we have so many willing princesses for our Prince Charming. Because choose you must, ma petite, choose you must.”

“I thought the whole pomme de sang choosing was a trick to make everyone behave. Nobody wants to piss off their prospective in-laws, that sort of thing.”

“Anita”—my name, not good—“we must know how dangerous you are, before Augustine wakes for the day. If you can feed from Requiem and not bespell him, then you can free Augustine. But if Requiem is not free, then he, and Augustine, will be like humans that we have let go, but we know that we can call them to us at any time. We take away our mind spell to please the human police, but we know which ones are so deeply ours that we can still whisper through their dreams. We can still call them.” He stood at the foot of the bed, letting me see how scared he was, but under that fear was eagerness. “If we can control this, then we are powerful beyond my wildest dreams. If we cannot control this, then we are dangerous beyond my deepest fears. If Requiem falls to the ardeur again, then we must cancel everything. I dare not even take you to the ballet among so many vampires.”

“And if Requiem is okay?”

“Then it is controllable, incredibly powerful, but controllable. It is something our enemies and allies will fear and lust after, but they will not fear us too much, or lust too greatly. It is the difference between having a weapon that one can use, and one that you dare never use.”

“Like nuclear bombs,” I said.

He nodded. “Oui.”

I frowned at him. “Define ‘feed the ardeur’?”

He made a sound that was half tsk and half throat sound. “Feed, feed, ma petite. He is not ugly. Feed upon him, completely, no tasting, no holding back. Feed, and if he can withstand it, then the ballet tonight goes on, the party after.”

I looked behind me to Requiem. He was trying for a neutral look, and failing. “Let me test my understanding: you want me to make love to another man, and feed the ardeur off him?”

“Yes,” he said.

If Ronnie had been there, she’d have shot herself, or maybe shot me. I wasn’t planning on keeping Requiem. This was supposed to be like a one-night stand. But I didn’t believe it. I’d never had sex with anyone just once. “I can’t do another permanent man in my life, Jean-Claude. I can’t.”

“Think of him as you think of Jason. What did he call himself, your fuck buddy?”

I raised my eyebrows at him, then turned and looked at Requiem. “Did you hear that?”

“I did.”

“Do you understand what the term means?”

“It means someone who is your friend, that you sometimes have sex with, but it is not a relationship. Though I prefer the term fib for it.”

“Fib?” I made it a question.

“Friends in bed, fib.”

“Prettier,” I said. “Fine, you okay with just being my friend in bed?”

“Your heart speaks to others, Anita, I know this. My heart speaks to no one else. But this is not a matter of hearts, but a matter of flesh and blood.” He held his hand out to me. “Come to me, Anita, please. I have thrown off your silken chains for this chance to be with you; do not deny me.”

Maybe it was the way Requiem talked, all poetry and so emotional sounding. I was a modern girl; I wasn’t used to it. Jean-Claude could talk pretty when he wanted to, but he was my serious sweetie, and hearing it from someone who was supposed to be casual just didn’t ring right. It was as if the words didn’t match the situation. How could you talk about silken chains if you weren’t serious? Fuck buddies didn’t say things like that, did they? Of course, my experience with the whole concept of fuck buddies was pretty limited, so maybe I was just wrong. Wrong about so many things.

I stared at Requiem, and felt nothing. He was pretty, but pretty had never been enough for me. I was almost perfectly happy in parts of my personal life, for the first time in a long time. I did not want to screw that up, and I’d learned that every new addition had a chance of blowing it all sky-high.

Requiem let his arm fall. “You simply do not want me, do you?” He sounded sad, and more lost than when I’d rolled him.

I don’t know what I would have said, because the door opening saved me. Asher glided in, as if his feet weren’t quite touching the ground under the golden satin robe. His hair spread out around the robe, putting the shiny cloth to shame by contrast. He glanced at the bed and flashed a wide smile. “Oh, good, I’m in time to watch.”

I gave him an unfriendly look.

He shrugged and smiled, way too pleased with himself. “Elinore has filled me in on what’s been happening in here. When I woke early, I realized that if I was awake then so was Meng Die.”

That stopped us all, made us all turn to him. Remus actually stepped away from the wall as if he’d go running.

Asher waved him back. “She’s still in the coffin, though she does want out. She’s agreed to behave herself.”

“She vowed she would kill me, or scar me so badly that Anita would not want me,” Requiem said.

Asher went to Jean-Claude where he still stood by the bed. He hugged the other man from behind, laying his head on Jean-Claude’s shoulder, so that his scarred cheek was bare to the light. “Yes, I was there when she made that particular threat. She looked at me, and said she’d forgotten that Anita liked scars.” His face tried for neutral when he said it, but failed. A flash of anger flared through the paleness of his eyes, making them flicker for a second like icy sapphires caught in light.

Jean-Claude hugged his arm where it lay across his chest. He leaned his face against the top of Asher’s hair, and said, “How did you get Meng Die to see reason?”

“She said, for such power as she felt when you did Augustine she would play virgin. There’s always another lover, but this kind of power is rare.”

I looked at the two of them standing there, the light and the dark, entwined. I realized in that moment that I had never seen Asher enter a room and simply go to Jean-Claude and touch him like that. I had never seen them hug, let alone more. They touched, but it was seldom this deliberate.

Did they touch like this when I wasn’t around? Did they do more? Did I care? Maybe. But did it bother me more that they were lovers, or that they were doing it behind my back? Doing it without me?

Jean-Claude pulled away from him. Asher held on for a moment, then let him go with a flash of annoyance on his face, but he didn’t fight to stay closer. He simply let Jean-Claude move a little closer to the bed, and me.

I wanted to say, You don’t have to hide, but I wasn’t sure about it. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel watching them act all lovey-dovey around each other. But the thought that they couldn’t touch in front of me bothered me, too. I sighed and hung my head. God, I was confused even in my own head without any help from anyone.

I felt the bed move, and looked up to find Requiem getting off the bed. He stood carefully, showing how much he hurt, but he stood straight, his pale untouched back military straight like most of the older vampires. They came from a time when good posture was beaten into you, sometimes literally.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

He turned his whole body, rather than just his head, as if he knew that it would have hurt to do it otherwise. “I see how you watch Asher and Jean-Claude. I said that you do not want me, and you do not. It is plain in your face, in your lack of reaction to me. The irony cuts deep, Anita. So many women have wanted me over the centuries, but I did not want them. Now it is my turn to burn and be unquenched.”

“Non,” Jean-Claude said, “you are not going.”

Requiem motioned with his good hand. “See her face, taste her lack of pulse. Her body does not respond to me. She does not even see me in that way.”

“Anita sees you, or you’d have never gotten to feed the ardeur twice for her,” Asher said. He walked wide around Jean-Claude, to climb onto the bed with me. There was a look in his face that I hadn’t seen before. It was eager, almost angry, but not unhappy.

He touched my face, and his hand was cool to the touch. He hadn’t fed. “I woke before noon today for the first time since I died.” He leaned in toward me, as if for a kiss. “So much power running through my veins, even without blood. I feel wonderful.” He stopped with his mouth just above mine, so close that it seemed wrong not to close the distance and kiss. So I did.

I meant it to be a good-morning kiss. Good, but not too sexual. But it takes two people to keep a kiss chaste and Asher wasn’t feeling the least bit chaste.

He explored my mouth with lips and tongue. I melted into that kiss. I danced my tongue over the dainty points of his fangs, slid between them, deeper into his mouth. He pressed us together, hands urgent on my body. One hand undid the sash of my robe. The nude fronts of our bodies were suddenly touching. I didn’t even know when he’d undone his own robe, only that the naked press of our bodies drove my hands under his open robe to slide along the smooth skin of his back and buttocks. When I cupped the tight smoothness of his ass, he drew back enough to see my face. Whatever he saw there painted a fierce look across his own. His voice came harsh and breathless. “Let me feed.”

I just said, “Yes.”

He wrapped his hand in my hair, hard enough for it to hurt, just a little. That little bit of hurting made me gasp, but it wasn’t just the pain. It was the feeling that with that one harsh grasp he could expose my neck and hold me exposed while he fed. I might never have admitted it aloud, but there was something about a little bit of force that just flat did it for me. Asher dug his hand deeper into my hair, jerked, brought a cry from me. It wasn’t exactly a cry of pain.

His free hand found my wrists, held them behind my back, while my robe slipped down my shoulders. He stretched my head to the side so that I could no longer see his face. I saw us reflected in the full-length mirror on the other side of the room. My robe had fallen like a dark frame around the paleness of my body. The robe covered our hands, and not much more. It looked in the mirror like my hands were bound. The sight of it made me strain to be free, and Asher tightened his grip, bruising my wrists just a little, just enough to let me know I couldn’t get away. I trusted him. Trusted him enough to let him trap me.

Movement in the mirror, and I saw Jean-Claude reflected there. His own robe was tight in place, but his eyes glowed with midnight blue fire.

“The audience is a little large for ma petite.”

“She’s not objecting,” Asher said.

“And do you not find that strange?” Jean-Claude asked.

Asher seemed to struggle to think, then finally said, “I do not know. I can’t seem to think with her here in my arms.” He looked out into the room. “Their presence seems to make it harder to think.”

“The guards, or just certain guards?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Remus”—and he looked to the far corner of the room—“and the new one.”

“And what of Pepito? Do you sense him as strongly?”

Asher’s body began to relax against me. I didn’t want that. I wanted him to feed. Needed him to feed. “Don’t stop,” I said, “please, don’t stop.”

Asher looked down at me with those glowing eyes. He seemed to be searching my face for some sign. “You wish me to take you here with the guards watching?”

Of course I did. “Yes,” I said, “yes, God, yes.”

He looked at Jean-Claude. “Something is wrong.”

“Wrong, and right,” Jean-Claude said. He came to the edge of the bed. “You have possessed her, completely. You could do what you wished with her, but when she sobered, then she would never forgive you.”

Asher turned back to me. Whatever he saw there calmed him, tore the light from his eyes. “Anita, are you in there?”

The question made no sense at first, then I said, “I am here, Asher, right here.” Some part of me heard me say it, and thought I’d heard that phrase before. I closed my eyes, tried to not see Asher’s face. It helped, to look away. I knew where I’d heard the words now: Requiem. I was echoing Requiem when I’d rolled his mind. Asher had rolled me before, but not like this, never like this.

Remembering Requiem helped me think, but closing my eyes helped more. I was too big a fish for Asher’s gaze to keep, but staring into his eyes had lost me, myself. I’d stared into Augustine’s eyes and not been swept away, so how did Asher’s gaze rate higher than a couple of thousand years of Master of the City? I was supposed to be immune to vampire gaze. My necromancy and Jean-Claude’s marks should have kept me safe.

Asher let go of my wrists. I felt him move back from me. I opened my eyes and reached for my robe, drawing it back around me. “What’s happening?” I asked.

Jean-Claude spoke from beside the bed. “Are you yourself, ma petite?”

“I think so.” I glanced up at Asher’s face, but he turned away, the spill of golden hair hiding his face. “Look at me, Asher.”

“I did not mean to bespell you with my gaze. I did not even know that my gaze could capture you.”

“It’s never been able to before,” I said. I looked at Jean-Claude. “What is happening? I was as bespelled as Requiem before I freed him.”

“Non, you were able to fight free, once you realized what had happened.”

“Yes, but why did it happen in the first place? What just happened, and why? And don’t avoid the question again, Jean-Claude, I mean it.”

He made a gesture that was half bow and half shrug. Managing to make it both apology and an I-don’t-know gesture.

“Not good enough. You do know what’s going on.”

“I know what I believe has happened.”

“Fine, tell us.” I slipped off the bed so I could tie the robe in place better.

“All our people gained from what we did last night with Augustine. Asher has been a master vampire for a very long time, but he has never had many of the master-level powers that are taken for granted among many of us.”

“His gaze has gone up a few notches, I get that,” I said.

Jean-Claude shook his head. “Non, ma petite, it is more than that. What is Asher’s greatest vampiric ability?”

I thought about it for a second or two, then said, “His bite is orgasmic.”

Jean-Claude gave a small smile. “That may be his most alluring power for you, ma petite, but it is not his most powerful.”

I thought harder. “Fascination. He makes you fascinated with him, once he’s fed off you using full power. Once he’s made love to you, it’s like a sort of love spell, but it works the way that love spells never work.”

“I believe his ability to fascinate has grown in power.”

I glanced at Asher, who was still sitting on the side of the bed, but carefully not looking at me. I shook my head and walked closer to him. “Look at me, Asher, please.”

“Why?” he asked, in a very still voice, carefully not looking at me.

“I have to know if your gaze can just roll me, or if it happened because I don’t protect myself against you.”

He almost glanced at me then, but gave me only the perfection of his profile and a wave of shimmering hair. “What do you mean, you do not protect yourself from me?”

“I trust you, so I don’t shield from you. I want your power to take me. I don’t want to fight it. But before it was a choice. Now I need to see if it’s still a choice, or if you’ve just outgrown me.”

“Give her the weight of your gaze, mon ami, let us see.”

Asher turned, reluctance plain in the way he held his body. He gave me a face as blank and unreadable as any I’d ever seen on him. I’d perfected the art of looking at a vampire’s face without meeting their gaze years ago. I was a little out of practice, grown arrogant with power, but old skills never truly desert you.

I studied the curve of his lips, then raised my eyes slowly to meet his. They were as beautiful as always, such a pale, pale blue. A pure, clear blue, but pale as a winter’s dawn. I stared into those eyes and felt nothing.

“This won’t work unless you try to capture me with your gaze.”

“I do not wish to capture you,” he said softly.

“Liar,” I said.

He managed to look offended then.

“Don’t try to kid me, Asher, you like power games entirely too much. You love the effect you have on me. You love that you can do to me what Jean-Claude can’t. You love the fact that you are the only vamp who can vamp me.”

His face went to cold neutrality. “I have never said such things to you.”

“Your body said them for you.”

He licked his lips then, an old gesture that he still made when he was nervous. “What do you want from me, Anita?”

“Truth.”

He shook his head, and looked solemn. “You ask for truth a great deal, but it is seldom what you truly want.”

I’d have liked to argue that, but I couldn’t, not and be honest. “You’re right, probably more right than I want to know, but right now, try to capture me with your gaze. Really try, so we’ll know how careful I need to be around you.”

“I do not want you to have to be careful around me.”

I shook my head. “Please, Asher, we need to know.”

“Why, so you can hide from me? So you can deny me the gaze of your own eyes?”

“Please, Asher, just do it, just try.”

“I will ask as a friend,” Jean-Claude said, “but the next request will be as master. Do as she asks.” His voice sounded so sad. Sad enough that it made me look at him. I felt like I was missing something.

Once I would have just ignored the warning in my head, but I’d learned to ask questions. “Am I asking something bad here? I mean, you’re both way too bothered by this. Am I missing something that’s going to come back and bite us on the ass?”

Jean-Claude smiled, almost laughed. “Ah, ma petite, how delicately you phrase it.”

“Yeah, yeah, just answer the question.”

“We fear what your reaction will be if Asher can indeed capture you with his gaze.”

I looked from one to the other of them. Jean-Claude’s carefully pleasant face. Asher’s arrogant blankness. I caught sight of Requiem against the far wall beyond them. His face was as blank as theirs, but it wasn’t pleasant like Jean-Claude’s or arrogant like Asher’s; he simply tried to show nothing. His upper body was still decorated with the wounds Meng Die had given him. For the first time I wondered: if I fed the ardeur off him, would the wounds heal? I’d healed before with metaphysical sex. I frowned and turned back to Jean-Claude. “You had more than one reason for me to feed the ardeur from Requiem, didn’t you?”

“You are not going to do it, so what does it matter?” There was the slightest flavor of anger to his words.

I turned to him. The pleasant mask was gone, and in its place something close to the arrogance that Asher hid behind. “I know I’m difficult, but let’s pretend I’m not. Let’s pretend that I’m not a huge pain in the ass. Just talk to me. Tell me your reasoning.”

“My reasoning about what, ma petite?”

I walked toward him, talking as I moved. “All the reasons for me to feed from Requiem now. All the reasons why you’re so nervous about Asher being able to capture me with his gaze.” I was in front of him now, and realized that he must have moved back from the bed at some point, and I didn’t remember him moving away. I’d been too caught up in Asher’s eyes. “Just tell me. I promise not to panic. I promise not to run away. Just talk to me like I’m a reasonable human being.”

He gave me a look, and it was an eloquent look. He let me watch thoughts chase over his face, but finally he said, “Asher is correct, ma petite; you ask for truth, but you often punish us for telling it.”

I nodded. “I know, and I’m sorry about that. All I know is that I’ll try to stop being a pain in the ass. I’ll try to listen, and not overreact.”

“Good intentions, ma petite, but you do know the old saying.”

I nodded, again. “Yeah, the road to hell is paved with them, I know.” I touched his arm where it lay folded across his chest. Even his body language had closed down. “Please, Jean-Claude, I feel like we don’t have time to play to my insecurities. If we crash this weekend with all the other masters here, I don’t want it to be because you were afraid to be honest with me. I don’t want the disaster to be my fault. Okay?”

He uncrossed his arms, and touched my face. “So sincere, ma petite. What has come over you?”

I thought about that, then said it, out loud. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

I put my hand on his, pressing his touch against my face. “Of failing us all, just because I didn’t want something to be true.”

“Ma petite, that is not it, not entirely.”

I looked away from those suddenly knowing eyes of his. “I think it’s the baby thing.” I made myself meet his eyes. The gentleness in them was both easier to meet and harder. “If we really are going to do this, keep the baby, then we have to make this work. We have to make it all work. I don’t have the luxury of being a pain in the ass, if it’s going to get us hurt.”

“You find out but hours ago, and you are suddenly more willing to compromise.” He looked at me, considering, serious, tender, all mixed together. “I am told that pregnancy changes a woman, but so quick as this?”

“Maybe I just needed a wake-up call.”

“Wake up to what, ma petite?”

“I keep telling Richard I’ve accepted my life, but he’s right, I’m still hiding from parts of it. You”—and I looked at Asher then—“are all still tiptoeing around me afraid of what I’ll do, aren’t you?” I turned back to Jean-Claude. “Aren’t you?”

“You have taught us caution, ma petite.” He tried to hug me, but I stepped away.

“Don’t comfort me, Jean-Claude, talk to me.”

He sighed. “You do realize, ma petite, that these demands for complete honesty that come over you from time to time are another way of being a pain in the ass?”

I had to smile. “No, I hadn’t realized that. I thought this was being reasonable.”

“Non, ma petite, this is not being reasonable. This is another way of being very demanding.”

“Well, hell, then tell me what to do, because I don’t know how to be anything else.”

“You are a high-maintenance item, as they say, ma petite. But I knew that before we became a couple.”

“You’re saying, you knew what you were getting into.”

He nodded. “As much as any man can when he decides to love a woman. There are always mysteries and surprises in every love affair. But, yes, I had some idea what I was getting myself into. I did it willingly, eagerly.”

“The difficulties were outweighed by what, the power you might gain?”

He frowned at me. “See, already you grow angry. You do not want truth, ma petite. You do not want lies either. You leave us all with no clue to what will take us safely through your rocky shoals.”

“I’ve never heard you use a sea metaphor before.”

“Perhaps seeing Samuel reminded me of my voyage to this fair land.”

“Perhaps,” I said, and even to me it sounded suspicious.

Asher made a sound low in his throat. “You seek a reason to be angry, so you can blame us, and run.”

“Like Richard was trying to pick a fight earlier,” I said.

Asher nodded.

I thought about that for a second or two. “It’s not that Richard and I are too different, we’re too much alike.”

Jean-Claude gave me a look, like I’d finally come to something he’d understood long ago. “Too much alike in many ways, but you have compromised more, and your very alikeness in character makes him keep trying to force you to make the same decisions he has made. He sees the echo of himself in you, and understands even less why you do not see his rightness in all things.”

“And it’s maybe why he frustrates me, too. He’s enough like me, so why can’t he make the decisions I’ve made?”

“Oui, ma petite, I believe that is part of your immense anger toward each other.”

“He’s right, I’m trying to make him into something he’s not, and he’s trying to do the same to me. Shit.”

“What, ma petite?”

“I hate being this slow about something that feels so obvious.”

“It is only obvious once you have thought of it,” he said.

“I’m not sure that makes sense, but okay, fine. I’m not saying I’ll like hearing it, but tell me why you’re so worried about Asher using his gaze on me.”

“I’ll answer this one,” Asher said. He came to me, his robe still open over his body. It took more concentration than I’d have admitted out loud to give him eye contact and not look lower. “If I can capture you with my gaze, we are both afraid you will exile me from your bed. Your bed, and Jean-Claude’s.”

“I’m not in charge of Jean-Claude’s bed. You and he sleep together in your bed whenever I sleep by day in his bed.”

The two men exchanged a look I couldn’t read. I touched Asher’s arm, brought his attention back to me. “What is it?”

He looked down at me, using all that gold hair to cover the scarred side of his face. He didn’t usually hide from me anymore. “What do you think that Jean-Claude and I do in my bed when you are asleep in this one?”

I frowned, then couldn’t quite meet his entirely too-frank gaze. Vampire powers didn’t make me look away, embarrassment did. “You’re right, I don’t want honesty, I just think I do.”

“You are blushing,” Asher said, and he gave a delighted laugh. “You think we are lovers, don’t you?”

I was blushing so hard I was dizzy, and I felt like he was making fun of me. So I got angry. I crossed my arms over my stomach, and said, “Yeah.”

Asher looked at Jean-Claude. “She believes what most believe of us.”

I finally looked at Jean-Claude. His face was very empty. I had to lick my suddenly dry lips to say, “Are you saying that you’re not doing it, when I’m not around?”

“All the touch I am allowed is when you are with us,” Asher said, and it was his turn to sound angry. But his anger had warmth to it, to fill his voice.

I kept staring at Jean-Claude.

“You do not believe us?” Jean-Claude asked.

“It’s not that, it’s…” I tried to put it into words. Finally, I said, “How could you be so close to him and keep turning him down?”

“Thank you for that,” Asher said.

“And what would you have done, ma petite, if you had found us in an embrace?”

“I…I don’t know. I guess it depends on what you mean by embrace.”

“Sex, ma petite, sex.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know.”

“I do. You would have stormed away. You would have abandoned my bed, damaged our power base, the triumvirate. You might have run to our so-conservative Richard, or left us both again. So shocked you would have been, so unready to conceive of such things.”

“Maybe, but I didn’t freak about you and Augustine.”

“You were involved. We shared him. If you had come upon the two of us alone, you would have taken it differently.”

“Well, yeah, he’s a stranger for one thing.”

“Wait,” Asher said, “are you saying that you would share Jean-Claude with me?”

“We share each other now.”

He shook his head. “We share you, Anita, we barely touch each other.”

“Do not do this tonight, Asher. I ask this as your friend, and as your master. When our guests are gone, then we will continue this discussion.”

“Your word on that,” Asher said.

“My word.”

I nodded. “When we’re not ass-deep in alligators, and I’ve had a few days to digest the news.”

“Is this news to you, that I want him as my lover?” Asher asked.

I shook my head. “Truthfully, I thought you guys were doing it like bunnies behind my back. You know, the whole don’t ask, don’t tell policy. It never occurred to me that all the touching you did was with me.”

“I thought you would see it as cheating,” Jean-Claude said.

“With another woman, yeah, but I don’t have the same equipment. I mean if guys do it for you, I don’t have those parts. But it wasn’t guys I thought I was sharing you with, it was Asher. He’s not just one of the guys to us.”

“Are you saying that Asher is your exception to the rule?”

“I’m not sure I had a rule, but I won’t share you casually with anyone, any more than I’d expect you to share me. But I assumed that you and Asher were lovers, without me.” There, that was the truth.

“Why did you assume it?”

I motioned at Asher. “Look at him. Look at the way he watches you.”

Asher laughed. “Are you saying I am so adorable, how could anyone turn me down?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

His face softened, and he came to stand beside me. “Oh, Anita, you make my heart young again.”

I took his hand in mine. “And sometimes you make me feel like such a baby.”

“Pourquoi?”

“That I can take you both to bed, but I assumed you were doing each other behind my back, to save my sensibilities. It was a neat, clean solution, I thought. I didn’t have to decide how I felt about you two being a couple, but we all got what we needed. Instead, Jean-Claude has been a very, very good boy, and you’ve felt neglected.”

“Rejected,” he said, and gave Jean-Claude a dark look.

I touched his face, turned him back to face me. “That was my fault, not his. He’s right, Asher. You know me. I can ignore the elephant in the living room until I’m eyeball-deep in shit, but if you make me look at something before it’s that big, sometimes I take it badly. If I’d walked in on you guys together, I’d have used it as an excuse to run for the hills. Jean-Claude’s right about that.”

“And now?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. That’s the truth. Before I saw Jean-Claude kiss Auggie last night, before we shared him, I would have just said no. Not only no, but hell no.” I looked down, not sure if I was embarrassed, unhappy, or just out of my depth. “But I want everyone that I love to be happy. I know that. I want us all to be happy, and to stop running.” I touched my stomach, so nice and flat with all the exercise. “To stop pretending that we’re something we’re not.” I looked up at him. “No one asked you how you feel about the baby thing. I mean, you have as good a chance at it as Jean-Claude. Being the father, I mean.”

He smiled at me. “I am a selfish clod.” He dropped to his knees, gazing up at me. “I wake power drunk, and forget you have been through so very much in the last few hours. Forgive me.”

I shook my head. “No, I’ve been ignoring your problem for a lot longer.”

“I am in the bed of two people I love, there is no problem. I am luckier, and happier, than I ever dreamed to be again.”

“But…”

He put his fingertips against my mouth. “Hush. You ask how I feel about your pregnancy. How could I be anything but happy about the possibility of a little you, or Jean-Claude, coming into our lives? Julianna regretted that she never gave me a child.” He said her name without aching sadness, for the very first time.

I kissed his fingers and moved his hand so I could say, “You’re happy about the pregnancy.”

“Not happy, or unhappy, but I am very happy with you right now. I am very proud to call you my lover. You truly want us all to be happy, Anita. You have no idea how rare it is for two people in a relationship to truly want the happiness of the other, but you juggle many hearts and seek happiness for all. It is a rare gift, this desire.”

“How could you love someone and not want them to be happy?”

He smiled up at me, his hair falling back. He smiled broad enough to flash fangs, which he did rarely. A smile this broad stretched the scars, made him notice how tight the skin was, but it was the effect on others that made him not do it, or the perceived effect on others. I remembered this smile from centuries before I was born. It was a smile he had before Julianna died, before holy water was trailed over him to try to chase the devil out. I smiled back, because it eased something in my heart to see that smile again. I was almost certain that the feeling of ease was Jean-Claude’s and not mine, but it felt real.

Asher hugged me, putting his face against my stomach. He went very still, as if he were listening. I stroked his hair, always a surprise, because it was soft and foamy, not as soft as Jean-Claude’s, but as soft as mine. Hair that looked like spun gold shouldn’t be that soft, should it?

He spoke low and soft, in French. I caught the word bebe. Baby. I waited to be irritated, but all I could think while I stared down at him whispering to my stomach was how cute it was. That didn’t sound like me. I looked across the room, and found Jean-Claude’s face gone soft with emotion. I knew who thought it was cute, and it wasn’t me. But with that much of Jean-Claude’s emotion going through me, I had to agree. I held my hand out to Jean-Claude, while the other hand stroked Asher’s hair. Jean-Claude took my hand and hugged me from behind, pressing his body to Asher’s arms around my waist. So happy, Jean-Claude was so happy. It filled us both, so warm, so good, like being wrapped in your favorite blanket cuddled against someone you love. I leaned into Jean-Claude’s arm, and he laid a kiss against my neck. Asher raised his face, and smiled up at us both. His face somehow looked younger, the way he must have looked centuries ago when he was alive.

The happiness was real, touchable; then the thinnest slice of regret crept into Jean-Claude’s mind. I caught the thought before he could hide it, that happiness like this does not last. That the last time he’d been this happy, it had all gone horribly wrong. He buried his face in the crook of my neck to hide his expression from Asher. I touched his face, gave him my eyes, and let him see that I’d “heard” his thought, and it was all right. It was all right to fear the-great-bad-thing coming to get you, because I believed in the-great-bad-thing, too.

When I was younger, I’d wanted someone to promise me that things would work out and nothing bad would ever happen again. But I understood now that that was a child’s wish. No one could promise that. No one. The grown-ups could try, but they couldn’t promise, not and mean it. I stood there between the two of them, and knew that I would do whatever it took to keep them safe, to keep them happy. I’d been willing to kill for the people I loved for a very long time; now I had to start living for them.

28

EVERYONE I CONSIDERED a boyfriend or a lover left. I wanted some alone time. But truly alone was too dangerous. Requiem and some bodyguards stayed. I dressed in the bathroom, which seemed stupid since everyone had seen me naked, but I needed some privacy.

While Jean-Claude and Asher were with me, I felt utterly calm about the baby, even happy. Once they were gone the panic set back in. One of them, I wasn’t sure which, had used vampire wiles on me. Or maybe, I was just picking up someone’s emotions. Hell, I was bound metaphysically to so many different men, it didn’t even have to be Jean-Claude’s emotions I was picking up. All I knew for certain was that they weren’t mine.

I got dressed in the emergency clothes I’d started keeping in Jean-Claude’s room. Jeans, black T-shirt, jogging shoes, good leather belt, and enough underwear to go under it all. The belt helped hold my shoulder holster. The familiar tightness of it made me feel better. More secure. The security had little to do with being able to shoot people. Most of the people making my life hard, I loved, and didn’t want to shoot. No, the gun was more psychological-better than real-life-better. Guns only work against things you’re willing to kill. If you’re not willing to kill, then a gun is, in some ways, a false sense of security. The wrist sheaths and silver-edged knives, that was extra security. Short of a heart blow, most of the people in my life would survive a knife. I didn’t expect to argue that hard with anybody, but the wrist sheaths helped me feel better. I left the bathroom dressed and armed. Much better.

I added another thing I kept at Jean-Claude’s, an extra cross. I got it out of the bedside table. It was cool against my skin, hidden under the shirt.

“I am the only monster in the room that a cross will stop, do you distrust me that much?” Requiem said from the bed.

His comment made me glance at Remus and another new werehyena sitting near the fireplace. “It’s nothing personal, Requiem, but I’ve been visited by Belle and Marmee Noir. The cross helps keep them at bay.”

“They are terrible powers.”

“Yeah.” I rummaged in the overnight bag until I came up with my cell phone, then headed for the bathroom.

“You can talk in front of me, Anita. I will not bear tales.”

“You’re blood-oathed to Jean-Claude. You’ll talk if he wants you to, but frankly, I just want some privacy. Again, nothing personal, Requiem.” I sighed, because this kind of shit was one of the reasons I’d been able to keep turning him down as pomme de sang. He was messy, or at least not neat, and I didn’t need more emotionally messy men in my life. “Look, this isn’t going to work between us if you take everything so damned personally. Fuck buddies don’t fret this much, okay.”

His face had closed down to that handsome blankness. “Okay,” he said, and that one empty word let me know his feelings were hurt. Shit, I did not need this.

I closed the bathroom door, and used my cell phone to call my gynecologist. I’d finally realized that a little piece of plastic wasn’t quite good enough. It was ninety-nine percent accurate; for this, I wanted a hundred percent. It took me nearly five minutes to convince the receptionist that I needed to talk to a nurse, or the doctor. The doctor, of course, was with a patient, but five minutes on hold snagged me a nurse.

“What seems to be the problem?” she asked in a voice that was part cheerful and part impatient.

“How accurate are those home pregnancy tests? I mean I know what the box says, but really, how good are they?”

“Very good, very accurate.” Her voice had softened a little.

I swallowed hard enough that she probably heard me. “So if one comes back positive, then…”

“Then congratulations,” she said.

“But it’s not a hundred percent, right?”

“No, but a false positive is very rare, Ms. Blake, very rare.”

“Isn’t there like a blood test that’s a hundred percent accurate?”

“There is a blood test, yes, but normally the doctors trust the home tests, too.”

“But if I wanted to schedule a blood test, to be absolutely sure, then I could?”

“Well, yes.”

“Today.”

“Ms. Blake, if you’re that worried, take a second home pregnancy test, but I doubt that the second test will give you a different answer. False negatives, those we see, but false postives are very rare.”

“How rare?” I asked.

I heard paper rustling. “When was the date of your last period?”

“First week of September.”

“Do you have the exact date?”

“No, I don’t.” I fought not to sound angry. Who the hell kept track to the day of their period?

“Ms. Blake, Anita, I think we need to schedule you a prenatal visit.”

“Prenatal, no, I mean, yes, I mean, oh, hell.”

“Anita, I talk to a lot of women. Most of them are happy about the news, but not all of them. You don’t sound like this was good news to you.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Dr. North is just coming out, I’ll let you talk to him.” Silence, then the sounds of movement, cloth rustling, and a man’s voice. “Hey, Anita, how’s my favorite vampire hunter doing?”

“Not so good today,” I said, and my voice sounded small, and hurt.

“I’m sorry about that. We need to schedule you an appointment.”

“I don’t want to be pregnant.”

He was quiet for a moment. “You’re not very far along, Anita; you still have options.”

“Abortion, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t, not unless there’s something majorly wrong. I mean, I’ll need to be tested for Vlad’s syndrome, and Mowgli syndrome.”

“I figured the Vlad’s syndrome test, but you only need the Mowgli test if you’ve had sex with a shapeshifter while he’s in animal form.”

I put my forehead against the cool marble tiles of the wall, and said, “I know that.”

“Oh,” he said in that overly cheerful way, the way people say it when what they really want to say is OH MY GOD! He recovered quickly; he was, after all, a doctor. “Peggy, I’m going take this in my office, transfer it, please. Hang on a minute, Anita, let’s get some privacy.” I listened to a mercifully short amount of Muzak, then the phone picked up, and he said, “Okay, Anita, we’ll need you to come in as soon as possible.” I heard paper rippling. “We had a cancellation at two o’clock this afternoon.”

“I don’t know if I can make it.”

“If this were just a regular prenatal visit, Anita, I’d say fine, do it next week, but if we’re testing for both of the syndromes, and you’re telling me there’s a chance, especially for Mowgli syndrome, then we need to do the blood work now.”

I wanted to say I’d only had sex with one lycanthrope in animal form, just one time, but as they say, once is all it takes. “Doc, I’ve read up on Vlad’s syndrome. I don’t know as much about the other. I mean, if I really am pregnant, then it’s just this little bunch of cells, right? I mean, I’d be at best two months along, right? There’s no chance of the baby trying to eat its way out until it’s bigger, right?” Just saying that made my stomach tight. There might be no option of keeping anything.

“Humans have a pretty long gestation period for a mammal. I am assuming mammalian shapeshifter, here?”

“Yes. Does that make a difference?”

“It can. You see, the problem with Mowgli syndrome is that sometimes the fetus grows at the rate of the animal, and not the human.”

I flipped back through every biology class I’d ever had, and nowhere had I ever learned the gestation period of a leopard. It just hadn’t been covered.

“Anita, talk to me, Anita.”

“I’m here, doc, I just…I know if it’s Vlad’s syndrome that I have to abort. The baby won’t live anyway, and will try to take me with it. But like I said, I’m not as clear on the other syndrome. It’s a lot more rare.”

“Very rare, in fact less than ten cases reported in this country. If the worst happens and it’s Vlad’s syndrome, then we have time to fix it. If it’s Mowgli syndrome, depends on the animal.” I heard computer keys clacking. “Do you know what type of shapeshifter he was?”

“It was only once, and yeah—” I stopped defending myself, and just said, “…leopard, okay, leopard.” Sweet Jesus, I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation.

I heard the computer keys again. “Leopard is between ninety and a hundred and six days, an average of around ninety-six days.”

“So?” I said.

“A human’s gestation is two hundred and eighty days.”

“Still, so what?”

“So this: I’ll assume you don’t have severe Mowgli syndrome, or you’d know it by now. You’d be almost ready to deliver.”

“You’re joking,” I said.

“No,” he said, “but you don’t have that, obviously. You could still have a less severe version of Mowgli syndrome. If you do, then the pregnancy could kick into high gear, and you could go from being barely pregnant to being ready to deliver, in a matter of days.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m looking at the medical literature as we speak. The Internet is a wonderful tool sometimes. Two cases in this country of women who had milder forms of Mowgli syndrome. Even with the test, Anita, all we can tell you is yes or no. Think of it like Down syndrome; we can test and know if you have it, but even an amnio wouldn’t tell you the severity of it.”

“Vlad’s syndrome is an automatic abortion—what about Mowgli syndrome?” I asked.

He hesitated, then said, slowly, “Not automatic, no, but the birth defects can be pretty, um, severe.”

“It’s never good when your doctor sounds nervous, Dr. North. What am I missing that’s put that tone in your voice?”

“If you have even a mild form of Mowgli syndrome, then by Monday the fetus could come up on an ultrasound as over the age limit for abortion in this state. You really do not want to be out of options on this particular birth defect, Anita.”

O-kay, I thought. “Two o’clock, right?”

“Meet me at St. John’s, just come straight up to the maternity ward.”

My heart pounded up into my throat. “Maternity ward? Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself there, doc?”

“At my office, we’ll have to send out the blood for testing. At the hospital, we’ll get all the results back much faster. Depending on the test results, if we want a closer look, the hospital is set up with the ultrasound equipment we’ll want for this.”

“You’ve got ultrasound at your office,” I said.

“We do, but they’ve got more sensitive equipment at the hospital. We’ll get more information much quicker, and speed really is of the essence here, Anita.”

“Okay, I’ll be there at two.”

“Great.”

“Your bedside manner sucks today, by the way.”

He laughed. “I know you, Anita. If I didn’t scare you, you’d find excuses to delay coming in.”

“Did you exaggerate to scare me?” I asked.

“No, sorry, but no. I just told you more bluntly than I would normally have told a patient. But then most of my patients don’t need rough treatment just to get them into the office.”

“You’re not wanting me in the office, doc, you’re wanting to see me at the hospital. I only go to hospitals when I’ve gotten hurt in the line of duty.”

“Are you backing out on me?” he asked.

I sighed. “No, no, I’ll be there.” I thought of something, and figured I should ask. “I can bring company with me to the maternity ward, right? I mean it’s not like when I was a kid, and all restricted, is it?”

“You can bring a friend to hold your hand, if you want, but since we may have to do a pelvic exam, it should be a close friend.”

Pelvic exam, shit. “At least one of them will be close enough to stay in the room. The rest can wait outside.”

“The rest?” He made it a question.

“At least one boyfriend, maybe more, and bodyguards.”

“Bodyguards? Are you in danger?”

“Almost always, but this isn’t…it’s not like bad guys trying to hurt me, or anything. Let’s just say that I think this will be a pretty stressful visit for me, and for the foreseeable future I shouldn’t be going anywhere stressful without muscle.”

“Is that supposed to be a riddle?” he asked.

“Not on purpose,” I said.

“You’re usually pretty straightforward, Anita.”

“Sorry, but this isn’t something I can really explain on the phone.”

“Okay, does it affect your health, and this situation?”

I thought about it, then said, “Maybe, yes. I guess it does.” I realized if I shapeshifted for real that I’d lose the baby, and this entire medical emergency would be over before we’d even decided what to do about it. But I just couldn’t think of a quick way to explain what had been happening to me. “Can I bring the extra people?”

“If I say no?”

“Then we have a problem.”

“How many extra?”

“Hopefully no more than four.” I did quick math in my head. Two bodyguards, and at least one of each beast I held inside me. “Five.”

“Five,” he said.

“At least two of them will be boyfriends.”

“Potential fathers?”

“Yeah.”

“If they’re not disruptive, then I guess so.”

“If anybody gets disruptive, it’s gonna be me,” I said, and I hung up on him. It was rude, but my nerves just couldn’t take any more talk about it. I was scared, so scared that my skin felt cold with it. Cold? I touched my forehead and tried to decide if I really was cold. If I was, then I was endangering Damian, my poor vampire servant, who was the first of my metaphysical men I started draining energy from, if I went too long between feedings. Was I draining him to death, so he’d never wake from his coffin? I’d tamed the ardeur so that it wasn’t as demanding; I could push it off for a few hours, but the price was high. And sometimes the price had almost been Damian’s life. Theoretically, after Damian was dead then I’d start draining Nathaniel. I never wanted to find out if the theory was right.

I checked my watch: ten a.m. God, it had been a long, damn, morning. It was incredibly early for so many of Jean-Claude’s vamps to be awake. So far only master vamps had woken up, and that didn’t include Damian, but still…Was I already draining him, just because I hadn’t fed the ardeur or eaten any breakfast? Real food helped keep the other hungers back, from the ardeur to the beasts. I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee yet. It wasn’t the time of day, but how long I’d been awake without eating that made it a mistake. Maybe we’d eaten a big enough meal from Auggie last night, but I couldn’t chance that. I needed food. The only question was, which hunger to feed first? Sex, or coffee? Hmm, let me think.

29

IT TURNED OUT to be coffee first. Requiem wasn’t in the bedroom, and Micah came through the door with a tray of breakfast. He didn’t say that I’d waited too long to eat, and maybe endangered Damian, or risked raising my beasts again and hurting myself, or losing the baby, or that by neglecting myself I could make the ardeur more uncontrollable. No, he didn’t say any of that. He just brought in the food and put it on the bedside table. Two cups of coffee, croissants, cheese, and fruit. All food in the Circus was catered because there was no kitchen. The old Master of the City hadn’t kept many humans with her, and hadn’t given a damn for anyone’s comfort but her own. Jean-Claude had remodeled the bathrooms first. Priorities. Frankly, you could get good take-out food, but a decent bathroom, that they don’t deliver. Still, as I looked down at the tray of food, I thought, We need a kitchen.

I took one of the chunks of cheddar first. We’d found that protein worked best at keeping my energy up. Some of us just aren’t meant to be vegetarians.

“Are you all right, Anita? You look very…” Micah seemed to give up on finding a word.

I smiled at him. “Thanks for the food, and I’ve got a two o’clock appointment with my gynecologist.”

“Today?” he asked, “Is that wise?”

I nodded, picking up the first cup of coffee. I’d been good and eaten a piece of cheese first, but that wasn’t what I’d really wanted. I took that first sip of hot, strong coffee. Later in the day I’d drown it in sugar and cream, maybe, but first thing, I wanted it black, naked, the way I used to drink all my coffee. I closed my eyes as I sipped, letting the warmth flow through me. Was I addicted to coffee? Probably, but as addictions go, it could have been worse.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Good coffee.”

He smiled. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it, but by two we’ll have most of the vampires awake and moving around down here. We’ll have daywalking visitors, too.”

I nodded, and took a smaller sip this time. “I know.” I told Micah what the doctor had told me.

He blinked at me, that long slow blink that I used sometimes when I was trying to process too much information too quickly. “You have to go.”

“I know,” I said. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and made myself take a bite of croissant. The croissant was good, soft and buttery, but I wasn’t hungry. I wanted the coffee, but the rest of it I was eating because I had to. Eating to keep everybody alive and well. I’d never been a big breakfast eater, but today I think I was just too nervous. Fine, too scared.

“I’ll go with you, as boyfriend and leopard.”

I nodded. “Nathaniel probably won’t be back in human form by then, I know.”

“You know that Richard had arranged today off from his job.”

I nodded. “He arranged a substitute.”

“He’s going to want to go, you know he will.”

I nodded. “Probably.”

“He can be your wolf,” Micah said.

Someone cleared his throat. Remus was closer to the bed than I remembered. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”

“I’ll have to have at least two guards with me, so you needed to know anyway.”

He nodded. “Good, but Anita, from what Claudia told me, Richard wouldn’t let you bring his beast. What good is his wolf, if he won’t let you bring it?”

I nodded. “Point, but he’ll still want to go.”

“How about if I make sure one of the guards is a wolf?” Remus said.

“Do it quietly.”

“I’ll make sure Richard doesn’t know,” Remus said. “Though maybe he’ll come through.”

I shook my head. “If he wouldn’t change here in the underground, then he is so not going to want to change in the middle of St. John’s maternity ward.”

“Can’t say that any of us would want to; it’s a good way to get the cops called on you,” Remus said.

I nodded. “I know, and I will do my damn level best to hold my shit together, but I’m scared, and it’s going to be stressful.”

“You need a lion. The new guy isn’t going to be in human form in time for the appointment,” Remus said.

“Didn’t someone mention that Joseph is bringing some of his lions by today so I can pick someone?”

Micah nodded.

“We need to call him, and see how early he can be here,” I said. I’d made myself finish the croissant, and one cup of coffee was gone. I took the lid off the second cup, and leaned back against the headboard. I had some food in me now, so I could allow myself to sip this cup without ruining it with food.

“I’ll check.” He pulled a tiny folding cell phone from somewhere on his person, and stepped away from the bed to give us some privacy. It was illusionary privacy, because he would hear anything we said, but I appreciated the effort.

Micah was wearing a man’s white dress shirt unbuttoned around the tan of his upper body. The sleeves were buttoned tight, but he wore it more like a jacket than a shirt. The jeans had started life black, but were now sort of gray. When he curled up on the bed beside me, his feet were bare. “You’re dressed in clothes you wouldn’t mind shifting in,” I said.

He nodded. He’d pulled his hair back in a ponytail, but missed a few curls, so they framed his face here and there. He looked very winsome, except for his eyes, which were way too serious for comfort.

“You think I’m going to have another”—I waffled my hand back and forth—“attack.”

He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Let’s just say, I’m prepared.”

I drank my coffee a little faster, because it was cooling. “Have I eaten enough?”

“No,” he said softly.

I hung my head. “My stomach feels like a hard knot today.”

“Either one more croissant, or a whole piece of fruit, or all the cheese.”

I finished the coffee, and reached for the bread. When you didn’t want to eat, bread was less objectionable. I started nibbling at it.

“Jean-Claude needs to know about the appointment.”

“I know.”

“I could tell him.”

I frowned at him. “You don’t trust me to do it.”

He sat up, raising his hands. “I will do whatever will make this easier for you, Anita, but he needs to know as soon as possible that you are going to take his human servant, his animal to call, and at least two or three blood donors with you this afternoon.”

I tossed the half-eaten croissant back on the tray. “If there is another way to do this, tell me, and I’ll do it.”

“I didn’t say that. All I said was that Jean-Claude needs to know.”

“Then go tell him,” I said, and the first flare of anger came.

He didn’t give me hurt eyes, he gave me careful eyes. He tried to hold my hands, and I jerked away. “If you hold me, I’m going to fall apart.”

He pulled back. “No one would blame you if you fell apart.”

“I would.”

He sighed. “You always have to be so strong.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

He slipped off the bed to stand beside it, gazing at me. I didn’t want him standing there looking scrumptious. I wanted to be angry, and I always had trouble being angry when he looked cute. Hell, I had trouble keeping any fight going with any of the men in my life; all they had to do was strip, and they usually won. It was true, and that pissed me off, too.

“Anger is a luxury, Anita.”

I screamed, full-throated, deep and loud. I screamed until it echoed off the walls. I screamed until the door opened and more guards poured in. I yelled at them, “Get out, get the fuck out!”

They turned in a black-shirted mass to Remus. He motioned them out, but he kept two of them, so I was back to four guards. I guess I couldn’t blame him.

“Tell Jean-Claude, and send Requiem to me.” My voice sounded deeper, thicker.

“Anita…”

“If you comfort me, I’m going to lose it.” I looked up at him. “Please, Micah, please, just do what I ask.”

“I’ll talk to Jean-Claude, but are you sure about Requiem?”

“You mean am I sure I want to feed the ardeur on him?”

He nodded.

“No, I’m absolutely sure I don’t want to feed on him, but Jean-Claude and I talked. If I feed on Requiem and he’s mind-fucked again, then I’m too dangerous for the other pomme de sang candidates. I need to feed on Requiem before Auggie rises for the day. Because, if I truly freed Requiem’s mind from the ardeur, then we may be able to use the same technique to free Auggie of us.”

“A lot of ifs and maybes,” he said.

“And maybe I can heal Requiem while I feed. I seem to heal during metaphysical sex, with or without intercourse, sometimes. Meng Die’s little temper tantrum is not going to impress the visiting masters, and we can’t hide it if he’s as hurt as he is now.”

“You could feed off someone else, someone who’s already one of your sweeties.”

“You mean, I don’t need another shock for the day,” I said, and I started to laugh, but it ended in a sob that I bit my lip to keep inside. Panic was eating at me, eating holes in all my bones and organs, so that I was getting more and more fragile, and when I needed it most, there’d be nothing there to use; there’d be nothing but the fear.

I whispered, because I didn’t trust my voice any louder. I was either going to start screaming again, or crying. I didn’t want to do either. “Jean-Claude thinks Requiem’s power can overcome my reluctance. I have to feed the ardeur, and I so don’t want to. If Requiem’s power can make me want him, then send him, because right now, I don’t want anyone. I just want to be left the fuck alone.”

Anyone else would have looked hurt, but Micah didn’t. He took it, with that quiet face. He said, quietly, “We all have a breaking point, Anita, all of us.”

I shook my head, over and over. “We can’t afford for me to break today, Micah.”

He sighed. “Someday, I’d like for us to have a little time for you to be able to break down, if you wanted to.” I realized his eyes were glittering with unshed tears.

“Don’t cry,” I said.

“Why not, one of us needs to.” He turned away, with the first tear shining down his cheek.

I grabbed for his arm, and crawled over the bed, and pulled him in against me. And just like I’d known I would, I lost it. I cried, and screamed, and clung to him, and hated myself for doing it. So weak, so fucking weak.

30

SOMEWHERE IN THE middle of breaking down, I realized there were other hands holding me besides Micah’s. I pushed at the hands, half-fought, and half-clung, as if I couldn’t decide whether I wanted not to be touched, or never to be let go. I heard a voice, a hysterical voice, saying, “Don’t want to do this…can’t do this. I can’t do this.” I realized it was me, and even realizing it, I couldn’t stop the babbling. “Can’t do a baby, tests, don’t want to do the ardeur anymore, no more, no more men, no more adding to my life.” The talking fell into sobbing, and finally even that stopped. In the end, I just lay in the curve of their arms, and was quiet. Too tired to move, too tired to protest. Because somehow in the midst of it all, Richard had ended up holding me. His body cradling me. I didn’t feel anything about him holding me. Nothing, I felt nothing, and I was glad. I’d been feeling too much lately, too much.

“Her energy feels different,” he said, and his voice sounded farther away than it should have. He was tall, but I was only in his lap, not that far away.

Other hands touched my face, my hands, my arms. My eyes were closed and I kept them that way; I didn’t want to see them. Didn’t want to see any of them. “She is cold.” Jean-Claude’s voice, his hand moving away from my cheek.

Cold, yes, I was cold, so cold. Cold down to the core of my being, as if I’d never be warm again. Fur brushed my arm, and it made me open my eyes enough to see Nathaniel kneeling on the bed. His face was still a stranger’s face behind the mix of animal and human. Once, just once, that face had been above me while we made love. Just the one time.

Hands touched my face, moved me to look at Jean-Claude and Richard. Their hands, one on either side of my face. Their hands were so warm against my skin. It took me a long second to realize that both of their hands felt warm. Had Jean-Claude gained so much power from feeding on Augustine, so much that he was hot to the touch?

I was having trouble focusing on their faces. I whispered, “Warm, you’re both warm.”

Richard spoke slowly, carefully, as if he thought I might have trouble understanding him, “Anita, you’re colder to the touch than Jean-Claude.”

I frowned at him, and tried to focus on his face. I could almost do it, but it was as if my attention kept wandering before I could make my eyes do what I wanted. “Wrong, something’s wrong.” Still a whisper, but I said it out loud.

“Yes,” he said, “something is wrong.” He looked at Jean-Claude. “I can’t feel her. She’s in my arms and I can’t feel her energy.”

“She is drawing away from us,” Jean-Claude said.

“Drawing away, what does that mean?” Richard asked.

“I believe ma petite is trying to break the bonds that bind her to us.”

“You mean break the triumvirate?”

“Oui.”

“Can she do that?” someone asked.

“Anita can do anything she wants to do,” Nathaniel’s growling voice said.

“I do not know if it is possible, but I know she is trying,” Jean-Claude said.

“It will destroy your power base,” Asher’s voice, though I couldn’t make my eyes search the room for him.

“So be it,” Jean-Claude said. I fought to see him clearly, watch him look to Richard. “Why the tragic face, Richard? You could be free of the triumvirate, Richard, free of me.”

“You know it’s what I want, but what would it cost us? She’s cold to the touch.”

Jean-Claude’s face loomed into view. “Ma petite, drop your shields. Drop them just enough for me to sense you. Let me share energy with you. You are unwell.”

I shook my head, and the world swam in streamers of color. I had a moment of nausea, and that was the moment that I realized I was sick. Sick at heart, sick of soul, sick of it all. Somewhere deep inside me, I was trying to undo all my decisions. I was trying to do a take-back, on a game that had played too far for a do-over. The front part of my brain knew it was too late, but it wasn’t the front part of my brain that was in charge. How do you argue with the subconscious? How do you argue with a part of your brain you don’t even know is there most of the time? The real bitch of the situation was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to argue.

I smelled the musk of leopard, and knew Nathaniel was beside me before his voice growled, “Damian.”

I opened my eyes, and found myself staring into a black blur of a face. Nathaniel moved back far enough for me to have a chance to focus on him. I repeated what he’d said. “Damian.”

“Damian will die,” Nathaniel said.

I blinked at him. I’d heard what he said, but it didn’t seem to make sense to me. It must have shown on my face because Jean-Claude said, “I do not know if what your despair attempts is truly possible, but if you succeed, Damian will die. His blood flows only with your power, Anita. Without your power, your vampire servant will rise no more from his grave. He will die, and remain dead.”

I stared at him, and again, it was as if his words didn’t truly reach me.

He gripped my arm, tight, and tighter, until it hurt, but even that was a distant hurt. “Anita, I will not be blamed for this. If you accomplish this miracle, and break free of all of us, then you will kill Damian. I will not have you later say you did not understand. I will not take the blame, not for this.” He was angry, but his anger could not touch me, and I was glad. His anger was no longer mine. I could cut him out, cut them all out of me.

Micah’s voice, from the other side of me: “Breaking the triumvirate won’t change the fact that you’re pregnant, Anita. You’ll still need to go to the hospital at two o’clock. That doesn’t change.”

I turned and looked at him, though it seemed to take a long time for me to do it. “The ardeur will go away.”

“Are you sure of that?” he asked, quietly.

Jean-Claude’s voice: “In truth, I do not know if the gifts and curses you gain through the vampire marks will vanish if the triumvirate breaks. It may leave you as I found you, alone and safe in your own skin, if that is what you truly desire. Or you may retain some abilities, but lose the aid of…” He hesitated, finally finishing with, “all of us, in your struggle with the ardeur.”

I turned until I found his face, still out of focus, like I wasn’t working quite right. “The ardeur will go away,” I whispered.

“I simply do not know what will happen, because what I feel you doing is impossible. Only true death should be able to break you free of my marks. Since what you attempt has never been done, I do not know what the outcome will be.” His voice was utterly bland, empty, as if his words meant nothing.

I tried to think about what he’d said. Even my thoughts seemed sluggish. What was wrong with me? I was hysterical, that was what was wrong with me. The moment I thought it that clearly, I started to calm. I didn’t feel any better, really, but I could think. That was an improvement. I thought about being free of the ardeur, and that was a good thought. I thought about being free of Jean-Claude’s marks, and all the metaphysical mess that came with it. My life being my own again, that sounded good. I thought about being just me, as Jean-Claude said, just me in my own skin. Just me, alone, again. Alone again. I had a moment of absolutely joyous nostalgia for my life before I’d acquired so many people. To come home to an empty house didn’t seem awful, it seemed relaxing.

Micah touched my face, turned me to look at him. I could see him clearly, finally. His kitty-cat eyes were so serious. “Nothing that is happening is worth dying over, Anita, please.”

I thought he meant Damian, then realized he didn’t. I wasn’t cold just because I was trying to break the triumvirate. There was only one way to be free. One of us had to die. Could I break free? Maybe. Would I die trying? Maybe. The thought should have scared me, but it didn’t. And that scared me. I know it sounds stupid, but it didn’t scare me to think I might die, but it did scare me not to be scared. Stupid, but true.

I had to do better than this, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I had to do better than this.

Richard hugged me from behind, bending all that six-feet-plus of warmth and muscle around me. “Please, Anita, don’t do this.” His breath was so warm, almost hot, against my hair.

I looked up at him, from inches away. His eyes were perfectly brown, warm, and full of so much emotion. “You’d be free.”

He shook his head, his eyes shiny. “I don’t want to be free that badly.”

“Don’t you?” I asked.

“No, this price is too high. Don’t leave me, not like this.” He held me close, his hair long enough now that it tickled along my face. I buried my face in the warm, sweet scent of his neck, but I knew it was a lie.

I cuddled against him, as tight and close as I could. I buried myself against the warmth and strength of him, and it still felt wonderful. It still felt so right, but I knew it wasn’t. We were both too stubborn for it to work.

I was crying again, and wasn’t sure why. Crying my regrets out against the warmth of Richard’s neck. The coulda-beens, shoulda-beens, woulda-beens. I wrapped myself around him, legs, arms, all of it, and clung to him, clung to him and cried.

A hand stroked the back of my hair, and a voice said, “Ma petite, ma petite, drop these shields, let us inside again.”

I turned my head to look at him while I clung to Richard. I stared up into that face, those midnight-blue eyes. His hand stroked along the edge of my face, and it wasn’t enough. Whatever I’d done to myself, I’d walled myself up tight. Since I hadn’t tried to cut myself off on purpose, I didn’t know how to undo what I’d done. How do you undo an accident?

I tried to explain. “I’m head-blind. I can’t feel anything metaphysically. I didn’t mean to cut us up.” I knew now I’d survive what I’d tried to do, but would everyone else? I reached out to Damian. Even dead in his coffin for the day, I should have been able to sense him. Nothing. Fear washed over me, and all the warmth I’d started to regain flowed away on that tide of fear.

I grabbed the edge of Jean-Claude’s robe. “I can’t feel Damian! I can’t feel him, at all!”

“We must breach your shields, ma petite. We must reawaken your powers.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I am your master, Anita, my very marks can keep me out of your shields. We are running out of time for Damian. I would ask that you allow Asher and Requiem to help me breach your shields.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I do not have time to explain, but it does not truly matter which of us breaks down these new stronger walls, only that they break. Once broken, then your own power will be set free, and it will find Damian.”

I wanted to argue, but that emptiness where Damian should have been scared me. I nodded. “Do it.”

“You must take off your cross first.”

I didn’t ask how he knew I was wearing one. Richard let me slide down his body enough so I could use my hands to unhook the chain. Jean-Claude had stepped away, not far, but far enough that he would not accidentally touch it. I spilled the chain into Richard’s waiting hand.

I met his eyes, while his hand closed around my cross. “Put it in the bedside drawer,” I said.

He nodded. “So it won’t glow.”

I nodded. I admitted to myself in that one moment why I’d stopped wearing a cross most of the time. Oh, I kept one in my vampire-hunting bag, but I didn’t wear one much. To bed, but, oh, hell. I kept waiting for the cross to glow when I did something. I kept waiting for the cross to glow because of some vampiric ability that I’d inherited from Jean-Claude. I kept waiting for it to glow against me. What was left of my nerves couldn’t have handled it, today.

Richard moved across the bed enough to lean over and open the bedside table drawer. He set the cross in carefully, and closed the drawer. He crawled back across the bed, until he was kneeling in front of me again. “I spend so much effort keeping you out of my mind, my heart, and now it’s like this void inside me. I keep trying to break up with you, stupid me. It’s like trying to break up with your own hand. You can live without it, but you’re not whole.”

“Can you sense Damian?” Jean-Claude asked.

“I can sense vampires with a cross on, Jean-Claude; that’s never made any difference to my necromancy.”

“Humor me,” he said.

I humored him. I shook my head. “Empty, like he’s not there.” I’d managed to chase the fear back, but it fluttered through my stomach, tingled the tips of my fingers. “Is it too late? Please, God, don’t let it be too late.” Inside my head, I added, Don’t let me have killed him.

I watched Jean-Claude’s eyes spill blue, until his pupils and the white were lost to the glowing, deep blue of his power. I sat on the bed only a few yards from him, while his power rose enough to fill his eyes with fire, and I felt nothing. At least my necromancy should have felt it, if not the vampire marks. I’d been psychically blind, head-blind, from shock or illness before, but never to this degree. It both scared me, and gave me hope. Maybe I couldn’t sense Damian because I couldn’t have sensed anyone right then.

Richard shivered beside me, then slid to the floor. “You don’t feel that, do you?” His eyes were a little wide. The small hairs on his arms were standing at attention.

“No,” I said.

He looked at Micah and Nathaniel, who were still on the bed, though they’d moved back to give us room. “I think we all need to clear a space for them to work.”

Micah kissed my cheek. Nathaniel brushed his cheek against mine, scent-marking me. They slid off the far side of the bed. Jean-Claude moved up until he was beside the bed. He raised a hand above my face. I felt it, the press of his aura, but faintly, as if my skin were wrapped in cotton, and he could not touch me.

He laid his hand against my face, and that one touch spread in a shivering line across my skin. “Ma petite.” The words breathed along my spine, as if he’d spilled a line of water down my skin. I shivered for him again, and it felt great, but…I opened my eyes and looked up at him. “It’s like years ago. I always felt your voice, your touch, but…”

“You have shut yourself away, ma petite, in a tower formed partially of my own vampire marks. You have used my own power against me.”

“Not on purpose,” I said.

Asher glided into view. His eyes were already full of pale blue light. He’d called power, and I’d felt nothing. He came to stand beside Jean-Claude. “More drastic measures, I think.”

I looked up at him, in his satin robe, the deep burnished gold of it that was nothing to the shine of his own hair. “What did you have in mind?” I asked.

Jean-Claude stepped back, giving his place to the other man. Asher raised his hand, laying it against my face in an echo of what Jean-Claude had done moments before. They had always been able to echo each other like that, I thought, and on the tail of that thought, memory crashed over me. I’d shared Jean-Claude’s memories before, but not like this. It wasn’t one memory, or two, but hundreds. Hundreds of images flooding my mind, drowning me in the scent of Asher’s skin, the spill of Belle’s hair around our bodies like a second body to caress us all. A woman with hair the color of copper spilled across our pillows, and our mouths locked on her neck, her hands struggling at the scarves that bound her to the bed. A blond, whose breasts we marked together, so that she bore twin love bites. A man in a long, powdered wig, his pants down around his knees, and both of us between his thighs, not for sex, but for blood, and it was what he wanted. Women with their clothing in disarray, red hair in every shade from nearly blond to darkest auburn; blondes from white to gold; brunettes from deep brown to true black; skin like ripe grain, or dark coffee, or wood. Tall, short, thin, fat, starved; bodies flowing under our hands, against our bodies, so that it was as if I experienced a thousand nights of debauchery in heartbeats. But in every memory they moved like shadows of each other. Jean-Claude took the woman, or the man, for sex, or blood, or both, and knew that his golden shadow would be there. That Asher would match his movements, that he would be there to help, to catch the pleasure and make it more. I hadn’t realized until that moment that they weren’t lovers, but more than that. They had been truly the best and closest person in each other’s lives.

I drowned in their memories, drowned in the scent of a thousand lovers, a thousand victims, a thousand pleasures won and lost. I drowned, and like any drowning man, I reached out to save myself.

I reached out metaphysically for someone, anyone. The memories hit Richard like a flood hitting a boulder. I felt the memories crash against him, sweep up and around him. I heard him cry out, and waited for him to push me away, to lock me out, but he didn’t. He let me cling to him, let me try to make him my rock in the flood of sensations and memories. I felt his confusion, his fear, his revulsion, and his desire to push it all away, to not have these memories, of all memories. The thought came: there are worse memories.

Jean-Claude’s voice. “Non, ma petite, mon ami, enough, enough.” His voice was soft, coaxing. I was lying on the bed, with him holding my hand. He was rubbing my hand the way people do when they’re trying to warm you.

“I’m here,” I said, but my voice sounded echoing, tinny.

The bed moved violently. Richard had collapsed on it. His breathing was ragged, his eyes showing too much white. He grabbed my other hand. He felt frightened, shocky, and I realized that he’d taken over some of my reaction. He’d sucked it away like metaphysical poison.

I licked dry lips and said, “I’m sorry.”

“You asked for help,” he said, in a strained voice. “I gave it.”

He usually cut himself out of the memories I got from Jean-Claude; of all the times to not shy away, he picked these memories.

“I would have preferred other memories to share, ma petite, but when you breached your unnatural shields, I did not dare restrict your access to me. I did not dare shut the marks down again.” He stroked my hair like I was still sick, but he cast a worried look at Richard.

“I won’t run,” Richard said, “I knew what you were, what you both were.” He glanced at Asher, who still stood near the bed.

Asher put his hand on Jean-Claude’s shoulder, and it was too soon after the memories to see them touching. Except this time they weren’t Jean-Claude’s memories, I just had to wade through the fact that some of that flood of memories had stayed with me.

Richard flinched as if he’d been slapped, and I knew that I wasn’t the only one who had kept some of it.

Micah yelled, “Nathaniel!”

I looked around the room for Nathaniel, and couldn’t see him. Micah was on the floor. I fought to sit up, and Richard helped me. Jean-Claude was already around the bed, and kneeling with Micah, beside Nathaniel. He was human again, all that lovely hair spread around his body. He wasn’t moving.

I screamed his name, and reached out to him not with hands but with power. I felt him breathe, but his heart hesitated, as if it was forgetting how to beat.

I screamed, “Nathaniel!”

Jean-Claude just suddenly appeared beside the bed. “Nathaniel is trying to keep Damian alive, but he does not know how. You must feed them energy, now, ma petite, right now.”

“Or what?” I asked, and I leaned into the death grip I had on Richard’s arm.

“Or they will die,” Jean-Claude said.

31

I STARED AT him, because I believed him, but feeding the ardeur meant sex, and in that moment I’d never felt less like sex in my life.

Richard said, “Feed, Anita, you have to feed.”

I looked at him. “You going to help?”

He shook his head. “Not me, my concentration isn’t this good.”

Jean-Claude’s voice cut across the panic. “Requiem, your moment has come.” He looked at me. “If you fight him, they will die. Drop your shields, and let his power take you. Let him awake the ardeur, and feed.”

I was suddenly staring at a chest decorated with stab wounds. I looked up into Requiem’s eyes, clear blue, an almost painful brightness. He’d raised his power, and I felt nothing. He’d crawled across the bed and I hadn’t noticed. Shock had set in again, but for different reasons. Minutes ago I’d wanted to be alone, just me again, but I hadn’t meant it. I prayed, I didn’t mean it, as if somehow my thought was responsible for this new disaster.

Richard’s body still cradled me. Requiem had to wrap his hands around my upper arms and pull me out of Richard’s arms. Richard’s fingers slid over my skin, and I felt the loss of his touch like a blow. I felt like some small animal torn out of its nest and thrown into the heart of the storm. That storm was made of flesh and bone, and eyes that glowed as if you could set the ocean afire.

Jean-Claude’s voice whispered through me. “Let go, ma petite, let go, or all is lost.”

I did what he asked. I let go. Let go, and fell into eyes the color of sea water where it runs deep and clear and cold, and the blue dark glows with the cold light of phosphorescence, shining off the backs of creatures that never saw the light of day.

I floated in that cold emptiness, with the dim light, and a voice whispered through me, but it wasn’t Jean-Claude’s. It was Nathaniel’s voice in my head. He didn’t ask for help, or chastise me. He whispered, “Love you.” Those words echoed through the emptiness, and I followed them, up through the cold dark. Cold wasn’t what we needed, it wouldn’t keep him alive. We needed heat.

I hit the surface of Requiem’s gaze, fell out of the power I’d let him try. I fell out of his eyes, and was left panting, struggling to breathe. I would not let Nathaniel go, even if it meant going with him. I reached out to him, felt his heart slowing. My chest ached with the need to draw a good breath.

I stared up into Requiem’s glowing eyes, and whispered, “Help us.”

He turned to Jean-Claude. “I cannot break her. I cannot get through!”

The last time he’d used his powers on me it had taken a while. We didn’t have a while. He couldn’t roll me, but I had rolled him before. Could I bring his powers on line? I prayed, prayed for help. I whispered, “Requiem.” His voice echoed through the room, and he turned glowing eyes to me.

I didn’t have enough air to say what I wanted out loud. I fell back toward the bed, and only his arms caught me. I knew what I wanted, what I needed. I willed it, I commanded it, and I shoved that command into him. I was losing my words, and it was a wordless longing that I filled him with. That longing flared like heat across my skin, threw me off the bed, gasping. My body was suddenly swollen with need, wetness dripping between my legs. My breasts ached with the need to be touched. The ardeur rose to that ache, and I welcomed it, embraced it. I threw the door of my self-control open wide, and didn’t care where it landed.

It was Jean-Claude’s mouth that found mine first. I knew the taste of him with my eyes closed tight. He gave himself up to the ardeur, and I fed through his kiss, fed in a rush that flowed through my body, in a tingling rush of energy. I’d fed the ardeur a hundred times, and it had never been like this.

He drew back from the kiss, eyes filled with midnight fire. “How do you feel?”

I tried to think past the pulse of my own body. I’d fed the ardeur, but the swollen longing in my body wasn’t gone. I felt for Nathaniel’s energy, and found him still there, still alive. Distant as a dream, Damian’s spark like a match flame in a wind.

“More,” I whispered, “I need more.”

He nodded. “I gave you enough to bring you back to us.” He moved back from me, and I tried to hold him against me. “Non, ma petite, you need food.” I kept my arms locked around his neck, and he reached out, and brought Requiem into view. “When you helped him raise need in yourself, you raised it in him, as well. Would you deny him?”

I frowned at him. I couldn’t think. I whispered, “No,” but wasn’t entirely sure what I was saying no to: no, I wouldn’t deny him, or no, to other things?

Requiem’s hand slid over my bare arm. That one touch threw my head back, fluttered my eyes shut. I knew where my need had come from, I could taste it on my tongue, taste his need.

Jean-Claude slid away, and Requiem was above me. So lonely, so heart-wrenchingly lonely. Lonely for so long. You feed the ardeur on sex, but its gifts are more than that. Sometimes you can see into people, see what they most desire, most need, and you can offer it to them. You can offer them their heart’s desire, and sometimes you can even give them exactly what you promise.

I had an instant of seeing so far into Requiem that I started to cry. Weeping not my tears, but his. He wanted the ardeur again, yes, but more than that, he wanted a place of refuge. A place where he could stop being afraid; he’d been afraid for so very long. Afraid that Belle would drag him back, and make him suffer for all eternity for falling in love with someone else. I felt his fear, his loneliness, his loss, like blows to my heart, and in the end, I did the only thing that would keep him well and truly safe. I made him mine.

32

MOST OF THE clothes vanished in a blur of hands and bodies, but it was when he wrapped his hands around my belt, and tore it in two, jerking my body up off the bed, that I remembered. I had just enough presence of mind to make sure he didn’t destroy the shoulder rig, but it fell to the floor with the pieces of the jeans and T-shirt. Requiem, with his poetry, his gentlemanly restraint, vanished under the crash of the ardeur, and the power of his own magic.

I fed on the touch of his hands, the brush of his lips, the sensation of his naked skin brushing along mine, the weight of him above me. Requiem and I had never been nude together, and that first time was shared with Nathaniel and Damian. They knew what I was doing, they could feel it, because I’d opened that mark between us, so that each touch, each kiss, each movement, fed energy to them. Nathaniel’s heart began to beat sure and strong, but Damian’s spark still flickered, hesitating between life and death. Nathaniel could make his own heart beat, but Damian couldn’t. Damian needed more than these small touches of ardeur. I’d gotten to where I could feed the ardeur in small ways from less touching, but I needed orgasm for a full feeding. Okay, for a really, truly, full feeding you needed orgasms from everybody involved, but one was enough to get you through. We needed to get through.

Requiem rested above me, pressing every inch of his nakedness against the front of me, but he laid his body on top of mine, not inside it. He pressed me down into the bed, kissing me as if he would eat me from the mouth down, and only luck kept us from cutting our lips on his fangs. The feel of him, swollen and hard, made me spread my legs and try to wrap my legs around him, but he moved away. Moved above me, holding most of his weight away with his arms and legs, as if he were afraid to touch too much of me. It had all seemed to be going so well, and then he’d climbed back into himself, regained control somehow. Requiem in control went back to being a gentleman. In a situation where I would not have blamed him about taking full advantage, he still seemed painfully aware that he wasn’t my first choice, or even my seventh. He tried to feed the ardeur without crossing that last barrier, because he knew, or thought he knew, I didn’t want him.

“Requiem, please, please, finish it.”

“Finish it,” he said, voice showing the strain of his control. “Your words betray you, Anita. You use me only because you must, not because you want me.”

Anger flared through me. “My body wants you, Requiem.”

“But your heart does not.”

I screamed, half from anger, half from the need in my body that he’d raised, and wasn’t going to satisfy. The thought came that I could make the ardeur stronger, that I could overwhelm him with it. An old thought from Belle’s memories, I think. But in his way, Requiem had made it clear he did not want to be food, or my fuck buddy. When push had come to shove, he wanted to be more than that. I understood that, but I couldn’t give it to him. This was one thing I could not do. I could not love him.

“I need food, Requiem. If you aren’t food, then get off.”

I watched emotions struggle across his face. I think he was fighting his own body’s need, but finally that so-refined sense of self won, and he slipped to the side, burying his face in his arms. He did not leave the bed, but he wasn’t touching me.

The ardeur was still there, but faded under the anger and frustration of the riddle that was Requiem. I reached outward for Damian, and he was still fragile. The energy I felt in him now would never wake; it wasn’t enough to bring him back to life for the night. If he tried to wake now, and failed, would he die? Would that fragile spark rise, and fall, never more to burn with life?

I yelled, “Jean-Claude!”

He came to stand by the bed on the other side of Requiem’s softly weeping form. I reached out to him, but he stepped back, just out of reach. “I make all the other vampires of this city wake at dusk. We cannot risk trading one life for many.”

I screamed, wordless, my hand reaching skyward, reaching for anyone. In that moment I used the ardeur to call food, not deliberately, because I’d never purposefully used it to call a victim to me. Jean-Claude had said that the ardeur was calling food of its choice; now I knew he had been right, because I could feel it. I felt the ardeur spread not randomly like some sort of shrapnel bomb, but like a high-tech heat-seeking missle. I felt the ardeur brush Asher; I knew the taste of him, but his energy signature was weak. He still hadn’t fed. The ardeur brushed against a dozen lesser fires, but finally it found one it liked.

I knew only three things about the energy it called; it was vampire, it was no one I’d ever touched, and it was powerful.

A hand grabbed mine, and that one touch stabbed through me, a hard, tight thrust of energy that tightened my body, and tore a cry from my mouth. So much need, God!

It was London who crawled over the footboard of the bed. London whose hand in mine had already fed me more energy than all of Requiem’s touches. I didn’t know why, I didn’t care. It was too late to care. He pressed his fully clothed body over me, settling between my legs, so that I could feel him tight and hard through his clothes. The sensation of it fluttered my eyes closed. I felt his face above mine, and opened my eyes to see him, so close it was startling.

I stared into his eyes from inches away, and realized they weren’t brown at all, they were black. A black that made his pupils vanish into them, an island of darkness in the whites of his eyes.

His face lowered toward me, his breath escaping in a sound like a sob, before he pressed his mouth against mine. That sound made me remember that there was something important about London and the ardeur. Something I needed to remember, but he kissed me, and I stopped thinking about anything but the feel of his mouth on mine.

It wasn’t just the force of his kiss, but that I fed from that kiss. As if his energy were some sweet liquor, spilling into my mouth, down my throat. There was no effort to feeding from London. He gave himself to the ardeur with an abandon that was exactly what I needed. I poured that energy into Damian, and felt his spark begin to grow to a small, flickering flame.

I wrapped my arms and legs around London’s body, pressed my most intimate parts against the hardness still locked behind his clothes. He made that sobbing sound again, his breath hot inside my mouth. I thought he would pull away from the kiss, but he kissed me harder, pressing, exploring, and I kissed him back, sending my tongue between the sharpness of his fangs. It was as if I had more room to explore, as if his mouth were wider than Jean-Claude’s. It was almost a clear thought, and I might have remembered what I’d forgotten, but London chose that moment to feed at my lips, kissing me fiercely, with tongue and lips and teeth, and with the intensity of his kiss, the ardeur fed harder. The sweet salt of blood filled my mouth, and I knew one of us had been cut on his fangs. If he’d given me time to think, I might even have known who, but he didn’t give me time to think. He mounded my breast in one hand, jerked his mouth from mine, and pressed his mouth around my breast. He sucked, hard and fast, tongue flicking across my nipple. I cried out for him, my arms and legs falling away from him enough so he could move that fraction of an inch that let him suck me harder, faster, always the press of his fangs like a promise, or a threat, against my flesh.

He made a sound, eager, almost whimpering, then he bit me, fangs plunging into my breast. It brought me screaming, and only his weight kept my upper body from rising off the bed.

He rose up, his lips decorated with my blood. His eyes drowned in black fire, filled with his own power. He pressed his mouth back to mine, but raised his body off me. The taste of my own blood was like sweet metal in my mouth. I tried to draw his body back on top of mine, but only his mouth touched me. When he lay back on top of me, his pants were undone, and all that hard length pressed against my naked body. The feel of it made me break the kiss so I could cry out.

He raised his upper body off me, angling himself to enter me. I got only a glimpse of him, before he shoved himself inside me, and my gaze tore from his body, to his face above me. His eyes were wide, lost even to vampire glow; there was something frantic about them. He drove his body as deep inside me as he could, drove until there was no more room, then he froze above me. He froze with his body plunged inside mine, and stared down at me. His face was slack with need, and lust, but underneath it all, was fear. That one look, and I remembered. He was addicted to the ardeur. Shit.

I said, “London, London, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He started to draw himself out of me. I thought he meant to stop. But he drew out only so much, then plunged back in, and he fucked me. He fucked me as hard and fast as he could. I stared down my own body, and watched him plunge in and out of me, and somewhere in the middle of it, I came. I came screaming, my hands clutching at his jacket, trying to find flesh to touch, but there were too many clothes. He brought me, and the ardeur fed on the waves of pleasure, on the sensation of him plunging in and out of me, on the sound of his breathing, as it changed. He picked me up, at the last minute, he picked me up, sat me in his lap, with his body still inside mine. He sat me across his body, and I wrapped arms and legs around him to help hold me in place. He sat back on the bed, still plunging in and out of me, but less sharp from this angle, less deep. I stared into his face from inches away, my hands in the short curls at the back of his neck. I watched his face grow frantic, felt his rhythm change. He buried his hand in the back of my hair, held me in place, so we had to stare into each other’s eyes. With one last, hard thrust he came, and brought me with him. I screamed, and it would have bowed my neck back, but he held me in place, forced us to stare into each other’s faces. As his body spasmed inside mine, I couldn’t look away. I had to watch his pleasure, and his pain.

His hand eased from my hair, and he hugged me, his arms loose instead of frantic. His heart pounded against my body, his breath so fast, so terribly fast. He clung to me now, softly, and I hugged him back. He had given me his everything. He had let me feed. Damian was awake, I could feel it. London had helped me save him, but as I held him, his pulse thundering against my cheek, I had to wonder at what price. What had it cost the man in my arms?

33

WHEN LONDON’S PULSE had slowed, he sat me down, gently, on the bed, and asked Jean-Claude’s permission to use the bathroom for cleaning up. Jean-Claude gave it. London had taken his pants off the rest of the way, so that he was nude from the waist down, though his dress shirt and suit jacket were long enough that they hid him from behind. He held his shirt up in front to keep it out of the mess, and his pants wadded in his other hand. He looked at no one as he went inside, and closed the door behind him.

He left behind him a silence so loud that I could hear the blood in my own head.

I knew that the vampires could be so still it was like they weren’t there, but it was the first time I’d realized that the lycanthropes had their own version of stillness. Of course, there were fewer people in the room than we started with. It was almost as if people had fled before things got bad. Some bodyguards.

Though, admittedly, I didn’t look around too much, to see who was left in the corners of the room. Maybe they were all there, huddled around each other, trying to keep the big bad succubus from getting them.

Jean-Claude moved first, and it was as if the pause on a television program had been turned off. He moved, and everyone else breathed, moved. Voices broke into a low murmur. Jean-Claude helped Requiem stand, from where he had apparently fallen on the floor. He must have left the bed sometime during London’s and my little…feeding. Even in my own head, I heard, So that’s what they’re calling it these days.

Requiem gripped Jean-Claude’s arm tight. He spoke low, urgently, as if he had something important to say.

“Damian’s coming.” Nathaniel’s voice turned me to look at him. Micah was helping him climb onto the bed. Nathaniel lay down beside me, his lavender eyes blinking at the ceiling as if he was still having trouble focusing. He was right about Damian. I could feel him coming down the corridor from the coffin room where he’d spent his day asleep. It would take him a few minutes to get here, so I turned to Nathaniel. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“Try to save Damian?” He tried to make a joke of it, and I wouldn’t let him.

I touched his face. “Don’t joke, Nathaniel.”

He snuggled his cheek against my hand. “You saved us.”

My throat was tight, and I’d be damned if I’d cry again today. “It was a near thing, and you know it.”

Micah put a hand on both our shoulders. He gripped us tight, as if he were fighting an urge to shake us. His face said how scared he’d been, more clearly than any words.

Requiem gathered his cloak from the floor, wrapped it around himself, and went for the door. He never looked back. Maybe he understood finally that he wasn’t food. I hoped so, because I needed less complication in my life, not more.

Remus went to Jean-Claude. He stood very straight and started a salute, then stopped himself in midmotion, like an old habit come back to haunt. The voice he used was one of those hardy, soldier voices. “Request permission to get me and my men out of here.”

Jean-Claude looked at him, his head to one side, like Remus had done something more interesting than I was seeing. “And what if we need protecting, Remus?”

Remus shook his head. “We can’t protect you from this, sir.”

Jean-Claude looked behind him, closer to the fireplace. I was still lying down, so I couldn’t see what he was looking at. “I think some of your men would disagree, Remus. I think several of them would have been more than happy to help protect ma petite, in these circumstances.” His voice was mild as butter as he said it.

Remus’s jaw tightened so hard that it looked painful. His voice came out strained, as if he were gritting his teeth. “I don’t believe that that was what our Oba had in mind when he let you hire us, sir.”

“Perhaps you should ask Narcissus what your rules of engagement are, Remus,” Jean-Claude said.

Remus gave one curt nod. “I’ll do that, sir, but with permission, can I get my men the hell out of here?”

I watched the thought travel across Jean-Claude’s face, that he might say no. But that it was that clear to read meant he was doing it for Remus to see. “Go, and take the men with you who wish to leave.”

Remus shook his head, hands in fists at his side. “No, sir, I am in command here, and I say we all go.”

Jean-Claude looked around the room, as if memorizing faces. He finally nodded. “Go, and take your men, Remus. I will speak with Narcissus.”

Remus looked uncertain then, but shook his head again. “I’m not saying that Narcissus wouldn’t enjoy the show, sir, but I think if the detail included this kind of thing, he wouldn’t have sent ex-military and ex-cops to you.” He stared as hard as he could at Jean-Claude’s shoulder. I realized that Remus was avoiding the vampire’s gaze. “If Narcissus wanted our duties”—he seemed to search for words—“expanded, he has other…men to send.”

“But not all the men in the room are hyena, Remus,” Jean-Claude said. “Do you speak for Raphael’s rats as well?”

“I am in command until relieved, so yes, yes, sir, I do.”

Another voice came from the far wall, male, and deep, but I couldn’t place it, at first. Pepito walked into view. “I’m Raphael’s man, and I agree with Remus.” Pepito was a large unshakable man, but he looked shaken now. Positively pale, he was. What had they felt when the ardeur moved through the room testing them for yumminess? Whatever they had felt, it had scared both Pepito and Remus badly. Or maybe offended them? Maybe.

“Then, by all means, go,” Jean-Claude said, and he made a sweeping gesture toward the door.

Remus headed for the door, but he didn’t go through it. He opened it, and held it. Pepito motioned to the men farther back in the room. I would have had to sit up to see past the headboard, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to see. I started to tug at the sheets. For some reason I wanted a little covering as the guards trailed out.

Micah pulled the sheets up and covered most of me and Nathaniel. Micah stayed kneeling by us on the bed, while the bodyguards trooped out. I fought two opposing instincts. I wanted to hide under the sheet, so no one would see me, and I wouldn’t have to meet anyone’s eyes. But I knew if I did that I’d never be able to look any of them in the face again. I did the only thing I could do; I glared at them. A defiant front was all the hope I had to maintain any level of control or respect from any of them. Yeah, it had been an emergency and I had had to feed the ardeur. Technically, the guards understood that. But in reality, as Remus had said, most of them were ex-military or ex-cops. Which meant a woman was always working uphill with them anyway. They’d seen me have sex with one man, and once the story got around it would be more. The really weird thing about the rumors would be that some of the men who had actually witnessed everything would be convinced that I’d had sex with more men. I’d be lucky if some of them didn’t claim they themselves had had sex with me. I’d had rumors start after crime scenes where I’d done nothing sexual. This had not been nothing.

Most of the guards seemed as eager to avoid eye contact as I was. But not everyone. I glared most of them down, but a few gave me bold eyes. The kind of look you don’t want to see outside a strip club. The look that said you’d gone from a human being to just being tits and ass. I tried to remember who looked at me that way, so I could keep them away from me later.

Micah leaned over Nathaniel and me, whispering, “I see them.” He was memorizing faces, too. Good, because I was still shaky, and didn’t trust my own eyes to hold the right faces in the right places.

I always have trouble holding a glare when I’m more naked than the rest of the room. Nathaniel cuddled against me, under the sheet. He brought one arm free of the covers, so he could lay his bare arm across my covered waist. He rubbed his chin along the side of my breast, dragging the sheet down so that I had to hold it in place. I looked at him, ready to tell him to watch it, but the look on his face stopped the words before they could start.

He was staring at the men, too, but he wasn’t glaring. His face held heat, and the promise of sex, but over it all was possessiveness. That look that a man gets when another man encroaches on his “woman.” Nathaniel, who shared better than any man in my life, was marking his territory. That dark, possessive look never wavered from the parade of men. He rested the side of his chin against the mound of my breast, making it clear that he had a right to be there, like that, with me, and they did not. I didn’t think Nathaniel would grasp the problem, but he had.

There was a holdup at the door, a confusion of movement, like a traffic jam. I saw the flash of blood-red hair, and expected it to be Damian on his own power, but it wasn’t. Richard came through the door, his arm around Damian’s waist, the vampire’s arm over his shoulder. Damian leaned so heavily on him that Richard half-dragged him toward the bed.

I sat up, leaving the sheet at my waist and not caring that I was topless. Nathaniel sat up, too; we both reached toward them. I said, “Damian!” I reached for him with less-physical parts. His energy was weak, but it was more as if he hadn’t woken up completely from his daytime torpor.

His legs gave out completely, and Richard carried him in his arms like a child the last few feet. He laid Damian beside me. The long, red hair hid the vampire’s face. I moved the hair away so I could see his face. He blinked up at me, eyes a perfect bright green, green as summer grass. It was Damian’s eyes that had raised the bar so high on green-colored eyes. No one else’s eyes could compare. He tried to focus on me, but didn’t seem able to do it.

I touched his face, and his skin was icy. “I fed the ardeur—why isn’t he better than this?”

Jean-Claude came to lay his hand on Damian’s forehead. Richard said, “I found him collapsed against the wall just down from the coffin room. When Remus called for reinforcements, all the guards came here. Damian was trying to crawl to you.”

“What made you think to check on him?” Micah asked, still kneeling on the bed.

“I remembered how bad he got the last time his tie to Anita broke. I thought someone should check on him.”

“Very good thinking, mon ami.” Jean-Claude touched my cheek, then Nathaniel’s while keeping his other hand on Damian’s face. He finally stepped back from all of us, frowning. “I believe part of what is wrong is simply that Damian has woken too early. Only the very powerful masters among us wake before noon, even deep underground. Damian is no master. I believe you, ma petite, called him from his coffin, but even with extra energy it was too soon.”

I held one icy hand in both of mine. “Will he be all right? Did I hurt him?”

“I’ll be all right.” Damian’s voice was slow, heavy, as if he were drugged.

I smiled down at him. “Damian, I’m so sorry.”

He managed a weak smile. “It would be nice,” he took a labored breath, “if you’d stop almost killing me because you don’t want to screw other people.”

I didn’t know whether to smile or be exasperated.

“I believe that Damian would feel better if Nathaniel touched him, as well,” Jean-Claude said.

Nathaniel took Damian’s other hand in his, and the power jumped between us. It made me gasp. It was as if a circuit had been completed. The energy hummed from my hand, through Damian’s body, into Nathaniel’s hand and back again.

Damian drew in a huge, gasping breath, almost like it hurt. He swore, softly.

“Does it hurt?” Nathaniel asked, looking worried.

“Wonderful,” Damian whispered, “feels wonderful. You’re so warm.”

Strangely, I was almost certain he was talking to Nathaniel.

“Sir, excuse me, sir.” It was Remus; nerves always made him default to military-speak. Of course, it worked. Jean-Claude and Richard both turned to look at him. We all looked at him, except for Damian, who had closed his eyes.

“Yes, Remus,” Jean-Claude said.

He finally looked at me, sort of. He never liked direct eye contact, but he seemed unable to stare at my shoulder, like normal, because too much of my breasts were in the way. “I owe you an apology, Blake.” He said it in such a way that, apology or no, it was obvious he didn’t want to be saying it.

I gave him as good an eye contact as he’d let me. “What apology do you owe me, Remus?”

He blushed, and it filled some pieces of his face with bright color, but lines in between paled, so that you could see where all the pieces of his face didn’t quite match up. “I thought you were just a…” He stopped, seemed to think about it, and finally said, “Well, you know what I was thinking.”

I could have been mean, and said nope, I didn’t know, and tried to force him to say it all out loud. But truthfully, I didn’t want to hear him call me a slut. Thinking it had been enough.

“It’s okay, Remus, I might think the same thing if I were on the outside of it looking in.”

He gave a small smile. “If it really is life and death for you and your people, then you need to talk to Narcissus about guards and food.” He almost laughed. “Maybe give them a different color of shirt.” He shook his head, and just stopped talking. He turned on his heel and left, as if whatever he’d been about to say, he wanted to stop before he said it, and leaving was the only solution. When the door closed behind him, and we were totally guard-free, Micah spoke for most of us, I think. “He’s an odd one.”

I just nodded. Odd one about covered Remus. I’d thought my not understanding him was because I didn’t know him that well, but I was beginning to think that months from now, I’d have no more clue to why he did or didn’t do things. Some people are mysteries, and knowing them well doesn’t make them less mysterious. Less confusing sometimes, but not less mysterious.

Asher leaned against the post of the bed, near us. He had a look on his face that I used to think meant teasing, but now I knew meant worse and darker things. “Richard,” he said, so pleasantly, “did you truly leave us because you worried for Damian’s safety?”

Richard gave him narrow eyes. “Yes.”

“Really?” Asher managed to put in that one word a world of doubt.

Richard shifted, uncomfortably, as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands. “I didn’t want to see Anita feed on Requiem. Does that make you happy, to know that?” he asked of Asher.

Asher leaned his cheek against the carved wood, and nodded. “Actually, yes, it does.”

“Why? Why does my discomfort please you?”

Asher wrapped his hands around the post, using it like a prop, as if the scene were staged. Most of the vampires had a certain flair for the dramatic. Belle’s vamps had more than their share sometimes. He didn’t answer Richard’s question, but made a statement. “You could have stayed, Richard, because she didn’t feed on Requiem.”

“Stop it, Asher,” I said.

“Stop what?” he asked, and the glint in his eyes let me know he knew exactly what and that he was angry about something. Angry with Richard, maybe, or maybe angry about something else entirely. Mysterious and confusing didn’t apply only to Remus.

“If you’re mad about something, say so. If you’re not, then stop the whole angry teasing routine.”

Damian’s grip on my hand tightened. Maybe he was just feeling stronger, or maybe he was trying to remind me not to get angry. One of his jobs as my vampire servant was to help me fight off those angry impulses. His own iron self-control had been forged by she-who-made-him. Any strong emotion was eventually punished, horribly punished. I’d shared enough of Damian’s memories to know that his creator made Belle Morte seem the heart of kindness by comparison. Damian had learned to control all his emotions, his urges, because to do otherwise had been disaster.

He gripped my hand, not as tight as normal. He wasn’t well, by any means, but I felt calm flow from him to me. That calm not of gentle meditation and the modern ideal of peace of mind, but of the older ideal, when control was carved from pain and hardship, and painted in scars across your flesh.

“Is Damian whispering peaceful things in your head, Anita?” Asher asked. His tone was still teasing and light, but underneath was a razor’s edge of spite.

“You know how wanting total honesty is just another way for me to be a pain in the ass,” I said.

Asher looked at me, his eyes like winter sky. “Yes.”

“What you’re doing now is your way of being angry without being angry. Teasing with a bite to it.”

He wrapped his arms around the post, letting his hair slide forward to hide the scarred side of his face. It was an old trick, one he rarely did when it was just Jean-Claude and me. He gazed at the room with the perfection of his profile framed by his glittering froth of hair.

“Am I angry?” He made the question winsome.

“Yes,” I said, and it was a statement. “Question is, what are you angry about?”

“I have not admitted to being angry.” But he kept that perfect profile, that shine of hair, so that he showed himself to what he considered his best advantage. He was breathtaking, but I’d begun to value the full-face view, imperfections and all, more than this angry coyness. This show meant he was uncomfortable, or trying to persuade us to do something. Asher seldom flirted without an agenda. Sometimes it was foreplay, or just to make us smile, but other times…well, I did not trust his mood.

“Asher wants me to know who you fed on, and you don’t want me to know.” Richard had summed it up nicely.

I hung my head. Damian laid his lips against my knuckles, not quite a kiss. I only had to open my eyes to stare down into his face, where he lay on the bed. He gazed up at me, and his eyes held not sympathy, but strength, control. You can do this, his eyes seemed to say, you can do this, because you must. He was right.

I looked up at Richard. I thought about raising the sheet and hiding my breasts, but everyone left in the room had seen them before. Modesty wouldn’t get me out of Richard’s reaction to my newest conquest.

“Who was it?” he asked.

I turned to Asher, and said, “You told me earlier today that you were sorry, that you were putting your hurt feelings ahead of my disaster. You apologized, and tried to make amends. Is that all your apology is worth, Asher? An hour of remorse, and you go back to being a bastard?”

His eyes flashed with anger, and his power trailed over my body like a cold wind. Then he swallowed it, the power, the anger. He turned a mild, if empty, face to me. “I can only apologize once more, ma cherie, you are absolutely right. I am throwing a fit.” He stepped away from the bed, and did a low, sweeping bow that trailed the edge of his hair on the floor. He rose up with a flourish, as if he were moving a cape with one hand.

“Why are you throwing a fit?” I asked.

“Truth?” He made it a question.

I nodded, not truly certain I wanted this particular truth.

“Because he will never be my lover. He will be your lover, but never ours together.”

For a moment I wasn’t sure which he he was talking about it. The confusion must have shown on my face, because he said, “You see, ma cherie, that is it, that is it, exactement. My statement could refer to so many of your men that you do not even know to whom I refer.”

Damian’s hand squeezed mine again. I wasn’t certain whether it was to comfort me, or to comfort him. Damian was a touch homophobic, and Asher was not a comforting presence if that was your particuliar phobia.

“Are you saying you’re pissed because I keep picking men who aren’t bisexual?”

Asher seemed to think about it for a moment, then nodded. “I believe I am. I don’t think I knew until you asked so point-blank, but yes, I believe that is why I am angry.” He looked past me to Jean-Claude. “As he will not turn to me for fear you would leave him, so I do not turn to others for fear that he will use it as an excuse to pull even further away from me.”

“We agreed that we would have this discussion at a later time,” Jean-Claude said, in a voice that was as empty as any I’d ever heard from him.

Asher nodded. “I thought I could wait, but I am choking on things unsaid, Jean-Claude.” He pointed to Richard. “But we must be careful in front of him, too. It would not do to frighten him away. We wouldn’t want him to know that we find him beautiful, would we?”

“Asher,” I started to say, but Micah finished it for me. “After the visiting masters leave town, and we know what we’re doing about the baby, then we’ll all sit down and talk about your…grievances.”

“No, we will not,” Asher said, “for there will be another crisis, another reason to put it off.”

“I give you my word that Nathaniel, Anita, and I will sit down and talk to you about it. I can’t promise for anyone else.”

Asher turned that winter-blue gaze on me. “Does he speak for you?”

I nodded. “He does.”

Asher turned to Jean-Claude. “And you, master?” There was a lot of sarcasm to the master.

“I will not be bound by Micah’s word in all things, but on this, I will agree. We will discuss it in detail, if you but leave it alone for a little longer.”

“Your word,” Asher said.

Jean-Claude nodded. “You have it.”

Some tension went out of Asher, almost like an energy release. The room felt lighter, the air easier to breathe. “I will behave myself.” He looked at Micah. “I thank you, Micah.”

“Don’t thank me, Asher, you’re part of Anita’s life. If we’re going to make this work, then we have to talk to each other.”

“Always perfect, aren’t you?” Richard said, and his own anger raised the heat in the room.

“No,” I said, “no, no more fights. Until after I’ve seen the doctor this afternoon, I want every one of you to behave like a fucking adult, okay?”

Richard had the grace to look embarrassed. He nodded. “I’ll try. Inheriting your temper makes it so hard not to be pissed all the time.” He gave a small laugh. “If this is just a shadow of how angry you feel all the time, I’m amazed you don’t just start killing things. God, such rage.” He looked at me, his brown eyes full of so many emotions. “You told me once that your rage was like my beast, and I belittled you. I told you that your anger couldn’t compare to my beast, that you didn’t know what you were talking about. I was wrong. God, Anita, God, you are so full of rage.”

“Everyone needs a hobby,” I said.

He smiled and shook his head. “You have to learn to control the rage, Anita. If you’re really going to shift, you have to get a handle on the rage first.” His face sobered, and he stepped close enough that he could touch my face. The moment he did, our energy jumped to him, both offering energy, and asking for it. Richard and I jerked back at the same time, because it had almost hurt, a slap of electricity.

He rubbed his hand. “Jesus, Anita.”

I used my free hand to touch my face. The skin tingled where he’d touched. “I’ve got the shields wide open between the three of us here.”

“Could you piggyback the energy of Anita’s two triumvirates?” Micah asked.

“Piggyback?” Jean-Claude made it a question.

“Double the energy,” I said.

“Since no one has ever before forged two triumvirates at the same time, I have no answer. The energy did respond to Richard’s touch.”

I rubbed my cheek. “You could say that again.”

“Are you hurt?” Richard asked.

I shook my head. “Just tingling.”

He nodded. “Yeah.” He rubbed his hand along the side of his jeans, as if he were trying to rub off the lingering sensation.

The bathroom door opened. London walked out, fully clothed now, adjusting his black-on-black tie. Except that his eyes were still drowning black with power, he looked like he always did. He stopped and looked at us all, because we were looking at him. His face was arrogant, his version of blank. I stared at him, and it didn’t seem quite real that we’d had sex. He’d never really been on my guy radar, and now he was food. Funny damn world.

“Where is everyone?” His voice was coldly arrogant, and didn’t match the words at all.

“The guards asked to leave,” I said, “and truthfully, I don’t remember when everyone else left.”

London walked along the edge of the bed without looking at me. He was back to his cold, isolated self, as if the sex had never happened. He almost made it around the bed, but his foot tangled in the covers on the floor, and down he went. His arm caught at the bed, and he brought himself up to his knees. He peered at us over the bed, like a cat that’s just fallen off something, and is trying to pretend it meant to do that.

He got to his feet, leaning on the bed. He jerked the fallen coverlet to one side, then kicked at it repeatedly, hands on the bed to steady himself. He kicked at the coverlet as if it were some kind of enemy that he had to vanquish. When the floor was clear enough for him, he smoothed his clothes again, then started walking carefully around the bed. His shoulder clipped the bedpost, and he fell into the bed again. This time he managed to sit on it, and not end up on the floor, but he didn’t try to get up again either. He sat there on the bed, his black-suited back very straight. He kept looking at the far wall.

“You’re drunk,” I said.

He nodded without turning around. “Not precisely, but drunk will do as a description.”

Jean-Claude walked around the bed until he was standing in front of the other man. He stared down at him, and I couldn’t tell if London met his gaze, or not. “How do you feel?” he asked him at last.

Someone giggled, a high, almost hysterical sound. It was a moment before I realized it was London. He fell back on the bed with his arms wide, and his legs hanging off the edge. He lay there all black and stark against the pale sheets, giggling. The giggling turned into laughter. He gave himself to the laughter, as he’d given himself to the ardeur. The laughter was a good clean laugh, a good sound, but none of us joined him, because London did not laugh. This was not the Dark Knight with his love of shadows and dislike of everything else. This laughing, pleasant man on the bed was someone we’d never seen before.

Tears trailed from his eyes, faintly pink with blood like all vampire tears. He rolled his head back so he could see me. “I wanted to hide it from you, but I never could hide it.”

“Hide what?” I asked, and my voice sounded almost afraid.

“How good the ardeur feels. Belle said once that she’d never known anyone who fed the ardeur as well as I did, or addicted to it as quickly.” The laughter faded from his eyes, leaving them desolate. From such joy, to such loss, in a blink of his eyes.

“Are you addicted once more, mon ami?” Jean-Claude asked.

He turned his head to look at Jean-Claude. “I do not know for certain, but most likely, oui, I am.” He sounded neither happy nor sad about it. He was almost matter-of-fact.

“God, London, I’m sorry,” I said.

Damian tried to sit up, but Nathaniel and I had to help him, so that he was propped up between us. “I’m sorry, as well.”

London curled himself on the bed so he was lying on his side, and could see us. “Don’t be sorry, I feel better than I’ve felt in centuries.” He closed his eyes, and drew a shivering breath. “I feel so warm, so…alive.”

I remembered when the ardeur was searching for food, how he’d hit the radar. So powerful, but more than that. “The ardeur recognized you as the tasty power in the room. Is it because you were addicted to it once?”

“Requiem was addicted once,” London said. “Did he seem tasty, too?”

“Not as yummy as you, no.”

“Belle said that my power is to feed the ardeur. To use a modernism, I am a battery for it.”

“If you are such a good feed, then why doesn’t Damian feel better?” Nathaniel asked.

“I did not mean to, but I think I drank a great deal of the energy myself. It was like being lost in the desert for years, and suddenly seeing a river, running cool and deep. My skin soaked it up, I couldn’t stop it. I kept most of the energy, and I’m sorry for that.”

“No you’re not,” Nathaniel said, his voice soft, but certain.

London laughed, an abrupt, happy sound. “You’re right, I’m not. I knew it would be enough energy to keep Damian alive, and beyond that I didn’t care.” He curled all that tall, strong frame into a ball, and looked at me with a face more uncertain than anything I’d ever seen from London. “I am at your mercy. I tried to hide how much it meant to me, but I cannot. I could never hide it from Belle either. She tortured me with it.” He gazed up at me with those lost eyes, and said, “Will you torture me, Anita? Will you make me beg for another taste?”

My pulse was suddenly in my throat, not from passion, but from fear. The proud, scary London was curled on a bed staring up at me with a look I’d only seen in Nathaniel’s eyes. I knew that look. It said, You can do anything you want to do, just keep me. I’ll do anything you want, just keep me.

Ronnie had always been able to find men to have a nice uncomplicated fuck with. Me, I seemed to be running a home for amazingly complicated men. As for a nice uncomplicated fuck, I wouldn’t have known one if it bit me on the ass.

34

BY TWO FORTY-FIVE we were in a maternity room at St. John’s hospital. If I’d been further along someone might have called it a birthing room, but not in front of me, not if they wanted to live. To say that I was not happy to be there was an understatement of amazingly gigantic proportions.

Dr. North had taken one look at the crowd with me, and managed a private room for the exam. Or maybe he’d known me well enough to arrange it ahead of time. The room had pink flowered wallpaper, and all the furniture tried to be homey, or at least to pretend we were in a nice hotel. All except the bed. The bed was nicer than most, but it still had railings, and one of those trays on wheels at the foot of it. It was still a hospital bed no matter how dolled-up the surroundings might be.

I wasn’t lying in the bed. I was pacing the room, because we were waiting for the blood test results. We’d find out in minutes just how bad the news was going to be.

Micah was in a chair in the corner, staying out of my way. Smart man. We had two werelions with us, one standing quietly against a wall, and the other in the room’s only other chair, reading. Joseph had shown up with six werelions for me to choose from. Joseph seriously didn’t like Haven, Auggie’s lion, and was hoping I’d pick other, less dominant lions to play with. Okay by me. But how do you choose from relative strangers? How do you choose the ones who will at the very least let you change them, violently, into their animal forms. How do you trust that they won’t fight you?

Joseph assured me and Jean-Claude, “I picked submissives, as I discussed with Jean-Claude. I think they’ll be like Nathaniel was for you once, for the ardeur.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I’d asked.

“I think you’ll be able to feed the ardeur from them without full sexual contact. If I understand how the ardeur works, it’s only dominance and power that keeps you from feeding from a kiss.”

“That’s the theory,” I said.

They all seemed soft and unfinished and too fragile for my life, but I chose two of them. Travis and Noel; blondish and brunette respectively. Travis was a business major and Noel an English major. Noel wore glasses and had a test Monday. He’d brought books to study. Travis just brought himself.

Noel was reading for his test and ignoring everything around him. Travis was watching everything with those pale brown eyes of his. He watched the way cops watch, as if he were memorizing everything. He seemed particularly interested in Richard.

My bodyguard shift had changed over, so Claudia and Lisandro were in the far corner near the door, doing that bodyguard casual that was almost a slump, but not quite. If either of them had ever been military or police, it never showed. They were just bad-asses, and that was enough. There were two more guards outside the room, by the door, which Dr. North had objected to, but Claudia had looked at him hard, and he’d okayed it. One of the guards outside the door was Graham, the other a werehyena that I didn’t know. Ixion was his name, though he said it like he hated it, and hadn’t had it long. Narcissus had more fun than he should have, passing out names to some of his new men. Ixion was so ex-military that he still had the haircut, and looked uncomfortable in civilian clothes.

We didn’t really need four bodyguards, but it was the only way Claudia could see to get us a wolf who would shift for me at the hospital if I needed it, without letting Richard know that none of us trusted him to take my beast in an emergency. Graham was my wolf in the hole, so to speak, and Ixion got to come along because Claudia preferred all the guards to be in pairs. If we were pretending, we had to make it good pretend.

“You’re going to wear yourself out, Anita,” Richard said.

“Then I’ll wear myself out,” I snapped, and knew that I snapped, and didn’t have nerves left to care.

He pushed away from the wall, and walked toward me. He reached out, as if he’d hug me, or comfort me.

“Don’t,” I said, and kept walking until the window made me stop and turn around.

“I just want to help, Anita,” he said.

“Pacing helps,” I said, not looking at him. Why couldn’t he understand that I just wanted to be left the fuck alone? Micah understood it. Nathaniel had wanted to come, but shapeshifting so early had exhausted him. Once you hit animal form you usually spend between six and eight hours in it; if you shift back early it comes with a price. If he was going to be any good tonight he needed rest. I’d left him tucked in with Damian, so they could both feel better before nightfall.

Richard touched my shoulder as I went past. I jerked away from him and kept on walking. If we could have figured out a way to bring Damian with me, we would have. He helped me be calm, and I needed it. But vampires do not travel well in daylight.

“If you don’t calm down,” Richard said, “you may call your beast. You don’t want that, not here.”

I stopped and glared at him. “It would take care of the problem though, wouldn’t it?”

“You don’t mean that,” he said.

“The hell I don’t.”

“Ulfric.” It was Travis, from his corner of the wall.

Richard turned to him.

“Ulfric, she’s burning off her nervous energy by pacing.”

“I know that,” Richard said in a less than friendly voice.

“If you make her stop pacing, then where will the energy go?”

Richard opened his mouth, shut it, and nodded. “You’ve made your point. I guess it’s making me nervous to watch her pace.”

“Then don’t watch,” Travis said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

Richard drew a deep breath, and said, “I’m going to get some air. I’ll be right outside, I promise.”

I paused in the pacing to say, “I know you will.”

He nodded, and he walked out. When the door was shut behind him, Travis said, “Thank God. One of you that nervous is enough for a room this size.”

I looked at him. “Is Richard that nervous?”

Micah laughed. “Yes.”

I hugged my arms tight. “I guess I’m so nervous that I didn’t notice.”

“You’re entitled to be nervous,” Claudia said from near the door.

I nodded, but not like I believed it. There was a knock on the door. I jumped, and turned toward the door, my fingers digging into my own arms. I wasn’t hugging myself now, I was clinging, as if my fingernails were digging into that last piece of rock ledge before you fall screaming into the abyss.

Graham opened the door enough to stick his head in, and said, “The doctor is here.”

“Let him in,” Claudia said, and her voice held tension. Was I making everyone crazy with nerves?

Dr. North came in, with a glance at Ixion, still by the door. “Your men are making the nurses and patients a little nervous. Could they come in the room?”

I looked at Claudia. She was the one in charge. She nodded, and sent Lisandro to open the door and invite Graham and Ixion inside. Graham just found a piece of wall to hold up. He gave me a nervous smile that I think was meant to be comforting. Ixion scowled at the entire room, and didn’t seem to know where to stand. The room was getting a little crowded.

“The window, Ixion,” Claudia said. “Not everything that hunts us comes through doors.” We weren’t really in that much danger from direct attack, but it gave the man somewhere to stand that was far away from the bed and whatever we’d be doing. Though if there was a pelvic exam coming up, then everyone who couldn’t be the father was leaving.

When Ixion had settled against the window, Dr. North looked around the room. “Do you want this discussed in front of everyone?”

“You just had me bring two extra people inside, doc.”

He smiled. “I mean, maybe you’d want some of them to go to the cafeteria.”

I sighed, and shook my head. How could I explain that if the news was bad enough I might need one, or all, of my support staff? I couldn’t, so I didn’t. “Just spit it out, doc, okay? The suspense is getting to me.”

He nodded, adjusted his glasses. The door opened behind him, and Richard came in. “Did I miss anything?”

I shook my head.

“Anita,” Dr. North said, “you’re going to bleed if you don’t stop digging your nails into your arms.”

I stared down at my hands as if they’d just appeared at the end of my arms. My fingers were stiff with tension when I peeled them away from my arms. Little half moons from my fingernails decorated my skin. Almost blood, almost.

Richard offered me his hand. I hesitated, then took it. The energy spiked between us; we were both too nervous to be of much help to each other. He shut down, shielded up, and his hand was just warm and real in my hand. I appreciated the effort on his part, after he’d seen what I’d done to my own arms, but I finally lost the battle not to look behind me at Micah. I was too scared to play to anyone’s ego. Too scared not to want to wrap myself in as much comfort as I could find.

Micah came to my other hand. Richard stiffened, not wanting it, and not able to hide that he didn’t want it, but he didn’t throw a fit. I squeezed his hand, and bumped my head against his shoulder to let him know how much the effort meant to me, because it did. It really did. The extra attention earned me a smile, that smile that brightened his whole face. The smile that once I’d have given my heart to see.

I turned back to the doctor, clinging to both of them, and feeling better for it. I’d have liked to play it cool, but I clung to their hands as if they were the last pieces of wood in a drowning ocean.

“I had them run the blood work a second time, Anita.”

“That can’t be good,” I said.

“Is this where you ask her to sit down?” Claudia asked.

Dr. North glanced at her. “She can sit down if she wants.” He turned back to me, with a smile. “Do you want to sit down?”

“Do I need to sit down?”

His smile widened, and he glanced at the men on either side. “I don’t think so, but if you do, I think you’ve got enough support.” He nodded at Micah and Richard.

“Just tell me, doc,” I said. My voice strained, but normalish. Points for me.

“Can I be absolutely candid in front of everyone in this room?” he asked.

I fought the urge to scream, and managed to say, “Yes, yes, just say it. God, please, just say it.”

He nodded, again. “Are you aware that you have lycanthropy?”

I nodded, then frowned. “I’m aware that I’m carrying lycanthropy.”

“Funny you should say it that way,” he said. “Your blood work is just unique, Anita.”

“I learned a few weeks ago that I’m carrying leopard, wolf, lion, and something that the doctors couldn’t even identify.”

He gave me a look. “You know that it’s impossible to carry more than one strain of lycanthropy. They cancel each other out. You can’t catch it more than once.”

I nodded again, squeezing the hands that held me. “I know all that. It’s a medical miracle, yadda-yadda-yadda, just get to the pregnancy part. Do I have Mowgli syndrome, or Vlad’s syndrome?”

He gave me very good eye contact, way too serious, and said, “Yes, as far as the tests can tell us.”

My knees went, and I might have hit the floor, but Micah and Richard caught me. Someone brought one of the chairs up, and the men lowered me into it. They kept their hands on mine, and each of them put a hand on a shoulder, as if they didn’t trust me not to fall forward. I wasn’t that bad, not yet. Not yet.

“What do you mean, ‘as far as the tests can tell’?” Micah asked.

“The two syndromes are like lycanthropy; you can’t have both. A fetus can’t carry both Vlad’s and Mowgli syndrome. If Anita weren’t carrying four different kinds of lycanthropy, a medical impossibility, I’d say we might have twins, but because of the other blood work, and some of the other tests…”

His mouth kept moving, but all I could hear in my ears was the blood roaring through it. Richard and Micah helped me put my head between my knees, and kept me from falling out of the chair. The head between my knees helped after a few moments. But I was glad for their hands on me, holding me in place. I don’t faint, but I’d passed out before, and this felt awfully similar. Jesus, twins. Talk about karmic payback, with interest. Twins with two of the worst birth defects known to modern science. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, help me on this one.

Dr. North’s voice came from just in front of me. He was kneeling by me. “Anita, Anita, can you hear me? Anita!”

I managed to nod my head.

“I don’t want to give you false hope here, because to my knowledge the only way to test positive for these syndromes is to be pregnant, but you tested negative for pregnancy. Twice.”

I raised my head, slowly; one, because it was as fast as I could move it safely, and two, because I didn’t believe I’d heard what I’d heard. “What?” I asked, in a voice that didn’t sound like me at all.

He was kneeling in front of me, and he was tall enough and me short enough that we had perfect eye contact. His face was sincere, worried around the edges. He spoke slowly, carefully. “You tested negative for pregnancy.”

I frowned at him. “But you said…”

He nodded. “I know. I don’t understand the test results either. In fact, the nurses and interns are arm-wrestling right now for who gets to help me do an ultrasound.”

“Arm-wrestling?”

“Do you want the truth?”

“Yeah.”

“No matter what happens with the ultrasound this is a medical first, as far as any of us know. Either you aren’t pregnant, and you’ve tested positive for two syndromes that we thought needed a pregnancy to test positive. Or you are carrying twins, from different fathers, and for some reason our tests deny that you’re pregnant. Unusual enough. And don’t forget, as we discussed on the phone, the Mowgli baby could be viable in weeks, but the other baby wouldn’t be.”

I just stared at him.

“What do you mean, doctor?” Richard asked it.

He gave an abbreviated lecture on Mowgli, and the potential for a speedy pregnancy. “Or something about Anita’s blood work makes her test positive for all of it.” He looked at me, still on his knees. “Are you a lycanthrope? I mean, do you shapeshift?”

I shook my head, then added, “Not so far.”

“What does ‘not so far’ mean?” he asked.

“It means, I came close.”

Micah said, “We thought she was going to shift earlier today.”

“How long has she been carrying multiple strains of lycanthropy?”

Micah glanced at me. I shrugged. “About six months, we think. When she didn’t shift, we just assumed she hadn’t caught it.”

Dr. North nodded as if that made sense. “Logical, up to a point. The literature says the first full moon and you shift, period. But you’re saying she’s had six full moons, and nothing.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Anita. I thought I’d give you a few minutes to recover.”

“I’m as recovered as I’m going to get,” I said. I took in a deep breath and let it out slow. I pushed at their hands. “I can sit up, I’m okay.”

“Anita”—and this time it was Micah—“let us help, please.”

I tried to find the energy to get grumpy about it, but I didn’t have it to spare. “Fine, just hold me, don’t hold me down in the chair. It’s like being trapped.” Trapped, yeah, that about covered it.

Micah held his hand down, and after a heartbeat, I took it. Richard did the same on the other side, and I took his hand, too. I was being brave, but if the news kept being so interesting, I might need something to hold on to.

“The blood work results came back with the same results on all the tests twice. Since according to everything we think we know, that’s impossible, I want to do an ultrasound. The ultrasound will show whether you’re pregnant or not. We’ll be able to see it. If we don’t see it, then you aren’t pregnant. The home test was a false positive, and the blood work is right.”

“And if I am pregnant?”

He fought his face, trying to find some bedside manner that would fit. “Then we’ll do this.”

“Two babies, one that may grow so fast that it will be ready to deliver in weeks, and a second baby that may try to eat its way out of me, or eat its twin.” My voice was mine again, matter-of-fact. I could have been talking about what to have for dinner.

Someone said, “Jesus.” Richard’s hand tightened on mine until it almost hurt, but I didn’t tell him to let go. I wanted to feel him there. Micah added a second hand, holding my arm, too. At least neither of them told the big lie, that it would be all right. It wasn’t going to be all right.

Dr. North blinked at me. It’s never good to see your doctor do that slow oh-my-God blink. “I think that would be worst-case scenario, Anita. Let’s get the ultrasound done, then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.” He stood up, shaking out his pants legs, and not meeting anyone’s eyes. I think I’d been a little too accurately pessimistic for Dr. North. Me, being too pessimistic, hell, yeah.

35

I GOT TO lie down on the bed. Doc North put the railings down so he could get the ultrasound equipment and himself close enough. The railings on the other side went down so that the crowd could gather round. He hadn’t been exaggerating about the interns and nurses arm-wrestling. Well, maybe about the method of choosing, but they all wanted to be there. We were making medical oddity, if not medical history, no matter what happened. I felt like a display at the zoo.

Dr. North beat me to it, by saying, “We don’t need this many people.”

One of the interns said, “Let’s clear some of her people out.”

I looked right at him, and said, “Get out!”

He started to argue.

Dr. North said, “Get out.”

The intern got out. The remaining junior doctors were way more polite.

The nurses got squeezed out completely, though one of the doctors was a woman.

Claudia saved the day, a little, by saying, “Anita, he was an asshole, but for this, we can get some of us outside. I’m going to assume,” and she glared at the white coats, “that some of these people are here to help out. Regardless of what the ultrasound shows, we don’t have the medical expertise to offer suggestions.” She motioned her people out, saying, “We’ll be right outside if you need us.”

She called to Travis and Noel. “The two of you, come with us.”

“We’re not guards,” Travis said. “Joseph gave us to Anita, not to you.”

“Now is not the time to be a pain in the ass, Travis,” I said; my voice wasn’t calm anymore. It was starting to crumble round the edges.

He didn’t argue after that. He just walked out. Noel followed him, clutching his book and his backpack. Claudia gave me a look before she went out. I almost called her back in, but didn’t. We weren’t close friends, but I trusted her. I trusted Micah, and to a point I trusted Richard. But they weren’t neutral parties, and we might need a cooler head, one not so personally involved. The door closed behind her before I could decide to say Stay. Decision made.

Dr. North started sending interns out, until we were down to three. That left enough room for Micah and Richard to stand near the head of the bed on the opposite side of the ultrasound stuff. I had only one hand to offer, and Micah got that. Richard ended up gripping my shoulder, but bless him, he didn’t argue about it. Maybe grown-up reality had finally hit us all, and the squabbling would stop. We could hope.

I’d had to take my jacket off, which showed the gun and its shoulder holster. I was using the extra belt I’d kept at Jean-Claude’s, but I was down two, so I’d have to send Nathaniel shopping for more leather belts soon. The lone female intern kept looking at the gun, with quick flashes of her eyes, as if she’d never seen one before.

I had to slide the belt off, and unhook the bottom part of the shoulder rig, so the doctor could snake my jeans down around my hips. The gun didn’t stay put when I lay back on the bed, and I had to use both hands to pull it down. I suppose I could have taken it off and let Micah hold it, but I wanted the gun touching me. It was the only security blanket I had with me, except for Micah and Richard. And since both of them were a little responsible for my being in this mess, well, I was having mixed feelings about clinging to anyone who could even remotely have gotten me pregnant. For the first time, I wondered if a vasectomy on a lycanthrope was an absolutely sure thing.

“This is going to be cold,” Dr. North said, before he squirted clear gel all over my stomach. It was cold, but it gave me something else to occupy my mind, and I was taking it.

“Micah had a vasectomy about three years ago. We’d discounted him as the possible father, but he is a lycanthrope, I mean…”

Dr. North looked at Micah. “Did he just burn the ends or did you put in silver clips?”

“Both, and I was tested about six months ago and came up clean.”

“I’ve heard about using silver clips; are you aware that there’ve been two cases of silver poisoning from vasectomies like yours?”

Micah shook his head. “No, I wasn’t aware.”

“You might let your doctor run a blood test for silver levels, just to be safe.” Dr. North looked down at me, and his face was all soft. Good bedside manner. He held up a chunky piece of plastic. “I’m going to run this over your skin. It doesn’t hurt.”

I nodded. “You explained how it works, doc, just do it.”

He started running the chunky wand over my stomach, spreading the clear gel around as he worked. I watched the little TV screen behind him. He was glancing at it, too. It was gray, white, and black, and fuzzy. If it had been my television at home I’d have been calling the cable company and raising hell. The images seemed to make more sense to him than to me, because he’d glance and move the wand. Then he just started moving the wand without looking at it, looking only at the screen.

The tallest intern said, “Well, damn.” He sounded terribly disappointed.

North didn’t even glance at him. He just said, “Get out.”

“But…”

“Now,” and my kindly doctor sounded as mean and serious as I’d ever heard him. He might have good patient manners, but I was beginning to get the idea that his bedside manner ended by the bedside. Fine with me.

“What’s wrong?” Richard said. He was leaning over me, trying to decipher the images.

I asked. “What are you seeing that I’m not?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Mr. Zeeman,” Dr. North said without looking at him. “And what am I seeing? Nothing.”

“What does that mean, nothing?” Micah asked, and for the first time I heard a thread of tension in his voice. That iron control, cracking just a little.

North turned back to me with a smile. “You are not pregnant.”

I blinked up at him. “But the test…”

He shrugged. “A rare, very rare, false positive. Anita, you’re outside normal parameters on every other test we’ve run, why should we be surprised if a home pregnancy test gets a little confused with your internal chemistry?”

I stared up at him, not willing to believe it yet. “You’re sure. I’m not pregnant.”

He shook his head. He put the wand back on my stomach. He made a slow circle of a surprisingly small area. “We’d see it here. It would be tiny, but we would see it, if it were there to see. It’s not.”

“Then how did I come back positive for Mowgli and Vlad’s syndrome?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I would guess that the same enzymes the test looks for would come back positive if you yourself were a lycanthrope. It’s designed to test human mothers, not mothers who are already lycanthropes.”

“What about the Vlad’s syndrome?” This from the female intern.

North frowned at her. “We’ll discuss the case when the patient has had her questions answered, Dr. Nichols.”

She looked suitably chagrined. “I’m sorry, Dr. North.”

“No, she’s got a point,” I said, “what about the Vlad’s syndrome?”

He touched my chin, moved my head so Requiem’s bite marks showed. “Do you donate blood on a regular basis?”

“Yes,” I said.

“We’re testing for enzymes in the blood at this stage, Anita. I’ve never read a study on what regular blood donation does to blood test results. We know it can cause anemia, but beyond that, I don’t think anyone’s really studied it.”

“May I ask a question, please?” It was the female intern, Nichols.

North gave her a cold look. “It depends on the question, doctor.” He said the doctor part like it was an insult. I was seeing a whole new side of my doctor.

“It’s not about the pregnancy, but about the bite.”

“You can ask.” He made it sound like he wouldn’t if he were her, but Nichols was made of sterner stuff, and didn’t back down, though she looked nervous bordering on scared.

“There’s a lot of bruising around the bite. I thought it was just two neat puncture marks.”

I looked at her. “You’ve only seen bite marks in the morgue, right?” I made it a question.

She nodded. “I took a preternatural forensics course.”

“What are you doing in obstetrics?” I asked.

“Nichols is going to be one of the first doctors we’ll graduate with a specialty in preternatural obstetrics.”

I frowned at them both. “I’d think that would be a very limited specialty.”

“Growing every year,” North said.

I answered her question. “A vampire bite is like any other wound; if death results from the bite, then you don’t get the same bruising. It can leave just two neat puncture wounds, because once the fangs go in, the blood flows easily from the anticoagulant in their saliva. It’s drinking, not really eating. Some of the older vamps pride themselves on being able to leave no marks but the two puncture marks. Younger vamps will leave more impressions of teeth, but it’s rare for them to break the skin, except with the fangs. The few times I’ve had vamps leave bite marks that involve more than the fangs, they were going for pain, not just feeding. They wanted it to hurt.”

“We saw one body that they thought a vampire and a wereanimal had attacked, because they got impressions of fangs, but the collarbone and neck area were savaged.”

I shook my head, and now that North had brought the wound to my attention, it ached a little. Requiem hadn’t been a gentleman about this bite. In the heat of his need, he’d done more than just insert fangs.

“I don’t know the case, but it could have been just a vampire.”

She shook her head. “It was a lot of damage.”

I held out my right arm with its mound of bite marks at the bend. “Vampire,” I said. I pulled down the neck of my T-shirt, stretching the neck out a little, so I could show her the scars on my collarbone. “Different vampire. He broke my collarbone, and worried at the wound like a terrier with a rat.”

She paled a little, but said, “I would love to contact the forensics program and suggest you come and lecture. I think just seeing your scars and talking to you in more detail might help coroners and medical examiners across the country in correctly attributing the damage on some of the victims.” She started to reach out, then stopped herself.

I said, “You can touch the scars, if you want.”

She glanced at North; he gave a small nod. She touched the collarbone scar, very tentatively, as if it were more intimate than it should have been. At the bend of my arm, she trailed her fingers over those scars like she was memorizing them. She trailed down to the claw marks lower on the arm. “Lycanthrope?”

“Shapeshifted witch, actually.”

Her eyes got wide. “A real shapeshifted witch, with an animal skin object, not a lycanthrope?” She was excited about it, and I was impressed that she knew the difference; most people didn’t.

“Yeah.”

She finally touched the cross-shaped burn scar, a little crooked now because of the claw marks. “This should mean you’re a vampire, but you aren’t.”

Nice that someone was sure. Out loud, I said, “Some vampire’s flunkies amused themselves by branding me while we waited for their master to wake for the night.”

She gave me wide eyes. “I would love to talk to you at greater length. Thank you so much for answering my questions at a time like this.”

“I fall into lecture mode pretty easy,” I said. “I’m used to being the resident expert on the preternatural.”

“Thank you,” she said, and sounded like she meant it.

I finally turned back to North. I searched his face. “I’m not pregnant, you promise, your fucking word of honor, that I’m not pregnant?”

He smiled at me. “I swear, my hand to God, that there is nothing inside you but you. You are not pregnant.”

I’d needed Nichols’s distraction to give my mind time to process. I’d needed time to let it sink in. I turned to Micah and Richard. I looked from one to the other of them.

The other intern was using a towel to wipe the goop off my tummy. I let him do it. I stared up at two of the men in my life, and said, as if they hadn’t heard, “I’m not pregnant.”

“We heard,” Micah said, smiling.

“Well, say something,” I said.

Richard said, “What do you want us to say?”

“Are you disappointed? Happy? Relieved?”

“We’re waiting for you to tell us what reaction won’t piss you off,” Micah said.

For some reason that made me laugh, and the laughter turned to crying, though I had no idea why. I curled on my side and wept, while they tried to hold me. Dr. North and the interns left us to it. Left me to cry away the stress and fear, and underneath that, a tiny, tiny piece of regret.

36

THAT MICROSCOPIC BIT of regret gave way to a planet-sized wave of relief. By the time we all left the hospital, I wanted to skip and shout to strangers that I wasn’t pregnant. I didn’t do it, but I was as close to giddy as I get; giddy with relief. It was like being on a happy drunk. It was so bad that Micah suggested he drive us back to the Circus. Two miracles occurred; I let him do it, and Richard didn’t argue that he should drive. In fact, Richard was positively quiet. He slid into the backseat without a word, a look on his face like he was thinking very serious thoughts. I left him to it, because I wasn’t thinking anything sad.

Claudia and Lisandro shoved themselves into the seat beside him. The three of them had such wide shoulders that I always wondered if they’d all fit, but they did. Noel got in the very back. Travis rode with Graham and Ixion in the second car.

I started to use the cell phone to tell Jean-Claude, then realized I didn’t need the phone, not for this. I opened the marks, just a little, until I could feel him down the cool line of power.

“What are you doing, Anita?” Richard asked.

“Telling Jean-Claude the good news.”

“Use a phone, please, with me this close in the car.”

I looked back at him. His skin was running with goosebumps from what little I’d just done. I thought about ignoring him, but that seemed cruel, and I didn’t want to be cruel. But I didn’t have a chance to decide; Jean-Claude whispered through my head, “Ma petite…”

Richard closed his eyes, as if it hurt him, but I knew that look. It wasn’t that it hurt. It was the opposite, it felt good. He didn’t like that it felt good.

I said out loud, “I’m here.”

He whispered through my head, “You do not need to say it. I can read it off the tip of your mind, so loudly do you think it. You are not pregnant.”

I fought the urge to bounce in my seat, but managed to say, “Yes, yes.”

I felt him smile. “I am very happy that you are so happy about it. You feel light, as if you could fly.”

It was how I felt, so I just agreed with him.

Richard’s thread of warmth trailed through my mind. But he spoke out loud, to both me and Jean-Claude, “Will you please stop this while I’m trapped in the car with it?”

Jean-Claude’s voice seemed to grow, so that it filled both of us. “We will talk later about these glad tidings.” Then he was gone.

I turned in the seat so I could see Richard’s face. “Why did that bother you?”

“I don’t want him crawling in my head right now.”

Noel’s voice came from the back. “I can’t study if power is crawling all over my skin, sorry.”

I looked at Claudia. “Did you feel it, too?”

She fought it, then finally shivered. “I can usually tell when you are using the triumvirate, but it does seem more powerful today.” She tried to rub her hands on her arms, but with the three of them squished in the seat there really wasn’t room to finish the movement. But she made her point.

“Okay,” I said, and turned to face front.

Micah offered his hand over the middle of the seat, and I took it. His hand was warm, but not too warm, in mine. He was trying not to up the power level in the car. I’d had small versions of the ardeur rise while I was driving—not good, not good at all.

I held his hand, and tried not to have my delirious relief bring my power up, and cause his beast to rise for me. Our beasts could flow in and out of each other, but that would be bad right now, so I tried to hold on to my shields, and not let happiness break them down. I knew that sorrow, and anger, could cause my concentration to break, but I’d never realized that happiness could do it, too.

I controlled my happiness all the way to the Circus. The long, stone stairs flew by under my feet. Jean-Claude met me in the living room, and I bounced into his arms, wrapping my arms and legs around him. I kissed him long and deep, and only when we came up for air did I realize that we had company.

Augustine sat on the love seat draped in a black silk shawl that left the tops of his bare shoulders like pale islands peeking out. His yellow curls were in disarray, as if all he’d done was run his fingers through them. He was wearing the bottoms of black silk pajamas that were too long for him. It seemed wrong to call such a muscular man winsome, but that was the word that came to mind. I looked at him, and I felt something similar to what I’d felt when I looked at Jean-Claude. It didn’t have the depth and richness that my feelings for Jean-Claude, or Micah, or even Richard had, but it was that first burst of love when lust has worn away a little, and you realize that you still like someone. That it wasn’t just lust, but something deeper. I stood there, staring at Auggie, and thought that it sounded like a good idea to wake up some morning beside him when he looked all sleep tousled and winsome. I was in love with him. I should have been terrified, or angry, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t vampire powers that made me stay calm about it. Maybe we could fix this, the way we’d fixed Requiem’s attraction to me. There were options. We could work around it. I wasn’t pregnant; we could work around anything else.

“Ma petite.”

I turned back to look at Jean-Claude. I hadn’t even noticed the brush of the black satin shirt underneath my hands. The shirt was untucked over black jeans. He had very few jeans. He usually only wore them if he suspected he’d be ruining the clothes, or he was trying to portray himself as accessible in some media event. His feet were bare, the flesh only a little less white than the carpet.

“Ma petite,” he said again, and this time the nickname made me look back to his face. His hair was a careful fall of curls—his version of casual. “How do you feel when you look upon Augustine?”

I started to look back at the other vampire, but Jean-Claude caught my arm, turned me to look at him. “Answer before you look back, ma petite.”

“I think it sounds like a really good idea to have him wake up beside me all tousled and half naked.”

“Is it merely lust?”

I shook my head. “No, no, it’s the beginning of the real deal. It’s love, not just lust.”

“You do not sound upset.”

I smiled at him. “I’m not pregnant, we can work around everything else. I mean, isn’t this similar to what I did to Requiem with the ardeur? If I can free him, then shouldn’t a Master of the City be able to free me?”

“Jean-Claude, how do you feel about Augustine?” This from Richard, who had come to stand just behind us.

“I see him as lovely, but strangely, I am not in love with him. He is not in love with me. I had hoped that meant the worst, or best, had not happened, but…” He looked beyond us to Augustine.

I looked with him. I noticed that from this distance Auggie’s charcoal-gray eyes looked almost black.

“Do you need to ask how do I feel about your human servant?” he asked.

Jean-Claude nodded.

“It is all I can do to stay here on this seat. I want to touch her, to hold her. If my heart could beat, it would break.”

“Why should your heart break?” I asked, and was surprised at how ordinary I sounded, even felt.

“Because you belong to another, and I love you.”

I took a step forward, and Jean-Claude’s fingers began to let me go. Richard grabbed my other arm. “No, Anita, don’t go to him.”

“Why not?” I asked, looking up into those brown eyes.

He started to say several things, but finally said the only thing that was really true. “Because I don’t want you to.”

That stopped me more surely than any anger could have. I was left staring up at him, watching the pain on his face, and not knowing what to do about it. “Why is sharing me with Auggie different than sharing me with all the rest.”

“You don’t love the rest.”

I started to smile, stopped, then said, “Who don’t I love?”

He let me go then, as if my skin had suddenly gotten hot. “I’ll go get changed for the ballet.” He actually started for the far hallway.

“It is a little early to change, mon ami.”

Richard shook his head. “I can’t watch this, I just can’t.”

“What do you think is going to happen, Richard?” I asked.

He answered without turning around. “You’re going to have sex with him again. Maybe you and Jean-Claude.” He shook his head again. “It was bad enough to feel some of it, I don’t want to watch.”

“I’m in love with him, Richard, that doesn’t mean we’re going to fuck. You, of all people, should know that just because someone has my heart doesn’t mean they have my body.”

That stopped him, just at the far doorway. He turned around, looked at me. “You don’t feel compelled to fuck him?”

I shook my head.

“I am losing my touch,” Auggie said.

It made me turn and waste a smile on him. My smile made him smile, that goofy smile that you only do when you’re truly gone on someone. “You haven’t lost anything, and you know it.”

He made a gesture that was half bow, and half shrug. He managed to look modest, but not like he really meant it. “If I have lost nothing, and you do not fear what we feel for each other, then come to me, Anita.”

“You come to me,” I said.

He grinned at me, wide enough to flash fangs, which was rare for a vampire his age. He stood up, the shawl still covering most of him.

“Master, do not go to her.” Octavius, his human servant, came around the side of the love seat. The werelion Pierce came with him. I think they meant to outflank him and keep him from touching me. He stood in front of Auggie, blocking our view of each other. “You are the Master of the City of Chicago, you go to no woman. They come to you.”

Auggie moved Octavius to one side, gently but firmly. “I don’t think this one will.” He looked at me, half-smiling. “Will you come to me?”

“Why should I?”

He grinned again. “I don’t know if it’s my own power backfiring, but I see what you saw in her, Jean-Claude. An ambitious target for love, and I would think harmful to the ego, but worth the effort, oh, yes, worth the effort.” He pushed past his men, flinging the shawl into the air, so that he was suddenly nude from the waist up. The sight of him like that pushed my pulse up into my throat. I remembered what it was like to be held down by that body, what it was like to hold all that muscled strength in my arms. I took a step forward, and I think we would have met in the middle of the room, but I suddenly smelled sun-warmed grass, felt heat, lion. I smelled lion.

I turned around to look for Noel and Travis. They were standing near the far door, as if they weren’t sure what to do. I couldn’t blame them for that, but it wasn’t them I was sensing.

I turned the other way, toward the far hallway, where Richard was still standing. But it wasn’t Richard who was making my skin creep with power. Haven stalked down the hallway, human again, nude, and beautiful. In truth he was a little thin for my tastes, but it wasn’t truly the washboard abs, or the slender hips, the long graceful legs, or even the swelling of promise between those legs, but his beauty as a whole that drew me. If he’d been unattractive, would I have felt the same about him walking toward me? Would I have been able to resist walking toward him, if he hadn’t looked so damn cute?

My view was suddenly blocked by Travis and Noel. Of all the men in the room that might interfere, they hadn’t been on my list. Travis’s soft face was utterly serious as he said, “Our Rex said that you weren’t supposed to touch him again before you’d fed on one of us.”

I could feel Haven behind them, moving closer. “Move, Travis,” I said.

He shook his head. Noel’s eyes were wide behind his glasses, but he added, “Joseph wants you to feed the ardeur, or give us your lion, before you touch him again.”

I knew he was close before Haven loomed over the two shorter men. I guess he loomed over me, too, but he wasn’t going to move me out of his way.

His blue eyes stared down at me with a look that was almost frantic. I felt it too, an almost overwhelming need to touch him. What was wrong with me? My hand started to lift up, to try to move between Noel and Travis, so I could touch Haven’s bare chest. I wanted, needed, to touch his skin. The look on his face said he felt the same. What the hell was happening now?

Noel and Travis moved closer together and stepped forward at the same time, bumping me, forcing me back a few inches. Farther away from the man at their backs.

I didn’t want to be farther away, and neither did Haven. He tried to grab them by the collars, but they must have felt it coming, because they threw themselves forward, on top of me, bringing us all to the ground.

“Get off me,” I said.

But I didn’t have to worry; Haven reached down and grabbed Travis. Suddenly, Travis wasn’t on top of me anymore. He was airborne, and hit the wall with a sharp, brittle sound, and I knew a bone had broken somewhere in his body. That fixed it, whatever the hell was wrong; I could think again.

Haven reached down for Noel, and I wrapped my arms and legs around him, tight, so if the big werelion threw him, he’d have to throw us both. It was the only thing I could think of in a split second.

He grabbed a handful of Noel’s curls, jerked his neck back at a horrible angle.

I yelled, “Let him go!”

Haven snarled at me, and came to one knee beside us. “I am your lion, can’t you feel it?”

I could, but that didn’t give him the right to break Noel’s neck, which was what was going to happen if he didn’t stop pulling his head back. I couldn’t draw my gun; it was trapped under Noel’s body. If I let go of him, I was afraid of what Haven would do to him.

I slid one hand through Noel’s hair, until I touched Haven’s hand. The moment we touched, energy shot through my body as if I’d touched a live wire. So much energy that I cried out in pain. Noel echoed me, getting the backlash of it. Haven threw his head back and roared, a coughing, harsh sound out of his human throat.

He looked down at me with eyes that had gone lion gold. “Oh, God, yes, yes!”

I was shaking my head. I whispered, “No, no.”

Auggie tried ordering Haven away from us, but it didn’t do a damn thing. Octavius was a pain in the ass, but he’d been right about one thing: Haven didn’t belong to Auggie anymore. He might not be mine completely, but he was no longer Auggie’s.

Richard loomed up over us. “You want him moved?” His voice was low and careful, his face full of a dark eagerness. I knew that look; it was my look, the look when you want a fight. Want to hurt something, because it’s simple, and you can stop thinking.

I said, “Yes.” I said yes, with Haven’s energy running through my body like a warm, hurtful blanket.

Richard said, “Thank you.” I wasn’t sure what he was thanking me for, but he knelt down beside us. He was on one knee, facing Haven. He wrapped his hand around the other man’s wrist, where it was trying to pull Noel’s head backward. The pressure eased on Noel’s hair, and his head began to lower. Haven’s hand shook with the effort to pull Noel’s head backward, but Richard pushed his hand down. It was a struggle, and slow, but it was like an arm-wrestling match when one person is simply the stronger of the two. The match wasn’t over, but one arm against one arm, Richard was the stronger man. He just was.

But Haven was one thing that Richard was not, a professional thug. He did two things simultaneously. He released Noel’s hair, and he tried to hit Richard with his other hand. That fist going over us was a blink of the eye, too fast to see, more just an awareness of air moving, and the afterimage. Richard saw it, because when the fist tried to land on his face, he wasn’t there to take the blow. He rolled backward, and pulled Haven with him, with one hand on the other man’s wrist. Haven’s own momentum made him fall forward, and Richard did a move that I’d showed him ages ago. His sport was karate, mine was judo. But if it had been me trying for the tomenage throw, I’d have failed. Because Haven was half-collapsed on Richard’s legs, not high enough above the ground, unless you had the strength to plant your feet in the man’s stomach and lift with your legs. I would have just ended with Haven on top of me, not an improvement in a fight, but Richard pushed him skyward and was strong enough to keep the momentum going.

Haven flew across the room and hit the fireplace. Richard had time to stand before the other man got to his knees, then charged him. The fight was on.

37

THE FIGHT ROLLED over the couch, and vanished from sight for a minute.

Noel shivered on top of me, and it wasn’t pleasure. “Are you hurt?” I asked.

His voice was breathy from pain or fear. I didn’t know him well enough to guess which. “Anita, you’re about to pick an animal to call.”

I patted the top of his curls, gently. “You’re not thinking clearly, Noel.” I started to try to sit up, but he wrapped himself around me. Not pinning me, but making it so sitting up would be an effort.

Richard was the one who staggered back from the couch, blood spattering his face. Haven got to his feet like he was on springs, and they squared off. Both of them went down into fighting stances that said that Haven knew some kind of martial art, too. Not good.

“Let me up, Noel.”

He raised his face, so I could see how frightened his eyes were behind his glasses. “You are about to have another animal to call.”

“Nathaniel is my animal to call.”

“He’s your animal for Damian and you, but Richard is your animal with Jean-Claude.”

Richard and Haven were circling in the bare area just in front of the far hallway. They feinted with legs and hands, but they weren’t fighting. They were getting the measure of each other. Once they had it, the fight would get serious. I didn’t want that.

Noel gripped my arms, turned my attention back to him. “Joseph thinks that something about the vampire marks is giving you an animal to call to match each of your beasts.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Everything you do is impossible, Anita. My Rex thinks it is possible. He hopes that if you feed from more than one lion, your power won’t bond to any one person.”

Travis collapsed to his knees beside us, blocking my view of the growing fight. He was cradling his arm tight against his chest. The side of his head was bleeding into his brown-gold curls. “But if you do have to bond to a lion, Joseph would prefer that the strongest preternatural power in his territory not bond itself to a lion who would try to take over his pride.”

It seemed stupid having this conversation flat on my back with a nearly perfect stranger on top of me, but I couldn’t figure out how to sit up without getting rough with Noel, and Haven had been rough enough. “Why did Joseph send you to me?”

Travis shrugged, and winced, his shoulders hunching around his arm. “Our first task is to keep you from bonding with blue-boy over there. Whatever it takes, to stop that from happening.”

I looked at them both. “You’re kids. You don’t want to be bound to my life, to me, forever. You don’t want that, you can’t want that.”

“I’m only five years younger than you,” Travis said. “Hell, I’m two years older than Nathaniel.”

“But Nathaniel needed me. You got drafted.”

Noel pushed himself up on his arms, which meant I was able to get to my gun, not that it would help, but it was still a thought. His lower body was pressed a little closer to my lower body, but for once it wasn’t erotic. It wasn’t anything. “Our lion group, our pride, works, Anita, it’s our home. I felt blue-boy’s power, just walking down a hallway. You can feel it now, coming off him in waves.” Noel licked his lips. “Joseph is powerful, but I’m not a hundred percent certain he’s more powerful than what’s behind us.”

“Let me sit up, Noel.”

Noel glanced at Travis, and the other man gave a small nod, then hunched over his arm again. Noel moved back so I could sit up, but he stayed kneeling between my knees, I think so he was close enough to grab me if I tried to go to Haven, again.

Richard and Haven were fighting now. Fighting with a capital F, if you’re not planning to kill each other. It was a kind of fighting that I would never be able to do. Pounding the shit out of each other, and being able to take the damage. It was guy fighting, for the sake of a point, yes. I’d asked for help to move Haven and protect the other men. Haven’s fist got past Richard’s arms, and Richard staggered back two steps, but hunched his body, so that the blows Haven tried to rain on him hit only shoulders and arms. Richard, on the other hand, landed two solid body blows that doubled Haven over. Richard followed with a fist to his chin, and only Haven throwing himself backward kept the next blow from hitting. Richard didn’t give him time to recover. He came at him with a flurry of blinding kicks that put the other man into a defensive crouch against the far wall. Richard was winning. I realized in that moment that I hadn’t thought he would.

Noel touched my face, turned my gaze back to his scared face. “Anita, please don’t touch him, not until you’ve at least tried one of us.”

I checked Richard’s progress one more time. Haven was against the wall, simply trying to keep the kicks from hitting him, not even trying to fight back now.

I looked at Travis and his wounds. Noel’s eyes so scared. The lions’ pride worked; they were one of the few wereanimal groups in town that let their people lead nearly ordinary lives. No power struggles, no hiring bodyguards. Joseph’s people were people first, animals second. If Haven stayed in town, hooked up to the power that I had through Jean-Claude’s marks, would the lions’ world go up in flames?

“You don’t think Joseph would win the fight?” I asked.

“He is not the fighter that your Ulfric is,” Travis said. Travis said it like it was just true, and no big deal. That was the biggest difference between wolf and lion culture; all the big cat shapeshifters seemed to be less about combat, and more about what was best for the group. The wolf culture was much more about strong is right, weak is just dead. Someone had suggested that it was because the werewolf culture passed through the Vikings’ culture, more than any other shapeshifter society. Maybe. Real wolves certainly weren’t more vicious than lions, or leopards.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Joseph won his fight with Haven.”

“Joseph got lucky,” Travis said. He motioned at the fight. “He got real lucky.”

Richard had the other man in a defensive ball against the wall. Haven had given up fighting back, and was just trying to keep the damage down. Richard did a very Richard thing. He backed up. The fight was over, as far as he was concerned. Since he wasn’t going to kill Haven, the fight should have been over. But Haven’s day job was mob enforcer; it’s a different mentality.

Richard’s voice sounded tired, but not strained, “Stay down.”

Haven got to his knees, shaking his head. “I can’t.”

“You can’t win,” Richard said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Haven said, “still have to get up.”

“Stay down,” Richard said.

“No,” Haven said, and he used the wall to push to his feet. He fell back to his knees, one hand holding him swaying against the wall.

I said, “Stay down, Haven.”

“Can’t,” was all he said, and he gathered himself for a rush. He came up off the floor in a blur of speed, still dangerous, for all the damage he’d taken. Richard sidestepped him, let his own momentum send him crashing to the floor.

“This fight is over,” Richard said, and he made the mistake. He offered Haven a hand up.

I had time to yell, “No!” I wasn’t even sure who I was yelling it at.

Haven kicked out with everything he had left; he tried to dislocate Richard’s knee. Richard had time to avoid some of it, but not all of it. His knee collapsed and he went down.

My gun was out and pointed. I got to my feet. If Haven had pushed the attack I’d have shot him, but he didn’t. He lay back on the floor as if that last kick had taken all the fight out of him. “The fight is over,” I said, just in case.

“Yeah,” Haven said, and his voice held pain, “now, it is.”

I stared down the barrel of the gun at him, and he didn’t even seem to see the gun. He certainly didn’t react to it. Most people don’t like having guns pointed at them; if he didn’t like it, it didn’t show. “I’m thinking you need to go back to Chicago.”

“Why? Because I hurt your boyfriend?”

“No, because you hurt two people who couldn’t fight back. And, the fight was over; you gained nothing from that last kick.”

“He’s hurt, I gained that.”

I shook my head. “That’s not how we play here.”

He lay on his back, covered in blood, and too tired, or too hurt, to sit up. He was still breathing hard. “Tell me the rules here, and I’ll follow them. Ask Augustine—I follow the rules, once you make ’em clear to me.”

I called out, without looking away from Haven. “Is that true, Auggie? Does he follow the rules, once he knows them?”

“It’s true, but you have to make damn sure that he knows the rules, and the consequences if he breaks them.”

That one statement let me know that I should pack his ass home to Chicago, but I couldn’t do it. Standing there while he bled, knowing what he’d just done to Richard and the two young werelions, knowing all that, I still wanted to drop down and spill my body over his. Fuck.

I stilled my breath, and sighted the gun in the middle of that face. The eyes had bled back to blue; they looked almost artificial with the blood all around them. I swallowed hard, and let my body go very still. My voice was soft, but strangely carried through the room, as if everyone had gone quiet. “The rules are, you don’t harm the weak. I’ve got no use for bullies. If you get into another fight like tonight, when you know you’ve lost, you’ve lost. You don’t try for one last bit of damage. That’s street fighting, and that’s not what we do here.”

“You won’t shoot me,” he said, and he sounded sure of that.

I felt myself smile, and knew it was the smile that creeped me out when I saw it in a mirror. It was a cruel smile, a smile that said Not only would I kill you, but I’d enjoy it.

His eyes went a little uncertain at that smile. Good.

“I will shoot you. I’ll kill you, if I have to.”

“Do you want to touch me?” he asked, his voice less breathy now.

“Yes,” I said, “I want to strip off and roll on top of you like a dog scent-marking.” I gave a very small nod. “I feel the call of your power, Haven.”

“If you kill me that all goes away.”

“Then it goes away. I don’t compromise my rules, Haven, not for lust, or power, or love.” I was going to have to either shoot him soon, or lower the gun. Important safety tip: if you’re going to do the big threatening speech, be in a comfortable shooting stance when you do it. My hands hadn’t started to waver, but they would soon. “Ask the men in my life, I don’t compromise.”

I watched him think about it. Think about coming off the floor and trying me. “Don’t, Haven.”

“Don’t what?” he asked, all innocent, but innocent just didn’t work on him.

“Don’t try me right now. If you do, I’ll pull the trigger.”

“Why? I won’t hurt you. I’ll just try to take the gun away.”

“I’ll shoot you, because this is our moment of understanding. You will either live by my rules, or you will die by them.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

I let all the air out of my body, and the two-handed shooting stance didn’t seem hard to maintain at all. I was suddenly focused, and ready. I felt myself sinking away into that white, staticky place, where I killed. I don’t know what my eyes look like when I’m like this, but whatever was on my face, Haven saw it. I watched his face change, and stop being sure of itself. Tension ran out of his body, his muscles, and he lay quiet on the floor, and very still, as if he were a little afraid to move suddenly. Good.

“It’s my way, or no way,” I said, and the words were squeezed out, because I’d let my air go, so I could shoot him.

He licked his lips, and spoke softly, carefully, being sure to move nothing but his mouth. “Your way.”

“If I put this gun away, are you going to try to hurt me?”

“No,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked, still staring at him down the barrel of the gun.

“You’ll kill me.”

“You sure of that?”

Some look passed through his eyes—pain, fear, something close to all of it. “I know that look, the one on your face. I know it, because I have one just like it. You will kill me, and I don’t want to kill you. I can’t win, so I won’t play.”

I stared at him a heartbeat longer. I thought about pulling the trigger. One, because I was ready to; two, because I was almost certain he was going to be trouble. But in the end I lowered the gun, and backed away until I was out of reach of him. I backed away, and made certain I didn’t give him my back. I didn’t offer him a hand up, and neither did anyone else.

38

I WENT TO one knee beside Richard, my gun not pointed at Haven anymore, but still out. We just weren’t that far away from the fallen werelion. To say I didn’t trust him was an understatement. The awful thing was, even knowing that he was bad news, knowing that he’d tried to cripple Richard just because he wanted him to hurt, knowing all that, part of me still wanted to touch him. Part of me wanted to go over and start licking the blood from his wounds. But the image in my head of me doing it wasn’t of me, not human me. The image in my head was of a huge golden lioness licking his wounds. I shook my head hard to clear the image.

I glanced at Richard. He was huddled over his leg, hands over his knee, but not touching it, as if that had hurt. Not good. I put my gaze back to Haven. I didn’t want him getting up without my knowing it. If I shot him, I didn’t want it to be because he’d startled me, and years of training with a gun took over. No, if I shot him, I wanted it to be on purpose.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

He spoke through gritted teeth. “It’s not dislocated, but it hurts.”

I called, “Claudia.”

She came to stand over us. “We need a doctor.” I thought of Travis’s arm. “Maybe more than one.”

“Dr. Lillian is on her way.” Doc Lillian was a wererat, and the local shapeshifters’ most popular doctor for emergencies we didn’t want anyone else to know about.

“Good.” I fought the urge to look at her, and kept my gaze on Haven. He didn’t seem to want to do anything but lie there and bleed, but I wanted to be sure of him. Sure meant looking at him. “Could you guys earn your pay, and actually secure him?” I didn’t try to keep the irritation out of my voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. She motioned and Lisandro, Ixion, and Graham came up to stand around the fallen werelion. Haven didn’t seem to notice. Had he passed out? Not my most immediate problem. I got to holster my gun without firing it, a rarity for me. I touched Richard’s face. “The doc’s on the way.”

He just nodded, face pinched and pale with pain.

I looked up at Claudia. “Where the hell were you guys while Haven was abusing Travis and Noel?”

“If I say ‘right over there,’ will you get pissed?”

I stood up. “Yes.”

She gave me empty cop face, though I knew she’d never been a cop. “This was a dominance challenge. We are not allowed to interfere in challenges of other animal groups.”

“This wasn’t a challgene for leadership of anything,” I said.

Claudia gave me a look that said, clearly, I’d missed something. Whatever showed on my face finally let her know that I didn’t know what the hell she was hinting at.

She sighed. “Sometimes I forget that you miss the obvious.”

“What did I miss?” I asked.

“Your Ulfric has established himself as dominant to this guy.” She smiled down at Richard. “Truthfully, I didn’t think the Ulfric had it in him.” There was a grudging compliment in her voice. “You needed for someone to establish dominance over him, if you planned to keep him.” She jerked a thumb in Haven’s direction. “Guys like this have to be forced to obey the hierarchy.”

“You mean the hierarchy of the werelions?”

She shook her head. “Anita, if you add this guy to your men, then someone had to beat the shit out of him, at least once, so he’d know who was boss.”

“I’m boss,” I said.

She smiled at me. “I like you, Anita. I respect you. I take orders from you. But a guy like Haven is going to see you as a girl, a piece of ass. Unless you can personally beat him to a pulp, he’s not going to behave for you. He’ll tell you to your face what you want to hear, but you’ve got Nathaniel, Micah, Damian. I mean you have a lot of non-coms around you. You don’t want to bring home a lion to play with your kittens unless you have a big dog to balance it out.”

I frowned at her. “Are you saying that Richard is my big dog?”

“Maybe it’s a bad example, but it’s the best I’ve got.”

“You don’t think he would respect me—Haven, I mean?”

She shook her head. “He’s got trouble written all over him, Anita.”

“You think I should throw him back?”

Her dark eyes widened, surprised. “Does my opinion count?”

“I trust your judgment, and you’re the only girl here.”

“Why do you need a girl opinion?” she asked.

“Because I’m tired of all the damn testosterone.”

She grinned at me. “I’m not sure I’ll say anything that the men won’t say on this one, Anita. Estrogen doesn’t make me stupid, and you’d have to be stupid to want to keep Cookie Monster over there. I mean he could be a bodyguard, if we made the rules clear, but to take home as a lover, no way.”

I nodded. “I agree.”

“Then why ask?”

I hugged myself. “Because, knowing all of it, I still want to touch him.”

She shrugged all that muscled upper body. “Then you’re fucked.”

Richard’s voice came strained. “You can’t want to keep him, not now, not after this.”

I knelt beside him. He grabbed my hand, so hard and sudden it startled me. “I don’t want to keep him.”

I watched him try to think past the pain. “But,” he said.

“But it’s not always about what I want.”

His hand convulsed around mine, until I had to fight not to cry out. “Shift, Richard, you can heal this if you shift.”

He shook his head. “If I shift I’ll have to spend at least four hours in animal form. Can’t go to the ballet as a wolf.”

“You’re not going to enjoy the evening like this.”

His grip on my hand loosened, just holding me for a moment. He stared into my face like he was trying to memorize it. “Do you want me not to go?”

I frowned at him. “Why would you ask that? Of course, I want you to go.”

He almost smiled, but winced instead. “You’ve got a lot of men to juggle, maybe one less would make tonight easier.”

I drew his hand against my breasts, and touched his face. “You didn’t just assume I needed help to handle Haven. You asked me first, and waited for me to answer. I know you wanted to wade in and pull him off us. Thank you for asking, for waiting.”

He grimaced, and tried to make it a smile. “I’m glad you’re happy about it, but my waiting cost Travis a broken arm. Joseph’s not going to want us to borrow his lions, if we keep breaking them.”

That made me smile. “Good point, but the lioness in me is looking for someone strong.” I looked at the wall, because I could feel that beast moving around inside me, as if it were pacing the cage of my body. I did not want another round of almost-shifting. I raised Richard’s hand to my face. I sniffed it, and it didn’t help. Yes, it was Richard, but he’d touched Haven, and the smell of lion was on his skin, along with wolf. The prickling warmth started to swell inside me.

I let go of his hand, and stood up.

“What’s wrong?” Claudia asked.

“Her beast is trying to rise again,” Richard said from the floor.

I nodded, and stepped farther away from Richard, and kept moving. I wanted distance between me and Haven. This didn’t feel like the way I’d bonded to Nathaniel. This instant attraction to Haven felt like…I turned and found Micah standing there, closer than I’d realized. He hadn’t wanted to interfere with me and Richard. I could feel my eyes widening. I reached out to him, and the wolf and lion quieted. Leopard stirred, and the movement almost doubled me over. Micah caught me, helped me stand up straight. But the leopard liked him too much, and I had to push him away from me. I stumbled, and Jean-Claude was there to catch me. I clung to him, burying my face against his chest, drawing in the scent of clean silk and him. I actually ripped his shirt open, so I could put my face directly against his skin. I drew in the sweet, clean, scent of him, as if he were air, and I’d been suffocating. His cologne was sweet, and always smelled as expensive as it was, but it was the scent of his skin underneath it, mixing with the cologne, that I needed. It helped clear my head, helped me ease the beasts back to sleep.

I rubbed my face along the smooth outline of his cross-shaped burn scar. Jean-Claude didn’t see the scar as an imperfection, and neither did I. It was something extra to play with when I kissed his chest.

His arms held me tight, and he whispered, “I felt your fear flare to life, ma petite. What has happened?”

I spoke with my face still buried against his chest. “I’m trying not to make Haven my animal to call.”

Jean-Claude stroked my hair, trying to soothe me, like a child who’s woken from a bad dream, but this bad dream wasn’t going to end with me waking up. It wasn’t going to be all right.

“You are drawn to Haven, and he to you, ma petite. You have broken his link to Augustine.”

I nodded my forehead against his chest. “Yeah, but he’s not Auggie’s animal to call, he’s just one of his lions.”

I felt Jean-Claude look behind him.

“That’s right,” and that was Auggie. He’d come to stand near us. “He’s bound to me, but not as an animal to call.”

I nodded again, my face still buried against Jean-Claude. I didn’t want to see Auggie’s naked chest. I didn’t want to be distracted by yet another metaphysical problem; one at a time was plenty. “What did I do with the leopards before I got an animal to call, Jean-Claude?”

“I do not understand, ma petite, what…” Then he went very still. He was still holding me. I was still clinging to him, breathing in the scent of his skin, but his heart had stopped beating, his breathing stilled. He was doing that be very still that the old vampires could do, but this time I was pressed against him while he did it. I’d never been this close to him when he went this still. Until it stopped, I hadn’t even been aware his heart was beating. It made me look up at him. Made me meet that beautiful, flawless face, and see it look unreal, masklike, as he stared, not at me, but behind me.

I turned and looked where he was looking. Micah stood there, staring at us. The look on his face was enough; he’d had the same awful thought I’d had.

I licked my lips and whispered, “Do the lions have a name for their queen?”

He said it out loud. “I felt it, when you saw him coming down the hallway. He won’t be your animal to call. He’ll be Rex to your Regina.”

39

RICHARD ENDED UP back in Jason’s room. Dr. Lillian pumped him full of painkillers, so he’d sleep and heal. I had to promise him guards I trusted at his door to make sure none of our “guests” visited him while he was drugged and helpless. Seemed like a reasonable request to me. In fact it was so practical that it gave me hope that he was finally beginning to realize that life wasn’t a Boy Scout jamboree.

Lillian said if Richard had been human, he’d have been on his way to the emergency room, and on crutches for weeks afterward. But he wasn’t human and two hours of sleep would heal a lot of the damage. Why not try to heal him with metaphysics? Because Richard had never let me heal him with magic. It was his choice, and I was okay with it. He’d done so much right in the last hour that I’d cut him slack. Acres of slack.

Haven was unconscious in the guest room he’d started the day in, with additional guards. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for at least forty-eight hours, so said the doc. Fine with me; out of sight was just dandy for the Cookie Monster and me.

I’d started to get upset again, like pace-the-room upset, but Jean-Claude had touched me, and Auggie had joined him. I ended up on the couch cuddled between them and feeling strangely calm. “You’ve rolled my mind, haven’t you?”

“You have the ability to keep me out, ma petite. Merely decide to push me out, and I will be forced to go. I think you need the calm.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I turned with my head in Jean-Claude’s lap, and looked at Auggie, who had my legs across his lap. “But he’s helping you.”

“A very little bit,” Auggie said, and did that face that was supposed to be humble, but never made it.

“You should really stop trying for the humble head dunk thing,” I said, “it doesn’t work for you.”

He gave me wide eyes—innocent, I think he was going for. He didn’t pull that off either. “Are you saying I am not humble?” He grinned, spoiling any attempt at innocence. That smile said he was thinking nefarious things—fun things, but nefarious nonetheless.

“You wouldn’t know humble if it bit you on the ass.”

He laughed, mouth wide, flashing fangs. If you hadn’t seen the fangs you’d have said it was a very human laugh. Jean-Claude had once explained to me that vampires learn to control their faces, voices, every reaction, to hide from their masters. Because any strong emotion can be used against you. After a few centuries you could lose the knack of true laughter, of smiling just because you were happy, not because you thought it would get you something. Facial expressions for the very old vamps become more like flirting: something you do on purpose, for a purpose. Auggie just seemed to laugh.

I raised my head so I could look at Jean-Claude’s face. I asked, “Is that real, that laugh, or is it part of Auggie’s game plan?”

“Ask him, ma petite.”

I looked at the other vampire. “Well?” I said.

“Well, what?” he asked.

“Is the laugh real, or a performance?”

He shrugged those massive shoulders, sending the black shawl sliding down a little lower. At the rate it was slipping, he’d be naked from the waist up again. I wasn’t sure if I wanted the shawl to fall faster, or make him tuck it back over himself. Seeing him nude sounded good, and the wanting of it made me not want it at all. Crazy, I know, but true. I seldom trusted anything that I wanted too badly.

I smelled vanilla, warm vanilla. Nathaniel was coming. I heard bare feet running, and the next moment he was airborne above me. He caught himself with hands and toes on the couch, just before he would have landed on me. He’d done it before, but it always startled me, and made me make that girly eep sound. I hated that I even had that sound inside me somewhere. Nathaniel laughed, his face alight with it. I tried to be grumpy about him startling me, but failed. The grumpiness rolled away under the delight of being this close to him, and the soothing touch of vampire.

“Not pregnant,” he said.

I shook my head, and laughed, too. Suddenly, I remembered how gloriously relieved I had been. He brought back the rush of joy that I’d had before Haven misbehaved.

Nathaniel let his body fall those few inches, so he pressed his weight against me. He kissed me, and I kissed him back. My hands slid over the muscled heat of his skin, and the silken warmth of his hair, unbound and sliding over us all. His body started to react to the closeness, and the kiss grew.

“If they actually have sex on our laps, do we get to join in?” Auggie asked.

I drew back from the kiss, and Nathaniel stopped, but he didn’t move. I had to actually move some of the thick auburn hair to one side so I could see Auggie’s face. “No,” I said.

“Then I am at a loss as to where to put my hands.”

I gazed past Nathaniel’s shoulder to realize that the most natural resting place for Auggie’s hands was probably Nathaniel’s ass, where it peeked from between the fall of his own hair.

Auggie lifted a strand of that hair. “I have not seen hair like this for a century.” He rubbed the hair along his cheek. “It brings back memories, though the body would be female.” He gazed down at Nathaniel. “It’s the longest hair I’ve ever seen on a man.”

I didn’t like the way he was looking at Nathaniel, not that we could really blame him. It wasn’t Auggie who had jumped naked into our laps. I pushed at Nathaniel’s chest. “Move, okay?”

He gave me a look that managed to be both innocent, and not, then he rolled to the floor. Yeah, he’d wanted to surprise me, but he was an exhibitionist, and loved to flirt. It didn’t mean he wanted sex, just that he enjoyed the way people reacted to his body. Or at least that’s what Micah and I thought. It was entirely possible that Nathaniel didn’t know why he did it.

Micah came up behind the couch. “Your leopard didn’t try to rise when Nathaniel touched you,” Micah said from behind the couch.

“No, it didn’t.” I looked at him, and found that Jean-Claude’s hair blocked my view. Micah moved so he was standing more between the two vampires, so I didn’t have to strain.

“You touched a lot less of me, and it did rise.”

“Try again,” I said, and held out my hand to him.

He hesitated, as if he were a little afraid of what might happen, but he took my hand. I waited for my beast to rise, but it didn’t. It was just Micah’s hand in mine. I squeezed his hand, and gave him a smile. Some tension in him eased, as if he’d been holding his breath about something. He still seemed so serious, almost sad. Was he jealous? Was the man who shared me best suddenly jealous? There was no anxiety with the thought, it was just a thought. Jean-Claude’s power let it just be a thought, without emotional baggage attached to it. Was this how well-adjusted people reasoned? If so, damn it was peaceful. I wanted to reassure him and take that worry from his eyes. There was no thought to it, no reasoning. I wanted to reassure Micah, so I sat up, and used our clasped hands to draw him downward. We kissed, but he pulled back from it. Those chartreuse eyes still held a shadow of worry. I wanted that shadow gone. I wanted him to know how much he meant to me.

I used both hands to drag him half over the couch back, and give him the kiss he deserved. I licked, kissed, ate, at his mouth, as if the taste of him were a drug, and I needed a fix. He fell into that kiss, and spilled over the couch, on top of me, and into everyone’s laps. He rose from the kiss, laughing, the worry erased from his eyes. We ended up laughing together in a big pile. Not just Micah and me, but Nathaniel, and Auggie with his big, fang-flashing laugh. Jean-Claude’s laughter spilled over us all, like something thick and sweet that you should be able to lick off your skin. The sensation of it made me catch my breath. Micah shivered above me. Nathaniel’s hand grabbed my arm, and Micah’s, his fingers convulsing against our skin. Auggie’s hand tightened almost painfully on my leg. I couldn’t see him past Micah’s body, but I could feel his body reacting to that touchable laugh.

It wasn’t just Auggie’s body that reacted. His power flared from his hand, and the warmth of his lap, through the silk jammies, and my jeans. I felt his body like heat through the cloth. That heat found the ardeur curled inside my body. Auggie called it, and like a well-trained dog, it followed his power.

Micah whispered, “Oh, God.” I think he would have rolled off and fled for safety, but Nathaniel’s arm tightened on us both, and Auggie’s other hand pressed into his back. He wasn’t trapped, but with the ardeur, willpower is so hard to come by that small things can tip the balance.

Jean-Claude’s power pulsed to life against me, but it wasn’t his ardeur that rose. The cool power of the grave spread out from his body like cool, soothing water to quench the heat that Auggie had awakened. Jean-Claude’s power spilled through me, over me, and spread. It spread to Micah, so that his eyes lost their panic. Nathaniel’s hands began to relax in their desperate hold on our bodies. Auggie’s breath came out in a long, shaking sigh.

“That was very bad of you, Augustine,” Jean-Claude said in a voice that was thicker than normal with his French accent. Which meant he’d had to work harder at stopping the ardeur than that easy flow of power had led us to believe.

Micah half-collapsed on top of me, his head burying against my shoulder, so that I could suddenly see Auggie’s grinning face. He was totally unrepentant. “Jean-Claude, can you truly blame me with all this bounty writhing on my lap?” He slapped Micah’s ass.

Micah rolled off the couch, and took me with him, because I let him. We ended on the floor close to Nathaniel. Micah and I stood, drawing Nathaniel to his feet. We moved back from the couch, so the three of us faced the vampires, faces no longer friendly. I’d shut both vampires out of my head, because I wasn’t sure how to shut Auggie out without shutting Jean-Claude off, too. I just didn’t have the finer points of metaphysics down yet.

“I may not blame you, but they will,” Jean-Claude said, and he sounded almost satisfied. I got just a flash of why: he was pleased that Auggie was falling into the same traps that once had been his own downfall. Then he shut the link between us, shut it tight, as if he didn’t want me to know what else he was thinking. Fine with me; I had my own reasons for not wanting to share.

There had been a second, just a second, when the ardeur rising while all four of them were touching me hadn’t seemed like a bad idea. Micah, Nathaniel, and Jean-Claude were one thing, but Auggie had rolled me. Yeah, I was in love with him, too, but it was because of vampire wiles. Auggie had trapped me into love, and that should be punished, not rewarded. Richard would probably say that I was pretty good at punishing true love, so love by deceit should carry a higher penalty, shouldn’t it?

“I don’t know you,” Micah said, “and you don’t get to touch me.”

Auggie spread his hands wide, and made a how-was-I-to-know gesture. “My deepest apologies, but if people keep falling into my lap, I’m allowed to take a little advantage.”

“No,” I said, “you’re not.”

He narrowed those charcoal-gray eyes at me. “I love you, Anita. Do you love me?”

I almost said no, but knew he’d smell the lie. I shrugged. “Yeah, thanks to your power, yeah, I do.” I shrugged again. “But what has that got to do with anything?”

“Most women who love me don’t act this angry. Most women in love are generous to their lovers.”

“In sex, I’m generous; everything else, you gotta work for it.”

Auggie looked at Jean-Claude. “She tastes of the truth.”

Jean-Claude nodded. “Ma petite is a demanding lover in every way.”

“Usually when a man says a woman is a demanding lover, it’s a good thing, but somehow I don’t think that’s what you mean,” Auggie said.

Jean-Claude gave me a smile, that smile that was only for me, and sometimes for Asher. The smile said he loved me, and I had to smile back. I felt my face soften, and the anger fade. I wasn’t angry at Jean-Claude. I had finally gotten better at not spreading my anger over everyone. “Ma petite and I have labored long together to form the love that you have gained by subterfuge.” He turned and looked at Auggie. “I was your friend, but you have used your arts to make me feel for you what you have not earned. But I, like ma petite, know how to love and not be a prisoner to that love. You can win, or steal, our love, but you cannot steal a true relationship with us; that must be won.” He turned, and curled his long legs up on the couch. He put his arm across the back of the couch, not quite touching the other man’s bare shoulder. He cradled his head on his outstretched arm, letting all those black curls spill along the white of the couch. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew the look. It was a charming, seductive look, his teasing look, when he really didn’t expect anything to happen. He just wanted to remind you how scrumptious he was. He usually used the look only when he was mad, or I was. It was a look to either end a fight, or begin one.

Auggie looked at him, and the look was pained. He saw Jean-Claude, understood the potential in that body, and knew now that having had it once didn’t mean you’d get it again. Jean-Claude played hard to get when he thought it would gain him an advantage. The look on Auggie’s face said it was a really big advantage right now.

If it was real love, true love, then shouldn’t it have made me feel bad to see Auggie wanting, hurting with doubt? Maybe, but it didn’t. It made me happy, in that small, petty, vindictive way that always promises a really bad relationship. There are different kinds of love, I’d learned that—not less real, or more real, just different. Maybe what Auggie could cause a person to feel wasn’t true love, after all. Maybe it was that kind of love that seems to come quick, and leave slow, but in the middle it’s just fights, and pain, punctuated by great sex, until one of you has the courage to end it, and walk away.

Auggie turned that pained expression my way. “You would both turn me down.” He sounded genuinely surprised. He glanced back at Jean-Claude. “I understand Jean-Claude, he’s maneuvering for power, though my pride is hurt. I must not be as good with other men as I thought I was.”

Jean-Claude answered with his head still poised on his arm. “If I feed your ego now, then I may lose the advantage I have gained.”

Auggie nodded. “I understand that.” He looked at me. “But her, I don’t get her. I know I’m good with women. Hell, I’m an amazing lover.”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it.

He gave me a dirty look. “Do you disagree?”

I shook my head. “No, you’re great.” I didn’t sound like I meant it, but I did. “Maybe I just like my men a little more modest, that’s all.”

He stabbed a thumb at Jean-Claude. “If he’s ever been modest about his prowess in bed, it was false modesty.”

“Why, thank you,” Jean-Claude said.

Auggie shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?” I asked.

“That he doesn’t have a modest bone in his body.”

I actually didn’t agree with that, but Auggie didn’t deserve the explanation that went with it, so I let it lie. “You’re entitled to your opinion.”

“Which means you don’t agree with me,” Auggie said.

“It means what I said.”

Auggie shifted his gaze to Micah. He looked at him, looked at him the way that men usually reserve for women. Like he was wondering what Micah would look like without his clothes.

“Here I stand all naked, and you’re not even looking at me,” Nathaniel said. “Should I be insulted?” He moved a few steps ahead of Micah, tossing all that heavy auburn hair over his shoulders, so his body was framed by it. He stood there and gazed at the vampire. He gazed at him from those lavender eyes, with that beautiful body.

“Maybe I like a little modesty, too,” Auggie said.

Nathaniel moved his muscular arms to cover himself, let the hair spill over one shoulder, so that more of him was hidden. He peeked coyly around his own body and hair, gave innocent eyes, let his face be as young as it was in years. I was never sure how he did it, but he could play the innocent down to his toes. He could hide those jaded eyes, and play the ingenue.

Auggie laughed, that bright, happy laugh. “He’s good.” He turned to Jean-Claude. “Where did you find so many beautiful men?”

“I didn’t,” he said.

He looked past Nathaniel to me. “Anita, you have a true eye for talent.”

“They aren’t talent to me. They’re people I care about, and I don’t like games.”

He motioned to Nathaniel. “This one plays games, and very well, I think.”

I nodded. “Nathaniel likes games better than I do, better than Micah does, but he doesn’t play them with us.”

Auggie gave me a look that seemed to imply I was being naïve. “Once a hustler, always a hustler, Anita.”

“Was that meant to be mean?” I asked.

“I thought you liked honesty,” he said.

“It was meant to be mean,” Micah said.

“I know whore when I see it, because I was one. So was Jean-Claude, and Asher, and Requiem, and London. Mustn’t leave out the ladies: Elinore, Cardinal, anyone who was ever Belle’s line was a whore. We’re created to be whores.”

“Nathaniel is not a whore,” I said, and reached for him. He pulled away from the touch, and gave me eyes full of loss. “I was.”

“You researched us, before you came here,” Micah said.

“You bet,” Auggie said.

I touched Nathaniel’s face, and tried to put into my eyes how much he meant to me. Whatever he saw in my face made him smile, a little. He pressed his hand over mine, pressing my hand against the curve of his jaw.

Micah stepped in front of us both. “You knew looking at me like that would be an insult. Nathaniel stepped up, took the attention, because it wouldn’t bother him. Something about him protecting me bothered you. Why?”

Jean-Claude raised his head, curled his legs over each other in a way that let you know just how flexible he was, but still managed to be “ladylike,” for lack of a better word. “I know why.”

I put one arm across Nathaniel’s back, and asked, “Why?”

Jean-Claude and Auggie exchanged a look. “If you think you can read me that well, go ahead,” Auggie said.

Jean-Claude gave a small nod, then looked at us. “Augustine prefers women to men, but one would have to be very, very heterosexual indeed to ignore the beauty of both of you. In his defense, you did fall into his lap. He behaved himself admirably. There are vampires among our own kiss who would not have shown his restraint. He offered such a small insult, and you took it as a large one. Anita and I are not falling over each other to profess our love for him, and that irks him. It puzzles him. Then you, who are animal, thus lesser in the eyes of most vampires, insult him, too. But I think it is more than that.” He looked at Auggie. “I think he watched Nathaniel use the only gift he had to protect Micah. Did it bring back old memories, Augustine? Bad memories?” He leaned in toward the other man.

Auggie stood up, abruptly, and wouldn’t look at him. “My memories are my own.” Then he realized what he’d said, and gave a bitter laugh. “For now, at least, until she dictates otherwise.” He wasn’t referring to me.

Jean-Claude lay back on the couch, spreading his hair over the arm of it, one arm carelessly above his head, the other across his stomach. One bare foot trailed over the carpet; the other was tucked up on the couch, his knee leaning against the back of the white couch. He looked fetching, and he knew it. But it was the way Auggie watched him that made the show. There was real anguish in his eyes. It hurt me to see his face like that.

“You give me another taste of heaven, and now I am in purgatory again. You, and she”—and he pointed at me—“can bring me into heaven at a whim, and cast me into hell if it is your will.” He closed his eyes, his face etched with pain. “I remembered you as gentler than this, Jean-Claude. I remembered you as my friend.”

“Friends do not use their powers against each other. You woke ma petite’s ardeur, deliberately. You meant to have her. The fact that we both had you was an accident of power. You remembered me gentler, and less powerful. You underestimated me, and you have mistaken ma petite.”

Auggie opened his eyes, and stared at the other vampire. “I don’t understand what you mean by that.”

“Ask our Nathaniel how he won her heart.”

“I see his body; I know how he won her heart.”

“You see nothing, know nothing,” Jean-Claude said. “Mon minet, tell him how you won her heart.”

“You call him ‘my pussycat’ and I’m wrong about him?” Auggie said.

Nathaniel leaned a little harder against the hand I had on his naked back. “I didn’t hustle Anita,” Nathaniel said.

“But you tried.” Auggie made it a statement.

Nathaniel nodded. “I wanted her to want me. I didn’t know any other way to do that.”

“It worked,” Auggie said.

Nathaniel glanced back at me, gave me a smile, then turned back to Auggie. “No, it didn’t.”

He motioned at us all. “Of course it worked.”

“Only when I stopped trying to hustle her, and just tried to learn how to love her.”

“Learn how to love her, you make it sound like a class, or a degree. You simply love people.”

Nathaniel laughed. Jean-Claude made a noise like he was trying not to laugh. I looked at Micah. “Aren’t you going to laugh, too?”

Micah shook his head. “I know better.” Though there was the edge of a smile on his lips.

I scowled at them all. “Fine, laugh it up.”

“I don’t get the joke either,” Auggie said.

“You will,” Micah said, and it sounded like a threat.

“Is it really that hard to date me?”

This time Claudia and some of the other bodyguards laughed. I was just amusing the hell out of everyone.

40

“TELL ME THE joke, I could use the laugh.” Travis’s voice came from the far hallway. His face was tight and pinched with pain. Noel hovered beside him like he was waiting to catch him if he stumbled. They both still looked too young to drive. Was it just age that had made Joseph pick them for my feedings, or was there some other reason? I mean, there’s submissive and then there’s cannon fodder. Everyone he’d offered for my selection, even the jocks, had that new-car smell, like they hadn’t been driven around the block enough. There had to be a reason he’d offered me lambs when what I needed was lions.

“Why haven’t you shifted?” Micah asked. He was already moving across the living room toward them, walking past Auggie. The vampire reached out, tried to grab his arm. Micah moved so fast that I didn’t really see Auggie try to grab him, and miss. I saw the vampire reach out, and Micah just wasn’t where he was reaching. So fast, it was like magic. Micah went to the werelions, and started talking to them in a low voice. He ignored the vampire.

Auggie looked angry, and something else, something that was almost pain. “You’ve made your point, Jean-Claude.”

“Micah does not like to be grabbed, that is all the point that has been made,” Jean-Claude said, voice mild. He was still lounging decoratively on the couch. “Do you envy me my cats, Augustine?”

“I don’t envy anyone.”

Even I could taste the lie.

Micah started leading the werelions toward the love seat. He stopped well out of reach, and looked at Auggie. “I really don’t want to play games, Augustine. I just want to get Travis sitting down.”

“If you were in my territory, I’d have to make a lesson of it, of you, but you aren’t my kitty-cat. Sit down, I won’t bother you.”

Micah walked wide round the vampire, but gave him his back. His eyes flicked to me, and I realized he was trusting my reaction to let him know what Auggie was doing. I nodded, like, it’s okay. Micah led the two lions to the love seat.

“Petty games do not become you, Augustine. You are master of a powerful territory. You could have your own collection of lovers, to rival mine.” He left the implication that we were all his lovers, and we let it slide. I was his lover, and neither of the other men was bothered by the rumors.

“I’m not just Master of the City of Chicago, Jean-Claude, I’m a mob boss. The mob allows you a family with a wife and kids, a mistress, whores, but nothing else.”

Jean-Claude luxuriated against the couch arm. “You could never let any of them see you looking at me as you do right this moment.”

Auggie shook his head. “If you were a whore or a hustler, I’d have to kill you if they saw me look at you this way.”

“But your rivals cannot see you now. You can look at me any way you like.”

“Fuck you, Jean-Claude, you’re going to use this look on my face to punish me, and try to control me. It’s just another kind of gun at my head.”

“We are master vampires, we are all about control, but I do not intend to punish you, unless you punish us first.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, if you are cruel to us, we will be cruel in return. If you play nicely, then so will we.”

“Define play nicely,” I said.

“When you saw the look of pain on his face, did it not make your heart ache, ma petite?”

I wanted to lie, but…“Yeah.”

The look of cynicism on Auggie’s face flickered, as if he didn’t know what look would help, or what look he dared give.

“But, so what? Thanks to his machinations, I don’t want to see him hurting, so what?”

“Augustine could come and visit us. His mob connections could think he was trying to woo us for criminal activities, or just that he was solidifying his alliance with us, one master to another. Either way, he could visit us periodically without arousing suspicions. Since he is a known mob figure, it would explain why the visits would have to be out of the media’s so-glaring eye.”

Auggie watched the other vampire like a mouse that’s had the cat tell him I won’t eat you, today. Half hopeful, half afraid to hope. “What are you offering, Jean-Claude?”

“One, that you do not try to make things worse for ma petite. Do not try to raise her ardeur, or mine, against our will. Do not abuse my hospitality by using your powers on my people.”

“I apologized for that,” he said.

“You made a joke of your apology,” Jean-Claude said. “I need to know if you are sincere.”

Auggie nodded. “I am sorry, but…” He looked away, his hands in fists. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the ardeur. You gained the ardeur almost from the first moment. It awoke with your blood lust. You’ve never been its victim.”

“Not true,” Jean-Claude said. He sat up, suddenly, brisk and almost businesslike. “Ma petite can feed the ardeur from me, as I can feed my ardeur from her. We can be the victim of each other’s ardeurs.”

“I’m sorry, I know that. I know that you were as much enthralled by Belle as any. But still, you can feed the ardeur, and gain the rush of it. I have nothing unless I can find a partner who carries it. I had hoped that one, or both, of you would love me, truly love me, truly want me. I’d hoped to bargain love for the ardeur, and now I watch you both.” Again, he looked away, as if he couldn’t stand to look at either of us. “And you are not moved by me. You, Jean-Claude, you watch as Belle used to watch me. She”—he pointed at me—“she watches me like she hates me. So cold, so angry. I don’t understand it. Did my power work on her, or only on me? I feel the draw of her body, but she doesn’t seem to feel anything for me, except anger.”

“Ma petite does not like to be in love. It always angers her, most especially in the beginning.”

Auggie shook his head. “I don’t understand that.”

I shrugged. “Join the club.” I went to the love seat. Nathaniel trailed me. “Why hasn’t Travis shifted?”

Micah answered, “He’s waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me to do what?”

“Bring my beast,” Travis said, and his face was almost gray with pain.

“What you do here on your little visits would be a secret from your so-conservative fellow criminals,” Jean-Claude said.

“Just shift, Travis. Heal yourself.”

He shook his head, huddling over his arm.

Auggie said, “And what would I be doing on these visits?”

“Perhaps we could even visit you in Chicago.”

I was suddenly paying attention to their conversation. If we went to Chicago, oh, my God, the energy there would…

“No, no fucking way. You’d feed on all my people then. I felt what one feeding off me and the few people I had here did to your power level. No way.”

“So you do not want to visit us again?”

Auggie forced himself to stand very straight, shoulders back, an echo of military something. “You know that I do, but I won’t trade my people and all my power for it. I won’t crawl for you, Jean-Claude.”

“I don’t want you to crawl, Augustine.”

“What do you want?”

“You to stop trying to manipulate us. Accept that we hold the ardeur and you want it. Supply and demand, dear Augustine.”

“You bastard.”

Jean-Claude was suddenly standing, so fast I hadn’t seen it. Magic, again. “You abused my hospitality first. You manipulated my human servant so you could feed on the ardeur again. You opened the way for Belle Morte to possess ma petite. I am not the bastard here.”

“Fine, I’m the rat bastard. You’re right; saying that I didn’t understand I was inviting Belle in doesn’t fix it. Yeah, I want to take back one of the women of Belle’s line, but no one but Anita carries the ardeur. She and you, so yeah, I came with the idea that if I had a chance at it, I’d raise the ardeur.”

“You came here wanting the ardeur one more time; what do you want now, Augustine?”

“Don’t make me say it, Jean-Claude.”

“Ma petite is not a subtle woman. Unless you say it, she will not understand it.”

Auggie looked at me, but his eyes flinched, like someone who was expecting to be hit. “I won’t sell my people, or my power base, I won’t humilate myself, but short of that, I will do anything, anything, to have you and Jean-Claude feed on me again.” The flinching gave way to fear. “Want someone killed, I’ll do it. Money, drugs, designer anything, whatever you want, whatever you need, just don’t tell me that I’ll never be in your arms again.” His face turned away, but not before I saw the shine of unshed tears.

“We do our own killing. We’ve got enough money. We are a drug-free zone; don’t bring that shit here. If I want designer stuff, I’ll buy it myself.”

Auggie stood there, face averted, shoulders hunched, waiting for the blow to fall. “I have nothing to offer you then.” His voice was thick when he said it.

“I am way past uncomfortable about what Jean-Claude and I did with you. It felt so fucking good to feed off you, and that terrifies me.”

Auggie looked back at me. His eyes held the tears back by sheer willpower.

“But for better or worse, I look at you and my heart aches. I want to comfort you, and that pisses me off. I’ve had people I loved, really loved, use vampire powers on me. I cut them off at the knees for it. I’ve run from them for months, not seeing them, not even talking to them.” I moved toward him as I spoke, a little closer with every sentence. “I just met you. You aren’t my friend. You forced me to love you, but I don’t know you.”

He tried to give me angry eyes, but the unshed tears that hovered there ruined the effect. “I underestimated you, Anita.”

“Most people do,” I said.

“I thought you were just Jean-Claude’s human servant. I felt your power as a necromancer. It should have been a warning, but I went ahead with my plan. I wanted the ardeur. I wanted it so badly.” He smiled, but not like he was happy. “And I was arrogant. I am Master of the City of Chicago. I’ve been a mobster since the 1930s. I have been powerful, and a threat to anything in my path for centuries. The only thing that ever truly defeated me was Belle.” The tears trembled, but still he held them back.

I stood there, staring at him, needing to look up only a little, because he wasn’t that tall. Normally I liked that in a man, but now I was just pissed. I was going to hold on to that anger, because rage was the only thing that kept me from running my hands over his bare chest. My hands itched with the desire to touch him. It wasn’t just love, it was more and less than that. It was a sort of magical compulsion. It felt like love, but it held elements of almost addiction. I realized that Auggie had rolled me, well and truly. His power had rolled me. I had fought free of some of it, and Jean-Claude had helped, but I wasn’t free of what he’d done to me. But staring into his face, those angry, teary eyes, I realized he wasn’t angry at me. He was angry at himself.

“You rolled yourself,” I said.

He closed his eyes and turned away. He spoke with his face averted from me. “The blade cuts both ways,” he whispered.

“But if we’ve got better armor, then more of your power hits you than us, doesn’t it?”

He nodded, still turned away.

I had a flash of satisfaction. Served him right. But on the heels of that petty pleasure came regret. Regret like bitter ashes. “Jesus,” I whispered.

He turned. He’d lost the battle with the tears. They ran in pale pinkish tracks down his face.

“Of all the powers from Belle’s line that I’ve had used on me, Auggie, yours is the most awful.”

“How can you say that?” he asked. “The ardeur can enslave. Requiem can rape with a thought.”

“Yeah, Requiem’s power would be the ultimate date-rape drug, but he doesn’t use it that way.”

“He did once,” Auggie said.

I processed that information, tested if it was a lie, but I didn’t think it was. I shrugged. “Whatever he was as a young vampire, he’s not that now. But the ardeur is just lust, and so is Requiem’s power. It doesn’t steal the emotions; yours does.”

“And you think that is a worse crime?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

“You hate me.” He whispered it.

I nodded. “Yes.”

He turned away, and took a step. I caught his arm. He froze under that one small touch, as if I’d turned him to stone. I knew that reaction. That was the reaction when the merest brush of someone’s hand meant more to you than almost anything in the world, and it meant nothing to them. It was how I’d felt off and on with Richard. As if my entire life were in the hand that touched him, and he didn’t care. It was one of the reasons that I’d fought free of him. It was too hard to love that much, and hate that much at the same time.

I used that touch to turn Auggie back to me. He let me do it, though he could have fought and won. I was stronger than a normal human now, but Auggie’s bicep was thicker than my thigh. In a fair fight, I’d lose, but Auggie’s own power had made certain he’d never have a fair fight with me.

I looked into his eyes, watching him try to be angry, instead of hurt. “What a terrible power you have, Augustine,” I said, softly, “to offer true love and mean it. People must have been willing to trade anything, everything, for such a gift.”

He nodded. “Without the ardeur to trap me back, I could have made you love me without risking this much of myself. I know everything about my power, Anita. I can make a person love me, really love me, and not love them back.”

I dropped his arm. “Have you done that?”

“You’re right, Anita, I have a terrible power. At first it was just the ability to make people like me, then love, but what I didn’t realize, at first, was that it was a two-edged blade. I could only cut my prey as deep as I was willing to be cut.”

“That changed,” I said.

He nodded. The tear tracks were drying on his face. He made no move to wipe them away. “I learned control. I learned to trap others without trapping myself, as Jean-Claude learned with the ardeur. I don’t know if Requiem ever learned how to cause lust in only one side of his equation.”

“I did not.” Requiem came in, moving slowly, carefully. He was wearing his usual black cloak, so the injuries were hidden, but he moved like things still hurt. Someone had used cover-up on the worst of the facial bruises. It was a good job. You had to look to see the discoloration; even then, if I hadn’t known it was bruises, I might not have seen.

Auggie glanced at him, then back at me. “But most of us do, eventually.”

“So if our power hadn’t tripped you up, you’d have been willing to make me love you, really love you, and not love me back?”

“I didn’t think that clearly, but I would not willingly have loved you, no.”

“You really are a bastard,” I said.

He nodded. “Chicago has no mob but the old-school Italian. I’ve kept out the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese. No one, absolutely no one, takes power from me. While almost every other mob stronghold has been whittled away, I’ve held my territory against everyone. To do that, Anita, you have to be a bastard. A cold-blooded, murderous bastard.”

“You hide it well,” I said. “The laugh is great.”

“I work at appearing human; it makes the other bosses be less afraid.”

“The head of Vegas is an old-time mobster, too.”

Auggie shook his head. “He stopped being a force in the mob when he became a vampire. It takes a while to recover from it, and by the time Maximillian was powerful enough to take back some of it, times had changed, and he didn’t change with them. He’s powerful, and runs Vegas, but he’s not a boss anymore.”

We stood there staring at each other.

Jean-Claude came up behind me. He touched my shoulder, and when I didn’t pull away, he hugged me from behind. The look on Auggie’s face, seeing us together, was painful, and strangely satisfying. If he’d had his way, it would be me with that stricken look, and him cool and calm. Evil bastard, but even thinking it, I couldn’t own it. Damn it.

“The night wastes away. Soon we will have to change for the ballet,” Jean-Claude said.

Auggie nodded. “Yeah, yeah.”

“We need to decide if ma petite is too dangerous to go out among the other Masters of the City.”

Auggie nodded again. “I’ll help you figure it out, if I can. I owe you for the breach in hospitality. I owe Anita for what I tried to do to her.” He looked away from both of us, staring at nothing. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the full weight of my own power. I’d forgotten how much it fuckin’ hurts.”

“Excuse me.” Noel was standing beside us.

We both turned and looked at him. I don’t know what he saw on our faces, but he backed up fast until he was out of reach of both of us. “May I approach?”

“No,” Auggie said.

“Yes,” I said.

We looked at each other.

Noel dropped to all fours. He didn’t bow, just dropped to all fours where he was standing. “I don’t know what to do; I can’t please you both.”

“What is your problem, Auggie?” I said.

“He asked a question, I answered it,” Auggie said.

“Fine, you answered it for yourself, not for me.” I stepped away from Auggie, closer to Noel. Auggie grabbed my upper arm.

I tensed, but didn’t try to pull away. I knew I’d lose if it was just brute strength. I looked at him, then at the hand on my arm. I looked back at him. “You did not just do that.”

“And you did not just step away from me to go to anyone this submissive.”

“Do you ever want to experience the ardeur again, Auggie?”

He looked puzzled for a moment, but I knew in a way that that was an act. He might have been truly puzzled, but he worked at human facial expressions. “You know I do.”

“Move the hand, or you won’t ever touch me again.”

We stared at each other for a moment, then he let me go. “I heard you were dangerous, powerful, and quick to kill. What none of my spies caught, is that your force of will is the most dangerous thing about you. God, your eyes, the determination in your eyes.” He shook his head. “You mean it. You would truly cut me off because of this.”

“Damn straight.”

“Why, because I grabbed your arm?”

“Because you’re acting like you own me. Nobody owns me.”

Micah got off the love seat and started toward us. It drew Auggie’s gaze to him. “Your lion injured Travis and abused Noel. I think you owe them some consideration.”

“Spoken like a leopard,” Auggie said, “so practical, so willing to negotiate.” He made those all sound like bad things.

“You really are very much your animal to call, aren’t you?” Micah said.

Auggie nodded.

“For those of us who are confused, could you explain a little more?” I said.

Micah said, “Lions are the most aggressive society among all the cats. To be a lion is to be always ready to defend your place in the pride. Unless you are very dominant or very strong, or make people fear you enough to be left alone. Noel and Travis are lesser, and Auggie treats them as if he were a dominant lion. A few dominant lions in most prides mate with all the females.”

“Joseph’s pride isn’t run like that,” I said, “it’s closer to how the leopards run things.”

Micah nodded. “Joseph’s pride is the exception, Anita. Remember, I spent years trapped with a mixed group. It can take forever to do business with lions because everything is a pissing contest. Joseph thinks more like a leopard—very reasonable, especially for a lion.”

“Pussy-whipped is what I heard,” Auggie said. “His wife wouldn’t tolerate sharing.”

“You know, Auggie, almost everything coming out of your mouth is just digging the hole deeper.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re on her shit list,” Micah said, “and you keep digging yourself a deeper pile of shit.” He actually smiled.

“What are you smiling at?” Auggie asked.

“I thought you might be a threat to our domestic arrangement, but you won’t be able to behave yourself long enough to be a threat to any other man in Anita’s life.”

“Jean-Claude has already invited me down to sample the wares again.”

“Sample the wares,” I said, “what the fuck does that mean? Am I wares, things to be sampled? I don’t fucking think so.”

“See,” Micah said, “you keep this up and you won’t ever get the ardeur again.”

Jean-Claude joined us. “You are being exceptionally careless with your words, Augustine. It isn’t like you to be so impolitic.”

“He’s scared,” Nathaniel said. He came in behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, pressing his nakedness against my back. I didn’t have to see his face to know the look. It was a look he’d only recently worn around me. Possessive, it said, mine, it said. I’ll share, but it’s mine. He usually only brought the look out when someone was behaving badly, or he didn’t like them. I think we were all agreed on what we thought of Auggie. He was such bad news.

“Afraid of what, pussycat?” Auggie asked, disdain thick in his voice.

“Wanting Anita as badly as you do,” Nathaniel said.

The comment made me tense, but he pressed himself even closer, and I relaxed against him. He rested his face touching mine, so we probably looked like one of those posed engagement shots. Auggie was right about one thing; Nathaniel could play games when he wanted to. He played less and less as he got more comfortable with his life, and himself, but he hadn’t forgotten how to play.

“You don’t like wanting anyone that much. You see it as a weakness,” Nathaniel said, “and you’re beginning to realize just how hard to deal with Anita can be.”

I turned and looked at him, forcing him to move his head enough for us to make eye contact. “Do you find me difficult?”

He grinned. “I like being dominated.”

I started to say how hard I’d worked to ensure that he wasn’t dominated, then realized what the grin meant. He was teasing me. I tried to glare at him, but I wasn’t serious enough for it to work.

“Do not let your unease be your undoing in this, Augustine,” Jean-Claude said.

“What’s that mean?” he asked.

“It means that if you continue to say and do such things to ma petite, then I will not be able to offer you the ardeur from her.”

Auggie had a moment where something flashed through his eyes. For just a second I would have said it was fear. “Maybe I am being stupid, but I came to her looking for a Julianna and what I found is Belle.”

Jean-Claude’s face went very still. “Why would you say that?”

“I only saw you love two women in nearly six centuries, Jean-Claude. You don’t choose to love Belle Morte, she chooses it for you. You chose to love Julianna. I thought, if you had finally fallen in love again, that it would be someone like her. I thought that the tough talk, and the danger, were just surface. I thought if I scratched deep enough that Anita would be more like the only other human I ever saw you love.” Auggie shook his head. “You’ve got a physical type you like, petite brunettes, but beyond that”—he shook his head again—“Jesus, Jean-Claude, sweet Jesus, don’t you ever have anything in a woman’s personality that you like every time?”

“Did you come here thinking that if you pushed ma petite hard enough she would crack open and be gentle and feminine in the way of Julianna?”

“It wasn’t just you, Jean-Claude, but Asher, too. He never seemed to have a physical type, but personality; he liked gentle, laughing, comfortable women. Belle used to accuse him of being addicted to peasants, when it came to women.”

“And you reasoned that if one woman had kept both of us happy, she must meet the criteria for both of us.”

Auggie nodded.

“Logical,” Jean-Claude said. “Wrong, but logical. I had forgotten that about you.”

“Forgotten what?”

“That you tried to make of love and emotions something logical, something that could be understood.”

Auggie frowned at him. “You’re making fun of me.”

Jean-Claude shook his head. “No, but I would remind you that Asher went on his own and found Julianna. I loved her with all my heart and soul, but she was not of my choosing. I came to love her, but I did not begin to love her.”

“So I’ve got faulty data.”

“If you like,” Jean-Claude said.

Auggie looked at me, with Nathaniel still wrapped around me. “Micah’s right. I think like a lion. I don’t see Nathaniel as a problem, because he’s submissive. I do feel the need to prove myself more dominant than the other dominants in your bed. But, damn, there are a lot of them.”

I shrugged, holding Nathaniel’s arms like you’d keep a shawl from spilling down your arms. “Is that why you tried to grab Micah, and why you stared at him like he was some kind of hooker?”

Auggie shrugged. “Maybe.”

“I don’t dig the macho shit, Auggie. Flex your dominance on your own time, not on mine.”

Auggie pointed behind us, turning us all to look at Noel. He was still on all fours waiting to be noticed. “You say your local Rex doesn’t run his pride the way most do.”

“He doesn’t,” Micah said.

“His lion is reacting like he knows the rules.”

“Joseph’s pride know how to be lions. They just don’t do that whole Serengeti-plains-dominance-fight at each kill,” Micah said.

“That’s what it means to be a lion,” Auggie said.

“Actually,” I said, “lions native to forested regions don’t do that. The fluidity of dominance, and the complicated social system, seem peculiar to the African plains region.”

Auggie gave me a look.

I actually felt myself beginning to blush, and fought it off. Nathaniel hugged me. “Smart girls are so sexy,” he whispered.

I managed to say, “I have a degree in biology, and I did research on the various animal forms once the coalition got going.”

Auggie gave an abrupt laugh. “I’ve been dealing with lions for thousands of years, and I’ve never picked up a book about them.”

I just stared at him. “How could you not want to learn as much about them as you could?”

“I live with lions, I don’t need to read about them.”

“I live with vampires, and raise zombies damn near every night, but I still read my trade publication, and keep abreast of the articles on all the undead.” I shook my head at the level of arrogance he was admitting to. The really scary part was that he didn’t see it as arrogance.

I couldn’t deal with Auggie anymore. I still felt the pull of his power, but it was just love. I could fight against love. Richard and Jean-Claude had given me lots of practice doing that.

I patted Nathaniel’s arm. He kissed me on the cheek and let me go. I went to where Noel was waiting on the floor. “Get up, Noel.”

He got up, eyes flicking behind me toward Auggie. It made me glance back, but the vampire actually wasn’t doing anything but looking at him. I touched Noel’s shoulder, turning him so he couldn’t see Auggie. “What’s up, Noel?”

“Travis and I need to talk to you.” He tried to glance back at Auggie. I touched his arm, kept him from doing it.

“Fine, we’ll talk.” I started toward the couch. I herded Noel with me. Micah and Nathaniel came at our backs. I wasn’t sure if they wanted to hear everything, or were covering my back in case Auggie decided to get all weird again.

Requiem was sitting beside Travis. He had a hand on the man’s forehead. “He is going into shock.”

I knelt in front of Travis. His face was gray-tinged. “Jesus, Travis, shift and heal this.”

He gave a small, tight shake of his head. His voice was tight, but breathy. “Give me your beast, make me change.”

“My beast is fine where it is, Travis.”

“You need to feed the ardeur on one of us, or give us your beast, Anita, please.”

I looked into his pain-filled face. “Do you really want to have metaphysical sex while you have a broken arm?”

He shook his head, grimacing. His upper body folded over his injured arm. He spoke, still bent over. “No, not really, but I also don’t want you making that blue-haired freak our Rex.”

“I won’t…”

He stared at me from inches away. His face was beaded with sweat. He was shaky, and hurting, and should have seemed weak, but he didn’t. There was a lot of force in that look. “Anita, if you make him your animal to call, or your Rex to your lioness, then he’ll share in your power. No way would any dominant lion with that much power be able to leave the local pride alone. Lions aren’t like the rest of the big cats. We aren’t live and let live. We’re very much about who’s the biggest cat in the pool. Joseph chose his Regina for love, not power. She’s nice, but she’s his wife, not a power to be reckoned with. If you give that other guy your power, then he won’t be able to leave us alone. The lion in him will be compelled to find us, and conquer us.”

I looked back across the room at Auggie. “You agree with his assessment of the situation, Auggie?”

Auggie nodded. “Yes, but I’m not sure that Haven being your Rex is as certain as you and the other cats think. I’ve bound you with my power, Anita; what if your reaction to my lions is so strong because of that? Not just your beast, but my power helping make my lions more appealing.” It was the smartest thing he’d said in a while. It left me wondering which was the real Auggie, thoughtful-guy or sexist-idiot-guy?

I nodded. “Okay, maybe, how do we test this little theory?”

“Anita reacted to your lions before you rolled her,” Micah said.

“Shit,” I said, “Micah’s right. My initial reaction to Pierce and Haven was funky from the beginning, before we had our little power duel.”

Auggie nodded. “Then perhaps what your lioness is seeking is a dominant. Either way, the way you react to Pierce, as opposed to these two, will tell you something. Either my power has made it worse, or your power seeks stronger prey. Jean-Claude believes that your ardeur seeks stronger prey; why not your beast?”

I glanced at Jean-Claude. “Getting chatty, are we?”

“I am seeking answers, ma petite. Augustine may not be trustworthy in all things, but when he gives his word, he keeps it.”

“So you asked his opinion, after getting his word of honor he wouldn’t tell our secrets anywhere.”

Jean-Claude nodded.

I didn’t like it, but I had to trust that Jean-Claude knew what he was doing. Besides, we did need help figuring some of this out. The list of Masters of the City that he trusted at all was damn small. It might be smaller after this visit, if I could vote on the list.

“Please, Anita,” Travis said, “please, give me your beast. Feed on one of us. Don’t give that freak power over us.”

“I don’t need to give my beast up, and I don’t want to raise it on purpose. I don’t know how to stop it, once it starts.”

“Start it, and give it to me.”

“Travis, just shift.”

He shook his head stubbornly.

“Then feed the ardeur on me,” Noel said.

I looked into his face, those eyes behind his wire-framed glasses. He looked so sincere and so young. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Noel.”

“Just mark their necks,” Nathaniel said.

I looked at him. Usually, Nathaniel liked to be the only one that I marked up. He shared with Micah, but he didn’t like it when I marked anyone who was just food. “Usually you complain about that,” I said.

“The jolt of power with Pierce could happen with anyone who was a preternatural. But what happened with Haven when you tried to touch his neck, that was different. Try to do the vampire greeting thing on their necks, and see if you get a similar reaction.”

“Beauty and brains,” Auggie said. “Lucky you.”

I wasn’t sure who he was calling lucky—me, Jean-Claude, or Nathaniel. We all ignored him. “All right, Nathaniel, all right. I’ll try, but if this doesn’t work at all, Travis has to shift and heal that arm.” I looked at Travis as I said it.

Travis nodded. “If you try it on both of us, and nothing happens, okay.”

Requiem tucked his black cloak closer around him. The movement made me look at him. “You are master here, Jean-Claude, but before she uses the ardeur again, should we not talk?”

That made me look back at Jean-Claude. He nodded. “Yes, but perhaps our young lions could go back to Dr. Lillian for a time.”

Travis gave him a look that said, clearly, he wasn’t moving. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Are you refusing the direct order of the Master of the City?” Auggie asked.

I raised a hand, and said, “Don’t start that shit again, Auggie. Not your city, not your call.”

“I don’t think Travis feels well enough to walk back to Dr. Lillian,” Noel said. “What if we give our word that we won’t tell anyone what you say?”

“You are young and live in a time where you do not truly understand what it means to give your word,” Jean-Claude said.

“Besides,” Micah said, “if Joseph ordered you to tell him, you’d have no choice.”

Travis let out a long shaking breath, cradling his arm against his body. “Help me up, Noel.”

“What can be so private that you’re making him move?” I asked.

“We could move,” Nathaniel said.

“Yeah,” I said, “all the able-bodied, except for Noel, follow me.”

“Are you really going to let her make us all move, so the lion won’t have to?” Auggie said.

I stopped a few steps beyond the group, because only Nathaniel and Micah were following me. Claudia was looking from Jean-Claude to me, and the rest of the guards were looking to her. We were deep into the pissing contest and Claudia was trying to decide what would help and what would hurt.

I pointed a finger at Auggie. “I’m getting tired of you.” I switched the finger to Jean-Claude. “Please, tell me you are not going to grandstand to save face in front of Auggie. It will cost us nothing to move down the hallway.”

“He lost a fight,” Auggie said, “it should hurt.”

I waved a hand at him, as if waving him away. “I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to my master, thank you very much. Jean-Claude?”

It wasn’t so much that I could see him think it through, because his face was perfect and unreadable. But I’d been staring at that empty face for years now. It was almost like I could feel him thinking it through.

He gave a small nod. “Very well.” He went to me, and I held out my hand to reward this show of common sense.

“I see the local Rex isn’t the only one pussy-whipped around here,” Auggie said.

I started to get angry, but Jean-Claude pulled on my hand. He told me with a glance that he’d take care of it. He turned those dark-blue eyes on Auggie, and said, “And if you knew that she would cover you in the ardeur, and love your body, would you stay here, or would you go where she wished you to go?”

Auggie stared at him for a second, then started shaking his head, over and over again. He walked toward us, then kept walking. He walked into the far hallway, and kept walking until he was lost to sight.

“When he faces us again, ma petite, he will have his people at his back. I do not think he will risk himself alone with us again.”

I squeezed Jean-Claude’s hand. It made him look at me. “I don’t think he’s afraid of being pussy-whipped,” I said.

Jean-Claude actually managed to look humble. “Perhaps not.”

41

“WHAT DO YOU mean, I was about to bind Requiem to me forever?” We were having our super-secret meeting in the hallway. It was empty, and I didn’t want to walk all the way back to Jean-Claude’s room.

“I have tried to teach you different ways to feed, ma petite, and you have learned well.”

I could have argued that, but I let it go. “Just explain what you said, Jean-Claude. You don’t have to protect my ego, just say it.”

“You have fed on Requiem, but always before you were holding back, or I was so deeply emmeshed with you when you did it, that I was in some way controlling what happened.”

I nodded. “And?”

“It is possible to know the innermost desire of a person. The ardeur can give you a glimpse into his soul.”

“I know that, it happens a lot.”

He shook his head. “But that is exactly the point, ma petite, it should not happen a lot.”

“But it does; that’s how the ardeur works when I feed completely.”

He shook his head again. “Non, ma petite, it is not necessary to know someone’s heart’s desire to feed completely.”

“It makes a better feeding, more energy, if you know their deepest wish and give it to them.”

He nodded. “Oui, but what is the rule for all the gifts of my bloodline?”

I frowned at him. “I don’t…oh, that they’re two-edged swords. All of Belle’s powers cut both ways.”

“Oui.”

I was still staring at him. “If you have a point to make, please make it, because if that was a hint, I don’t get it.”

“When you first met Micah, what did you need in your life?”

“Stop trying to make me reason this through, Jean-Claude, just tell me.”

“You will not like it,” he said.

“I’m getting that impression, but remember I’m a jerk-the-Band-Aid-off kind of girl. Just tell me.”

“You needed help with the wereleopards, and with all the other shapeshifters that you were beginning to try to help. It was your willingness to help many kinds of shapeshifters that laid the groundwork for our so-lovely coalition. You yourself said that so much that was wrong with the lycanthrope community could be fixed if they would only talk to each other.”

“I remember all this, so what?”

“You needed a man in your life who simply said yes, instead of arguing with you or running his own agenda. You needed someone to put your needs first.” He looked at me, as if he’d been very clear. It wasn’t clear to me.

“Doesn’t everyone?” I said.

“I think I get it,” Micah said, softly.

I turned to him. “Then tell me.”

“My heart’s desire was safety for my people, and a partner powerful enough, passionate enough, to help me save them. We both got what we wanted most, out of each other.”

I frowned, trying to think, then said slowly, “Are you saying that I caused Micah to be everything I needed him to be?” I looked at Jean-Claude. “Are you saying that even now, he’s like under my power? That that’s why he never argues with me? That he’s under a spell?” I looked back at Micah, to see if his face was as horrified as mine felt.

He looked the same as ever, calm, ready to do what was needed. So practical, so…so everything I needed in a man. Shit.

He smiled at me. “Don’t look so horrified, Anita.”

“Do you normally argue more than this?”

He shook his head. “I was always pretty easygoing, and years trapped in Chimera’s group took care of most of my rebellion. It was too expensive to the people around me to be a smart-ass.”

“Is everything we have just vampire tricks, except I’m the vampire? Is it all a lie?”

“This was the reaction I feared you would have,” Jean-Claude said.

“What reaction am I supposed to have?” I asked, and it was almost a yell.

“You missed part of his point,” Micah said.

“What part?”

“If the ardeur made me into your perfect mate, then it made you into mine. It’s a double-edged sword, remember.”

Was I under a spell? My own spell? It was too complicated for me. I turned back to Jean-Claude. “I don’t understand this. I mean, if this is true, then how could we not have noticed?”

“But, ma petite, you did notice. Your Nimir-Raj is the first man you have ever had sex with on first meeting. He is the first man you have ever allowed yourself not to push away, is he not?”

I wanted to argue, and I couldn’t. Damn it, but I couldn’t. “Shit,” I said.

I turned, and looked at Nathaniel. He gave me a gentle smile, like you’d give someone in the doctor’s office who just got bad news.

“If this is true about Micah and me, then…”

“Oui, ma petite, the same would be true of Nathaniel.”

“No, it was different, very different with both of them.”

“But they are very different men. One heart’s desire is not the same as another’s.”

“I resisted Nathaniel for months before we had sex.”

“Oui, but it was not sex that Nathaniel wanted, not truly; he wanted to be loved and valued for himself, not just for his body. By denying him sex, but loving him, you gave him what he wanted most.”

I felt like I was choking. I couldn’t breathe. My back hit the wall. I leaned against it, trying to think, and failing.

“The only two men in my life that I haven’t seen all the way through are you and Richard.”

Jean-Claude nodded. “I knew how to keep you out, and Richard was strong enough, and conflicted enough, not to know his own heart’s desire.”

“But everyone else,” I stared at him. “Asher, Damian, maybe even Jason, hell, I don’t know.”

Requiem spoke then. “I think that your ardeur holds not just lust, Anita, but love, as Belle’s ardeur did. As my Ligeia’s ardeur did.”

“I’ve been inside Belle’s head. She wouldn’t know real love if it bit her on the ass.”

He gave a small smile, as if I’d amused him. “She knows the ardeur as a warrior knows his weapon. She knows the art of causing love and devotion, even addiction, in others, without suffering it herself.”

“Are you saying I’m doing it wrong?”

He seemed to think about it, then nodded.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“There was a moment when you looked deep into me. I felt you see all the way down into my soul, Anita. I felt you caress the deepest pain I own. Belle Morte would have coaxed that pain to life and used it to torment me. You were going to try to heal it.”

“I was supposed to heal you, right?”

“Physically, ma petite, not emotionally.” He touched my face, staring at me, as if he were trying to read something from my face. “And certainly not his deepest hurt.” He let his hand drop away, but continued to study my face.

“I don’t know how to do anything halfway, Jean-Claude. It’s all or nothing for me, you should know that by now.”

He nodded and looked unhappy. “You are quite right, ma petite. I am your master and this is all my fault. I should have seen it.”

“Seen what, exactly?”

“You have been obsessed with learning to control the feedings, ma petite. It has made me obsess with you, but there are other things to learn about controlling it. Things I have neglected to teach you.”

“You could not have taught her control of this, not when the ardeur was fresh, Jean-Claude,” Requiem said. “I was with Ligeia from the moment she gained the power. The first few months are a wild thing. I thought she would go mad with it.” He gripped Jean-Claude’s shoulder. “My understanding is the ardeur rose for the first time with Micah. There was no controlling it.” He looked at me, and at Micah. “It has actually worked out extremely well for all concerned.”

I turned and looked at Micah, and Nathaniel. “I trapped you both. I rolled you.”

They exchanged a look, then both looked back at me. “We love you,” Micah said.

Nathaniel moved in, as if he’d hug me. I moved farther down the wall, out of reach. “But it’s all vampire powers. It’s a lie—doesn’t that ruin it for you? I trapped you. I trapped you both; it’s worse than what Auggie did to us. It’s not fake, it’s like real love. I made you both fall in love with me, that’s like evil.”

“If you made us fall in love with you, but didn’t love us back, maybe it would be evil,” Micah said, “but you do love us back.”

“But it’s a lie, Micah. It’s all a lie.”

He gave me a look, that look that said I was being silly. But I wasn’t being silly, was I? “I’ve been in love before, Anita, remember.”

“Becky, your high school sweetheart, college fiancée,” I said.

He nodded. “That was real, Anita. She was the love of my life, and if she hadn’t dumped me, I wouldn’t have known that love could get any better than that.”

Becky had dumped him when he survived the attack that made him a wereleopard. She just couldn’t handle his being furry once a month. Of course, she’d had other problems with him before that. What I thought was a huge bonus, she’d thought was a huge downside.

Micah stepped toward me.

I slid along the wall, my hand out. I didn’t want him to touch me, not right then. Mainly because if he did, I’d lose this fight. I’d always wondered at how my body reacted to him. No one had that effect on me, not to that degree. Now I knew it was vampire mind tricks, but I was the vampire who had done it. Fuck.

“I know what true love feels like, Anita. This is it. We are all happier than we’ve ever been. The only thing that will spoil what we have is if you freak about this.”

“How can I not freak about this, Micah?”

I felt movement, a second before hands touched me. The hands brushed my bare arms, and I felt calmer. I leaned back against Damian’s body, let his arms enfold me. The fear, anger, confusion, just washed away. The iron control of his emotions that he had learned at the hands of his creator was what he shared with me. I leaned back into that peaceful control for a handful of seconds. The panic was still there, but I could ride it. I was still horrified, but it wasn’t the only thought screaming through my brain.

I leaned my head back against his chest, and looked up at him. He’d tied all that bloodred hair back from his face. I stared into a face that my magic had actually made prettier, more perfect. He’d been handsome before; now he was beautiful. I looked up into those eyes, like looking into the perfect green of an emerald, if it could look back at you. If a jewel could burn with intelligence and need. “Hey, Damian,” and my voice sounded almost drugged, I was so calm.

“Hey,” he said, smiling down at me.

I blinked at him. “I feel so good. I don’t remember you ever making me feel this calm, so fast.”

“You love Micah, don’t you?”

I frowned at him. “Yes.”

“You love Nathaniel, don’t you?”

I frowned harder. “Yes, but it’s all a lie.”

His hand swept up the line of my neck, as his face bent toward me. “Does it feel like a lie?”

“No,” and my voice was small.

He whispered the last few words against my lips. “You all love each other, isn’t that more important than how you fell in love?”

With Damian touching me, it was utterly reasonable to say, “Yes.”

He kissed me. Those lips that my own magic had made fuller, more kissable, covered mine. He drew back enough to whisper, “Love is too precious to waste, Anita.”

He was right, of course. He was right, but it wasn’t like me to see logic this quickly. This wasn’t like me, at all.

Damian lowered his mouth over mine, his hand kneading my throat, as he pressed my back against his body. Always before when he was helping me be reasonable, kissing him was a cold thing. Today, I gave myself to his kiss, to his hands, even as part of me knew this was just more vampire mind games. Damian was my vampire servant. He gained power as I gained power. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might be able to use that power against me.

42

I BROKE THE kiss, pushed him away hard enough to make him stumble. His eyes were drowning emerald fire. “Didn’t it feel good?” he asked.

I shook my head, not trusting my voice. But the moment he wasn’t touching me the panic was back. The fear, and it was worse now. I was surrounded by vampire tricks. Surrounded even inside myself, and that was one person I couldn’t run from.

Micah tried to hug me again, but I moved around him, toward the living room. Nathaniel brushed my arm, and I moved away. I was shaking my head, and wasn’t sure why.

“This does not have to be a disaster, ma petite.”

“Yes,” I said, “it does.”

“Anita,” Micah said, “I don’t care that it was vampire magic that brought us together. We’re together, that’s what matters.” He held his hand out to me.

I shook my head. “No, because if you touch me, I’ll give up. I won’t fight. I can never win a fight when you touch me. The effect you have on my body overwhelms everything else.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” He made it a question, his hand still held out toward me.

“I wondered why your touching me always overwhelmed me, and now we know. It’s vampire powers. It’s mind tricks. It’s an aftereffect of the ardeur, Micah.”

He let his hand drop slowly. “I love the way your body reacts to mine, Anita.” He closed his eyes, hugged his hands into fists in front of his chest. “I abso-fucking love that you react to me like I’m intoxicating.” He opened his eyes and gave me the full stare out of those yellow-green kitty-cat eyes. “Don’t you love it, too?”

I opened my mouth to say no, but it would have been a lie. The vampires could sense lies, but wereanimals could smell them. I told the truth. “Yes, I loved it.”

He shook his head. “Not loved, not past tense. You love it. You love it so much, you’re afraid to let me touch you now.”

“Please, Micah, don’t do this.”

“Do what? Make you happy? Make us both happier than we’ve ever been for longer than we’ve ever been happy in our entire lives? We’re both almost thirty, Anita; it doesn’t get better than what we have. We’ve all tried other people, other ways of living. This works for us. Don’t throw it away because it started with the ardeur.” He took a step toward me. “We always knew that you and I began with the ardeur, Anita.”

“Maybe, but not all of it. Not…” I turned away from him. I couldn’t keep being this stubborn and look at the anguish on his face. But looking away put me looking at Nathaniel. It wasn’t an improvement. First, he was nude, and any of the men I loved only had to take their clothes off to win most arguments with me. I might never admit that out loud, but it was the truth. Nathaniel nude was a treat, but what made it even harder was the look on his face. So hurt, so terribly hurt.

“Anita,” he said, “would you really throw us away? Could you just walk away? Just like that?”

My throat was tight, but not with panic anymore. The panic had company now. Can you choke to death on unshed tears?

He stared at me; those lilac eyes sparkled through the fall of all that hair. I stared at his eyes, so bright, like firelit amethyst, as he tried not to cry. Then the first tear glittered down his cheek, and I was undone.

I went to him. I hugged him, and he collapsed so suddenly in my arms that it pulled us both to the floor. He clung to me, weeping, and I was left drowning in the vanilla warmth of his hair. Micah stood there, looking down at us.

Was it a lie? It didn’t feel like a lie. The man in my arms felt real, and his tears were real. The thought that I could turn away from him because of something so…petty, had broken his heart, just a little. Micah had said it; we knew that the ardeur had been the beginning of us. Hadn’t I always known it was the beginning of Nathaniel and me, too? If I hadn’t needed to feed the ardeur, I would never have allowed him to move in with me. I would never have slept with him, clothed and strangely chaste, feeding by a kiss, a touch, but never with release for him. I would never have done all that without the ardeur to feed. I would never have fallen in love with him, if the ardeur hadn’t kept him in my way.

I hugged Nathaniel, and held one hand out to Micah. He smiled, and came to me, to us. He dropped to his knees, and put his arms around us both. Nathaniel cried harder. I held them both as hard as I could. Micah kissed me, and I kissed him back. The taste of his mouth was the taste of sex to me. Just the kiss, and my body reacted to it. Nathaniel’s hands spilled over my breasts. Had I taught them that the only way to make up a fight was sex, or had the ardeur preordained that sex was our currency of healing? It was a chicken/egg sort of question. I let it go in the sensation of hands and mouths on my face and neck, and body.

We licked the tears off Nathaniel’s face, and somewhere in all that closeness, I let go of my doubts. I could worry about it later. Right at that moment, nothing seemed more important than touching the two of them.

We both came up for air, to the smell of lion. Micah growled. It was Noel on hands and knees. He had his forehead pressed to the stone floor, one hand held out toward us. Travis collapsed to his knees behind him, cradling his broken arm. He leaned against the wall, heavily, and for the first time it occurred to me that maybe the broken arm wasn’t the worst of his injuries. Wereanimals were tough bastards. I hadn’t even asked if there were other things broken. I hadn’t even asked exactly what the doc had said. They had just been another embarrassing problem. Another pint of blood to lay on the altar of the ardeur, and my beast.

I looked at Micah. “I agree with the lions. I don’t want Haven.”

I turned to Nathaniel. He smiled. “I agree with Micah. Though Jean-Claude, or someone, needs to help you not to bond with them completely.”

“Agreed,” I said.

I looked behind us, for Jean-Claude. “How do we do this?”

“I can help you not use the ardeur as deeply, but I do not know if I can control the lion within you.”

“I can,” and it was Auggie. He’d added a long black cloak. His shoulders were so wide that it made him look square, his head too small for all that body. The bottom of the cloak puddled on the floor, because any vampire here that the cloak could belong to was a foot taller. The cloak looked borrowed, and it was, but Octavius and Pierce were at his back, and they didn’t look borrowed at all. They looked perfectly at home.

The two bodyguards at their backs looked right at home, too. Standing orders were that Pierce and Haven got four guards. I wondered if Haven, now unconscious, had two of his own? Probably.

“I want this to work, Auggie, if it can,” I said. “I need your word that you won’t spoil it.”

“Tell me exactly what you want me to swear to, Anita,” he said. His face was empty, pale with concentration. His eyes looked huge and even darker, like the sky before it goes black.

I thought about what he’d asked, then looked again to Jean-Claude. “Help me to word it, okay.”

“I will second Augustine on this, ma petite. Tell me what you wish him to swear to.”

“I want to really try to bond with Noel. I don’t want him to interfere with that, but I don’t want to bond to Noel the way I did with Micah and Nathaniel. I want to see if it’s just lions I’m hunting, or if Auggie’s lions are especially tasty.”

“If my lions are more tasty, it may not be because they are my lions, but because your power seeks something more dominant than what’s kneeling on the floor. I think in your Rex’s zeal not to give power to a rival, he has sent you food that your inner lioness will never accept.”

“My inner lioness,” I said, though it’s hard to be disdainful when you’re on your knees with men still hanging on to you. But I managed it.

“Inner beast, then,” he said, voice empty. His face showed nothing. He was finally acting more like all the other really old vamps that I’d ever met. Will the real Augustine please stand up?

“Are the lions more likely to want a dominant?” I asked.

“I thought you had read up on lions,” he said.

I thought about it, then nodded. “If a new male takes over the pride, second thing he does is kill the cubs. It means he doesn’t help the lion he drove off breed successfully, and it puts the females into estrus faster, so he gets to mate.”

Auggie nodded. “It makes the females of most wereprides very tough to impress.”

I shook my head. “You’re not saying that werelion prides are run like real lion prides? That the new leader kills the children? That’s ridiculous.”

He shrugged those big shoulders under the long cloak. “It has happened.”

I turned back to Noel and Travis. “You guys know about this happening for real?”

They both said, “No.”

“They’re too young to know what we did before we became legal.” This from Pierce.

“Are you saying that some men do kill the babies of the old Rex?”

“I’ve seen it,” Pierce said in a very clipped voice.

I almost asked, Which end of the fight were you on? but I didn’t. There was a look in his eyes, almost a flinching. Either he’d been a victim, or he’d done things that haunted him. I had enough nightmares of my own; I’d let Pierce keep his to himself.

“I guess that would make you want the strongest lion around,” I said, but my voice was a little thin. The pregnancy scare was too recent. How would it feel to go through nine months, then labor, and have some stranger kill your baby, after first killing your husband? I said it out loud. “If someone did that to me, he wouldn’t survive very long.”

“Prides with really strong females don’t get taken over much,” Pierce said, “because you gotta sleep sometimes.” He almost smiled when he said it.

I nodded. “That’s how I’d be thinking.”

“Your local pride has very weak females,” Auggie said, his voice still that empty master’s voice, so it could have been almost anyone talking. “Your Rex’s wife is weak, and since the females of the lions are just like the males, it’s forced him to reject a lot of strong women.”

“Are you saying that if someone killed Joseph, there wouldn’t be enough fight in his pride to do much about it?”

“His brother would be a problem,” Pierce said, “but other than that, yeah.”

“You would definitely have to kill both of the brothers,” Auggie said, “but after that the pride would be helpless.” He looked past me at the lions.

Noel was staring at him with a sort of soft horror. It was Travis who said, “Sounds like you’ve thought this through.”

“It’s why you brought dominants,” I said. “You came planning for Pierce or Haven to take over the local pride.”

Auggie gave me flat eyes.

“You evil bastard.”

“It’s not me that’s left his pride open, ripe for the picking, Anita. He did that himself.”

“He loves his wife, that’s not a crime,” I said.

Auggie shrugged.

“Anita.” Noel’s small voice brought me back to look at him. He inched closer to me, his hand out, his face showing his fear. “Please, Anita, please, try me.”

I wanted to say, I won’t let them hurt you and your people, but I couldn’t. Not and be truthful. We had an alliance with the lions, true, but if Joseph had truly let his pride get this fucked up, and it was truly the lion’s way to take over the pride like this, then no other animal could interfere. We could help each other, but we couldn’t interfere directly in the dominance hierarchy of the other groups. Not unless we wanted to start glomming us all into some kind of super-group. Wereanimals didn’t do well in mixed-species groups. Too many cultural differences.

The only way I could send Haven home was to find another lion that my lioness liked. Shit. Noel stared at me, hand outstretched. The fear in his face made him look even younger and more inexperienced. No animal group could operate without dominants. You needed muscle and strength, and strength of will. If Joseph had truly done what Auggie said, then his pride was in the gravest of dangers. If it wasn’t Haven or Pierce now, it would be someone else later. Of course, if one of them were my semipermanent pomme de sang, then other lions might hesitate to attack them.

Hell, master vamps from around the country who hadn’t had the ballet troupe go anywhere near them were offering up pomme de sang candidates. We’d be seeing potential feeds for months even after this batch went home. We’d already had inquiries from animal groups that weren’t aligned with any vampire. You know you’re big fish, when all the sharks want to come play.

I did the only thing I could think of. I took Noel’s hand and drew him toward me. I wasn’t sure what we’d do when he got to me, but we’d think of something.

43

NOEL SMELLED OF fear. He smelled like food, but not food for the ardeur. He smelled like meat that just hadn’t stopped squirming yet. I pushed him onto the floor, raised his shirt to his shoulders. I stared down at his bare chest and stomach. He was breathing so fast, so hard, that his stomach rose and fell with it. I lowered my mouth over that pale, soft flesh. I stopped with my face just above his skin, so close that my breath came back warm against me. With that warm breath, came his scent, stronger, richer. It made me close my eyes. But I was too far into beast mind for sight to help or hurt that much. It was all about the smell of him, the sound of his breathing, and his heartbeat. I laid my ear against his chest so I could hear that frantic beating, so clear, so wonderfully afraid. I put my hand on his stomach so I could ride the movement of it, as he breathed.

“Slow your breathing, Noel,” Micah said, “or you’re going to hyperventilate.”

“I can’t help it,” Noel said, voice breathless, “she’s not thinking about sex.”

“If you act like food, then you’re food,” Travis said from behind us.

I lay there on the floor, my head over his heart, my hand on the quick rise and fall of his stomach. So soft, so…tender.

The thought slid my face down his body, until I rested at his sternum, the upper edge of his stomach. So close now that I could not so much see the fast rise and fall of his body as feel it under my cheek. I rolled my face over, and kissed his stomach.

He jerked, as if I’d bit him, and made a wonderful whimpering sound.

I buried my mouth in the soft, easy flesh of his belly. I took as much of his flesh into my mouth as I could hold, and not draw blood. I bit him, hard and deep, and it took all my willpower to rise up from that flesh, and leave it whole.

I pushed back from him, crab-walked until the wall stopped me. The sensation of all that warm, tender flesh filled my mouth. I could still feel it, a sensory memory that would haunt.

“Talk to me, Anita.” Micah’s calm voice.

I shook my head. “Food,” I whispered, “just food.”

“Noel is just food,” Micah said.

I nodded, eyes still closed.

“Get up, Noel.” Travis’s voice, unhappy, angry.

“I’m sorry,” Noel said.

I finally opened my eyes, to watch him drag his shirt back over his body. He wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, as if he’d failed.

“It’s okay, Noel. Auggie and Pierce are right, Joseph shops for bottoms.”

“He’s not a bottom,” Nathaniel said. “If he had been he’d have enjoyed the biting, and the danger. It might even have been enough to push you from food to sex.” Nathaniel shrugged. “He’s too straightlaced.”

Once I would have argued.

“I would ask one favor,” Travis said.

We looked at him.

“Can you come to me, instead of making me crawl to you?”

I remembered what I’d forgotten to ask, and asked it. “Is the broken arm the worst injury?”

“At least two cracked ribs, maybe a small break. Dr. Lillian said she’d need X-rays to be certain. No concussion, too hardheaded for it, I guess.” He tried to smile and almost made it.

I crawled toward him. Micah moved so I could do it. Nathaniel crawled beside me. I glanced at him. “I don’t think Travis will want company on this.”

“I’m the only submissive you’ve collected. Everybody else is a dominant.”

That stopped me, made me think about it. I actually sat back on my knees. “Damian isn’t a master.”

“No, but he’s submissive because he doesn’t have the power to be dominant. I’m submissive because I like it.”

I frowned at him. “If you have a point, make it.”

“Ask if the pride has anyone who swings more like I do.”

I thought about all the men. Was Nathaniel right? Was everyone else a dominant personality, except for him? Richard, yep; Asher, yes; Jean-Claude, way yes; Micah, yes; Jason, no.

“Jason,” I said.

“You rang?” and it was Jason coming into the hallway. His short blond hair was cut neat and tidy like a junior executive. The body would have qualified, if the executive worked out in the gym enough. He was about my height, short for a man, and boyishly handsome most of the time. But he glanced at Noel getting shakily to his feet, Travis with his obvious wounds, Nathaniel and I so close together and him so very nude. Jason took it all in, and his face changed. I could never put my finger on it, but he looked suddenly older, more grown-up, and his eyes, the color of spring skies, filled up with a knowledge, a weight of intelligence. He hid it most of the time, but there was a very nice mind in that smiling, very nice body.

The look vanished, replaced by his usual smart-ass, flirting look, but I knew him too well, now, to be fooled.

“Jason subs if he wants to, but he’s a top at heart,” Nathaniel said, smiling up at his friend. We were never going to marry, Nathaniel and I, but if we did, I knew who he’d pick for best man.

“Tell me what position you want me in,” Jason said, “and I’m your man.” He wiggled his eyebrows and gave me that grin. That grin that said he was thinking cheerful nefarious thoughts. Most people made sex dark, but not Jason. He was a cheerful lecher.

I had to smile. He just had that effect on me. Hell, he had that effect on most people. “Sorry, I’m shopping for lions today, not wolves.”

“Actually, ma petite, I think we are trying to establish how you react around all your beasts, but lions for now.”

“Looks like I got here just in time,” Jason said.

“You’re not the only wolf in the hallway,” Graham said, sounding sullen.

Jason gave him a look that wasn’t entirely friendly. You didn’t see that from Jason much. “I suppose not.” His tone was dark, almost angry. I wondered what had been happening between the two of them to get that level of animosity from Jason. He was one of the most easygoing people I knew.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “Jason is the only wolf in the hallway.”

“Why is he the only wolf that you fuck besides Richard?” Graham asked.

Ah, now I knew why Graham was pissed. Had he tried to bully the smaller man? Probably. Graham had this backward idea that size and strength were more important than anything else.

“I don’t know, but comments like that are what help keep you off the list,” I said.

“Step back,” Claudia said to him.

He scowled at her, muscled arms folding over his chest.

She took a small movement toward him. “Are you challenging me?” Her voice was flat and empty as she said it; it made the threat all the more ominous.

Graham shook his head, and backed up until he was against the wall. He sulked, but he did what she asked. I hoped he got a girlfriend soon, because his little tantrums were really beginning to bug me.

As if the thought had conjured her out of the dimness, Meng Die appeared farther down the corridor. It was the first time I’d seen her since she’d sliced Requiem up. I did not want her here while I tested my beasts.

She was one of the few women who ever made me think, delicate. She was tinier than I was, so fragile looking. Maybe that was why she almost always wore black leather, very dominatrix. The clothes suited her though, catlike, skintight, scary, and sexy all at the same time. Yeah, scary, sexy, that summed Meng Die up perfectly.

She slinked on black, high-heel boots toward Graham. It was as if Claudia had seen this show before, because she said, “He’s working, Meng Die.”

Meng Die made that delicate triangular face pout, but it never reached those uptilted eyes. She changed direction without so much as a regretful glance at Graham. And that, that was why Graham wasn’t devoted to her. Why she’d almost broken Clay’s heart. She’d wanted Graham, but if she couldn’t have him, that was fine. No man likes to know, for certain, that it doesn’t matter to a woman if he’s the man in her arms or not. Come to that, a woman doesn’t like it when a man treats her that way either. Okay, no one likes knowing that they’re utterly replaceable. We all like to be special.

Meng Die slinked toward Requiem. He backed away from her. Jean-Claude said, “You are not to touch him again, Meng Die.”

She looked at Jean-Claude. “Never again?”

“Not unless he wishes it.”

She turned that lovely face to Requiem. “Do you truly wish never to touch this body again?” She made her hands flow over her curves as she said it.

Some of the men in the hallway followed her hands down her body. Auggie and his men did. Requiem didn’t. Jean-Claude didn’t. None of the wereleopards did. Jason did, though. The view was nice if you didn’t know the mind that went with it.

Meng Die walked past me, and the leopards, and the lions, like we weren’t there. She went for Jason. He had looked, and he wasn’t on the forbidden list.

She entwined herself around him, head on his shoulder. Even in the heels, she was shorter. “Come play with me, Jason.”

He laughed, and shook his head. “I’ve got a report to give.” I had no idea what report he was talking about.

“Afterward?” She made it a question.

He smiled, but said, “No. Thanks, but no.”

She ran her hand over the front of his jeans. Apparently, she wasn’t feeling the least bit subtle today.

He grabbed her wrist, and said, “No.”

She jerked away from him. “Why is it no? Because she’s here?” She pointed at me.

I hadn’t known that Jason and Meng Die had had sex. It must have shown on my face, because she said, “You didn’t know?”

I shook my head.

“We had a lot of fun, until you fucked him. Until you fed the ardeur off him.”

I stood up, and Micah and Nathaniel moved with me. “I didn’t know he was your boyfriend,” I said.

“Meng Die doesn’t have boyfriends,” Jason said, “just people she fucks.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” she asked.

“Not wrong, just not my thing.”

“You enjoyed it, Jason, I know you did.”

“You’re good at fucking,” he said.

“So are you,” and she made it a purr. Not a cat purr, but that alto, sultry sound that some women can make. I’ve never been able to do it.

Jason grinned at her. “But sometimes I prefer to make love, not just fuck. I couldn’t explain the difference to you.”

She frowned at him, the sultry look slipping around the edges. “Making love, it’s all just pretty words for fucking.”

I glanced at Jean-Claude. “You couldn’t teach her the difference?”

He gave an elegant shrug. “Some lessons come too late. She was much abused by the time I found her.”

“No,” Meng Die said, “no, my story is not for her. I want no one’s pity, least of all hers.”

Jean-Claude gave that Gallic shrug again, that meant yes, no, everything, and nothing. “As you like,” he said.

“You just fuck Anita, too.” She’d turned back to Jason.

He smiled, but gentler this time. “Anita makes it impossible to just fuck her.”

“What does that mean?” Meng Die asked.

“She was my friend, my good friend, before we ever had sex. You can’t just fuck someone that’s important to you. Because if you screw it up, you lose more than potential sex, you lose your friend. Her friendship was more important to me than the sex, so it had to be making love, not just fucking.”

“I don’t understand you,” she said.

Requiem’s voice then. “Because sex is almost never casual for Anita, it makes sex with Anita almost never casual.”

Meng Die shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“I know you do not,” he said, “and for that I am sorry.”

“Don’t pity me!” She shouted it.

I couldn’t see any weapons on her, but the leather could have hidden surprises. Slender surprises, but blades can be amazingly easy to hide.

“I want to fuck, who will fuck me?” Her words hit the air like a stone, and smashed into a suddenly heavy silence.

She looked at the men one at a time. She went to Damian, but he backed up, shaking his head. “Why shake your head? She is your master, not your wife.”

Damian actually looked a little embarrassed, as he said, “We fuck when we can’t find anyone else.”

Again, news to me.

“So, I am who you fuck if you can’t find anyone else, really?” That purring contralto went from sounding sexy to sounding ominous.

“You’ve turned me down enough, Meng Die. When Graham, or Clay, or Requiem was available, you didn’t even look at me. It stops being flattering to be last on a woman’s list.”

She looked at Auggie, and he just said, “We’re doing business.”

She turned to Noel. He backed away, as if she’d struck at him. “You scare me,” he said.

“But Anita does not scare you?”

“She scares me less than you do.”

Meng Die frowned at him. “Why?”

I didn’t expect Noel to answer, but he did. “Anita may hurt me by accident, but I think you’d hurt me just to see me bleed.” Damn perceptive for walking food.

I felt London coming down the hallway. Felt him in a way that I shouldn’t have been able to feel him. He was seeking me, using his vampire powers to find his fix again. I looked up, and found him coming toward us, all dark and pale.

Meng Die’s face brightened when she saw London. She practically skipped toward him. He glanced at her, but that was all. His eyes were set on me as if I were his north star and he were lost at sea without me. Shit.

She slid her small hand through the bend of his arm, their black-on-black clothing blending together nicely. “Come on, London, let’s leave them to their business.”

“Not right now,” he said, and didn’t look at her when he said it. He looked at me.

She stiffened, gazing slowly up at him, then followed where he was looking. She came to me, and started shaking her head. “No,” she said, “not London. You think he’s dark and morose.”

“He is dark and morose,” I said.

“But you fucked him anyway,” she said.

I shrugged, and gave her the “sorry” face. I mean, what was I supposed to say?

“You don’t even like him,” she said.

“It was sort of an accident,” I said.

“How do you accidentally have sex?”

It was a good question. I did not have a good answer.

London walked away from her. He never looked at her as he glided toward me.

I watched her face pale with anger. Her hand slid to the small of her back, and I knew she had a weapon. I took a breath to say something, but Claudia and Lisandro were ahead of me. The guns under their arms just seemed to magically appear in their hands. Claudia’s gun touched Meng Die’s shining black hair. Lisandro’s hand was hidden by Meng Die’s slender back.

Claudia said one word. “Don’t.”

Everyone on our side of the hallway moved closer to us. Everyone behind Meng Die moved farther down the hallway. Everyone except the bodyguards, that is. The bodyguards on Pierce and Octavius started to join them, but I shook my head. They stayed at their posts. We had four guards on Meng Die, two of them with guns plastered to her. Two extra guards wouldn’t make a difference on her, but it might on Auggie and his crew.

It was one of those moments when the world seems to hold its breath. Because the next breath may be someone’s last.

“Do not die this way.” Jean-Claude said it in a voice that shivered down the skin. But he was directing that voice at her, especially for her. I knew what it was like to be the target of that voice.

The tension left her shoulders. Her eyes were unfocused for a second. Lisandro used that second to take the knife out of her hand. Meng Die reacted to it, but too late.

She started to turn as if she meant to go for her blade, but Claudia pressed the gun barrel hard into the side of her head. Meng Die, wisely, chose to stop moving.

“Check her,” Claudia said.

Lisandro holstered his gun and frisked Meng Die. He did it quickly, efficently, and very, very thoroughly. “There are rivets and ridges throughout the leather. They could hide a few things. Do you want me to rip the leather open?” He asked it as if it were an everyday question.

“Your word of honor that you are not carrying anything else?” Claudia said.

Meng Die hesitated, then finally said, “There was just the one knife. This outfit doesn’t leave much room for hiding weapons.”

Claudia’s eyes flicked to Jean-Claude. “It’s your call, Jean-Claude, do we back up, or do we finish it?”

“Will you behave yourself, Meng Die?” he asked, and this time in as normal a voice as he could manage.

She gave him a look of such hatred that she didn’t look quite sane. “I will not try to kill anyone tonight.” Not exactly a rousing yes, but Jean-Claude nodded.

Claudia hesitated, then stepped back and lowered her gun. She didn’t holster it, though. I couldn’t say I blamed her.

London went to one knee in front of me, head bowed. It was a gesture that should have had a cloak and a plumed hat with it, so old-fashioned. “I am able to serve my lady again, if she has need.”

It took me a second or two to work out what he meant. “You mean feed the ardeur again?”

He looked up. “Yes.”

I looked down into that so-serious face. “You know if you act as food for the ardeur too often, it can be fatal?”

“Yes, but I can feed the ardeur every two hours or so in a twenty-four-hour period without ill effect.”

I stared at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“Why would I joke about such a thing?”

“I don’t know, but…London, even the strongest, most powerful person I feed on can only feed twice in a row with a break of at least six hours between.”

“It is my gift, Anita,” he said.

“London is the perfect food for the ardeur. He can truly feed every few hours day after day, to no ill effect. In fact, Belle Morte said he seemed to gain power from it,” Jean-Claude said.

“I’m scrambling to figure out how to feed and control this thing, and we have someone who is made to take care of it, and you didn’t mention it to me sooner?”

“And if I had?” he said, simply.

I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it. If he had, what would I have done? “I’d have accused you of trying to set me up with London.”

“Since he did not wish to be captured by the ardeur again, I thought it wisest not to mention his talent. To raise the possibility of it would be, I felt, a betrayal of his trust. For it would raise the issue of his being food for the ardeur. He was most adamant against it, ma petite.”

“What’s the downside to being able to feed the ardeur like this?” I asked, looking back at the vampire kneeling at my feet.

“Everyone is eventually addicted to the ardeur, but for me, the addiction is immediate.”

“You’re addicted again?” I said.

“Yes.” His eyes were so peaceful, more peaceful than I’d ever seen them. He looked happier and more at home in his own skin than ever before. I looked up, and it was Nathaniel’s gaze that I caught. He looked solemn, eyes not peaceful at all.

“You always look happy at the beginning of an addiction,” Nathaniel said.

“What happens later?” I asked.

“You die.”

44

I DID TRY sniffing Travis’s neck, but he hit my radar as wounded antelope. Since I didn’t want to rip his throat out, I had to back off. Touching Pierce’s hand had been an electrifying experience. Shit. I made Noel take Travis to the hospital room in the back, so he could shift and heal the damage. I had to give my most solemn word that I would not bond with either Pierce or Haven, and bring disaster to their pride, while they were resting. I promised. I meant it. I wasn’t sure how to keep the promise, but I did mean it.

We all went to sit in the living room while we tried to get through our list of metaphysical emergencies before we had to get dressed for the ballet.

“We are running out of time, Jean-Claude,” Auggie said.

“Ma petite was able to free Requiem of an ardeur-related compulsion earlier today. We had thought to use the same technique to free you, Augustine. Are you saying that your freedom from the slavery of the ardeur can wait?”

“I need to send Octavius to fetch my clothes for this evening. He has expressed”—Auggie smiled—“reservations about my being here without him at my back. I came thinking I’d get my ashes hauled, and make a smash and grab on the local lions. Still might do the whole lion thing, but the rest didn’t work out like I planned.”

“You are not going to do the whole lion thing,” I said. I was on the love seat sitting between Micah and Jean-Claude. Nathaniel and Damian were on the floor at our feet. Damian was touching my leg, and that one touch helped me think. He’d promised not to do anything but help me stay calm. There would be a learning curve on Damian’s new power level, too. The grade on all of it seemed pretty damn steep.

Jean-Claude patted my knee, as if warning me to be calm. I was calm; Damian’s touch almost guaranteed that. I was also determined that our invitation to the Master of Chicago was not going to rain bad stuff all over our local werelions.

“Most of the werelions in the Midwest owe allegiance to my pride.”

“It’s not your pride,” I said, “even if your animal to call is the Rex of that pride. It’s his pride, or hers.”

“His,” Auggie said.

“Fine, but that doesn’t make it yours.”

Auggie glanced at Jean-Claude. “She believes that. Doesn’t she know the law?”

“Ma petite knows that in the vampire world all that my servants own is mine.”

I had known it, but I hadn’t made the logic jump. “It can’t be your pride, because if something happened to your lion to call, then you couldn’t hold the pride. If you can’t hold the group without the help of someone else, then it’s not yours, Auggie. Your lion dies and your hold on his pride dies with him.”

“Is that a threat?” he said, softly.

Damian squeezed my calf, and Jean-Claude squeezed my knee. Micah moved closer to me, sliding his arm across my shoulders, so that he was holding me and Jean-Claude, really. It didn’t seem to bother anyone but me.

“Not yet,” I said.

Damian laid his head in my lap. Jean-Claude stroked my leg, his way of saying, Be careful. Micah was as close as he could get to me. Nathaniel just cuddled more solidly between Jean-Claude and me, wrapping his arm around my leg, but laying his head on Jean-Claude’s knee. I’d never seen him do that before to the vampire. Jean-Claude petted his hair, absently, like you’d stroke a dog, as if it were very everyday. It wasn’t everyday, and I realized that Nathaniel was helping us negotiate. Auggie had proved that he liked men, maybe not as much as he liked women, but still…He’d remarked on Nathaniel’s hair, made a pass at Micah. Nathaniel wasn’t flirting, he was lying with his body. Lying that he and Jean-Claude had a closer relationship than they did. Would it bother Auggie? And if it did, which way would it bother him? Would it disturb him because it’s guy-on-guy sex, or would he be jealous? Hell, it might bother him both ways. A lot of men seemed conflicted about that sort of thing.

“Did you say that most of the prides in the Midwest owe you allegiance?” Micah said.

“Yes.”

“Vampires aren’t allowed to wage war on territories that don’t touch their own,” Micah said.

“I haven’t done anything to any other Masters of the City. Vampire law only covers how we treat each other’s animals to call. My lions haven’t tried to take over any land where the Master of the City had lions as his, or her, animal to call.” He looked at me, as if I’d like the “her” comment. Frankly, I was liking less and less about Auggie.

“So as long as you only take over prides that aren’t owned by vamps, you’re in the clear?” I said.

He nodded.

“If we hadn’t invited you into our territory, how would you have taken over Joseph’s pride?”

“Sent Pierce and Haven down on their own.”

“Then what, kill Joseph, and take over?”

“Joseph and his brother, yes.”

“But if lion is one of my animals to call, then since everything that I own belongs to Jean-Claude, you have to leave Joseph and his people alone, because they’ll belong to another master vampire.”

“I think you’ve already chosen a lion to call, Anita. Your reaction to Haven was pretty intense.”

“My reaction to Pierce is intense, too. I haven’t chosen between the two of them. The fact that they belong to you may be why I’m reacting to them. Or, like you said, my lioness is looking for something a little more dominant.”

“Justin’s coming to the ballet with us tonight,” Jason said, from the chair near the love seat.

Everyone looked at him. “Joseph’s brother?” I made it a question.

Jason nodded, then winced, pulling the collar of his leather jacket a little away from his neck. It wasn’t that cold in here, but he was still wearing his leather jacket. Why? If Auggie and his people hadn’t been there, I would have asked. Jason had said something about a report he had to make. What report?

“Take off the jacket, wolf,” Pierce said. “We can smell the wound.”

Jason looked at Jean-Claude. He nodded. Jason took the jacket off. He then turned so we could all see his neck. It was either the biggest hickey I’d ever seen, or something had tried to tear out half of his throat.

I tried to rise, but all the men pressed down just enough to let me know, Don’t. Jason came to us. Something had bitten him, but the teeth marks were like nothing I’d ever seen. “What the hell did that?”

Jason looked at his master.

“Not everyone who wishes to join us wishes to be your pomme de sang, ma petite. Some of the masters have brought people that they simply wish to trade. Jason was investigating one of them.” His voice held so little inflection that I knew it was the truth, but not all the truth.

“Hope the sex was good,” I said.

He grinned at me. “It was.”

Meng Die made a disgusted noise. She was leaning decoratively near the white fireplace.

“I thought you didn’t pimp your people out, Jean-Claude,” Auggie said.

“I didn’t order Jason to sleep with anyone. I asked him to get to know them better. His decision to have sex was just that, his decision.”

“What did you fuck?” Pierce asked. “I’ve never seen a bite like that.”

Jason flashed a grin in their direction. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Auggie reached up and laid a hand on Pierce’s where it lay on the couch back. A look of near pain passed over Pierce’s face. What did Auggie do when he touched his lions like that? Whatever it was, it wasn’t pleasant. It reminded me of a shock collar for a dog.

The fact that Auggie didn’t want Pierce to admit he didn’t know something meant we were still negotiating. Negotiation was over as far as I was concerned.

“Is Justin meeting us here?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jason said. He settled back on the floor, on the other side of Jean-Claude, because Meng Die had taken his chair. London was in the chair closest to me. Only Requiem had taken a chair closer to Auggie’s group. Or maybe he was farther away from me. Who knew with Requiem?

“If you liked Joseph’s brother he would have already been on your radar, Anita. Don’t let misplaced emotion trap you with someone not worthy of you,” Auggie said.

“I decide who’s worthy of me.”

“He is the strongest dominant the pride has, but he is not as strong as your Ulfric is. He is not the survivor that your Nimir-Raj is. Would you truly bind yourself to someone who does not lead his group, Anita? Your power chooses only the strongest.”

“It chose me,” Nathaniel said, from where he cuddled on the floor.

“Yes,” Auggie said, “there must be more to you than I can see.”

“Perhaps it is love,” Jean-Claude said.

Auggie looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Perhaps what ma petite needs is not strength of arms and will alone. Perhaps there are other needs to be met.”

Auggie smiled, and for a minute he was the friendly guy who had first stepped into our living room. “You are a romantic at heart, Jean-Claude. It was always your weakness.”

“And my strength,” Jean-Claude said.

Auggie shook his head. “I gave up such things long ago.”

“How sad for you.”

The two vampires stared at each other. It was a long, long look. It was Auggie who turned away, and put his gaze on me. “You come off as hard, but you’re a romantic, too, Anita. I don’t think you have it in you to bind yourself to someone just for power and safety. That’s what we did, Jean-Claude and me. We chose our servants, and our animals, for power. There are dozens, hundreds that come up on the radar over the centuries, but you wait. You wait until you are either desperate enough for the choice to be forced, or you find just the right one to make you powerful.” He motioned at all the men. “Since you don’t choose, your power chooses for you. I must say, it’s got high standards. Since you don’t know how to force your power to choose the one you want it to choose, I don’t think you have the ability to force your power to choose.”

I couldn’t keep my nervousness down. My pulse rate sped up, just a little, and I had to swallow. Auggie would notice it. He would know that his little talk had hit home. He was right. I’d never been able to force the ardeur to choose, or not to choose.

“She forced the ardeur to free me,” Requiem said, from his chair.

“She fought her beast not to choose Haven,” Micah said.

“I think ma petite is finding her footing with her powers, Augustine.”

“Do you truly wish to waste such a powerful alliance with someone who does not rule a pride?”

“Justin is part of Joseph’s male coalition,” I said. “They rule the pride together.”

“But he is still not the dominant to match your wolf or your leopard king, Anita. It seems a shame to settle for a prince when you’ve only bedded kings.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Because he was right, in one way; Justin didn’t do it for me, or he hadn’t before this. Maybe my lioness would like him better than I would? Part of me was hoping yes, and part of me didn’t want to have to choose at all. If I was a master vampire then I should be able to choose, or not choose. If my power was more vampire than lycanthrope, then I had choices. If my power was more fuzzy than dead, then I was screwed.

45

WE GOT DRESSED in record time. I just gave myself over to the makeup and the primping. There wasn’t time for me to argue. The outfit looked totally impractical, but the corset top was a dancer’s corset. It meant it couldn’t be laced as tight as Jean-Claude might like it, never tight enough to impede breathing, or movement. Jean-Claude told me I’d see similar corsets on the dancers tonight. The shoes had been dyed to match the shiny black of the dress, but they, too, were dancers’ high heels. Made for ballroom dancing, actually, not ballet. When I’d seen the open-toed sandals I’d protested, hell no. There was no way to dance in them, I’d said, but damn me, Jean-Claude had been right. The shoes were actually comfortable.

The corset’s piping was made of tiny diamonds, honest-to-God diamonds. The necklace he put around my neck was platinum and more diamonds. I’d almost asked how much money I was wearing, but decided that I really didn’t want to know. It would have just made me more nervous, and that I did not need.

Jean-Claude’s opera coat flowed like an elegant black cloak, but much more modern, with a short raised collar to frame his face, and the gleaming white of his shirt collar. The cravat at his neck was pierced by a platinum and diamond stickpin to match my necklace. His vest fit him like a glove because it was laced up the back; a corset vest. When he first suggested a corset top for me, I’d made the mistake of saying, “I’ll wear a corset when you do.” You’d think I’d know better by now. He’d just smiled and said yes. In fact he’d commissioned vests of various styles for all the men who would wear one. Impeccably tailored black slacks and gleaming black dress shoes completed his outfit. Oh, and a scattering of diamonds across the vest like stars tossed across a night sky. When I’d asked him why not make his vest have the same diamond pattern as my corset, he’d replied, “It is not a prom, ma petite.”

All the other men were in black tuxes, some with tails, some just tailored. The only difference was the color of the vests or jewelry accessories. It was damned subdued for one of Jean-Claude’s parties.

The stretch limo had dropped us at the door, all eight of us. Which was why we needed the stretch. We’d done the gauntlet of flashing lights, cameras, microphones. They could call it a red carpet. It always felt like a gauntlet to me. Something to be endured, except instead of running as fast as you could, you had to smile and answer questions.

Jean-Claude always fielded the yelled questions and photo opportunities like a pro. I’d gotten better at clinging to his arm, and not glaring at the cameras. Occasionally you’d even catch me smiling. Everyone else was treated like entourage. You didn’t yell questions at the entourage.

Normally, I enjoyed the Fox Theatre. It had been built in the 1920s as a movie theatre, but no movie theatre I knew had Chinese Foo dogs with glowing eyes at the bottom of a sweep of marble staircase. The interior was lush and gilt, full of carved Hindu gods, and animals from anywhere that qualified as exotic. Normally, I loved gazing at it all. Tonight, it was shelter from the storm.

We entered at the side entrance, the Fox club entrance. It was private, with valet parking, and a nice restaurant if you made reservations. People and corporations paid thousands of dollars a year to have a reserved box at the theatre. To my knowledge Jean-Claude didn’t have a permanent box, but for tonight he had two reserved. The Fox club box seats actually ran out of room before they ran out of VIPs to seat. Jean-Claude had said that some of the visiting masters were actually on the floor with the peons, but in a special reserved front row section, along with many local celebrities.

The media frenzy might have been less if one of the Masters of the City coming hadn’t been the Master of Hollywood, and his entourage. Hollywood likes Hollywood, and they had followed him out here. Someone had said that his newest girlfriend was some hot young star, in a new hit series I’d never heard of. When you work an average of sixty to a hundred hours a week, you don’t watch much television. Funny, that. Apparently, the media was here as much for her as for anyone else. She must have been a very hot property indeed.

There were too many vampires in the VIP section to have dinner beforehand. It raised too many questions about what everyone would eat. Jean-Claude had avoided the problem by simply saying the restaurant was closed for that night. The management of the Fox was happy with that. Yeah, vamps were legal, but St. Louis is still part of the Bible Belt. No one was sure how people would take it if someone got pictures of vampires feasting on humans in the Fox club theatre. Just better to avoid the problem. Once we got to Danse Macabre, all bets would be off, but then people expected decadence at a vampire-run dance club. Not only expected it—were disappointed if they didn’t see at least some salacious activities. I knew for a fact that some of the “naughty” impromptu scenes at Danse Macabre were very planned. The trick was to give the customers a thrill, not scare them to death, or make them run for a cop.

We finally got to our seats, Jean-Claude and I on one side of the little table in the middle, and Damian and Micah on the other side. Asher, Nathaniel, Jason, and Requiem took the box next to ours. Claudia and Lisandro, both in the bodyguards’ black-on-black tuxes, stood near the boxes. Wicked and Truth were in the hallway leading into the box area. We had other bodyguards scattered throughout, because we’d refused to let the visiting masters bring more than two guards per, which meant we had to make certain they were safe. There were uniformed cops everywhere outside, as there usually were when you had a big event at the Fox. But it was more tonight; no one in St. Louis wanted some right-wing crazy to kill one of the master vamps in front of a television crew. No one wanted anyone to die period, but let’s be honest, no one wanted that much bad publicity. Us, either, so there were wererats, werehyenas, werewolves, scattered throughout the building. The main difference was that the police were watching for hatemongers trying to kill the monsters, and our guards knew that the other job was to make sure none of the visiting monsters got out of hand. Jean-Claude was pretty sure they’d behave, but none of us was betting someone’s life on it. Nor was he willing to risk ruining all this amazingly good publicity for vampires by some incident now at the last performance. Best behavior tonight, or else.

I was shielding as hard as I could. I did not want my abilities, not as Jean-Claude’s servant, necromancer, or whatever the hell I was turning into, getting in the way. But some things are too powerful to hide from. Some things are too much a part of who you are, not to feel them. The lights dimmed, and I felt…vampires. Felt them through the shields. Felt them through Damian’s sudden reach across the table, so that he could help me shield, help me control myself, help me not be overwhelmed. Jean-Claude had my other hand, but the tension in him wasn’t helpful. He was excited.

I took my hand out of his with a smile, and clung to Damian. I needed something cold and calm, not nervous and excited. Damian wasn’t excited, he was scared. I’d been nervous about all the masters coming to town, but not the ballet, itself. It was just a ballet, just a performance. The reactions of the two vampires let me know that maybe I should have worried about it more.

I glanced at Asher sitting so close in the next box. His froth of hair hid most of him, but there was a tension to him, too. What was about to happen?

I heard something, though that wasn’t exactly it. It was as if I heard it with something deeper inside my head than my ears, or maybe felt it, and my mind could only translate what was happening into sound. I don’t think they actually made any noise, but I heard a soft rustling, almost like birds.

I dropped the tiniest edge of my shields, like peeking over it in the midst of battle. I was holding hands with a vampire, surrounded by them, and sometimes when I was that wrapped up in vamps it was hard to sense other vampires. But not this one; this one was someone I didn’t know. It was vampire, but unlike anything that had ever touched me before.

I glanced at Micah on the other side of Damian. Micah was shaking his head like a fly was buzzing him. He looked at me. “What’s happening?”

I shook my head. “Vampire shit.” Beyond that I truly didn’t know. I looked over and found Nathaniel’s face peaceful, waiting, as the lights dimmed. Jason’s face lost its fight, too. I glanced at Damian, and his eyes were wide, a little panicked almost, then his face went peaceful, as well. I looked at Jean-Claude. He whispered, “He will try to make humans of us all.”

I actually understood what he meant by that. The vampires at Guilty Pleasures and Danse Macabre would sometimes use group mind tricks to make performers appear in the midst of the human audience. Magic. Whatever vampire was doing this was trying not just to roll the human audience, but everyone. He was trying to cloud the minds of the other master vamps, so that his “performers” could appear like magic.

The theatre had gone eerily silent. There was no rustling, no movement below us. The humans had all had their minds rolled. Next would come the wereanimals, and then the vampires would fall. At least most of them would. I had never felt anything like this.

I drew my hand out of Damian’s; he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept staring straight ahead. I glanced behind at our bodyguards, and found Claudia staggering. Lisandro was just standing there, all peaceful. Shit, so much for the guards.

I looked back at Micah. His eyes were starting to unfocus. I grabbed his hand, and thought, No. No way. I pulsed a little power down his hand. My leopard flowed down my hand like warm water, spilling over his skin. He looked at me, eyes wide.

“Power up our cats,” I whispered.

He nodded, closed his eyes, and I felt my leopard slip away, and follow his down the metaphysical lines to the other leopards. We had two leopards among the bodyguards.

“Ma petite, what are you doing?”

“Fighting back,” I said.

My leopard began to swell upward, and I reached out to Richard. He was there in the crowd below with his date, a prof from a local college. He couldn’t afford to be outed, but we couldn’t afford not to have him here. He’d impressed the hell out of the prof by having tickets to tonight’s gala event. I brushed his energy, and he whispered through my mind, “What’s happening?”

I called my wolf, and the leopard quieted, but I could feel Micah reaching out further, finding the leopards. My wolf rose, and I saw through Richard’s eyes. His human date stared at the stage, waiting, unseeing. My wolf touched his, and I thought what I wanted him to do, and I felt his energy, our wolves circle out from him, seeking. Where our energy touched, the wolves woke.

Having the vamp roll the Masters of the City was impressive, but rolling the guards was dangerous. I didn’t like that at all. I looked behind, and found Claudia still struggling. She fell to her knees, struggling hard not to lose herself to the power. I had no tie to the rats, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Besides, my wolf was starting to rise. I didn’t need that.

I got out of my chair and knelt beside Claudia. Her eyes were terrified. She reached out. I grabbed her hand. I thought, Power. Her eyes cleared, and she gripped my hand so hard it almost hurt. Suddenly I felt Raphael. Not like I could feel Richard, or Micah, but I felt his power, like a scent on the air. Through Claudia’s hand, his rat’s hand, I offered power. Power enough to free his rats, who were most of our guards.

He took it, used it, and I felt it like a rock thrown into a pool. Out and out, leopards, wolves, rats, awake, alert. Pissed.

If there’d been a werehyena close enough, I’d have tried with them, too. Helping the rats had quieted my beasts. The power was awake, but they weren’t trying to tear me apart. We were all waiting for the big, bad vampire to appear. We knew he was out there. We could feel him.

Jean-Claude’s power flexed, suddenly and so strongly that it bent me over, nearly sent me to the floor. Claudia caught me. “You okay?”

I nodded.

Jean-Claude was waking up his vampires, but he needed my necromancy to do it. He’d borrowed without asking, but I was okay with that. There wasn’t going to be time to ask nicely about a lot of things tonight.

I glanced at the box on the other side, away from Asher’s box. It was Samuel and his family. Samuel looked at me. Thea glanced in our direction. His sons were lost to the magic, as were his two merpeople at his back. Whoever this was, was going to succeed at rolling everybody but the masters themselves and maybe one or two powerful servants. Impressive power, that. Impressive and scary.

Claudia helped me stand, and the curtains opened behind us. It wasn’t Truth or Wicked, but a vamp I didn’t know. He was tall, and meaty in an athletic sort of way, not fat, just physically bigger than I liked my men. Tall and broad the way Richard was, but unlike Richard, this one knew he was big and liked it. He moved in a glide that was already a kind of dance. Most of his body was nude, just enough covered by his leotard to not get him arrested. His upper body was beautiful even by my standards. Careless blond curls covered to just below his ears, framing a face that was more handsome than beautiful. He put all that beauty into his face so that the gaze of it was like a blow, or that’s what he tried for. Claudia made a small, helpless sound. He’d rolled her, that quick.

I dug my fingers into her arm, and that didn’t free her. I looked into his pale eyes, and felt the weight of his power. It said, See me, I am beautiful, I am desirable, you want me.

I shook my head, and had to flex power like unsheathing a blade not to fall into that gaze. Auggie hadn’t been able to roll me, but this one could. I actually dropped my gaze, rather than fight it. The moment my eyes weren’t being bored into by that pale gaze, I could think. Jesus, he was good.

I saw his hand coming. Claudia tried to stop him. I think he just looked at her, and she stopped moving. Lisandro tried, too, but again, a glance, and they seemed confused. The hesitation was enough. He had the time he needed to touch me. Touch makes it all worse, or better. He wanted me to look up, and I did.

I met his gaze, and again, his face was like a beautiful weapon. He leaned over me, his face painted with the stage makeup. He leaned in, as if he’d kiss me, and some part of me that was still sane knew that if he kissed me, it would be bad.

I smelled Jean-Claude’s cologne, and the scent of Richard’s neck. Jean-Claude had opened the marks wider. It made me startle, and take a step back, away from the blond.

I reached backward, and Jean-Claude took my hand. The touch of my master, and I was proof against the pale-eyed blond.

He smiled, an arrogant curl of lips. The smile said it all: I almost had you. He was right. He had almost had me. And still there was a breathing presence of power out there in the theatre, flowing over the crowd, and that power wasn’t the blond in front of us. There was still something even more powerful waiting in the wings. Something even more powerful that we’d invited to our town. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, what had we done?

46

THE BLOND FLUNG himself over our heads, and out into the air. The air was full of vampires. They had flown up and over the audience, and in that instant the vampire let them go. He released his hold on the audience and they were left gasping, shrieking. Not at the fact that their minds had been messed about with, because they didn’t know that, but at the vampires suddenly appearing above them like magic.

Jean-Claude helped me back to my seat. I needed the help; my knees were shaky. I looked around at all of us, and only the vampires hid their fear. The rest of us were wide-eyed and a little pale.

I leaned into Jean-Claude and whispered, “Did they do that every show?”

He shook his head, and spoke mind-to-mind. Yeah, maybe some of the other masters could overhear us, but we knew for dead certain they’d hear us whisper. “He bespelled the humans and some of the wereanimals, but he did not try for the vampires. He left them alone.”

“Why now,” I whispered, “why tonight?”

Of course, he didn’t know. That didn’t make me feel any better, strangely.

Claudia asked permission to check on the other guards. I gave it. I, like Claudia, wanted to see for sure that the other guards were up and running.

Lisandro was cursing very softly under his breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over, like he said it with every breath.

He’d taken the words right out of my mouth.

The vampires danced on the air, at least a dozen of them. They defied gravity, and made it look effortless. It was beautiful, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I was too scared.

The blond hovered in front of our box for a moment. He blew me a kiss. I smiled sweetly and gave him a one-fingered salute. He laughed, and flew away.

Other vampires flew low over the crowd, and they blew kisses at other women and other men. There were three or four women among them. It was sort of the reverse of most ballet companies, where there seemed to be more women than men.

The drapes at the back of our box opened, and it was Auggie. I got a glimpse of Pierce and Octavius on the other side of the curtain with Wicked and Truth. Auggie didn’t look any happier than I felt.

He leaned over us, smiling, pretending he’d just come to say hi. “He did not do this in Chicago.”

“Who didn’t? Who’s doing this?” I asked.

“Merlin,” Auggie said, “troupe leader, dance master. The blond is Adonis. He used to be Belle’s. Now he belongs to Merlin.”

I felt that power breathing back on the air, like the smell of smoke drifting through the forest, when you don’t know yet from which direction the flames will come, but you know they’re on the way.

Auggie touched my bare shoulder. His power slid over my skin like a fall of silk. He offered his hand to Jean-Claude. “You rolled me; use it now.”

Jean-Claude took his hand. To a casual viewer, they were shaking hands. Auggie’s hand tensed on my bare shoulder, touching the edge of scars where a vamp had once worried at my collarbone like a dog with a rat. I wasn’t entirely sure what Auggie meant for us to do. But Jean-Claude was sure, and you only need one driver on the metaphysical bus. Jean-Claude opened the marks between him and me, opened them wide. If it had been me, I couldn’t have opened them that wide without involving at least Richard, but Jean-Claude had centuries of control under his belt. He used his free hand to touch my arm, and that was all we needed.

It was as if he pulled aside a curtain, a thick, velvet curtain. I could almost feel it sliding through my body, and then my necromancy flowed out from me like a chill wind. His power met mine, and the cold grew. But not the cold that blankets and coats would cure. This was the cold of the grave, spilled down our skins. Jean-Claude took that cold power and poured it down our hands and into Auggie. His power burst over Auggie, sudden enough that he had to close his eyes. His power was warmer than Jean-Claude’s, warmer than my necromancy. He tasted not just of vampire, but of lion. More than any vampire I’d ever touched, he was also his beast. Interesting.

His cold warm power rose up, then spilled down his body to meet ours. It was a rush of power that tightened my throat, clenched my hand tight on Jean-Claude’s. Only feasting on Auggie earlier let me know how small this power rush was compared to what we could do with him.

My lion tried to rise to roll his power. It was Auggie who soothed the lion, like a hand to stroke her quiet. But his power, far into me, found something else to rise. The ardeur started to flare, and it was Jean-Claude who rode it down, dampened those fires. He took the power, firm and hard, in his hand, the way he could suddenly take charge during lovemaking. You go from it being a team sport, to suddenly having him on top, and holding you still, so he can do exactly what he wants, in exactly the way he wants it, giving you more pleasure than you could have found on your own. He rode the power, and Auggie and I were just along for the ride.

The audience below us was oohing, aahing, giving little fake screams. It sounded like a crowd at a fireworks display, except this display was whirling, floating, diving bodies. I watched the dancers distantly. Their beauty no longer moved me. The power that Jean-Claude was building was the only thing that truly touched me.

But I heard the rustling of birds again; that got through the power haze. Merlin was about to pour power over the crowd again. He was going to hide the dancers, so they would vanish again, poof.

Jean-Claude used our power like a slap, a feint to let the other vampire know to back off. I heard birds flutter, as if they’d been disturbed in their sleep. I whispered, “Birds,” and I couldn’t tell if I said it out loud or not.

“His animal to call,” Auggie whispered back, and that was a voice in my head.

I felt the power pull back, as if this Merlin had taken a deep breath. I had a moment to think he’d gotten the message, but the next moment that breath came back at us. Power poured over the audience. I felt the humans snuff out like matches, one by one. Vampires are allowed group hypnotism, because group mind tricks aren’t permanent. Once the power is over, no harm, no foul. But this felt different. This felt like something that would linger, and change what it had touched.

“What’s he doing?” and that was aloud.

Jean-Claude’s voice breathed through my mind, “He is going to try to take us.”

“What is he doing to the crowd?”

“He’s trying to take us, all of us,” Auggie said, “and that’s too much power for the humans.”

“He’ll own them,” I said.

“No,” Jean-Claude said, “they are ours.” He didn’t try to fight for the minds of the crowd; he went straight for the source of our problem. He used the power of the three of us to smash into that mind.

The power staggered, as if we’d hit him, then the sound of birds filled the theatre. Twittering, crying, fluttering; the sound of hundreds of birds. The sound was so real that I searched the theatre for the flock, but there was nothing to see.

Nathaniel said, “I hear birds.”

I didn’t have time to wonder why he could hear them, too, because the birds were upon us. Feathers everywhere, touching, beating at me, trying to get me to move, to run. Jean-Claude’s hand had a death grip on mine. Auggie’s fingers dug into my shoulder, and the pain helped. It helped chase back the beating wings. I remembered the last time that a vampire’s power had beat against my body like wings. Beat against me, not to frighten or make me run, but to be let inside. The power had cried in the dark, to be let inside me. Obsidian Butterfly, Master of the City of Albuquerque, had found her way inside me. She had filled my eyes with the blackness between suns, and the cold light of stars. She had also shared her power with me. That power came again, as if the touch of wings had called it.

Auggie cursed under his breath, his hand desperate on my shoulder. Jean-Claude said, “Ma petite, do not…” But whatever I wasn’t to do he never said, because Obsidian Butterfly’s gift dropped my shields and cut me open for Merlin’s power. That metaphysical wind of wings and twittering calls poured inside me. The power poured inside me and I felt Merlin’s triumph like the scream of some huge bird of prey. He thought he’d broken my shields, broken our shields, but he was wrong.

Jean-Claude and Auggie clung to me, trying to shore up what they, too, thought was a break in our power. But it wasn’t a breach, it was a mouth.

It felt as if my body were a cave, a fleshy, soft cave, and the birds that I had heard and felt poured inside me, as if they’d found a home. I swear I could feel the brush of feathers, tiny bodies, fluttering, diving, filling me. Merlin’s power poured into me, and tried to find Jean-Claude and Auggie. The power tried to find a way out of me and into them. Merlin poured more and more power into me, and I swallowed it.

Auggie and Jean-Claude clung to me, afraid to let go, afraid not to let go, I think. So much power, so much that it began to leak through into the other two vampires. The moment it touched them, they both understood. Merlin wasn’t going to break me, we were going to eat him.

He must have figured it out at the same time, because he tried to stop the power, just cut it off. But I had the taste of him, and I didn’t want it to stop.

The torrents of invisible birds slowed, but didn’t stop. Obsidian Butterfly’s power called to them, helped me know sweet words to use, to coax that power. The power kept coming, and I felt the flash of fear. It was sweet, and good, and I longed to taste the sweat on his skin. And I could, I licked down his skin, where he watched from the shadows.

He stared at me with dark eyes that held crimson like a pinpoint tear inside them. I’d seen eyes like that before. Never were human, were you? I thought.

He tried to break the contact, and he couldn’t do it. Not with Auggie and Jean-Claude hooked up to me. He was big and bad and powerful, but he was not a Master of the City. He was not two Masters of the City, and he didn’t know what the hell I was; in that moment neither did I.

I smelled jasmine and rain. I smelled a tropical night that hadn’t existed for thousands on thousands of years. A voice rode the smell of rain. The Mother of All Darkness whispered, “I know what you are, necromancer.”

I didn’t want to ask, but it was as if I couldn’t stop my mouth from forming the word. “What?”

“Mine.”

47

I SCREAMED, AND I shut it down. I shut it all down. No more birds from Merlin. But in my panic, I shut down the tie with Auggie and Jean-Claude. For an instant, it was just me and her inside my head. I felt rain on my face, cool and warm. The moon rode full and bright, and I was too tall, and too male. I thought it was Jean-Claude’s memory, but the hand I could see was too rough, too dark. Whose memory was I trapped in?

“Mine,” she said again.

Oh, yeah, her. So why was I inside the head of the man she was about to eat? Why wasn’t I inside her body?

Something moved in the moonlight. Something huge and pale, like some muscular ghost, sliding along the ground toward me. The head moved, and the eyes caught the moon, shining at me. I stared into the face of that great cat, and knew that nothing like it had walked the earth for thousands of years. “Cave lion,” I thought, “huh, they were striped.” The cat crouched to spring.

A wolf appeared between me and it. A white wolf with a dark saddle and head. Me, my wolf. This was a dream, which meant I was unconscious. Weird.

The wolf’s hackles rose, and it gave that low, bass growl that all the canids use when they aren’t kidding anymore. The wolf looked fragile beside that crouching figure. We were out of our weight class by a few hundred pounds.

I smelled wolf. I smelled pine, and forest loam. I smelled things that never grew here in this land, where the Mother of All Darkness had taken Merlin, or whoever he’d been once. I smelled the trees of home, the earth of pack land. I smelled the soft musk of wolf.

The cave lion tensed, and I knew this was it. The wolf braced for the spring, and the body I was wearing readied a spear that would not help.

Something touched my hand. I grabbed for it, without thinking, and the night exploded into white, hot light. Light, and pain, a great deal of pain.

Voices. “Let go, Anita, let go!”

Hands touching the pain. I tried to jerk away. It felt as if the blood in my hand had been replaced with molten metal. I knew that pain. A different voice, “Anita, let go!”

“Open your hand, Anita, just open your hand.” Micah’s voice.

My left hand was a lump of agony. I couldn’t even feel my fingers. How could I open it, if I couldn’t feel it? All I could feel was pain. It made me open my eyes. My vision was ruined, spotted, gray and black and white, as if I’d looked into a bright flash of light.

I had a moment to see the ring of faces: Micah, Nathaniel, Jason, Graham, and Richard. I saw them, but all my attention went to the agony that was my left hand. I looked at it, and on the outside it was fine. A thin gold chain trailed out of my fist. My hand looked fine, but I knew it wasn’t.

There were heavy drapes behind us. We were still at the Fox. They’d just carried me out of the box, and put me somewhere where the audience couldn’t see. I knew why there were no vampires kneeling with us. The Mother of All Darkness had tried to take me, again, and some fool had given me a cross to hold.

“Open your hand, Anita, please.” Micah whispered it again, stroking my hair.

I found my voice, and whispered, “Can’t.”

Richard cradled my hand in his, and started trying to pry my fingers open. He peeled a finger up. I whimpered, then bit my lip. If I started making noises, I’d end up screaming, or weeping, loudly. They’d managed to hide me away from the crowd. If I started screaming that would all be for nothing.

“I’m sorry, Anita, I’m sorry.” Richard whispered it over and over as he pried my hand open.

“Curse if you want to,” Jason said.

I shook my head. Bad burns hurt too much for cursing to make anything better. I forced myself to feel past the pain. I could still feel my hand, but distant, as if the hand around the pain were almost asleep. The pain overrode everything else—as if the nerves just couldn’t handle it all so they transmitted the important parts, that it fucking hurt, all else was secondary.

Richard made a sound and it made me glance at him. The look on his face made me look where he was looking—my hand.

Most of the blisters had burst, so that my palm and fingers were a mass of ruptured skin and clear fluid. But the glint of gold in my palm was buried inside the mass of torn flesh. The cross had melted into my hand.

I looked away then; I didn’t want to think about what was going to be needed to clean it up.

Nathaniel leaned over me, blocking my view, which panicked me. I pushed him away, so I could see what Richard was doing by my hand. No way was that cross coming out without medical help. Painkillers, good painkillers, yeah, that was the ticket.

I reached my good hand back up to Nathaniel. He leaned over so I could whisper, “Doctor.” I whispered because I was afraid if I talked any louder, I’d start yelling.

He nodded. “Dr. Lillian is on her way.”

I nodded. Not caring how the doc was getting into the event. For once in my life, I just wanted the help. Most pain you can ride out, but burns just seem made to eat the world. The pain eats everything else. You can’t think about anything but the pain. The grinding, biting, aching, nauseating pain. I’d had burns before, but this one was going to be the worst. Weeks of recovery, and depending on how deep the cross was embedded, maybe permanent damage to the hand. Shit, fucking shit.

Dr. Lillian came into sight. I didn’t recognize her at first, and it wasn’t just the pain. Makeup had softened her face, brought out what she must have looked like ten years ago. The soft blue of the dress complemented the soft gray of her hair, and the pastel shades of lipstick and eye shadow. I didn’t look at her and think, She must have been lovely a decade ago. I looked up at her and thought, She is lovely now.

She shook her head. “What am I going to do with you people tonight?”

I swallowed hard. “Didn’t do it on purpose.”

She lifted the long skirt enough so she could kneel comfortably. “I would say not.” Her face was neutral, pleasant, a good doctor’s face. She started to reach for my hand, and I jerked away.

She leaned back, giving me a little smile. “If you promise to do everything I tell you to do, exactly the way I tell you to do it, I’ll shoot you up with a painkiller before I touch your hand.”

I nodded.

“Your word of honor that you won’t argue with me, Anita. That you’ll just do what I tell you to do?”

If I hadn’t been out of my head with pain, I might have thought harder about her wording, but all I could think about was the pain. I nodded, and whispered, “I promise.”

She smiled at me. “Good.” She looked behind her. Claudia came into view, kneeling so the other woman could whisper to her. Claudia nodded, stood, and left.

Lillian turned away to get the shot ready. Normally, I made a fuss about needles. I was almost as phobic of needles as I was of flying. But tonight, I wasn’t complaining. I was too busy fighting off the urge to start screaming, Make it stop, make it stop.

Lillian made Richard move, so she could kneel by my injured hand. Micah cupped my face so I couldn’t see the needle. He knew how I felt about them. I let him do it, but I wasn’t sure that I’d have cared tonight. I felt the pressure of the needle, then it was as if she shot hot water directly into my veins. I could feel it spreading liquid through my body. It was the oddest sensation. I’d never had anything that I could trace through my veins like that. My upper body flushed with heat. Then it was hard to concentrate, and I was dizzy. Even lying flat, I was dizzy. I started to ask if something was wrong, then the pain just washed away. The drugs bathed the inside of my upper body in hot water, and the pain just washed away.

Lillian leaned over me. “How do you feel, Anita?”

I managed a smile, and knew it was probably goofy. “Doesn’t hurt now.”

“Good,” she said, smiling. She looked at Richard. “I think you need to go back to your date, Richard.”

He shook his head. “I’m staying here.”

“You’re Clark Kent tonight, Ulfric, not Superman. You have to go back to your date and pretend you’re a mild-mannered science teacher. I’ll take care of Anita.”

Richard glanced at us all. “Are they staying?”

“One of them will be,” Lillian said, “but they aren’t hiding what they are, Ulfric. The price of hiding is that you must stay hidden. Now, go back before the woman starts to look for you.”

He started to argue.

“Don’t make me be cruel about this, Ulfric,” Lillian said.

“Go,” I said, and my voice sounded strange. “Go, Richard, go.”

He gave me a look that was full of such conflict, even pain. But tonight I didn’t have any time for anyone’s pain but mine.

“I’m sorry,” he said. I wasn’t sure what he was sorry about. That he had to go? That he had another date? That he was still hiding in his Clark Kent disguise? Or, maybe, that it was his cross embedded in my hand. The cross I’d given him for Christmas once. Yeah, that might need a sorry.

48

THEY SPREAD A tablecloth across me and another under my arm. Apparently, Requiem had “charmed” them out of the restaurant staff. He’d kept his eyes averted from me, as if he feared the cross would flare to life.

Lillian had Micah and Nathaniel distract me, though the drugs did a lot of the distracting for them. I was afraid it would hurt, but it was like the fear couldn’t hold on to me, or I couldn’t hold on to it. Jason pressed down on my arm. I started to protest. Nathaniel kissed me, hard. The kiss swallowed my small noises.

There was a sharp, abrupt tug on my hand. I cried out, and Nathaniel ate the sound as he did sometimes during sex. A scream lost in a kiss.

I could feel them doing something to my hand. Wrapping it in something. Nathaniel drew back from the kiss, his mouth smeared with my lipstick. He put a finger over my lips, and I fought to make only small whimpering sounds. It wasn’t so much that it hurt, it was almost as if my body knew it was hurt, and wanted to react to it. But every time I tried to concentrate on the pain, it just slipped away. Maybe it seemed weird to try to concentrate on it. I guess I was trying to fight the drugs, stupid of me. But I couldn’t just slip away. I couldn’t not fight, even when it wasn’t good for me.

Nathaniel smiled down at me, as if he knew what I was doing. He probably did. He moved his finger back from my mouth. I nodded at him to let him know I understood. We were trying not to attract attention. Sure.

I looked down and found that my hand was wrapped in gauze, like a pristine version of the mummy’s hand. I got a flash of fresh blood on the tablecloths before they were bundled up. I tried to care about how we’d explain the fresh blood, but I couldn’t finish caring, before it floated away. It should have felt good, to be so relaxed, but I knew that this was a night when Jean-Claude needed me, everyone needed me. The Mother of All Darkness was still out there. What would they do if she came back and I wasn’t there? Fear tried to swell again, and it didn’t last. I couldn’t hold on to any one thought, or emotion. It was like trying to row a boat in the fog. You knew what direction you wanted to go. You’d get a glimpse of the shore, and row your hardest, then the fog slipped back over you, and when it cleared again, the shore was somewhere else. As much as the pain would have distracted me, I’d have been more functional with that than the drugs. But the burn had hurt so much, so very much. I’d wanted it to stop.

Someone picked me up, and it woke me. Though I wasn’t sure I’d exactly been asleep, passed out maybe. Nathaniel was carrying me. The sleeves of his white shirt showed, and I was covered by a black tux jacket. His, probably. I was vaguely proud of myself for figuring it out.

I looked around for Micah and it was as if Nathaniel understood. “Micah is going to sit with Asher, so that neither box will be empty.” He started down the steps with me in his arms.

Requiem appeared over his shoulder, following us. Lisandro was beside him. I looked down the stairs, and caught a glimpse of Doc Lillian, before the dizziness became too much. What the hell had she given me?

I lost some more time, because the next thing I knew we were all the way down and stepping out under the covered awning outside the Fox club’s private entrance. I got a glimpse of Wicked standing beside the valet attendant. The attendant’s face was blank and peaceful. Vampire mind tricks to make sure no one remembered us. One-on-one mind tricks were illegal, technically, partially because of shit like this. That a vampire could persuade a person that the bad things hadn’t happened. It made witness testimony a bitch.

Fredo was holding the door to the limo as if he were a real chauffeur and not a walking weapons store. Nathaniel crawled inside with me in his arms. He laid me gently on the backseat, and lifted the tux jacket off me. Doc Lillian knelt beside me. She touched my face, and tried to get me to follow her fingers. I don’t think I did really well at it.

She smiled at me. “I dosed you like you were one of us, and you’re not. Whatever you are becoming, it’s not lycanthrope.”

I frowned at her. “What?”

“The morphine should have worked out of your system by now, and it hasn’t. It won’t be four to ten hours like a human, but two, at least two.” She shook her head. “Sometimes we all forget that you are still mostly human.”

“Morphine,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes, Anita, morphine. If the master that tried to take us all renews his attack, without you, I don’t think Jean-Claude can take him.”

Did she think that all that happened had been Merlin’s doing? Did she not know about the Mother of All Darkness? It seemed like I should explain it to her, but I couldn’t hold all my thoughts in a row long enough to do it.

“We need you back with us now.”

I nodded, then closed my eyes, because it made the inside of my head fuzzier for a moment. “Agreed,” I whispered, “how?” I opened my eyes, and fought to focus on that lovely face, the gray eyes that looked blue tonight with the dress and the eye shadow.

“Call the munin, Anita. It will clear your mind, and heal much of this damage.”

I frowned at her. I must have heard her wrong. “Call munin, now?”

She nodded. “Raina could heal this.”

I closed my eyes and fought, fought hard to gather my thoughts and explain why this was such a bad idea. Munin were the ancestral spirits of the wolf pack. But they could be a lot more “lively” than just normal ancestor worship. Especially if you had psychic ability, or, most yummy, talent with the dead, the munin could be much, much more lively. Raina was the old lupa of the pack. I’d killed her because she was trying to kill me. The munin could “possess” people who had the talent for it. I’d become her favorite ride. I’d spent a long, long weekend in Tennessee with my spiritual teacher, Marianne, learning how to control the munin in general, and Raina in specific. Micah and Nathaniel had gone with me to “help” me deal with it. I’d asked Richard first, wolf business and all, but he had flatly refused. Raina was dead. He wanted nothing more to do with her. Neither did I, but I didn’t have a choice.

She’d been a sexual sadist, but she could also heal with sex. It didn’t have to be full-blown sex, she just liked it that way. I’d tapped into her power a few times to save lives, but the cost had been high. Her memories alone were worth avoiding. The ardeur wasn’t normally a thing of healing, and Jean-Claude had speculated that the fact that I could heal with sex and metaphysics might be more because of Raina’s munin than vampire powers. It was almost as if the more often I was used by, or borrowed magic from, someone else, the more likely it became that their magic would become part of my arsenal. Raina had played with me enough that it had somehow effected the ardeur, or that was the theory. Why not use the ardeur to heal the hand? Healing with the ardeur was catch-as-catch-can; sometimes it worked without your wanting it to work, and sometimes it didn’t work at all. I did my best to explain it out loud. “Not sure I can control her, like this. Bad, if she’s in charge.”

“You are badly hurt, Anita. If you were truly vampire, then you’d need more blood. A lot more than normal. Jean-Claude thinks that the ardeur will rise and try to feed that need.”

I frowned harder at her. “I don’t…”

“You promised to do whatever I asked, if I gave you the morphine. You gave your word.”

I swallowed, licked my lips, and thought about calling her a bitch, but since she was the only doctor we had, and I was hurt, it seemed unwise to piss her off. I could control Raina’s munin now, if I hadn’t been on drugs. I said, “No.”

“Then you will miss the ballet, and the party, and you will not be there to help Jean-Claude against the other masters. Richard will not be there because he is hiding. If you think it is a good idea to strip the master of this city of both of his thirds on this night, then refuse.”

Hell with it. I said, “Bitch.”

She smiled, and patted my cheek. “Once you are healed, your beasts may rise, so I will leave you with people who can take your beast, if they must.”

“I don’t understand.”

“But I think we should start with someone that Raina never touched. I knew her, you see; she always loved new conquests.”

I shook my head, gently. “Don’t understand.”

Nathaniel appeared beside her. He was not new to Raina; she’d had him every way a woman could have a man, and some that stretched the imagination to the screaming point. He was nude, except for the amethyst and diamond collar. It had been a gift from Jean-Claude and me, though frankly, more Jean-Claude’s idea than mine. It would simply never have occurred to me.

“You’re not wearing any clothes.”

He smiled. “We’re going to try to go back inside afterward.”

“Afterward what?”

He glanced at Lillian. “How much is she following all this?”

“I’m not certain.”

A voice from behind us. “I don’t do rape.”

Jason’s voice then. “None of us do.”

Lillian leaned over me. “Anita, Anita, you must give permission for this.”

“For what, exactly?” There, that was a clear question.

“Raise Raina’s munin, heal yourself, and heal Requiem.”

“Requiem?”

“Raina will like that he’s someone new, and that he’s badly injured.”

I stared into Lillian’s face. “You really did know her.”

She nodded. “Better than I wanted to. I would not ask this, if I thought we would survive this night without you. Raphael felt one of the masters in the ballet. One of them can call rats, Anita. Do you understand what that means to our people?”

“Yes,” I said, “if they take Raphael, then they own you all.”

“Exactly.”

“And we invited them here,” I whispered.

Requiem’s bare shoulder appeared around Lillian. “Merlin, their dance master, rolled the human audience to make his dancers appear and vanish, but he did not try to roll the other masters. Until tonight.”

I wasn’t so sure of that. I’d felt Merlin’s mind. If he’d rolled them, then let them go, they might never have figured it out. I tried to explain it. “His mind, powerful enough. He could let them go. They might never know.”

“You mean that he rolled them, and was so powerful that they don’t remember it?”

“Yes.”

I watched fear march over his face, swallowed by that perfect blankness that the old ones have. “Perhaps, but I do not believe that Marmee Noir appeared in the other cities.”

“Who is Marmee Noir?” Lillian asked.

“Our dark mother, the first of us. It was her power added to Merlin’s that did what was done tonight. It was her power that made Richard’s cross melt into Anita’s hand.”

“Is she here, with the troupe?”

“No,” I said, “she lies in the room with windows.” That probably made no sense to any of them, but they let it go. They took my drugged assurance that the nightmare of all vampires wasn’t physically in St. Louis. Drugged out of my ability to concentrate and they took my word about it. They shouldn’t have done that. But more than Mommie Dearest, there was Auggie and Samuel, and hell, Samuel’s wife, Thea. If these were the masters Jean-Claude trusted, then what would the other masters do to us? Jean-Claude didn’t need to be alone tonight. Something bad would happen.

“Get out, doc.”

“What?”

“Don’t want you here when the wicked bitch comes.”

“I’ll get out, and the only ones in the car will be people you’ve fed on before, Anita.” She glanced behind her. “With one exception.”

“Exception?”

“Go, Lillian,” Jason said. “Jean-Claude’s nervous. Something else has happened. Not as bad, but something.”

Lillian moved out of sight, and Jason knelt beside me. He was as nude as Nathaniel. He was wearing the cuff bracelet that Jean-Claude had had commissioned for him. Wolves running over a gold and platinum landscape. The wolves looked so real you expected them to move. I stared at the bracelet. “Pretty,” I said.

He grinned. “And the bracelet’s nice, too.” He looked down at me, and his face was so serious. I couldn’t feel what Jean-Claude was feeling; the morphine and my own earlier panic had shut the marks down. I didn’t like how serious Jason looked. What was happening to my sweeties while I was arguing?

“Let’s get you out of the clothes. You’ve got to have something to wear back inside.”

A moment ago, I might have argued, but Jason was scared, and I couldn’t feel Jean-Claude. I was too befuddled to risk opening the marks. Afraid I’d screw up Jean-Claude’s concentration as badly as mine was, and that would be a disaster. Bad things were happening, and it was our fault. The vampires had invited bad things to the city, and now everyone was in danger. “Help me out of the corset.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Jason said, and he leered at me, the way he usually did, but I could see his eyes, and his eyes weren’t having any fun at all. Bad things, bad things, what was happening inside? I thought, Hold on, Jean-Claude. I felt him like a distant caress of wind against the door I’d used to shut us down. That breath of power smelled sweetly of his cologne. His words seemed to fill the car. “Feed before you come back to me, ma petite. Do not loose the ardeur on the crowd.” Then he was gone, shut down and tight, shielding his ass off. But he’d raised a good point. It was perfectly me to raise munin, heal, and not feed the ardeur, if I could stave it off. That brief message let me know that he wanted me back fed, and ready to fight, not hungry and dangerous to the crowd. Jason helped me sit up, and Nathaniel started unlacing my corset back. Was it too small-town Midwestern of me to think it was weird that my main squeeze was encouraging me to have sex with a limo full of men before I came back inside to him? We had the mother of all vampires lurking around. A master vamp powerful enough to roll every master in town. And mustn’t forget the blond dancer, Adonis, who had almost rolled me with his gaze. Powerful, dangerous shit going on, and the thing that made me squirm inside was the sex? It was one of those evenings when I’d really get to decide if it was a fate worse than death.

The corset loosened enough to spill my breasts into the open air. “Requiem,” Jason said, “get over here.”

The vampire came, and he used his hands to hide his nakedness. He seemed embarrassed. I was uncomfortable with it, too, but the morphine took the edge off the embarrassment, like it took the edge off everything.

They lifted the corset over my head, and other hands went to the top of my skirt. Nathaniel took the clothes away as they came off. They took everything but the diamond necklace. Apparently the jewelry was a theme tonight. There was plastic over the far seat, and he was putting the clothes under it. How messy was everyone expecting to be?

I caught movement in the far back of the limo. It was Noel. “No,” I said, “get him out.”

“Justin didn’t get here, Anita,” Jason said, “he’s the only lion we got except for Auggie’s bodyguard. If your lion rises, we need somewhere for it to go.”

“He’s a baby.”

Jason nodded. “Raina loved virgins.”

I shook my head too hard, made myself dizzy. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. “He waits outside the car. If my lion rises, then I’ll bring his beast, but we are not feeding him to Raina.” I opened my eyes, and the world had stopped wavering. Good.

Jason touched Requiem’s shoulder, drew my attention back to him. “I don’t think we’ll have to, Anita. Look at Requiem through her eyes. Look at those wounds, Anita. He’s fresh meat and he’s wounded. She’ll like that.”

I looked at the knife wounds on his chest and side. His arms were cut up. “Silver blades,” I said.

Requiem nodded. “Meng Die meant my death.”

“A little power and she changes her mind.”

“It is not a little power, Anita,” Jason said.

I looked back at Requiem. “Do you know what Raina will do?”

Nathaniel knelt by us. “I told him what she liked to do during sex.”

I fought to focus on Requiem’s still face. “Is it”—I searched for the word I wanted—“all right?”

“I have been at the court of Belle Morte, Anita, this will be as nothing.” He found a smile for me. “Heal me so that we may both serve our master well this night.”

I nodded. “Okay.” I looked behind them all, at Noel. He was pressed in the far back of the limo, as far from the action as he could get. “Out, now.”

“Wait outside with Fredo,” Jason said.

“I was told to stay close,” Noel said. His eyes were big, his mouth a little parted. I realized I was naked in front of him. I’d known that, but the drugs or the emergency, or my collapsing morals, had made me not think about it. The look on his face wasn’t lust. It was fear.

“Outside the car is close enough,” Jason said.

Still, he hesitated.

“Get out of the car, Noel,” Nathaniel said. He sounded angry.

Noel got out of the car. When the door closed behind him, Nathaniel said, “How could Joseph have sent him for this job?”

“Joseph didn’t understand,” Jason said.

“Didn’t want to understand,” Nathaniel said. His eyes had gone almost purple with anger.

“Protect the innocent,” I said.

He gave me those angry eyes, then made a smile for me, and nodded. “You can control Raina. I know you can.”

“The drugs…”

“Will make it harder, but you can do this. I was there when you learned how to do this, Anita. Drugs or no drugs, your will is stronger than hers.”

I stared into his face, studied that anger, that surety. I got that glimpse that I had sometimes, of what he might be in ten years. He was going to be something special at thirty, and I planned on being there to see it. I planned on us all being there to see it. Which meant we had to get through tonight. Whatever it took.

Jason laid me back on the seat. Nathaniel gave me a quick kiss, then he moved away, too. Requiem sat on the end of the seat, like he was on an uncomfortable first date.

I held out my hand to him. “Help me.”

He took my hand, and knelt beside the seat, still covering as much of his nakedness as he could. “How can I help you?”

“Use your power on me.”

His eyes filled with rich blue fire, and my body jolted with it. It hurt my sore hand, but the mixture of pain and pleasure and confusion would appeal to her. I’d learned to control Raina, which meant she had to be coaxed inside me now. It was sort of like leaving a perfectly good house when you know a tiger is just outside, and oh, by the way, let’s strap a raw steak around your neck. This was all such a bad idea. Problem was, I didn’t have a better one.

49

THE FIRST THING you need to know in order to control something is how it feels to do it. I was a natural psychic, which meant that my gifts weren’t something I had to strive for, they just came to me. The problem with being a natural is that sometimes things come so easily that you don’t know how, or even when, you’re doing psychic stuff. It sort of sneaks up on you. You must understand a thing to truly control it. I’d relied for most of my life on the fact that I was just such a brute psychically that I could bull my way through things. But some things can’t be controlled by brute force alone, or even by sheer power alone. You need control. It’s the difference between being able to throw a baseball ninety miles an hour, and being able to throw it ninety miles an hour over home plate. The speed and skill is great, but if you keep throwing wild, it’ll never get you into the majors. In fact, you may kill some poor fan in the stands. Getting hit in the head with a ball going that fast, well, not good. Raina wasn’t my only ninety-mile-an-hour ball, but she was the second one I learned to control, after the necromancy.

Requiem was flat on his back on the seat. I didn’t remember changing places with him. The last thing I remembered, clearly, was me naked on my back, on the seat. Now, it was him lying naked. Him, looking up at me, a surprised look on his face. What had I done to put that look on Requiem’s face? What had I done, while Raina was in control and I was fighting off the morphine?

I was sitting on his waist, which was an improvement over lower, I guess. I looked behind me to Nathaniel and Jason. The look on my face must have been enough, because Jason said, “You body-slammed him down on the seat.”

“Your hand is bleeding,” Nathaniel said.

I stared at my left hand as if it had just appeared at the end of my arm. There was fresh blood soaking through the gauze. The moment I saw the blood, the hand began to hurt. It wasn’t as bad as before Lillian gave me the shot, but it was a persistent, grinding pain, with twinges of sharper things. The sharper pains promised worse to come.

“I believe you injured yourself throwing me down on the seat,” Requiem said. His voice was mild, almost politely empty. His face matched it, handsome, and blank. The surpise was gone as if I’d dreamed it. He was in control of himself, once more.

I felt Raina inside me. She didn’t want him in control of himself, or anything else. She wanted to break him. I’d seen far enough inside his head with the ardeur to know he’d been broken centuries before, and more than once. I knew that breaking someone already broken wouldn’t appeal to her as much as being the first one to do it. Jason had been right; Raina liked virgins, of every sort. She loved to be in on someone’s first experience, especially if she could turn pleasure to pain, joy to terror. That just flat did it for her. Not my kink, which made it easier not to do it.

Her voice whispered through my mind, not as clear as it once had been, more a wind-in-the-trees kind of sound. Marianne had informed me that Raina had come close to truly possessing me, as in almost demonic possession. That had been a scary thought. Now I knew how to keep Raina from getting that intimate a grip on me. The wind of her voice blew through my body, smelling of forest, and fur, and perfume. “You know what I want, Anita.”

“You know what I’m willing to give you.” I said that part out loud, because talking mind-to-mind with her spirit could give it a stronger hold on you. I thought about how close Requiem and I had come to intercourse earlier today. I thought about him rolling off, unsatisfied, and unsatisfying.

“The first fucking between you,” she laughed, and my concentration wasn’t pure enough to keep that laugh off my lips. Her laugh was a low, throaty, alto sound, a joyous promise of sex. I didn’t own a laugh like that.

Nathaniel said, “Concentrate, Anita. You can do this.”

Raina wanted me to look behind me at him, and I fought not to do it. Not because it was a bad thing, but because I had to start fighting somewhere, and it was a place to start. It was also something that if I lost the fight, it wouldn’t hurt anyone.

“Petty, Anita,” she whispered.

I ignored her, as best I could. Always hard to ignore people who are sharing your consciousness. I tried to concentrate on my breathing, but the pain in my hand kept distracting me. I tried concentrating on each heartbeat, on the pulse in my body, and that was a mistake. It was as if each beat of my heart hit my injured hand like a spike. As if the very pulse of blood made it hurt worse.

I shook my head, and that was a mistake. I was suddenly dizzy. Requiem’s hands caught my arms, kept me from falling. I let myself collapse on top of him, my head resting against his shoulder. He made no sound, but his body flinched. I was lying across his wounds. Raina liked that a lot.

I kissed his shoulder. The skin was warm. Warm with the blood he’d taken from me earlier, but not as warm as it should have been. I gazed up into those brilliant blue eyes, with their hint of green around the iris. “Your body is using more energy trying to heal your wounds.”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Do you need to feed more often when you’re this badly hurt?”

“Yes, m’lady.”

I smiled at him. “Somehow m’lady doesn’t work with me naked on top of you.”

He smiled, and it even reached his eyes. “You will always be m’lady to me, Anita.”

I was suddenly drowning in the scent of wolf. The beast inside me stirred, as if Raina’s power were a spoon and I were some kind of soup. Stirring, looking for just the right tidbit.

Her voice sounded inside me. “Your very own wolf, Anita. What have you been doing while I’ve been away?”

The wolf, my wolf, appeared inside me. I could see it forming. No, I thought, no. I turned my face into Requiem’s neck where his pulse should have beat, but didn’t. I pressed my mouth to that chilled flesh, and chased away the warm, prickling energy. I did not run from my wolf, for if you run things will chase you, but I turned to colder things. Things that the wolf neither understood nor entirely approved of. My wolf quieted, under the brush of dead flesh and the scent of flesh unmoving. The trouble with quieting my wolf was that Raina fled, too. I rose up from Requiem’s body, enough to see his face.

“Your eyes, they are like brown diamonds, so much light in the darkness.”

“Raina’s gone,” Jason said, softly.

I didn’t look at him. I only had eyes for the vampire. I began to kiss down his body. A light kiss on his shoulder, and with each kiss, my body slid lower, and because we were both nude, that raised interesting things. And I knew that his body was swelling with blood that he’d taken from my veins. That without that ruby kiss, he would have been dead in so many more ways than just undead.

I raised my lower body enough so that we weren’t touching below the waist. It felt wonderful, so much promise of things to come, but I wanted to concentrate on the feel of my mouth on his chest. I couldn’t do that and have him brush the front of my body with the swelling richness of his. It distracted me.

I wanted to enjoy the smooth perfection of his skin. Cool, and moving, but not pulsing. Not alive, not completely, not really. It was like kissing my way down a dream, faintly unreal, as if Requiem’s pale body should have evaporated into the first alarm of the day. Did Jean-Claude and Asher play human for me, more than this? Did they make their hearts beat, their blood pump, so I would not feel this amazing stillness? Requiem’s arms caressed down my back, my sides. His chest moved, writhing with the pleasure of being touched, but he did not breathe. He did not play alive for me. He was a moving dead thing. It should have bothered me, but it didn’t. The power that filled my eyes understood what he was, and liked it, liked it a lot.

I kissed down that smooth, cool flesh, until I came to coarseness, and a faint metallic taste. It made me open my eyes, and look at what I was kissing. It was the knife wound. It looked so smooth, but my lips told the truth. The edges of the wound were rough. The wound could look as pretty and neat as it wanted to but it had been violent. The knife had torn his skin, even around the edges, minute tears that the eye couldn’t see, but the mouth could feel. I traced a fingertip across the lip of the wound. It drew small pain noises from him. Part of me liked the noises, and part of me worried that it hurt too much.

I gazed up at him. The look on his face as he stared down the length of his body at me wasn’t a pained look. There was a tightening around his eyes that showed it hurt, but the look in those eyes was still eager. Which meant I hadn’t crossed that thin line, yet. It still excited him more than it hurt him. Cool.

I concentrated on the sensation of the wound under the barest tip of my finger. I closed my eyes so that I could concentrate on it. It was coarse under my finger, not as instantly noticeable as my lips had found it, but the skin was torn and roughened by the violence of the blade. Touch also didn’t give me that sweet, faint taste of blood. Was this Raina’s thought, or mine? No, Jason was right, Raina was gone. I realized I was using my hand, both hands. It made me lean back from Requiem and stare at my burned hand. I’d had burns before, almost this bad, and for similar reasons. Admittedly, it had been because a vamp had pressed his flesh into the holy item. I guess this was the first time it had been just my body involved. Had it been because Marmee Noir had been possessing me, or had it been because I was using vampire powers? Huh? That was an interesting thought. I pushed it back, for so many reasons. I’d look at the implications later. Much later.

The skin had blistered, and hardened, and begun to slough off. Days, or weeks, of healing in minutes. I moved the hardened skin to one side. I wasn’t quite brave enough to pull at it. I moved all that truly dead skin aside until I found the palm of my hand. The skin of the palm was soft, baby soft, but there was a new cross-shaped scar in the middle of my hand. That skin was shiny and not soft, not rough, more slick. Weeks of healing.

I hadn’t used Raina to heal Requiem. I’d used her to heal me. But I understood why. I’d asked something of her munin that it could not do. She healed lycanthrope flesh, living flesh, and Requiem was not living flesh. No matter how alive he seemed, it was a trick, or a lie, or something I had no name for.

I stared down at Requiem. He gazed up at me with eyes that had gone back to their normal swimming blue. There was no power in him now. If it hadn’t been silver blades, his body would have smoothed the damage over by now. But it was silver, and that meant healing would be almost human-slow, unless he had help.

“You are healed?” He made it a question.

I nodded. “A little trimming away of dead skin, but yeah.”

“Trimming away the dead,” he said, voice soft. He sighed, and said, “I can go back inside as I am. I will not be at my best, but it was your wounds that were most important.”

I stared down at him, the two nearly fatal wounds in his upper body, the dozens of cuts and slashes on his arms. But I looked lower and found the rest of his body still hard and ready. “You should walk around nude more often,” I said.

He actually frowned at me. “Why, m’lady?”

“Because you are beautiful.”

He smiled. “I thank you for that.”

“You say it like it’s not true.”

“If I were truly beautiful you would have found your way to my bed weeks ago.”

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. My necromancy was still here, but it was changed somehow. It was like calling the munin or something about chasing out the Dark Mother had changed my own power. It was still necromancy, but it held an edge of…life. It was more alive, this energy. I didn’t understand it, exactly, but I understood one thing: always before when I’d healed damage on vampires, small wounds, it had been in the daytime when they were dead. Once they rose, their own personality, or soul, or whatever, kept my power from recognizing them as a dead thing, the way it recognized zombies. They always hit the radar as dead, no matter how mobile they were.

I could feel the wound I had touched. I could feel it, and knew that it was a little like gathering up the bits of a zombie. One of the things I did most often in my job was to make the dead whole again.

It seemed important to do this thing. As though if I didn’t heal Requiem now, I would forget how to do it. It was like a gift offered once, and wiped away if you don’t use it. I wanted to use it; it would feel good to use. It always felt good to work with the dead.

I set my fingertips over his wound, and thought about it like clay. Like smoothing clay back into place. I closed my eyes so I could “see” the deeper tissues of the body knitting together, things I could not touch with my physical fingers.

There was a wind in the car, a wind that was chill, but held an edge of spring. I thought someone had opened a door, but when I opened my eyes, the car was closed. The wind was coming from me. I looked down at Requiem’s body, and found my hands touching smooth, healed skin. There wasn’t even a scar. I moved my hands to the wound on his side, at the ribs. I did it before my conscious mind could say, Gosh, that’s impossible. I pressed my hands to his side, and I smoothed the wound away. The wind blew bits of my hair around my face. The hardened skin of blistered flesh fell away on its own from my hand, as I healed him. Dead flesh, all of it, dead flesh.

I grabbed his arms, and smoothed my hands from elbow to wrist, to hold his hands, and the skin smoothed behind my touch like a fast-forward camera trick. It wasn’t possible, but I was still doing it.

The wind faltered, and I fell forward onto him. He caught me or I might have slipped to the floor of the car. Working with the dead always felt good, but it had its price, too. It was especially trying if there was no blood magic involved. It hadn’t occurred to me it would be that similar to raising the dead in price.

Jason and Nathaniel were beside us. “What’s wrong?” Jason asked.

Nathaniel answered, “She’s exhausted.”

I blinked up at him. “Are you exhausted, too?”

He shook his head. “When you shut the marks down, you shut them down. I can tell you’re exhausted, but you aren’t draining me. I don’t think you’re touching Damian either.”

“I didn’t want to risk the two of you again tonight.”

“You shut everybody out,” Jason said. “Jean-Claude is sensing more through me, right now, then you. A pomme de sang is not nearly the connection that you are to him.”

“Too much happening,” I said.

Requiem hugged me. “What can I do to make this right, m’lady? How do I repay such a miracle?”

“If we ever do this again, I need to have you take blood during it, just like a sacrifice at a zombie raising. Blood magic helps the energy.”

“You need to feed,” Jason said, and he had an abstracted look as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear. It was probably Jean-Claude whispering in his ear.

“Okay,” I said, settling heavier onto Requiem’s chest.

Jason and Nathaniel looked at each other, then back at Requiem. “Call your power, Requiem,” Jason said, “call her ardeur. She’s too weak to bind you with it, like she tried to do earlier. Feed her first, and you will be safe.”

“It’s like a ventriloquism act,” I said, “your mouth moves but Jean-Claude’s words come out.”

Jason gave me the grin that was all his, and shrugged. “His words, or not, it’s still true.”

I rolled my head to look up at Requiem’s face. “Is that why you stopped before? You were afraid I’d own you through the ardeur?”

“Yes,” he said, “I feared I would end as London has ended, and I do not truly wish that.”

“I don’t think I’m up to binding anyone right now.”

A look passed over his face that wasn’t gentle, or hesitant. It was a very male look for a moment. “Then I can do as I wish with you.”

I thought about arguing with the way he’d phrased it, but I just didn’t have the energy for it. Too tired, and too drained. “Yes,” I said, “you can.”

He sat up, cradling me against the front of his body. He sat up, and half-carried me, until I was lying on the other end of the seat, and he was kneeling over me. His power danced over my body, and even that was energy, that was food. I watched his eyes drown in the blue depths of his own magic, until he stared down at me like one blind.

“Is this truly what m’lady wishes?”

I stared down the length of his body. So hard, so ready, almost hard enough that it must have hurt him a little. Too hard for too long is not always a good feeling. With his body practically screaming with need, he asked, asked permission one more time.

“Requiem,” I said, “I promise I will always think of you as a gentleman, but I’ve already said yes.”

“It is good to be certain,” he whispered.

“Whoever taught you this caution, it wasn’t me.” I stroked my hand not across his chest, but just above it, playing in the energy of his aura. So much energy to play with. It made him close his eyes for a moment. “I promise, Requiem, I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

That made him smile, and he said, “And you will always be m’lady.”

That made me laugh. Then he poured his power over my body, and the laughter changed to other sounds.

50

HE HELD ON to the door to raise himself above me, so that only the long, hard length of him touched me at first. His own magic had made my body tight and wet, and more than ready, so that each thrust was exquisite pleasure. A pleasure so great it was almost painful that his movement was slow, and shallow. He’d found that spot inside me, and he meant to work it, but I could feel his body fighting his own rhythm, wanting something harder, faster, less controlled. I was torn between wanting him to never stop, and knowing that we needed to hurry. But every time I opened my mouth to tell him to hurry, to let me feed, he thrust inside me again, or moved his hips just a little, and the thought died before I could say it.

The ardeur was raised, but even the ardeur seemed weak. I’d had it spread to most of the people in a room before; now, with Nathaniel and Jason trapped in a car with us, it hadn’t spread to them. They were untouched. I needed to feed, not just to be strong enough to help Jean-Claude tonight, but to make certain I didn’t start to suck Damian’s life away.

I watched Requiem’s body glide in and out of mine. In the dimness of the car I couldn’t see that he was wearing the condom that Nathaniel had given him. I was glad someone was thinking about safety, because all I was thinking about was sex and food. Trouble was, they were the same thing right now. I curled my legs back, rose up so I could see him sliding in and out of me. The sight of him inside me for the first time, finally, bowed my spine back, closed my eyes, drew small sounds from me. That warm, delicious weight began to build inside me.

I found my words, and managed to say, “When I go, you go.”

“I would soak your body in all the pleasure it could take,” he said, voice full of the strain of all that control.

Jason said, “We don’t have time to give Anita all the pleasure she can take, Requiem. Jean-Claude needs us.”

Requiem nodded, but never changed his rhythm, that relentless gentle thrusting in and out, over and over that spot just inside my body.

“God, you’re good,” I whispered.

His hands convulsed on the car, so that it creaked under his strength. “If I get to go when you do, then I must let go of some of my control, or I will still be fighting my body.”

“Can you keep doing this until I go?”

“Yes,” he whispered it.

It built, and built, and built, and then came the stroke of his body inside me that spilled me over. It brought me screaming, digging nails into the leather of the seat. It bucked my body against his, and he thrust deep inside me, as hard and fast as he could. He brought me again with that deep thrust, a different kind of orgasm, before the first had finished. I raked nails down his sides, and screamed.

The pain didn’t make him come again as it did sometimes for Nathaniel, or even Micah. He took it, but he was done, and the pain didn’t change that.

He drew himself out of me, and even that was a wondrous sensation that made me writhe on the seats. Someone touched my face and the ardeur jumped to him. I smelled wolf and knew it was Jason before I saw his face.

He swallowed hard, voice breathy. “You’re feeling better.”

I nodded.

“No offense, but we need you fed and all of us back inside, as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice was hoarse.

“If we double up, you feed faster, and we’re done faster.”

I frowned at him, part postorgasmic haze, part the rising ardeur, and part just me. “What?”

Nathaniel appeared over his shoulder, and touched my hand. The ardeur leaped to him, but it had taken touch for it to transfer. My powers were still weak. “I want you to go down on me while the ardeur rides you.”

I began to have a clue. “And what will Jason be doing while I’m going down on you?”

“Fucking you,” Nathaniel said.

Jason tried to look embarrassed, but never quite managed it. He finally grinned at me. “You want me to be all gentlemanly about it.”

I shook my head. “I want you to fuck me.”

He looked startled for a moment, then his eyes filled with that knowledge, that darkness, that is all male. That look that is almost predatory, but not when you want it, when you’ve asked for it, then it’s something to tighten your body low and hard. I cried out just from the look on his face.

“Let’s fuck,” he said.

“Let’s,” I said.

51

I ENDED UP sitting, facing Nathaniel, him inside me. I wrapped my legs around his waist with him buried as deep inside me as he could go. It reminded me of earlier with London, so intimate a lovemaking. But staring into Nathaniel’s eyes from inches away, with his body inside mine, my hips riding him, it was more. London had had to hold my hair, force me to stare into his face. I wanted to stare into Nathaniel’s face, wanted to watch his moods swim across his face. Wanted to watch him watch me.

Jason’s hands slid down my back, cupped my buttocks. They’d decided to change places when Jason had mentioned that he’d never gone with me orally. Intercourse, yes, but not oral sex. Nathaniel had told him, “You have to feel her do this. She’s amazing.”

“I’ve had foreplay from her.”

“That was when she was trying to be good, it’s better when she’s trying to be bad.”

“Better than Raina?”

Nathaniel had nodded.

A look of almost pain had crossed Jason’s face, and he’d said, “Can I change my order, please?”

So we’d changed the order.

Without a lot of foreplay I didn’t normally go in this postion, but there’d been foreplay. Small G-spot orgasm always makes intercourse more fun. Big G-spot orgasm means you’re done for the night, as in Stick a fork in me, honey, I’m done. Requiem had done just enough, and not too much, so that my body was tighter than normal, but still wet, still spasming with aftershocks. Every thrust of Nathaniel’s body brought tiny spurts of pleasure, made me move my hips against his body, and drive him deeper inside me.

Jason licked a cool, wet line up my spine. It made me shiver, and lean a little back into his hands. Nathaniel kissed me, hard and completely, drowning his tongue inside my mouth, until I had to relax my mouth wide. He drove his body inside me, as if he were imitating himself at both openings. It brought me screaming, the orgasm trying to bow my spine, tear my mouth off his, but his hand at the back of my head kept our mouths pressed together.

Jason bit my back, and it made me scream more. Nathaniel let go of my hair, and let my upper body fall back into Jason’s arms. “I didn’t feel her feed.”

“She didn’t feed.”

Nathaniel’s body started finding a new rhythm from the slightly different angle. My breathing started to change almost instantly. I kept my legs around Nathaniel’s waist, his hands supporting most of my weight. “Move back,” he told Jason. Jason did, and my body bowed backward, my hands seeking his body.

I was suddenly staring, upside down, at a very intimate part of Jason’s anatomy. Nathaniel’s hands were strong and firm at the small of my back. He gave me the foundation I needed to stretch off into space, and reach for the other man. I wrapped my hand around him, tight and firm. He made a small noise for me. I wanted him to make more.

Nathaniel’s body just kept going inside me, over and over, deep, and smooth. I felt the beginnings of another orgasm building. I wanted Jason inside my mouth before that happened. I wanted to feed on them both. Nathaniel had put a condom on before being inside me, but Jason would slip naked between my lips. I could suck him clean, and naked, and I wanted it. In that moment the ardeur, my own special hunger, might not have cared whose body I was playing with. I needed to feed.

Jason wasn’t quite at the angle I needed, and I said, “Please, please.” He used his own hand to help guide himself between my lips. My hands wrapped around his thighs and ass. I started to make love to him with my mouth. To suck, lick, and writhe my mouth, my tongue, and ever so lightly my teeth, around the smooth muscled length of him. I moved my mouth, strained my throat to meet each thrust.

I lost myself in the sensations at my mouth, and Nathaniel reminded me, hard and fast, that I had two men to satisfy. I fought to keep both rhythms going: my hips writhing to meet Nathaniel’s thrusts, and my mouth and throat to meet Jason’s.

Jason’s hands found my upper back, and he helped support me with one hand, while his other hand found something to hold on to. Their hands were like a safety net, holding me, supporting me, helping me fuck them.

“Are you close?” Jason asked, and his voice sounded strained.

For a moment I thought he was talking to me, but his body kept me from answering. Nathaniel said, “I can be.”

“Either she has to slow down, or I’m going to go.”

Nathaniel’s hands tightened at the small of my back, and he sat up higher, and changed the angle of my hips at the same time. It was like he’d been waiting to do it. It forced my legs higher up his back, put my pelvis at a more than forty-degree angle. His next thrust made me scream around Jason’s body.

“God, Nathaniel, stop that, or I’m…”

He thrust two, three times, with every word. “Just…a…little…more!” And he brought me, screaming, screaming with Jason’s body thrusting inside me, so that I screamed around him. My nails dug into his body. Jason thrust one last time as deep and hard as he could down my throat, and I felt him go, felt it hot but too far down to be thick. I got only the heat, and the spasming of him inside my throat. Nathaniel thrust deep and hard between my legs, a heartbeat later. It made me scream as I was trying to swallow Jason down. It made me have to suck harder or choke.

Jason cried out, his body spasming, his nails digging into my back where he held me. He screamed my name, and the ardeur finally fed. I fed. I drank them both down, and the rush of energy tightened our bodies, made us all cry out. Nathaniel thrust inside me again, brought me again. Jason spasmed deep inside my throat again; I felt him spill inside me. A moment before I’d been fighting not to choke or throw up, and now the ardeur rode me, and I drank him down as if he were exactly what I wanted. I drank them both down; everywhere our skin touched I got small sips, but down my throat, and between my legs, that was food. It was exactly what I needed, exactly the way I needed it. Maybe the feeding would last longer if I fed on men who weren’t tied to us metaphysically, but I didn’t love anyone who wasn’t tied to us. So I had to feed more often, so what?

We ended on the floor of the limo, with Jason on the bottom, me in the middle, and Nathaniel on top of me, as if the last orgasm had pulled us all to the floor.

“Wow,” Jason said.

“Yeah,” I said.

Nathaniel laughed, low and a little unsteady. “I love you, Anita,” he said.

“I love you, too,” I said. I could feel Jason’s heart thudding against my back.

“I feel left out,” he said, from underneath me.

Nathaniel didn’t so much raise his head, as move his eyes, to look at the other man. “I love you, too, or I wouldn’t enjoy sharing her with you this much.”

I managed to roll my head back enough to glimpse Jason’s face. “I love you, Jason, you are our very dear friend.”

“I thought I was just everyone’s fuck buddy.”

I cuddled against the front of his body. Nathaniel crawled up until he managed to wedge himself around us both. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Jason smiled at us both, his eyes full of more emotion than I think he knew what to do with. He managed a version of his usual grin. “And I thought the most interesting thing I’d ever do with a best friend was watch football.”

Nathaniel smiled at him. “We can if you want, but you’ll have to explain the rules to me.”

“I am not watching football,” I said.

“I hate football, let’s just keep fucking,” Jason said.

“Not tonight,” I said.

“We need to get inside,” he said.

“Whoever can move, stand up first and get dressed,” I said.

He laughed, hugged me, and laid his head against Nathaniel’s. “God I love my friends, but if you guys can fall to one side, I think I can stand.”

“I’ll have to work on that,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“You’ve recovered too quickly. I must have done something wrong.”

The laughter faded around the edges, and there was suddenly a very serious look on his face. “You did everything right. You were wonderful.”

“As good as the person who gave you the teeth mark hickey on your neck?”

He grinned, as he started trying to wriggle out of the pile. “Better actually, but if you tell her I said so, I’ll deny it.”

“Tell me who I’m supposed to be nice to, and I will.”

He was opening a box of moist towelettes. Wiping a little of the sweat, and other things, off his body, he said, “Have you met all of the Cape Codders?”

“Samuel and his family, yeah.”

Jason shook his head. “Not the family, the entourage.”

“There was a man and woman with them.”

“Her name is Perdita. Perdy.” He stuffed the towelettes into an empty garbage bag, apparently there for the purpose. “Jean-Claude wanted to know some of what you could expect when you fuck Sampson.”

“He sent you to fuck one of the mermaids so I’d be forewarned?”

Nathaniel got up slowly. Jason tossed him the box of towelettes, and dragged the plastic off our clothes. Hadn’t really needed the plastic. We hadn’t been that messy.

“He didn’t send me to fuck her, just to find out what the transformation of a mermaid, and maybe male siren, could entail.” He grinned at me. “Jean-Claude left it to me to decide how to get that information.”

I’d forgotten that I’d agreed to try to bring Sampson’s powers. So much had been happening; it was hard to keep track. It was always especially hard to keep track of things that made me uncomfortable. Having agreed to have sex with Sampson qualified.

“If the bite is a sample, ouch.”

“It wasn’t all ouch. I’ll give you a full report after we’ve survived the ballet.”

We got cleaned up as best we could. An emergency makeup kit for touch-ups had been in the limo. I’d thought maybe I’d smear my lipstick. It was a little more extensive than that, but we managed.

We were dressed, and almost as fresh as when we started the evening. Requiem had gone to report to Jean-Claude, or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to watch. Nathaniel and Jason escorted me back inside. Lisandro was rear guard. Claudia and Truth met us at the Fox club entrance.

Underneath those stoic bodyguard faces I saw worry. But I didn’t need their faces to tell me; I could feel it. It wasn’t Marmee Noir, or Belle Morte. It was the vampires we’d invited to town. I wasn’t sure what they were doing, but whatever it was, it was powerful.

Jason and Nathaniel shivered on either side of me. “What the hell are they doing up there?” Jason whispered.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but we’re going to find out.” I started up the stairs on Nathaniel’s arm, with Jason’s hand in mine. Normally, I’d have tried not to hold on to too many men at once in public, but the hell with it. One, we all needed the comfort. Two, my reputation couldn’t get any more trashed than it already was.

52

OUTSIDE THE CURTAINS to the seats, I had to let go of Jason’s hand so he could go back to Asher’s box. I didn’t want to let go of him. I wanted to wrap both him and Nathaniel around me like a security blanket. I put my arm around Nathaniel’s waist, tucking myself in under his arm. He hugged me, and whispered against my hair. “You all right?”

I nodded. Jason would have called me a liar, but Nathaniel just accepted it. He might not believe me, but he wouldn’t call me on it. Nathaniel parted the curtains. The music swelled around us and the world was suddenly golden. The air sparkled with glitter. Out of that scintillating cloud a vampire floated. It was Adonis, the vamp who had almost rolled me with his gaze earlier. His costume had changed to a ballet version of 1700s dress, which meant: fairly accurate from the waist up, and tights from the waist down. I’d seen vampires fly before, but not like this. He hung in the air as if he could have hung there forever. Other vampires appeared out of the glitter, hanging in the air as if they’d been pinned there. Adonis hovered just outside our box, so close I could see his blond curls moving in the wind. What wind? The wind of his own magic.

Jean-Claude and Damian turned from that vision to look at me. Jean-Claude let me see a moment of relief in his eyes, before his face became the blank, perfect mask that he would wear for the public tonight. Damian reached out for me. I gave him my free hand, without thinking that I was touching Nathaniel, too. It was as if his touch completed a circuit. It wasn’t just a leap of energy, it was a feeling of deep contentment. It was like suddenly being wrapped in a warm electric blanket. It felt so good. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to wrap them both around me and sleep. I just knew that it would be healing and exactly what I needed. Not all psychic flashes are ambiguous, or hard to interpret. Some of them are crystal clear. Problem is, they always seem to come when you can’t possibly act on them. Looking at the vampires spinning and diving through the falling glitter, somehow a nap didn’t seem likely.

I took my seat beside Jean-Claude, and Nathaniel went to the seat on the other side of Damian, where Micah had started the evening. But to get everyone sitting down, I had to let go of Nathaniel. It was almost wrenching to let go of him, like giving up a shield when you know you’re about to go into battle. No, not that, Nathaniel wasn’t my shield. He was my warmth on a cold night. He was what kept me safe and sane. Well, not always safe. Safety lay elsewhere. I squeezed Damian’s hand, and let go of it. There, it didn’t feel so bad not to be touching Nathaniel. For some reason giving up them both was easier than giving up just one of them.

I took Jean-Claude’s hand, and that was safety. That was armor in the face of battle. There was love there, too, but Jean-Claude sought power more than safety. Just touching his hand energized me. I wasn’t thinking nap now, I was thinking battle. It was the difference between a soldier and a general. One sleeps when he can, the other has to be preparing for the next conflict.

The glitter had fallen down, so that the vampires were revealed in all their grace. They danced in the air. They held their places, and danced. Damian leaned in and whispered, “Do you have any idea how much strength it takes to do what they’re doing?”

I shook my head.

Jean-Claude leaned in and gave the barest whisper. “To fight gravity, and your own body’s desire to touch earth; it is impressive.” He squeezed my hand a little tighter, as if watching the dozen vampires dance in their perfect, solid circle was exciting, or nerve-racking. I was too insecure to drop shields and check for sure. So much had already gone wrong tonight that caution seemed smarter.

Nathaniel was leaning forward in his seat. His face was rapturous. I glanced at our other box. Micah gave me a smile and I gave one back. But it was Jason who caught my eye. He was sitting on the edge of his chair like Nathaniel. They wore almost identical entranced looks. Not entranced by vampire powers, but by the beauty and strength of the dancers. I realized that I’d taken away from the performance the two people in our group who would have appreciated the dancing most. They both had dance training. They both danced for a living. Yeah, they took their clothes off while they did it, but Jean-Claude had insisted that all his dancers have some training. You couldn’t just shake your booty on stage at Guilty Pleasures. Jason and Nathaniel were the two that had taken to the dancing most. They were the ones who helped the other dancers work up new acts. And I’d taken them away from the dancing. The looks on their faces made me regret that. Among all the regrets tonight, that was another.

Asher was very still, watching the show. It was a stillness that a stranger wouldn’t recognize, but he wasn’t a stranger to me. He was as enraptured by the show as the boys. He just had several hundred years of cool, and wouldn’t let it show that much.

The music changed, and the vampires hesitated. They pretended not to know what was coming next. They were close enough to us that I could see their expressions of surprise, as they turned one by one, or two by two, to look at the stage below them.

A woman stepped on stage, dressed in one of those long white gossamer dresses. I would have said the dress floated around her as she tiptoed on stage, but compared to the vampires, it didn’t quite float. But it was delicate, and she was lovely. Her hair was long and shining brown, tied back in a high ponytail. The hair moved with her like an extension of her body as she danced, slowly, tentatively across the stage. It reminded me of what Nathaniel did with his hair on stage some nights. Not the same kind of dance, but the same awareness of the hair as an extension of the dance.

She was young, as in not long dead. I whispered against Jean-Claude’s hair, “Is she supposed to be human?”

“Oui.”

She was fresh enough that once upon a time, I might have believed the illusion, but that was long ago, and I knew vampire when I saw it.

The vampires above us began to circle downward, the way vultures will when they decide that the thing on the ground is finally dead.

One of the female vamps landed, lightly, on the stage. She had hair almost as dark as mine, but how much of all those curls were real and how much a wig, I couldn’t tell. She went up on her toe shoes, as the girl did. They mirrored each other from across the stage. The girl held her hands out, beseeching, asking a question, or wanting something. The dark-haired vampire mimicked her, made fun of her. It was amazingly well done. Sometimes the ballet leaves me confused, but there was no confusion here. The human was asking for help, and the vampire wasn’t going to give it.

Another female vamp touched down, brown hair this time, then a blonde. The three vamps linked arms and danced across the stage. The girl went to her knees, begging with graceful arms. She was wearing more base than the rest; it gave her a rosier skin tone, made her look alive.

Three male vampires alit upon the stage. They joined the dancing women, linked hands, boy, girl, boy, girl. The girl in white continued to beseech them. They laughed at her, and broke into couples. They danced around her. The men were able to do amazing leaps, and carry the weight of the women as if it truly were nothing. The leaps were amazing, but after seeing them fly, it just didn’t impress. Once you’ve seen someone fly, what’s a little grand jeté?

They began to circle around her, close and closer. She finally realized her danger, and began to try to run, but the circle had closed. They would grab her and throw her back into the middle. She fell like white and brown water, spilling all that hair like a shining cloak across the white dress. The vampires began to dance close and closer, the circle tightening in graceful, flowing movements, but tightening all the same.

There was movement above us. I had forgotten that there were vampires still hovering in the air. They had risen to the ceiling, using it like a rear stage area, but now they dropped delicately to the stage, and suddenly you realized that the vampires in the circle were nothing. The dancers who hit the stage now rolled power outward like a trembling line of cold. So cold, it almost burned. They stalked across the stage, in a rolling predatory dance that made me afraid for her. Silly. I knew they’d done this act across the country. I even knew that she was already dead, but still my body reacted to the menace in their movements.

The audience below us gasped. They’d seen the whole show, and they didn’t know she was dead.

The circle of couples parted as the other vampires stalked forward. Two men, and three women, stalking across the stage. The girl stared at them with fear plain on her face. She begged with graceful arms, on her knees. When that didn’t help, she got slowly to her feet, and her fear was palpable. Someone was projecting emotions onto the audience. There weren’t many who could roll me that easily.

I looked up to find one last vamp hovering at the ornate ceiling. Adonis, the blond that had damn near gotten me with his gaze. He wasn’t looking at me. His attention was all for the stage. I think he was waiting for his cue. It wasn’t him. Oh, I was slow tonight. It was Merlin again. Merlin who I hadn’t seen in the flesh, but only through memory. I didn’t poke at his power. He wasn’t hurting anyone. I was afraid if I poked at him, made him stop projecting emotions into the crowd, that it might raise Marmee Noir again. I was not up to another visit from the Mother of All Darkness tonight. So I left Merlin alone. We’d discuss his sins later, in private.

The vampires were chasing her around the stage. It was a beautifully choreographed game of cat and mouse. They would jump out at her, use that incredible speed to stop her from leaving the stage. She’d almost run past them, but they would be there, grabbing a hand, throwing her backward, sliding her prettily across the stage. I wondered how she kept the white tights so white doing all that.

I felt Adonis move forward. I felt his power reach outward. He flew slowly toward the stage, going down as if on wires, so slow, so incredibly slow. It wasn’t a bird of prey, it was like a picture of some heaven-bound saint, except this one was coming down, not going up. He touched the stage and the dancers froze. A red-haired vampire came to his hand as if he’d commanded her. The dancers all formed couples, and began to dance around the girl. She was huddled in the middle, not begging anymore. She had given up on asking for help. She huddled like a white star in the center of the bright colors of the vampires.

They danced, and showed that they could do traditional ballet. Then the music changed. The couples gave themselves more room, and they began to do dancing that would have looked more at home on the stage at Guilty Pleasures than at the ballet. It was still beautiful, graceful, predatory, but it was also very sexual. Nothing that would get you arrested, but as they had been able to convey menace, pity, and derision, with a gesture and a look, now they conveyed sex.

The girl hid her face, as if it were too awful to watch. It was Adonis who stood above her. She raised a startled face, slowly, the way the actors look up in a horror movie when they hear that noise, and know, somehow, that the monster is right there. She gazed up at the handsome man, with that look on her face, in the posture of her body. No matter how beautiful he was, she made you see him as hideous, dangerous, frightening.

He grabbed her wrist, and they did a slow dance, with him half-dragging her, and her trying to stay farther away from him. Her reluctance for him to touch her screamed through her every movement. But he won, as you knew he would. He jerked her into his embrace, and went skyward. He flew her out over the audience, while she struggled, and pounded at him with little fists. So he dropped her. She actually screamed, before another vampire caught her. Caught her just over the audience’s heads. The audience gasped and screamed with her. The vampires played catch with the girl. One would rise, then let her struggles make him drop her. She began to cling to them, and they tore her hands from their clothes and flung her to the air. Then Adonis caught her again, and he held her close. I caught the shine of tears on her face as he floated past us. He grabbed that shining fall of hair, and wadded his hand in it. He pulled her neck into a graceful, straining line, and pretended to bite her. Then he threw her to the next vampire, and that one bit her, too. They began to close in around her in a tight floating ball of arms and legs. When they parted, her neck was dotted with fake blood, and she went eagerly to them. Embracing them with graceful arms. It became a lovely feeding frenzy. From one set of arms to another, from one man, one woman, to another, until the vampire’s faces were stained crimson, and the girl’s dress looked like an accident victim’s sheet. The fake blood made the dress cling to her body, so you could see the muscles, the small tight breasts. It was both alluring and utterly disturbing.

The audience was silent with tension, as the vampires landed on the stage again. They surrounded her, hiding her from view. It gave the illusion that all of them were feeding at once, though I knew logistically that wasn’t possible. Too many mouths to fit like that.

A new vampire stalked onto the stage. He was dark-haired, and darker-skinned, pale, but I couldn’t tell if it was makeup or skin tone. He chased back the other vamps. He saw the bloody almost-corpse, and he wept. His shoulders rose and fell with it.

Adonis laughed at him, one of those big stage laughs, with the head back.

The dark vampire raised a face livid with anger. They began to dance around the stage. They danced with her bloody corpse as their centerpiece. The other vampires vanished behind the stage. The two men danced. Adonis had more bulky muscles. The dark man was tall and lean, and more graceful than anyone I’d ever seen. He moved like a dream of water, and even that didn’t do him justice.

Adonis’s dancing came across as clunky, human in comparison. Somewhere in the middle of the dance, I realized I was looking at Merlin.

Merlin won the dancing fight. For that was what it became. They fought in the air, and on the ground, and it looked real. Real anger seemed to be involved, and I wondered if it was projecting, or if they were truly pissed at each other and the fight gave them an excuse to vent it.

Adonis was vanquished, not killed, and that left Merlin on stage alone with his dead love. He leaned over her, held her in his arms, and rocked her. My throat was tight, damn him. He wept and I fought not to weep with him. Jean-Claude did some of this with the audience at the clubs, but he wasn’t this good. No one I’d ever met was this good at projecting emotions.

A mob entered from stage right. They had crossbows and torches. They shot the weeping vampire. The crossbow bolt appeared in his chest like magic. Even knowing it was stage trickery it looked real. He collapsed on top of his dead love, and the lights circled round the two dead lovers. He died curled around her, as if, even in death, he would protect her.

The mob came, and the weeping man who had shot the vampire picked up the dead girl. He cradled her in his arms, and a woman from the crowd joined him in weeping. Parents, I thought. They cradled her, much as the dead vampire had. They carried her offstage, weeping, and left the vampire dead.

The stage was empty for a moment, then the vampires returned. They crept out on the stage, cautious, afraid. They seemed bewildered by the dead vampire. It was Adonis who knelt by him, touched his face, and wept. He picked the fallen man up in his arms, cradling him. Then he rose skyward, and the vampires flew away with their fallen leader. They flew away weeping to the sounds of music that sounded like the violins were weeping with them.

The curtain went down and there was a moment of utter silence. Then the audience went wild, clapping, making noises of all kinds. The audience came to its feet and the curtain reopened. The humans came out first, the chorus, but the audience stayed on their feet through it all. When Adonis took the stage, they clapped louder. When the girl and Merlin came down to bow, well, the crowd actually screamed. You don’t hear screaming much at the ballet, but you heard it now.

Roses were delivered to the girl, and to Merlin. More than one bouquet of them, in different colors. They bowed, and bowed again, and finally the audience began to quiet. Only then did the curtain close, and the dancers exited to the soft sound of applause and the excited babble of the audience, already asking themselves, “Did you see what I saw? Was it real?”

We’d survived the ballet. Now all we had to survive was the cast party afterward. The night was young. Damn it.

53

I WAS IN Jean-Claude’s office at Danse Macabre. It was black-and-white elegant, with framed kimonos and fans on the walls as the only color. I sat behind his elegant black desk, with a drawer open. I had an extra gun in that drawer. I’d loaded it with silver shot while we waited. Asher sat beside me, in a chair pulled up so he could be close enough to touch me. He was the reason the drawer was open and the gun was loaded, but not sitting in plain sight on the desk, or in my hand already. He thought it might make the discussion get off on a hostile foot. Damian stood on my other side, hand on my shoulder. His touching me, sharing his calmness, was probably why Asher had won his argument about the gun. The other reason he’d won the fight about the gun was leaning up against the door: Claudia, Truth, and Lisandro, looking very bodyguardy against the wall. Where was Jean-Claude? He was out being the media darling. Elinore, as manager here, was also playing to the media. For public events like this, she made a much better hostess. Besides, I was handling other business. The kind the human media didn’t get to know about.

Merlin was sitting in a chair facing us. Adonis and the dark-haired woman from the chorus were sitting on the couch against the wall. Her name was Elisabetta, and her vaguely Eastern European accent was thick enough to walk on. Merlin’s and Adonis’s accents seemed to flow with their moods, but were mostly absent.

Merlin was answering my questions in that elegant from-anywhere-and-everywhere voice: “I wanted the show to be magical for the entire audience, not just the humans.”

“So you tried to roll everyone’s mind, including the master vampires and lycanthropes, because you didn’t want them to miss the show?” I didn’t fight to keep the sarcsasm out of my voice. I’d have lost the fight, so why try?

“Yes,” he said, simply, as if, of course.

Damian’s hand squeezed a little tighter on my bare shoulder, his fingers caressing the edge of the collarbone scars.

“I find that a little hard to believe,” I said. There, that was calm. I hadn’t called him a lying bastard.

“Why else would I have done it?” he asked. His face was very calm. I knew his eyes were dark, pure brown, but other than color I couldn’t describe them much, because I wasn’t making eye contact. This vampire had damn near rolled us all with no gaze. I wasn’t chancing it. He was tall, dark, and handsome. He was not European. No, something darker, farther east, as in Middle East. There was something very Egyptian about him, or maybe Babylonian, because he was old. Old enough that he made my bones ache with his age. Not power, just age. I was a necromancer, and I could taste the power and age of most vampires. It was a natural ability that had gotten better as my power had grown. Now that ability made my bones thrum with the weight of ages that sat smiling in front of me.

“Using power that way on a Master of the City is a direct challenge to his or her authority. You know that.”

“Not if you don’t get caught at it,” Adonis said from the couch.

I glanced at him, avoiding his eyes. That made him laugh. He liked that he could roll me with his gaze. All right, that we both thought he could.

Asher spoke then. “Are you implying that Merlin rolled the minds of all the masters in all the cities that you performed in, and they did not know it?” His voice was empty, pleasant, even happy. It was a lie. He wanted Adonis to chat himself into a corner.

Merlin raised a darkly pale hand. That one gesture stopped Adonis with his mouth parted. “No,” Merlin said, “no. We have answered the question of Jean-Claude’s servant. When she speaks it is with his voice. But why are you here, Asher? Why do you sit so close and join these talks?”

“I am Jean-Claude’s témoin.”

“How have you earned this place of trust and power, Asher? It is not through strength. There are at least four vampires here, perhaps more, who are more powerful than you. And you were never known for your skill in battle. So why do you sit at his right hand, and now at hers?”

“I can tell you why he’s here tonight, sitting beside me,” I said.

Merlin gave me a quizzical look. It was so hard not to look him in the eye when he moved. I’d lost the knack of not making eye contact with vampires. “Do enlighten me, Miss Blake.”

I reached in the drawer and wrapped my hand around the gun. I felt better holding it. The moment the gun flashed to the room, the tension level rose. I felt rather than saw Adonis and Elisabetta begin to move forward on the couch.

Claudia said, “Don’t.”

Merlin said, “Do not react. That is what she wants.”

It was probably their master’s voice, not Claudia’s warning, that kept them on the couch. Or hell, maybe she’d been speaking to me.

I put the gun on the desk with my hand sort of caressing it. Not exactly holding it, but touching it. “I wanted to have the gun naked on the desk when you came through the door. Asher talked me out of it.”

“So he is here to see you do not do anything foolish.”

“He is here because I trust him, and I don’t trust you.”

“You are not a fool. I would not expect you to trust me.”

“And what would you do with your little gun?” Adonis asked.

“Shooting you and Merlin here seems like a possibility.”

“On what grounds?” Merlin asked. “What laws have we broken? We are allowed mass hypnosis for theatrical purposes.”

I hated to admit it, but he was right. I shrugged. “If I think on it, I’m sure I can come up with something.”

“Would you, as you Americans say, frame us?”

I sighed, and let my hand fall away from the gun. “No, I guess I wouldn’t.”

“Then I say again, why are we here? What have we done to anger Jean-Claude?”

“You know exactly what you did,” I said, “and why we’re pissed at you.”

“No, truly, Miss Blake, I do not.”

“It’s Ms. Blake, or Marshal Blake, to you.”

He made a small gesture. “Ms. Blake, then.”

“What would you have done if you had succeeded in rolling the minds of six Masters of the City?” Asher asked. His hair hid half his face, a golden distraction.

“I will not answer your question for you are not master here, nor powerful enough to be témoin.”

“Fine, what he said.”

Merlin looked at me. “What is that, Ms. Blake?”

“Don’t make me repeat the question, Merlin, just answer it.”

“I don’t understand what you hope to gain by this little discussion, Ms. Blake. Truly, I do not.”

“You tried to mind-fuck six Masters of the City, plus a half-dozen or more rulers of the local lycanthropes. Hell, we’ve got animals to call of several masters, plus human servants. You tried to bite off a great, big, bloody chunk, and you weren’t master enough to swallow it.”

“Merlin could have taken you all.” This from Elisabetta.

I shook my head without looking at her. “No, he couldn’t, or he’d have done it.”

“What do you want from us, Ms. Blake?” Merlin asked.

“I want to know why you did it. Don’t give me shit about wanting all your audience to enjoy the show. If you have truly been mind-fucking all the masters at all the performances, then you wanted to know if you could take them all here tonight. I want to know, why?”

“Why what, Ms. Blake?”

“Why try to roll everyone? Why run the risk of insulting all of them? Why throw this big a gauntlet down? You’re a master vampire. You’re so damn old you make my bones ache just sitting there. Vamps like you don’t make mistakes, Merlin. Vamps like you always have a reason for everything they do.”

“Perhaps I do not believe that a human who has barely seen three decades of mortal life would be able to understand my motives.”

“Try me. Better yet, try Jean-Claude. You said it yourself; when you speak to me, you speak to him.”

He went very still then. I knew the quality of that stillness. I’d surprised him in some way. Stillness could be as telling on a vampire as a gesture on a human.

“Touché, Ms. Blake.” He made another small gesture with his hands. “You will not believe that I did it only to make our production more enjoyable to all.”

“No,” I said.

He did that hands-out gesture again. I was beginning to wonder if it was his version of a shrug. “Perhaps, after succeeding in city after city, I had simply grown arrogant. Perhaps I truly believed I could do you all.”

“I believe you’re arrogant. I might even believe that you rolled the rest of the masters individually. I’m not sure on that one, yet. I’ve felt your mind; I won’t say you couldn’t do it, just that you might not have tried.”

“Then why did I try tonight?” he asked.

I smiled. It didn’t feel like a happy smile, more like that curl of lips when I’m pissed. “That’s what I’m trying to find out, and what you keep avoiding answering.”

“Am I avoiding the question?” he asked.

I nodded, and this time my smile was almost happy. “Yeah, you are.”

“Perhaps I have answered it, and you simply do not like the answer.”

“Perhaps you’re trying not to outright lie in case Damian, or Asher, or one of the others smells or feels the lie. But you are definitely not answering the question completely.”

“Do you truly believe that if I wished to lie in front of the people you have in this room, that I could not do it successfully?”

I thought about that for a second. I fought the urge to look at Asher. Damian played his hand along my shoulder. “I think you could, but not without using more mind power than you want to use around me.”

“And why do I not wish to use mind powers around you, Ms. Blake?” His voice held disdain, almost amusement. I wasn’t insulted; his voice was like everything about him, practiced, calculated.

“Because you’re afraid that Mommie Dearest will hear it, and pay a second visit tonight.”

He tried for arrogant disdain, and made it, but I could taste the change in him. The faintest, thinnest taste of fear. “And who is Mommie Dearest?”

I stared very hard at that graceful line of jaw. I’d have loved eye contact, but didn’t want to risk it. “Do you really want me to say her name?”

“You can say anything you like,” he said.

I nodded, and found my own heart beating faster, my newly scarred hand clenched into a fist. “Fine”—and my voice was a little breathy—“you’re afraid the Mother of All Darkness will show up again.”

Did the lights grow a shade less bright, or was it my imagination?

“She is lost to us, Ms. Blake. You know nothing of her.”

“She lies in a room that is underground, but high up. There are windows around the front of that room that look out upon a cave, or underground building. There’s always firelight down below, as if whoever watches is afraid of the dark.”

“I am aware that Valentina has been inside the room you describe, and lived to tell the tale. Do not seek to impress me with secondhand stories.”

I was beginning to think that Merlin didn’t know that I’d been in his head with her. Did he not know that I’d seen his memory of her coming out of the darkness? “Let’s try another secondhand tale, then. I saw her in the shape of a great cat, maybe a type of extinct lion, bigger than anything that we have today. I watched her stalk you in a night where the world smelled of rain and jasmine, or something like jasmine. I mean, I don’t know how long jasmine has existed as a plant; maybe my mind just calls it ‘jasmine’ because it’s the closest smell I know.”

I thought he’d gone still before, but I had been wrong, because now he went so still that I had to concentrate on his chest to make sure he didn’t just disappear. So still, more still than any snake, still in the way that live things don’t get. Still, as if he were willing himself not to be there anymore.

His voice was as empty as his body when he said, “You shared her memory tonight.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Then you know her secret.”

“She’s got a lot of them, but if you mean that she’s a shapeshifter and a vampire, simultaneously, then yeah, I know that secret.”

He drew a breath. A lot of them did that when they came back from that still-stillness. They drew a breath as if to remind themselves they aren’t dead yet.

“But Ms. Blake, everyone knows that you cannot be both.”

“The strain of vampirism that we have today is destroyed by the lycanthropy virus, but maybe once it wasn’t, or maybe it’s a different kind of vampirism. Whatever. I know what I’ve seen.”

“Musette brought some of the Dark Lady’s cats to visit us,” Asher said, “they were both, and neither.”

“Yes, Belle Morte says the sleeping cats of our mother have woken to her call,” Merlin said. “What do you think of that, Ms. Blake? Do you think Belle Morte has grown so powerful that the servants of the mother have woken to her call?”

“No,” I said.

“Why no?” he asked. His voice was still empty, his body not moving much. He wasn’t trying to play human now.

“Because Belle Morte doesn’t have that kind of power.”

“You have never seen her in the flesh,” Adonis said, “or you would not be so quick to judge.” He didn’t sound happy as he said it, which was interesting. It was the first time I felt that he’d lost control of his voice.

I glanced at him. “She’s powerful, but it’s not the same kind of power as Mommie Dearest. It’s just not.”

“If Belle Morte did not wake the servants of our good mother, then who did?” Merlin asked.

I had a moment of insight. I don’t get them often. I debated on whether to act on it, or ask Asher’s opinion first. Then I thought, to hell with it. I was tired. I’d fed, but the healing had taken more than the feeding had given back. I was too tired for games.

“Do you want her to wake up, Merlin? Or do you fear her waking up?”

He sank back into that stillness again. “I do not know how to answer that question.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“Then I will not answer it.”

“Are you a flunky of the vampire council, is that it?”

“Merlin has been outside the circle of inner power for centuries,” Asher said.

I nodded. “Yeah, you guys filled me in on the limo ride here. He grew so powerful that he was given a choice of giving up his territory, or being killed. He gave it all up, and vanished into the mists of time. Jean-Claude thought there might be a place for him here on American soil.” In my head, I thought, and the next time that Jean-Claude offers refuge to someone this fucking powerful, he better run it by me first. I’d made that clear in the limo. He hadn’t even argued with me.

“If you’re not working for the council, then who are you working for?” I asked.

“If I said myself, would you believe me?”

“Maybe, maybe not, don’t know, try me.” My hand was on the gun again.

“Why touch your gun?”

“Because, I think if you don’t want to answer the question that you may try vampire powers again. It just depends on what you’re more afraid of.”

“I am not afraid of your little gun,” he said.

“Probably not, but you are afraid of Mommie Dearest, aren’t you?”

He actually licked his lips. The gesture gave me hope that his façade was cracking, and it made me give his eyes a full glance. Which was what it was supposed to do. He tried to roll me in that moment of eye contact, and he might have done it, except that Asher and Damian touched my bare skin at the same time. It was enough to distract me, make me look away.

“There must be more to the two of you than I have been told,” Merlin said, and his voice was back to emptiness again.

“He is her vampire servant,” Adonis said, “it isn’t rumor.” His voice wasn’t empty, more hollow with an edge of anger.

“But that is not what saved her,” Merlin said. He looked to Asher, and I saw what I had rarely seen, one vampire look away from the gaze of another. Most vamps’ power, like my own necromancy, protected them against vampire gaze. They couldn’t roll each other—but Merlin could, or Asher feared he could. Scary bastard.

“You were the weakest of Belle Morte’s master vampires. That vampire would not have helped save anyone from my gaze.”

“I have never met you before,” Asher said, his hand still on my arm, and his gaze averted from the other vampire.

“I have been closer to you than you know, Asher.”

I did not like the direction this talk was taking. “Look, we brought you back here to get answers, not the other way around.”

“And what answers do you think that I want from you?”

“You wanted to know how powerful we were. I don’t know why, but you did. You wanted to test us. Why?”

“Perhaps I have sought long and hard for another master I could call my own. Someone who was powerful enough to make me feel that he was worthy to follow.”

“You’re Merlin, not Lancelot,” I said.

“Lancelot was fiction, as is most of what you know today about me, and the ones I served.”

I blinked in his direction. “Are you saying you’re the Merlin, as in King Arthur and the Round Table?”

“Are you saying I am not?”

I started to argue with him, but decided not to. It was no skin off my back if he wanted to pretend to be the real Merlin. I wouldn’t even point out that Merlin, himself, was a late addition to the legend of Arthur. It was his delusion. Obsidian Butterfly thought she was an Aztec goddess. She’d been powerful enough that I hadn’t burst her bubble either.

“Another night, maybe, but tonight I want to get some straight answers out of you. You’re talking rings around me, and I’m tired of it.”

His power breathed through my mind. I was suddenly pointing a gun at his chest. “Don’t try it.”

“You would slay me simply for using my power.”

“I would shoot you in the chest for trying to roll my mind. One-on-one mind control is illegal, especially for nefarious purposes.”

“I do not plan to take your blood, or feed upon you in any other way.”

The gun was still nice and steady at his chest. “The law doesn’t state you have to do mind control for feeding, just that you infringe on the free will of another. It’s grounds for an order of execution.”

“It takes time to get an order of execution, Ms. Blake. You cannot possibly have one with my name on it in your pocket.” He was chiding again. Silly girl, his voice seemed to say.

I shook my head. I was being silly, wasn’t I? Asher’s hand found my leg. When I’d pointed the gun, his hand had had to move. His hand went up under my skirt, until he traced the edge of the hose, and found skin. It wasn’t about sex, it was about helping keep me clearheaded. It was the first time a man touching my thigh had cleared my head.

I straightened my arm a little, and made it a double-handed grip. Damian’s hand on my shoulder dug in, as if he was afraid of what I was about to do.

“You try to mind-fuck me again and I’ll take my chances with the courts.”

There were other guns out in the room, all of them in the hands of our guys, and girl. Claudia said, “If you leave the couch, you bleed.”

Adonis and Elisabetta settled back against the cushions again. I didn’t spare a glance to see if they were happy about it. Claudia and the others had them; I had my hands full with the vampire in front of me.

“I will not use my power on you again, Ms. Blake. I think you are a little too dangerous to tease.”

“Good of you notice,” I said, voice quiet, fighting to keep my arms steady.

“Your word that you will not try to use your powers on any of us here tonight,” Asher said, his hand very still on my thigh.

“I give you my word that I will not use my powers on any of you tonight.”

“Broaden,” I said.

“What?” Asher asked.

“His word that he doesn’t use his powers on us while he’s in town. I want his word that he’ll be a good boy until he leaves our territory.”

“You heard the lady,” Asher said, and he didn’t try to keep the humor out of his voice. I was glad I was amusing someone.

He gave his word, exactly as I asked him to. He was an ancient vampire. If you could ever get one of the bastards to give their word of honor, then you had them. They wouldn’t break it. Weird, but true.

I lowered my gun, and Claudia and the others did the same. We didn’t put the guns up, though. We had Merlin’s word, not Adonis’s, or Elisabetta’s. I guess I should have thrown that in, but I hadn’t thought about it at the time.

“You know that I am one of the few vampires she created personally. You have seen the memory of my death.”

I nodded.

“I had heard rumors that she was stirring. More rumors that she has visited you in dream, or vision. I am forbidden to approach the council for any reason on pain of death. To have the rumors confirmed, or denied, I had no choice but to come here, to you and Jean-Claude.”

“Why the power trip at the ballet?” I said.

“I wanted to see if I could find something in Jean-Claude that would interest her.”

“And?” I said.

“I found you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you are a necromancer, as of old.”

“And that means, what?”

“You have powers that I have not seen in many long centuries.”

“You haven’t seen my powers used yet.”

“You have a vampire servant. You have an animal to call. You gain powers as if you were a master vampire. You feed upon sex as Jean-Claude does, as Belle Morte does. It is not an option for you, or an added power from Jean-Claude. You must feed as if you were in truth a vampire. Not upon blood, true, but upon lust.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a succubus.” I tried not to think hard about what I’d just admitted, saying it quick.

“You make light of it, why?”

“Because it scares me,” I said.

“You admit that?” This from Adonis.

I shrugged. “Why not?”

“Most people don’t like admitting what they fear.”

“It doesn’t make you less afraid of it,” I said.

“I find that it does,” he said, and it was his real voice, I think, not a game.

“What do you fear?” Asher asked.

“Nothing I will share with a lesser master.”

“Let’s not start name-calling,” I said. “We were actually talking.”

“What do you wish to talk about, Ms. Blake?”

“You say you came here looking for answers about Mommie Dearest; ask your questions.”

“And you will answer them, just like that?” He sounded like he didn’t believe me.

“I won’t know until I hear the questions, but maybe. Stop trying to mind-fuck and just pretend we’re both civilized beings. Ask me.”

He actually laughed, and it was just a laugh, not that touchable sound of Jean-Claude, or Asher, or Belle Morte. It was just a laugh. “Perhaps I am so old that I have forgotten how to simply talk.”

“Practice on me, ask your questions.”

“Is she waking from her long sleep?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How do you know with such certainty?”

“I’ve seen her in dreams, and in…” I hesitated, searching for a word.

“Vision,” Asher supplied.

“But that makes it seem like some beatific otherworldly shit, and it wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?” Merlin asked.

“She sent a spirit cat once, an illusion. It sort of climbed up my body in the Jeep once. She smells of night, soft and tropical, jasmine, rain. She damn near suffocated me once with the taste of a rainy night. Belle Morte does it with the perfume of roses.”

“Do you equate their power with each other?” he asked.

“Do you mean, are they similar in power?”

“Yes.”

“No,” I said.

“How is it no?”

“I’ve seen her rise above me in vision, or dream, or whatever the fuck it was, like a huge black ocean. I’ve seen her rise like living night, made into something real, and separate. As if night wasn’t just the absence of light, but was something real, and alive. She is the reason that our ancestors huddled around the fire at night. She’s why we fear the dark. She’s a fear in the very fiber of our beings, something going back to the lizard part of us. We don’t fear her because we fear the dark; we fear the dark because of her.”

I shivered, suddenly cold. Asher took off his tuxedo jacket and laid it around my bare shoulders. It put Damian’s hand against the back of my neck, under my hair, so he could keep contact. I didn’t argue about it.

“Then it is true,” Merlin said, in a voice that held a sliver of fear, “she is waking.”

“Yes,” I said, “she is.” I took Asher’s hand in mine. I needed the comfort.

“Belle Morte believes it is her power that has raised the mother’s servants.”

“That isn’t it, and you know it,” I said.

“They wake, because she is waking,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Why is she so interested in a human servant?” Adonis asked, not rudely, but like he truly wanted to know.

“I believe it is not the human servant who interests her, but the necromancer.” He looked at me, and again I fought not to meet his eyes. I didn’t think it was mind tricks, just habit. You look in someone’s eyes. You just do. “Did you know, Ms. Blake, that it is on her orders that the necromancers of old were slaughtered?”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t know that.”

“It was her orders that all with your gifts be killed before they could grow to such power.”

“I can sort of understand that.”

“Can you?”

I nodded, and squeezed Asher’s hand, and pressed Damian’s hand closer to my skin. “I can roll a vampire’s mind the way you guys roll us.”

“Can you, truly?”

I realized that I’d said too much, overshared. “I am too tired to play games tonight, Merlin. When she mind-fucked us both tonight a well-meaning friend gave me a cross to hold.”

“Oh, dear,” he said.

I raised my left hand so he could see the new scar.

“How did you heal it so quickly? A holy item heals slowly for us.”

I put my hand back on top of Damian’s. “I’m not a vampire, Merlin, I’m a necromancer. It’s just another kind of psychic gift. It doesn’t make me evil.”

“And are we evil, merely because we are vampires?”

The question was too hard for me with a vampire in each hand. “I’m too tired to debate philosophy with you. It took energy to heal this.”

“We felt you feed,” Adonis said.

I fought not to look at him again. “Yeah, I fed, but it wasn’t enough. Dealing with Mommie Dearest takes a lot out of a girl.”

“It takes a great deal out of everyone,” Merlin said.

I wondered for the first time if the reason he hadn’t done some major mind control after the mother left wasn’t just to be polite, but because he was scared. Maybe he didn’t have enough juice left. Maybe he, like me, was drained of energy.

“She can feed off other vampires, just by touching their powers, can’t she?”

“Why do you ask?”

“She almost always comes to me after some other vampire has used major power on me. She used to follow Belle Morte’s mind games. Tonight it was you that she followed. Does she feed off us when she does this?”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“So she hasn’t been asleep and not feeding for thousands of years. She’s been like some kind of dark dream, feeding on energy, on power.”

“I believe so.”

“Why did she go to sleep in the first place?”

“How should I know?”

“Avoiding the question, aren’t you?”

He gave a small smile. “Perhaps.”

“Do you know why she went to sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it is not a story I wish to share.”

“I can’t make you tell me, can I?”

“You could try to see if you are necromancer enough to command me to tell you.”

I grinned. “My ego isn’t that big.”

“More of the mother’s servants have woken. Most of the council, like Belle Morte, believe it is their own growing powers that have broken the servants from their long sleeps.”

“Which council members don’t believe it?”

“Since I am forbidden to go near the council, how would I know that?”

“The same way you know what Belle Morte thinks.”

He gave that smile again. I think it was his I’m-not-telling-you smile.

“You need to feed again, Ms. Blake, as do I. The good mother fed upon us both.”

“She’s not good, and she was never your mother.”

He made that hand gesture again, the one that passed for a shrug. “She was mother to what I am now.”

I couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t try. “You wanted to know if she’s waking; she is. You say you wanted to know whether Jean-Claude was a power strong enough for you to call him master.”

“You do not believe that I seek a master?”

“I believe that the only master you’ve ever acknowledged is lying in a room somewhere in Europe, haunting my dreams.”

He took a deep breath, sighing. Vamps didn’t need to breathe, only air enough to talk, but I’d found that most of them sigh, from time to time, as if it’s a habit that even a few millennia can’t break.

Damian’s hand tightened almost painfully on the back of my neck. I was being utterly calm; what was the deal? I started to look up at him, but I felt it. He let me feel it. I was sucking his energy. Taking back the energy I gave him to live. Shit.

There was a knock on the door.

Claudia looked at me. “See who it is,” I said.

She checked before opening the door, good bodyguard. It was Nathaniel. She opened the door for him. He came through with his hair still back in its braid, but he’d lost his shirt and vest somewhere. His upper body gleamed with sweat, and the amethyst and diamond collar on his neck glittered as he glided into the room.

“How did you lose your shirt?” I asked.

“I got hot,” he said, and grinned.

“I’ll say.”

He walked toward me still smiling, but there was worry around the edges of his eyes. A stranger wouldn’t have seen it, but I’d spent months reading his face. He walked wide around the desk, so he’d be out of reach of Merlin. He’d learned to be a better person, and a worse victim, living with me. He came around, and put his hand on my arm, underneath Asher’s jacket. Having them both touch me was as if someone had stuck an electric plug in my spine. It made me jump, but underneath the rush of power was the feeling that it was going just one way, into me. Shit. I was really, really going to have to get better at this energy thing.

“You are very new at being the center of this triumvirate of power,” Merlin said, like he was certain of it, and like it was interesting to him.

“Yeah, there’s a learning curve.”

“There are ways to keep the good mother from feeding upon your energy.”

“I’m all ears,” I said.

He frowned at me.

“I mean, I’d love to hear it.” Sometimes I forgot that slang does not travel well, not across countries, or centuries.

“A holy item hidden inside at least two layers of pillows will keep her at bay.”

“That sounds risky,” I said, raising my newly marked hand. The movement made Damian move, almost a stumble. I felt Nathaniel reach for him, knew when he had put an arm around the taller man’s waist.

“Even vampires can sleep thus, if they believe and they do not call their own power.”

I needed to feed, but I didn’t want a mistake here. I bunked with too many vampires to want a holy item going off at the wrong moment. “A vampire can sleep with a holy item under his pillow?”

“Yes, or underneath the bed, though pillow is better.”

“What happens if the holy item touches vampire flesh?”

“Look at your own hand for that answer,” he said.

“Are you saying that the cross burned me because of my own power, not Mommie Dearest?”

“You are a succubus, Ms. Blake; that has long been a power associated with the demonic.”

“I’ve come up against demons. Vampirism is a contagion, not a demonic anything. It’s a blood-borne disease. A doctor back in the 1900s sort of figured out how to cure it. You don’t cure demonic possession with a blood transfusion.”

“Cured it?” Merlin said. “With a blood transfusion, truly?”

“Well, yeah, but the vampirism is what keeps the dead body up and running, so you take the vampirism out of the blood, and the body dies.”

“Ah, then not a cure that most would seek.”

I shook my head. “No.”

Damian leaned over and whispered against my cheek, “All interesting, but may I ask that you speed this up?”

“The mother cannot break through your protection on her own, except in dream. But she can follow the attack of another vampire inside your defenses. You are correct on that. Fear of her was one of the reasons for the laws governing combat between masters. But she has been asleep for so long that we have forgotten caution.”

“Why does she need to follow someone else’s attack?”

“Because she is still a creature of nightmare and the lands of Morpheus.”

“She’s still asleep, you mean?”

“Yes, that is what I mean.” He smiled.

Damian’s hand dug into my shoulder. I said, “I don’t mean to be rude here, but I need to feed. So, if you’ll excuse us.”

“Can’t we watch?” Elisabetta asked.

“No,” I said.

“Come, Elisabetta,” Merlin said. He went out the door with her behind him. Adonis turned in the doorway, and stared at us all.

“You don’t get to watch either,” I said. “This meeting is over.”

He started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He finally shook his head, and left without another word. I’d learned more than he meant to tell, but less than there was to know. Somehow I knew I’d see him again. Just a feeling.

Claudia went to the door. “I’ll make sure no one interrupts.” She closed the door behind her.

I stood, and gently moved their hands off my shoulders. I took their hands in mine. “Nathaniel, take Damian to the workers’ lounge or somewhere. Or find a table outside, I guess.”

“Why can’t we watch?”

I gave him a look, but he gave innocent, knowledgeable eyes. “It’s been less than two hours, are you saying you’d go again?”

He smiled.

“I can’t feed on you again this soon, Nathaniel, it’s too dangerous. I don’t know what the mother did to me, exactly, but I feel shaky. I don’t know if I can guarantee that the ardeur won’t spread through the room. Outside the door you’ll be safe; inside, I don’t know.” I looked at Damian, who was clinging to Nathaniel’s shoulders as if he’d fall down without the support. “If I fed on Damian right now, I think that would be bad.”

“Who will you feed from then?” Asher asked from where he stood near the wall.

“If it’s okay with you, you.”

“A man likes to be asked.”

I squeezed the others’ hands, and said, “Nathaniel, Damian, go, please, and stay where someone can keep an eye on you, okay?”

“I promise,” Nathaniel said, and they started for the door.

I turned to Asher. “Are you mad at me?”

“No one likes to be taken for granted, Anita.”

“I don’t take you for granted.”

“You do, and so does Jean-Claude.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so I said that part out loud. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

He shook his head. “We do not have time to tend my emotional wounds. Forgive me.”

The door closed behind us, Nathaniel and Damian were outside trying to find a place to wait while I fed enough to keep us all alive.

I reached for Asher’s hand. He took it, but he wouldn’t look at me. What little of his face he gave was that perfect profile, with the scars hidden behind the glory of his hair. I’d asked for sex and he was hiding from me. Not good.

“What is wrong?” I asked.

“Do you realize that this will be the first time we have ever had sex alone together?”

I started to argue with him but stopped myself. I could remember his body so intimately. So many nights and afternoons of his body against mine. Had there always been someone else with us? Had we never had a moment that was just us, just ours?

I touched his face, tried to get him to look at me, but he wouldn’t do it. “It’s not just Jean-Claude that you haven’t gotten enough personal attention from, is it?”

He smiled then, but not like he was happy. “I spent centuries being desired by all that I touched, or wanted. Then I spent centuries being despised, ridiculed. Sex was a mercy or done as a torment to the ones Belle wished to punish.”

I tried to hug him, and he kept me away, just holding my hand while he talked. I said the only thing I could think to say. “I’m sorry.”

He finally looked at me with the perfect side of his face. He let me see the drowning beauty that had made people give up their fortunes, their honor, their virtue, for but one more night staring into this face. “You have healed some of my hurts. Being with you and Jean-Claude. I thought it would be enough.”

I slid my hand underneath his hair, so I could touch the scarred side of his face. I cupped that which he hid, while I stared up into the face he let me see. “But you don’t get enough attention from either of us.”

“It sounds childish when you say it out loud, but it does not feel childish inside here.” He touched his chest. “It feels like I am starving to death in the midst of a feast. But it is a feast that I share with too many. Neither of you watches only me. There is always someone else more beautiful, more desirable.”

“There is no one more beautiful than you, Asher.”

He jerked back, and exposed the scars on his face. “How can you say that to me?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want to be the center of someone’s life again, Anita. Jean-Claude’s center is you. Yours is beginning to be Nathaniel and Micah.” He grabbed my arms and closed his eyes tight. “I am no one’s darling, and I cannot bear it.” He laughed, but when he opened his eyes there was a shine of unshed tears. “How stupid and childish. How selfish.”

“It’s not about being with men, or women, is it?” I said, “It’s because none of the men I’m picking will ever put you at the center of their world.”

“I want to be loved, Anita, as I once was.”

“Julianna,” I said, softly.

He nodded. “Once it was Jean-Claude, but he could never truly love another man the way he loves a woman. Belle’s tastes and demands sent many of us to the arms of other men, but Jean-Claude could never be content with just men in his bed. He is a lover of women above all else.”

“And you?” I asked, because he seemed to want me to ask.

“I think if it were the right man, I could be in love, and content, but I think the same of a woman. It is love I seek, Anita, not the package around it. I have always been needier of attention than Jean-Claude. I sought a woman for my human servant when I realized that Jean-Claude would never be content with just men, with just me.”

I didn’t know what to say to the pain in his voice. An emotional burden he’d carried for two or three hundred years, and I was supposed to fix it, or at least make it better, how? How was I going to do that?

I felt Damian reach out for me. It made me stagger against Asher. He had to catch me. “I’m draining Damian.”

“Then I must stop being an enfant terrible, and let you feed.”

“I do want you, Asher. I do love you. But right now, I don’t have time to…”

“To heal my wounds,” he finished for me.

“To make love to you the way I want to.”

He gave me a look, like he didn’t believe me.

“We have to feed and get back to the party, but you are not just emergency food to me. You are not just someone I share with Jean-Claude. You are special to me, Asher, you, just you. I don’t have time to make you believe me tonight, but I’ll try to do better later.”

He drew me in against his body, held me close, whispered into my hair, “Later you will have to feed upon someone else, for I will have had my turn.”

I drew back enough to see his face, and said, “Remember one thing, that I didn’t make love to you that first time because I had to feed the ardeur. I made love to you because I wanted to, because Jean-Claude and I wanted to.”

“You did it to protect me from Belle Morte’s agents.”

“Yeah, we did it so that Belle couldn’t call you home, so you’d belong to us by her rules, but you’re still the only new man in my life that I had sex with because I wanted to take care of you, not because you were food.”

“Take care of me?”

I nodded. “It’s what you do when you love someone.”

He smiled then, and it was that rare smile. The smile that made him look terribly young, and not at all like himself, as if that smile was all that was left of what he might have been centuries ago. “You can’t possibly love all the men in your life, Anita.”

“No,” I agreed, “but I love you. I love Jean-Claude.”

“And Micah, and Nathaniel,” he said.

I nodded.

“And London, and Requiem,” he said.

I shook my head. “No, not them.”

“Why not love them? They are beautiful and perfect.”

I grinned. “Not perfect; handsome, but not perfect. Requiem’s too damn moody by half. London, I’m a little embarrassed about him.”

“Why embarrassed?”

“Not sure, maybe because I’m not sure I even like him, and I had sex with him.” I felt Damian slumping at the table where he sat. Nathaniel caught his arm, kept him in the chair. Asher had to catch me or I might have fallen.

“You need to feed,” he said.

I nodded.

“Then we have talked enough. Tonight I will take care of you, because that is what you do when you love someone.”

Heat rose up in my face, and I wasn’t sure why.

He laughed, not a magical vampire laugh, but a very masculine laugh. That laugh that lets you know you’ve pleased them in some very guy sort of way.

“What?” I asked, and wouldn’t look at him, because I knew that would make the blush worse.

“You blushed because I said I loved you.”

I nodded, and tried to sound churlish, as I said, “So?”

“So, I know you love me.”

That made me look up at him. “Just because I blushed?”

He nodded.

“I blush a lot.”

He drew me into the circle of his arms. “Yes, but this one was for me.” He laid a kiss upon my forehead. “I would like to feed while you feed.”

“Haven’t you fed yet?”

“No, the blood hunger did not rise.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“Very.”

“Then feed.” I thought about it. “Though I’m sort of running out of spots for fresh fang marks.”

He touched the side of my neck where Requiem’s bite lay. He traced his hand over the mound of my breast, dipping a little lower than the corset top until he caressed London’s bite. He dipped his fingers lower, so that he touched my nipple. Just that brought my breath in a gasp.

He laughed again, that pleased sound. His hand slid up my thigh, forced me to move my legs apart so he could find Jean-Claude’s bite in my very inner thigh.

My voice came breathy, “How did you know it was there?”

“I smelled it,” he whispered. “Are you ready for me?”

I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice.

“Then look at me, Anita, look into my eyes.”

I looked up slowly, and found his eyes full of light like blue ice, glittering in winter moonlight, all shadows and shimmers. His eyes dazzled me.

He was carrying me, and I hadn’t remembered him picking me up. “Where are we going?” I whispered.

“The couch,” he said.

“We have to be quick.”

He laid me down upon the couch, my knees bent, and him kneeling between them. “We can be quick now, because I know that there will be long later.”

“All because I blushed for you,” I said.

“Yes.” He laid me down on the couch. There wasn’t room for him to lie beside me, so he stood, and began to take off his clothes.

“If we take off the corset it will take forever to get it back on.”

“The corset can stay.” He threw his shirt and jacket on the arm of the couch. He stood there for a moment nude from the waist up. I stared up at him, stupidly, that golly, wow look on my face. I couldn’t help it. He was so beautiful, and I knew that the rest of him was just as beautiful. I could look at him with knowledgeable anticipation. It made me shiver just staring up at him like that.

“The look on your face, Anita, mon Dieu, the look on your face.”

I had to swallow twice to say, “What do you want me to take off?”

“Panties.”

“Just panties,” I said.

He nodded, and started unfastening his pants.

My pulse sped up. I had to sit up to take the panties off. It also helped me look away from him while I did it. Was it just that we had never been alone before? Was that this incredible anticipation? Or was it more than that? I wanted him. I wanted him to touch me. My body ached with the need, not just to be touched, but for Asher to touch me.

His hands slid over my bare shoulders, where I sat facing away from him. The smoothing of his hands down my skin made me hold my breath.

He leaned down and whispered, “What do you want?”

“Your hands on my body.”

“What else do you want?”

“You inside me.”

“What else?”

My pulse was hammering in my throat so hard I could barely speak around it. “Bite me while you fuck me, make me come both ways while you’re inside me.”

“Inside you both ways?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

He grabbed a handful of my hair, and pulled until it hurt, just a little, just enough. “Say please.”

“Please.”

“I have to take blood to enter you. To bring you a second time with my bite, I will have to take blood again.”

I tried to reason that out, and failed, but finally said the only thing I could think to say. “Please.”

54

HE PUT US both on our knees on the couch, me facing away from him. His hand wrapped in my hair, hard enough to hurt, drawing my neck back in a clean, straining angle. He pressed his body against the back of mine, used his hips to raise the short skirt so I could feel his body against my bare ass. He plunged his hand down the front of the corset, so he could grip my breast, tight and hard. It made me cry out. He plunged his body against mine, but without blood, he was still soft.

He whispered in my ear, “Your blood will make me a man, again. It will fill my body with life, so that I may fill your body with life.”

There was something about what he’d said that should have bothered me, but I couldn’t make the thought form. He’d rolled my mind in a blissful rush, and I couldn’t make my thoughts march to logic. All the logic I had was in his hands, in the soft push of his body, the growing tension as he held me.

Something stabbed through that lustful calm. Damian reached out to me with a silent scream. “Anita, damn it, feed!”

It made me slump in Asher’s arms.

“What is wrong?”

“Let me feed with the first bite. Let me feed with your power.”

“Damian is fading.” He made it a statement.

“Yes.” My voice was breathy, and not for any good reason.

“I will not fight your power, Anita. I will let you take me, then I will take you.”

“Yes, but please hurry, please…”

He was too tall to stay pressed as he was, and bite me. He had to ease his body back enough to fold that six-feet-and-change frame over me. His hands tensed in my hair and on my breast. The sudden pain seemed to send me back into his gaze. My breath was short and eager, when he struck. There was a moment of pain, then it was gone, washed away in the first orgasm.

Asher’s bite was pleasure. It was his gift, his power, and that power tightened my body, and exploded like a wave of warm pleasure across my skin. So much pleasure, so much, and as long as he fed, it would be wave after warm, thrilling wave. It felt so good, so good, that it spilled out my mouth in long, ragged screams. Somewhere in all of it, the ardeur rose, and fed. It fed through his mouth, his teeth on me. It fed through his hands on my body. I poured the spill of it into Damian, felt him sit up so hard in the chair, that he almost fell off it. Nathaniel steadied him, and got a taste of that pleasurable power.

I fought the energy, fought to send only food, and not the nearly overwhelming pleasure. To send only so much, and no more. It was like trying to meditate in the middle of sex; no wonder I wasn’t better at it.

Asher drew back from my neck, breathing hard. “You took a great deal.” He sounded shaky, and his bite didn’t necessarily cause him pleasure, so that wasn’t it.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

He let go of me, and I slumped forward onto all fours, head down. “God, Asher, God.”

The couch moved as he shifted position, and the next thing I felt was his hands on my hips, pulling my skirt up. He pressed the tip of himself against me, and there was nothing soft about him now. He was hard, and ready, pushing against me.

“Do you still want me to pierce you twice?”

I should have said no. I’d missed so much of the evening. But I didn’t want to say no. I wanted to say yes. I tried not to think about Asher much. One, it could cause mini-orgasms at odd moments. One of the side effects of his powers. Two, because I understood why people had been willing to trade everything away just for one more night of the pleasure that only Asher could bring. The rest of the metaphysical sex was great, but it was the affection I had for the people involved that made me want to be with most of them. Emergency food being the exception. I loved Asher, but it wasn’t love that made me want to be with him. If I had been less stubborn, I might have chased after him simply for the pleasure. I stayed away from him when I could, because no one could quite do what he could, and it scared me.

Which is why I said, “Just fuck me.”

“You do not wish me to bring you pleasure with my bite again?”

“Yes, but…we don’t have time.”

“As you wish.” He used his hands to position my hips, and he began to push his way inside me. I was wet, but tight; my body spasmed around him, as he fought to be inside me.

His voice came strained, “So tight tonight, so tight. Forcing me to fight for every inch. I love it.”

I just nodded, not trusting my voice. I should have said no to the sex. We’d fed. Jean-Claude needed us to schmooze the crowd. But I didn’t want to say no. I could have lied to myself and thought that Asher needed this, this time just the two of us, but that wasn’t why I said yes. I said yes because I wanted him inside me. I said yes because I was fighting myself not to beg for another bite. I did want him to pierce me twice. I did want it. I did.

He had himself inside me, as close as his body would let him. He rested a moment with our bodies wedded to each other. He laid his body across my back, letting me support our weight for a moment. His skin was warmer now, alive with the blood he’d taken from me. His hair fell around me like a shining curtain.

“Bite me,” I whispered it.

“What?”

“Bite me, while you fuck me, take me, take me as only you can take me.” My voice stayed a whisper as if that would make it all right. Make it less weak.

“As only I can take you?” He made a question of it.

“Yes,” I said, “yes.”

He wrapped his arms around me, forced me to hold all of our combined weight. He hugged me, hard and tight. “You do feel my power.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Are you afraid of it?”

“Yes.”

“Afraid of how much you want me?”

“Yes!”

He whispered, “I like that.” He raised himself off me, so that the only part of him touching was the part that was deep inside me, and the barest touch of thighs and hips.

He drew himself out slowly, so slowly.

“I’m still tight.”

“Yes,” he said, “yes, you are.” He drew himself out of me, then used his knees to spread my legs wider. It made me lower my head to the couch, pressing my face to the leather. Asher entered me, shallow, just inside, inside over that sweet spot. He started slow and steady, pushing himself in and out, and always over that one spot. I kept expecting him to speed up or go deeper, but he kept that slow, shallow rhythm.

I started moving my hips to help, but he put his hands firmly on my hips, kept me from moving. It was strangely like all the ballroom dancing they’d made me learn for the party. A flexing of the man’s hands, a squeeze in one direction or the other, and you knew what he wanted, or thought you did. He wanted me not to move, to let him do the work.

He spread my legs even farther, forced my body at a higher angle. “Up, Anita, I want you up on all fours.”

I did what he asked, but my knees were spread so far that my hips protested the angle. It didn’t exactly hurt, but it might if we did it long enough. And through it all he kept up that gliding, gentle rhythm inside my body.

The orgasm began to build inside me. To build with each caress of his body just inside mine. Building, building, on the gentle touch of him inside me. Most of the time sex was about the ardeur. The ardeur wasn’t gentle. I fed and I fucked because I had to. I realized as Asher took me so carefully, so gently, that it had taught us all bad habits. I loved a good, hard fucking, more even than most women, but just because I could take it didn’t mean that that was what I wanted, not always. This, this was perfect. This was what I had been missing in all the frantic sex. All the emergency feeding had made me forget that gentleness had its own pleasure.

I fought to stay where he wanted, and not to move, fought to keep my legs spread, fought to hold the pleasure. “I’m close.”

“Then go.”

“But…”

“Go,” he said.

I might have argued, but he pushed his body over mine one last time and the orgasm caught me. Only his hands digging into my ass kept me from writhing my pleasure around him. He kept me in place, and he kept going, as if I weren’t screaming, digging fingers into the leather. So much pleasure, so much pleasure, that my hands needed something to hold on to. I couldn’t reach him, so I dug nails into what I could reach.

“Anita, I love you, I love you, I love you!” The rhythm changed. I felt him fight his body, not to lose himself yet. He grabbed my hair and jerked me to my knees with his body still inside mine. It changed the angle, and he didn’t try to stay shallow. He used all the length of him, still pushing gently, still fighting his body not to pound into me. I felt the struggle in his chest and arms as he pulled my head to one side and exposed my neck again. “Now,” he whispered.

“Please,” I whispered.

He plunged his fangs into me, locked his mouth around me, and sucked. He stopped fighting his body, let himself plunge into me as hard and fast as he could. He brought me screaming again, brought me with his body, brought me with his bite, brought me with his power. He came inside me with one last powerful thrust. I raked nails down his arms, and screamed myself hoarse.

He fed at my neck, and as long as he fed the orgasms continued. For me, for him, for us. It was one of the things that made him so dangerous. While you were in the middle of all that pleasure, you could forget. Forget that this was my fourth blood donation tonight. Forget that he shouldn’t open his mouth and let the blood pour down my body, because he was too full to take more. Forget that we were supposed to save something to go outside to meet and greet. Forget everything but the feel of him thrusting inside me, until he poured from between my legs, poured over his own body. Forget until my blood poured down my neck to soak into the dress and the diamonds. Forget until hands pulled us apart, and Asher turned snarling to the room.

I didn’t snarl. I collapsed onto the couch, because I couldn’t do anything else. I lay there like a broken doll, and even my thoughts circled lazily, white edged as if the world were covered in cotton.

Someone rolled me over. Remus’s jigsaw face loomed out of the growing dimness. “Anita, Anita, can you hear me?”

I meant to say yes, but the world went black, and I was floating, and I couldn’t say anything to anyone.

55

I WOKE UP in the hospital. Not the human hospital, but the lycanthrope hospital. The building that the local shapeshifters keep for just such emergencies. If they’d taken me to the humans, then Asher might have ended up with an order of execution against him. The downside to going to the furry hospital was that the blood they used for transfusing wasn’t human blood. If you get the right blood type, humans can take in lycanthrope blood, and lycanthropes can take in human blood, but lycanthropes have trouble taking in blood that isn’t their strain of lycanthropy. Since I carry three, I was something of a problem. But since I was also O-negative, there wasn’t a lot of choice. It’s not the most common blood type around, especially in a small hospital like this one.

Doc Lillian won’t actually tell me what strain of lycanthropy she decided to add to my mix, or if she chose one that I already had. She thinks that if I know what it is, it could influence which beast wins. Since my mental process shouldn’t have anything to do with it, I have no idea what she’s babbling about, but she won’t give in, so come next full moon we’ll see if my mixed bag of furry picks a winner.

I slept off and on, and when I woke up again, Asher was sitting by my bed. I startled when I saw him, made a little gasp.

He looked away from me, letting all that long hair fall forward to hide his face completely. He wasn’t flirting, showing that perfect profile. He was just hiding. “You are afraid of me now.” His voice held regret like a light, persistent rain, one you know will go on all day.

I started to deny it, then stopped myself. Was I afraid of him? Yes. Yes, I was. But not for the reason he thought. I touched the bandage at my neck, and from the feel of it alone, I knew the bite wouldn’t be some polite pricking. He’d gotten carried away at my neck, as he had elsewhere. It wasn’t like collarbone-scar bad, or even the bend of my arm bad, but it wasn’t what the old vamps usually did. It felt like a rookie mistake under the bandages.

He stood, and the movement looked tired, weary. “I understand, Anita. I don’t blame you.”

Movement by the door drew my attention. There were guards at the door, and there hadn’t been when everyone else visited me. Remus was one of the guards. I remembered his face just as I passed out.

Asher started for the door.

“Don’t go,” I said, my voice hoarse.

He didn’t turn and look at me; he just stopped moving. He stood, motionless, waiting.

“Stay,” I said.

He risked a glance back at me, his eyes peering through the curtain of hair. The hair wasn’t artfully messy, it was just tangled and spilled over his face, as if he hadn’t bothered to touch it.

I stared at him, that tall figure. He usually had perfect posture, but tonight his broad shoulders were rounded, slumped in defeat. It was as if he were hunched from the cold. I knew that wasn’t it; the dead don’t feel the cold, much.

“I know you cannot forgive me, but I had to see you. I had to see you…” His words trailed off. He reached out with those graceful hands that tonight had lost all their grace to his grief.

I wanted to reach out to him, to offer my hand, but I was afraid of what would happen if he touched me. I wasn’t afraid he would turn into some ravenous monster. I was afraid that I would. I’d almost died, and all I could think was, Isn’t he beautiful, isn’t he sad. I wanted to comfort him, hold him. He said I couldn’t forgive him; he was wrong. I had forgiven him, but it wasn’t a conscious thing. It was as if the sight of him just made it impossible to be angry with him. That wasn’t right. That was vampire mind tricks.

“Why the guards?” I asked, finally, because I didn’t know what to say out loud.

He blinked at me through the golden strings of his hair. “I do not trust myself alone with you. Jean-Claude agrees.”

I looked past him at the guards. “Hey, Remus, Ixion.”

They glanced at each other, then said hi.

“Remus was the last face I saw before I woke up here.”

“He came to my call,” Asher said, and his face was miserable.

“Your call, what do you mean your call? You don’t have an animal to call.”

“He does now,” Remus said. He hesitated, then walked farther into the room. Ixion stayed by the door. “He called us while he was doing you. The call was…we had to answer. We had to leave our guard duties and go to him.” He looked at Asher, who would not meet his eyes either. “Good thing we did, I guess, but Jean-Claude thinks that the reason it got so out of hand between the two of you was that Asher’s new power came on line.”

“You do not have to make excuses for me,” Asher said.

“I didn’t mean to.” Remus gave me a look that I couldn’t interpret, then went back to stand by the door.

“So you have an animal now?” I said.

“Yes.” He didn’t look any happier. “I know that you can’t forgive me. I don’t expect you to. I won’t touch you again, Anita; you have my word.”

It took me a moment to understand what he’d said. “Are you saying that you won’t ever be with me again, as in sex?”

He nodded, face so solemn.

The thought of him never touching me again filled me with panic. My pulse sped up, and I fought not to yell at him. How could he deny me? I had to work to make my voice come out calm. “Sit down, Asher, please.”

He hesitated, then finally sat. “I offer you the only safety I can. I give you my word that I will never touch you again.”

I couldn’t quite keep my voice steady as I said, “I don’t want that.”

He finally met my eyes. “What?”

“I don’t want you to never touch me again.”

“Anita, you’ve kicked me out of your bed for far less than this. I almost killed you. You can’t forgive that. You don’t forgive anything.”

He had me there. “I’m working on that, okay?”

His mouth moved, almost like he fought off a smile.

“Do you know why I haven’t reached out and taken your hand?”

“You are afraid to touch me.” His voice spilled despair over my skin the way Jean-Claude could spill pleasure.

“Yes, but not in the way you mean.”

He shook his head, hunching over his clasped hands. “I do not want you afraid of me, Anita, not in any way, but I cannot blame you for it.”

“I’m afraid to touch you, because I’m afraid that I’ll ask you to kiss me.”

He nodded. “And you fear where that kiss will lead.”

“Asher.” I said it harder, more like myself, though with a voice that needed water. “Asher, look at me.”

He just shook his head.

“Damn it, look at me.”

It was actually hard to tell through the hair and the dimness of the room, but I think he was looking at me. “What would you have of me, Anita? I have already given up everything I ever wanted. What more do you want from me?”

“God, you are a gloomy person.”

That made him sit up a little straighter, his arrogance kicking in. “I am sorry that my manner displeases you so.” He sounded a little angry; good. It was better than despair.

“You’re right, I should be furious with you. And you’re right that I’ve kicked men out of my life for a hell of a lot less than this.”

The anger leaked away, and that numbing depression rolled over him again. It was like watching the light fade from him. “Did you ask me to sit so you could grind the knife in deeper?”

“If I want to grind a knife in, you’ll know it. I’m just trying to talk.” I had to cough to clear my voice. “Is there water?”

Asher looked around the room. It was Remus who found a pitcher of water and a little cup. He poured it, then hesitated, and finally handed it to Asher. The two men had a moment where you could almost feel the battle of wills, then Asher finally took the cup, and came to the bed. He would not look at me as he offered the water with a little bendy straw in it.

The water tasted stale, but it was cool, and felt wonderful in my mouth and throat. I raised my untaped arm to help hold the cup. My fingers brushed Asher’s hand. He jumped, as if it had hurt, but I knew it hadn’t hurt. “Have I spilled water on you?”

“No, just a little on the sheets.”

“You are the only woman except Belle who has ever made me feel clumsy.”

Ixion was there with a handkerchief. Asher took it and dabbed at the few spots he’d gotten on the sheets.

“Is that a compliment, or an insult?” I asked. My voice sounded better, less hoarse. It made me wonder how long I’d been unconscious. I didn’t ask, because if it had been a long time, then Asher would feel worse, and I’d be more scared. I let it go.

He finished trying to soak the water up, handing the handkerchief back as if he expected Ixion to simply be there to take it. He was, and he did, but the offhand quality of the gesture made me wonder again how long had I been out. “It is neither, just the truth. You have made me feel awkward from the moment I met you.”

“I tend to have that effect on ladies’ men.”

He looked at me then. I tried to read his expression and failed. “I am a ladies’ man, am I?”

“Belle Morte made certain that all of you were good with the ladies.”

“And the men. Do not forget, Anita, she made certain we knew how to pleasure men, as well.”

I nodded, and stopped, because the bandages pinched. “I’ve grasped that concept, thanks.”

“But you are not happy with it.”

“More puzzled by it.”

He smoothed the sheets where he’d dampened them. I think he was looking for anything to fuss over, rather than what we were doing. I’d never seen him this uncomfortable.

I did what I’d wanted to do since he walked into the room. I laid my hand on his. He went very, very still under my touch. That awful, unnatural stillness, where it feels like you’re not touching anything alive. He went away from my touch, but I kept my hand on his. If he thought a little weird vampire shit would make me move, he was wrong.

“Anita,” and his voice tried to be as empty as his body, but failed.

“I’m not afraid because you almost killed me. I’m afraid because you almost killed me, and I still want to touch you.”

He drew his hand out of mine. He sat down, but he would at least look at me now. “I have rolled your mind, completely and utterly. I have done what you feared that I would do.”

“And don’t you want to touch me?”

“Yes.” He whispered it.

“You were the first one to realize that just biting me helps me gain control over a vamp. I don’t think it’s just you who’s rolled me.”

“Are you saying you have gained control of me?”

“I’m not sure what I’m saying. I just know that I don’t want you gone. I don’t want you to never touch me again. I want us to be together. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

“Together in what way, Anita?”

“We’ll just need a spotter,” I said.

“A spotter, what are you talking about?”

“A spotter, like you have in gymnastics. Sex with you is so good we need spotters.”

“So dangerous, you mean,” he said, and he stared at his hands where they lay loose in his lap.

“I’d do it again, Asher.”

He looked up then, and it wasn’t a happy look. “Do you really mean that?”

“Yes.”

“That should frighten you, and me.”

“It does scare me, but it doesn’t really scare you, does it?”

“I’m terrified for your safety, but…”

“You’ve been a very good boy, haven’t you?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

I had one of those moments of seeing so deep into another person that it makes the rest of the world seem unsteady for a moment. It wasn’t vampire powers, or necromancy, it was just a moment of insight so bright and painful that I couldn’t look away. “Look me in the eye, Asher, and tell me that you’ve never done what you did with me before, and had the woman not survive it?”

He looked away then, those pale eyes hiding from me.

“Asher,” I said.

He met my eyes with that blank perfect face, peering through the mess of his hair. “I have done what you accuse me of.”

“It’s not an accusation,” I said, “it was more a statement.”

“Do you not think me a monster for it?”

I thought about it. Did I think him a monster? “Did you do it on purpose?”

“Did I go into the lovemaking planning the death of my lover?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s what I mean?”

“No, save once.”

“Once?”

“There was a lord from whom Belle desired money and land. He had been diagnosed with a cancer. He was a strong, proud man. He did not wish to die in pain and sickness. He requested I kill him. He wished to die by pleasure, instead of pain. He also felt that if I took his life, it was not suicide, so his soul was strangely safe.”

He told the story in an empty voice, as if it meant nothing to him. It was the kind of voice that people use about trauma or tragedy when they haven’t dealt with it yet.

“You liked him,” I said.

“He was a decent man.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster.”

“Why am I not a monster for killing someone to give myself pleasure?”

“Put that way, you would be, but that’s not what you did. It’s a loop of pleasure, Asher. It’s not your pleasure, but hers, mine. I could have said no. There was a point where I knew it was too much, that we should stop.”

“I had rolled your mind. You had no free will.”

“You can roll me, but I don’t stay rolled if I don’t want to, not anymore. I didn’t want to stop, Asher. Do you think I’m a monster for saying it was one of the most amazing orgasmic experiences that I’ve ever had?”

“No, not a monster.”

“We can have intercourse together alone sometimes, but no biting while we’re alone.”

“You do not trust me.”

“I don’t trust either of us,” I said.

He almost smiled. “I nearly killed you. I nearly spilled all that precious blood. The sofa had to be destroyed, the carpet taken up. I almost killed you, Anita, not for food, but for pleasure.”

“You were in the middle of a major power-up, Asher. An animal to call, at long last.”

He glanced behind at the waiting guards. “Hyenas, yes.”

“Jean-Claude says that the first time any power kicks in, it’s always hard to control.”

Asher took my hand. “I would not trade your love for a thousand powers. I would not trade a single strand of your hair for any territory.” His eyes were glittery, not with power, but tears.

“I believe you.”

“Your new laws say we are citizens, but we are monsters, Anita. If I had killed you with the birth of this new power, I would have followed you soon after.”

“You’re saying you would have killed yourself?”

He nodded. “I could not have borne it.”

“I don’t want you dead.”

“Nor I you.” He knelt and laid his head on my hand. “It was not blood that brought my power, Anita. It was you, you wanting me more than anyone else. In that moment I could feel it. You wanted me, not Jean-Claude, not Richard, not Micah, not Nathaniel, me. You wanted me, my body, my touch, more than anyone else’s. I could see into your heart, and I saw only me there.” He rose up, tears staining his face faintly pink. “You truly do love me, just me. Not because of memories you share with Jean-Claude. Not out of pity. You love me.”

“Yes,” I said, “otherwise I’d be wicked pissed about the whole almost-killing-me thing.”

“I will never forgive myself for that. Jean-Claude would have been within his rights to slay me for such carelessness.”

“He loves you.”

He nodded. “Yes, he does. I doubted that, until I realized he was not going to kill me for almost killing you. I doubted everyone’s love for me, Anita, but no longer. He loves me, or he would have killed me when he walked into that room and saw what I had done.”

SO that was it. I almost died. Asher had an animal to call. Jean-Claude didn’t kill him for almost killing me. I didn’t kill Asher for almost killing me. Jean-Claude has forbidden Asher and me to have feeding sex by ourselves. We didn’t argue, because Asher and I both know the darkest secret of all between us. It felt so good, so incredibly good, that we didn’t trust each other not to do it again.

I am a succubus. I am a vampire. Maybe not a bloodsucker, but I feed off sex. It isn’t just Damian’s life that can get drained away if I don’t feed. Nathaniel will die. I will die. I think Jean-Claude can protect himself and Richard from me, but I could kill us all if I don’t learn to manage my own personal triumvirate of power. London is the front-runner for my new pomme de sang. I wish I liked him better. I don’t dislike him, but I’m afraid to bring him home. He doesn’t strike me as the domestic type. Requiem is part of the food chain, but he is so not just food. He craves true love. I can’t blame him, but I can’t help him either. The sex is great, but he scares me. For centuries-old vampires, they all seem so easy to hurt emotionally. Weird.

I wrapped a cross in silk, put that in a velvet bag, and that inside a pillowcase. It seems to be working. No more bad dreams of Marmee Noir. No accidents for my vampire lovers, or me. I’d send Merlin a thank-you note if I had an address.

Sampson is staying in town so I can fulfill my promise to try to bring his powers over. He’s letting me recover my strength, and my nerve for it. Nice of him. I made Auggie take Haven home to Chicago. My hands ached to touch him. So dangerous. The local werelions are trying to find me someone else, but I miss Haven. He’s a dangerous thug, but I miss him. My lioness misses him. He would be such a bad idea to keep.

I wasn’t pregnant, yea! But while I thought I was pregnant, I had unprotected sex with Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Micah, and Augustine. No one handed London a condom when I fed the ardeur off him. But I’ve managed to dodge the bullet on those, too. Thank God. Pregnant by one of my boyfriends is one thing; pregnant by Augustine would be a disaster I could not deal with. I think I’ll just start taping condoms to my body. Emergency sex comes up, you rip a condom off, and you’re as safe as you’re going to be. I’m safe from disease because my lovers aren’t human, but pregnancy, that is one disease that I’m not safe from. My period is still AWOL. My doctor says there’s nothing wrong with me. It could just be stress, or, there is literature about female shapeshifters having interrupted periods until their first full moon. Or, as my doctor pointed out, I am like a metaphysical miracle on two legs, so maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s something we haven’t even thought of. He recommended I take folic acid because there are birth defects that have nothing to do with werewolves and vampires. I did what he said. He also suggested a therapist, or a vacation. A vacation? Me? Where would I go, and what would I do? Hell, who would I take with me?

I try not to think too hard on the fact that my “vampire powers” gave me Nathaniel and Micah. Hell, gave me to them. Why didn’t it work on Richard? Jean-Claude thinks it’s because he does not know his own heart’s desire. You can only get your wish when you truly know what it is you want. Maybe someday Richard will truly know what his heart needs. He’s dating humans exclusively. I’m the only preternatural he’s seeing. Richard has informed me he’s shopping for his white picket fence.

I’m happy behind my black wrought-iron fence. The one with the pointy spikes on top. White never really was my color.

THE HARLEQUIN

THE HARLEQUIN

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

BERKLEY BOOKS

NEW YORK

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2007 by Laurell K. Hamilton.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hamilton, Laurell K.
The harlequin / Laurell K. Hamilton.—1st ed.
p. cm.

ISBN: 1-101-14710-5

1. Blake, Anita (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. St. Louis (Mo.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.A443357H37 2007
813'.54—dc22 2007005971
http://us.penguingroup.com

To Jonathon, who never freaks about my choice of research. He took away my serial killer books, at my request. When I was ready he gave them back. He’s helping me understand that just because someone else thinks you’re a monster doesn’t mean you are. Even if that person says they love you. Here’s to finding love that builds you up, instead of breaking you down.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To the Staff: Darla, Chief Operations Officer, and Lauretta, who assists her; Sherry, Chief Domestic Officer, and Teresa, who assists her; Mary, Comptroller and Grandma extraordinaire; and Charles aka Gru, Chief Security Officer. For those who are wondering, Jon’s official title is Chief Information Officer.

Merrilee Heifitz, my agent, who has worked hard as we’ve pushed boundaries and entered new territory.

To Bev Leveto, thanks for your wonderful donation to Granite City. Hope you enjoy being a victim in this book.

To everyone at DBPro and Marvel, who helped bring Anita to life in the comic-book world. Special thanks to Les and Ernst Dabel for being gentle. Extra special thanks to our artist, Brett Booth, who did an amazing job and listened.

As always thanks to my writing group: Tom Drennan, Debroah Millitello, Rett MacPherson, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn, and Mark Sumner. You guys help keep me going.

1

MALCOLM, THE HEAD of the Church of Eternal Life, the vampire church, sat across from me. Malcolm had never been in my office before. In fact, the last time I’d seen him, he’d accused me of doing black magic and being a whore. I’d also killed one of his members on church grounds, in front of him and the rest of his congregation. The dead vamp had been a serial killer. I’d had a court order of execution, but still, it hadn’t made Malcolm and me buddies.

I sat behind my desk, sipping coffee from my newest Christmas-themed mug: a little girl sat on Santa’s lap saying, “Define good.” I worked hard every year to find the most offensive mug I could so that Bert, our business manager, could throw a fit. This year’s mug was tame by my usual standards. It had become one of my holiday traditions. I’d at least dressed for the season in a red skirt and jacket over a thin silk sweater—very festive, for me. I had a new gun in my shoulder holster. A friend of mine had finally persuaded me to give up my Browning Hi-Power for something that fit my hand a little better and had a smoother profile. The Hi-Power was at home in the gun safe, and the Browning Dual Mode was in the holster. I felt like I was cheating but at least I was still a Browning girl.

Once upon a time, I’d thought Malcolm handsome, but that had been when his vampire tricks worked on me. Without vampire wiles to cloud my perception, I could see that his bone structure was too rough, almost as if it hadn’t quite gotten smoothed out before they put that pale skin on it. His hair was cut short and had a little curl to it, because to take the curl out of it he’d have had to shave it. The hair was a bright, bright canary yellow. That’s what blond hair does if you take it out of the sun for a few hundred years. He looked at me with his blue eyes and smiled, and the smile filled his face with personality. That same personality that made his Sunday morning television program such a hit. It wasn’t magic, it was just him. Charisma, for lack of a better word. There was force to Malcolm that had nothing to do with vampire powers and everything to do with who he was, not what he was. He’d have been a leader and a mover of men even if he’d been alive.

The smile softened his features, filled his face with a zeal that was both compelling and frightening. He was a true believer, head of a church of true believers. The whole idea of a vampire church still creeped me out, but it was the fastest-growing denomination in the country.

“I was surprised to see your name in my appointment book, Malcolm,” I said, finally.

“I understand that, Ms. Blake. I am almost equally surprised to be here.”

“Fine, we’re both surprised. Why are you here?”

“I suspect you have, or will soon have, a warrant of execution for a member of my church.”

I managed to keep my face blank, but felt the stiffness in my shoulders. He’d see the reaction, and he’d know what it meant. Master vampires don’t miss much. “You have a lot of members, Malcolm; could you narrow it down a little? Who exactly are we talking about?”

“Don’t be coy, Ms. Blake.”

“I’m not being coy.”

“You’re trying to imply that you have a warrant for more than one of my vampires. I do not believe it, and neither do you.”

I should have felt insulted, because I wasn’t lying. Two of his upstanding vamps had been very naughty. “If your vampires were fully blood-oathed to you, you’d know I was telling the truth, because you’d be able to enforce your moral code in entirely new ways.”

“A blood oath is not a guarantee of absolute control, Ms. Blake.”

“No, but it’s a start.”

A blood oath was what a vamp took when he joined a new vampire group, a new kiss. He literally took blood from the Master of the City. It meant the master had a lot more control over him, and the lesser vamps gained in power, too. If their master was powerful enough. A weak master wasn’t much help, but Jean-Claude, St. Louis’s Master of the City and my sweetie, wasn’t weak. Of course, the master gained power from the oath, as well. The more powerful a vamp they could oath, the more they gained. Like so many vampire powers, it was a two-way street.

“I do not want to enforce my moral code. I want my people to choose to be good people,” Malcolm said.

“Until your congregation is blood-oathed to some master vampire, they are loose cannons, Malcolm. You control them by force of personality and morality. Vampires only understand fear, and power.”

“You are the lover of at least two vampires, Ms. Blake. How can you say that?”

I shrugged. “Maybe because I am dating two vampires.”

“If that is what being Jean-Claude’s human servant has taught you, Ms. Blake, then it is sad things he is teaching you.”

“He is the Master of the City of St. Louis, Malcolm, not you. You, and your church, go unmolested by his tolerance.”

“I go unmolested because the Church grew powerful under the previous Master of the City, and by the time Jean-Claude rose to power, we were hundreds. He did not have the power to bring me and my people to heel.”

I sipped coffee and thought about my next answer, because I couldn’t argue with him. He was probably right. “Regardless of how we got where we are, Malcolm, you have several hundred vampires in this city. Jean-Claude let you have them because he thought you were blood-oathing them. We learned in October that you aren’t. Which means that the vamps with you are cut off from an awful lot of their potential power. I’m okay with that, I guess. Their choice, if they understand that it is a choice, but no blood oath means that they are not mystically tied to anyone but the vamp that made them. You, I’m told, do the deed, most of the time. Though the church deacons do recruit sometimes.”

“How our church is organized is not your concern.”

“Yes,” I said, “it is.”

“Do you serve Jean-Claude now, when you say that, or is it as a federal marshal that you criticize me?” He narrowed those blue eyes. “I do not think the federal government knows or understands enough of vampires to care whether I blood-oath my people.”

“Blood-oathing lowers the chance of vamps doing things behind the back of the master.”

“Blood-oathing takes away their free will, Ms. Blake.”

“Maybe, but I’ve seen the damage they can do with their free will. A good Master of the City can guarantee that there is almost no crime among his people.”

“They are his slaves,” Malcolm said.

I shrugged and sat back in my chair. “Are you here to talk about the warrant, or to talk about the deadline Jean-Claude gave your church?”

“Both.”

“Jean-Claude has given you and your church members their choices, Malcolm. Either you blood-oath them, or Jean-Claude does. Or they can move to another city to be blood-oathed there, but it has to be done.”

“It is a choice of who they would be slaves to, Ms. Blake. It is no choice at all.”

“Jean-Claude was generous, Malcolm. By vampire law he could have just killed you and your entire congregation.”

“And how would the law, how would you, as a federal marshal, have felt about such slaughter?”

“Are you saying that my being a federal marshal limits Jean-Claude’s options?”

“He values your love, Anita, and you would not love a man that could slaughter my followers.”

“You don’t add yourself to that list—why?”

“You are a legal vampire executioner, Anita. If I broke human law, you would kill me yourself. You would not fault Jean-Claude for doing the same if I broke vampiric law.”

“You think I’d just let him kill you?”

“I think you would kill me for him, if you felt justified.”

A small part of me wanted to argue, but he was right. I’d been grandfathered in like most of the vamp executioners who had two or more years on the job and could pass the firearms test. The idea was, making us federal marshals was the quickest way to grant us the ability to cross state lines and to control us more. Crossing state lines and having a badge was great; I wasn’t sure how controlled we were. Of course, I was the only vampire hunter who was also dating her Master of the City. Most saw it as a conflict of interest. Frankly, so did I, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

“You do not argue with me,” Malcolm said.

“I can’t decide if you think I’m a civilizing influence on Jean-Claude, or a bad one.”

“I saw you once as his victim, Anita. Now I am no longer certain who is the victim, and who the victimizer.”

“Should I be offended?”

He just looked at me.

“The last time I was in your church you called me evil, and accused me of black magic. You called Jean-Claude immoral, and me his whore, or something like that.”

“You were trying to take away one of my people to be killed with no trial. You shot him to death on the church grounds.”

“He was a serial killer. I had an order of execution for everyone involved in those crimes.”

“All the vampires, you mean.”

“Are you implying that humans or shapeshifters were involved?”

“No, but if they had been, you would never have been allowed to shoot them to death with the police helping you do it.”

“I’ve had warrants for shapeshifters before.”

“But those are rare, Anita, and there are no orders of execution for humans.”

“The death penalty still exists, Malcolm.”

“After a trial, and years of appeals, if you are human.”

“What do you want from me, Malcolm?”

“I want justice.”

“The law isn’t about justice, Malcolm. It’s about the law.”

“She did not do the crime she is accused of, as our wandering brother Avery Seabrook was innocent of the crime you sought him for.” He called any of his church group who joined Jean-Claude “wanderers.” The fact that Avery, the vampire, had a last name meant he was very recently dead, and that he was an American vampire. Vampires normally only had one name, like Madonna or Cher, and only one vamp per country could have that name. Duels were fought over the right to use names. Until now, until America. We had vampires with last names, unheard of.

“I cleared Avery. Legally, I didn’t have to.”

“No, you could have shot him dead, found out your mistake later, and suffered nothing under the law.”

“I did not write this law, Malcolm, I just carry it out.”

“Vampires did not write this law either, Anita.”

“That’s true, but no human can mesmerize other humans so that they help in their own kidnappings. Humans can’t fly off with their victims in their arms.”

“And that justifies slaughtering us?”

I shrugged again. I was going to leave this argument alone because I’d begun to not like that part of my job. I didn’t think vampires were monsters anymore; it made killing them harder. It made executing them when they couldn’t fight back monstrous, with me as the monster.

“What do you want me to do, Malcolm? I have a warrant with Sally Hunter’s name on it. Witnesses saw her leave Bev Leveto’s apartment. Ms. Leveto died by vampire attack. I know it wasn’t any of Jean-Claude’s vampires. That leaves yours.” Hell, I had her driver’s license picture in the file with the warrant. I have to admit that having a picture to go with it made me feel more like an assassin. A picture so I’d get the right one.

“Are you so certain of that?”

I blinked at him, the slow blink that gave me time to think but didn’t look like I was thinking furiously. “What are you trying to say, Malcolm? I’m not good at subtle; just tell me what you came to say.”

“Something powerful, someone powerful, came to my church last week. They hid themselves. I could not find them in the new faces of my congregation, but I know that someone immensely powerful was there.” He leaned forward, his calm exterior cracking around the edges. “Do you understand how powerful they would have to be for me to sense them, use all my powers to search the room for them, yet not be able to find them?”

I thought about it. Malcolm was no Master of the City, but he was probably one of the top five most powerful vampires in town. He’d be higher, if he weren’t so terribly moral. It limited him in some ways.

I licked my lips, careful of the lipstick, and nodded. “Did they want you to know they were there, or was that part an accident?”

He actually showed surprise for a moment before he got control of his face. He played human too much for the media; he was beginning to lose that stillness of features that the old ones have. “I don’t know.” Even his voice was no longer smooth.

“Did the vamp do it to taunt you, or was it arrogance?”

He shook his head. “I do not know.”

I had a moment of revelation. “You came here because you think Jean-Claude should know, but you can’t let your congregation see you going to the Master of the City. It would undermine your whole freewill thing.”

He settled back into his chair, fighting to keep the anger off his face, and failing. He was even more scared than I thought, to be losing it this badly in front of someone he disliked. Hell, he’d come to me for help. He was desperate.

“But you can come to me, a federal marshal, and tell me. Because you know I’ll tell Jean-Claude.”

“Think what you like, Ms. Blake.”

We weren’t on a first-name basis anymore. I’d hit it on the head. “A big, bad vamp checks your church out. You aren’t vampire enough to smoke him out, and you come to me, to Jean-Claude and all his immoral power structure. You come to the very people you say you hate.”

He stood up. “The crime that Sally is accused of happened less than twenty-four hours after he, it, they came to my church. I do not think that is a coincidence.”

“I’m not lying about the second order of execution, Malcolm. It’s in my desk drawer, right now, with a driver’s license picture of the vampire in question.”

He sat back down. “What name is on it?”

“Why, so you can warn…them?” I’d almost said her, because it was another female vamp.

“My people are not perfect, Ms. Blake, but I believe that another vampire has come to town and is framing them.”

“Why? Why would someone do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“No one has bothered Jean-Claude or his people.”

“I know,” Malcolm said.

“Without a true master, a true blood-oathed, mystically connected master, your congregation are just sheep waiting for the wolves to come get them.”

“Jean-Claude said as much a month ago.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“I thought at first that it was one of the new vampires who has joined Jean-Claude. One of the ones from Europe, but it is not. It is something more powerful than that. Or it is a group of vampires combining their powers through their master’s marks. I have felt such power only once before.”

“When?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We are forbidden to speak of it, on penalty of death. Only if they contact us directly can we break this silence.”

“It sounds like you’ve already been contacted,” I said.

He shook his head again. “They are tampering with me, and my people, because technically I am outside normal vampire law. Did Jean-Claude report to the council that my church had not blood-oathed any of its followers?”

I nodded. “Yes, he did.”

He put his big hands over his face and leaned over his knees, almost as if he felt faint. He whispered, “I feared as much.”

“Okay, Malcolm, you’re moving too fast for me here. What does Jean-Claude’s reporting to the council have to do with some group of powerful vamps messing with your church?”

He looked at me, but his eyes had gone gray with worry. “Tell him what I have told you. He will understand.”

“But I don’t.”

“I have until New Year’s Day to give Jean-Claude my answer about the blood-oathing. He has been generous and patient, but there are those among the council that are neither of those things. I had hoped they would be proud of what I had accomplished. I thought it would please them, but I fear now that the council is not ready to see my brave new world of free will.”

“Free will is for humans, Malcolm. The preternatural community is about control.”

He stood again. “You have almost complete discretion on how the warrant is executed, Anita. Will you use some of that discretion to find the truth before you kill my followers?”

I stood up. “I can’t guarantee anything.”

“I would not ask that. I ask only that you look for the truth before it is too late for Sally, and my other follower, whose name you will not even give me.” He sighed. “I have not sent Sally running out of town; why would I warn the other?”

“You came through the door knowing Sally was in trouble. I’m not helping you figure the other bad guy out.”

“It is a man, then?”

I just looked at him, glad that I could give full eye contact. It had always been so hard to do the tough stare back when I couldn’t look a vamp in the eyes.

He straightened his shoulders as if only now aware that he was slumping. “You won’t even give me that, will you? Please tell Jean-Claude what I have told you. I should have come to you immediately. I thought morals kept me from running to the very power structure I despise, but it wasn’t morals, it was sin; the sin of pride. I hope that my pride has not cost more of my followers their lives.” He went for the door.

I called after him. “Malcolm.”

He turned.

“How big an emergency is this?”

“Big.”

“Will a couple of hours make a difference?”

He thought about it. “Perhaps; why do you ask?”

“I won’t be seeing Jean-Claude tonight. I just wanted to know if I should call him, give him a heads-up.”

“Yes, by all means, give him his heads-up.” He frowned at me. “Why would you not see your master tonight, Anita? Aren’t you living with him?”

“Actually, no. I stay over at his place about half the week, but I’ve got my own place still.”

“Will you be killing more of my kindred tonight?”

I shook my head.

“Then you will raise my other colder brethren. Whose blissful death will you disturb tonight, Anita? Whose zombie will you raise so some human can get their inheritance, or a wife can be consoled?”

“No zombies tonight,” I said. I was too puzzled by his attitude on the zombies to be insulted. I’d never heard a vampire claim any kinship with zombies, or ghouls, or anything but other vamps.

“Then what will keep you from your master’s arms?”

“I’ve got a date, not that it’s any of your business.”

“But not a date with Jean-Claude, or Asher?”

I shook my head.

“Your wolf king then, Richard?”

I shook my head, again.

“For whom would you abandon those three, Anita? Ah, your leopard king, Micah.”

“Wrong again.”

“I am amazed that you are answering my questions.”

“So am I, actually. I think it’s because you keep calling me a whore, and I think I want to rub your face in it.”

“What, the fact that you are a whore?” His face showed nothing when he said it.

“I knew you couldn’t do it,” I said.

“Do what, Ms. Blake?”

“I knew you couldn’t play nice long enough to get my help. I knew if I kept at you, you’d get snotty and mean.”

He gave a small bow, just from the neck. “I told you, Ms. Blake, my sin is pride.”

“And what’s my sin, Malcolm?”

“Do you want me to insult you, Ms. Blake?”

“I just want to hear you say it.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” I said.

“Very well; your sin is lust, Ms. Blake, as it is the sin of your master and all his vampires.”

I shook my head and felt that unpleasant smile curl my lips. The smile that left my eyes cold, and usually meant I was well and truly pissed. “That’s not my sin, Malcolm, not the one nearest and dearest to my heart.”

“And what would your sin be, Ms. Blake?”

“Wrath, Malcolm, it’s wrath.”

“Are you saying I’ve made you angry?”

“I’m always angry, Malcolm; you just gave me a target to focus it on.”

“Do you envy anyone, Ms. Blake?”

I thought about it, then shook my head. “Not really, no.”

“I will not ask about sloth; you work entirely too hard for that to be an issue. You are not greedy, nor a glutton. Are you prideful?”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Wrath, lust, and pride, then?”

I nodded. “I guess, if we’re keeping score.”

“Oh, someone is keeping score, Ms. Blake, never doubt that.”

“I’m Christian, too, Malcolm.”

“Do you worry about getting into heaven, Ms. Blake?”

It was such an odd question that I answered it. “I did, for a while, but my faith still makes my cross glow. My prayers still have the power to chase the evil things away. God hasn’t forsaken me; it’s just that all the right-wing fundamentalist Christians want to believe he has. I’ve seen evil, Malcolm, real evil, and you aren’t that.”

He smiled, and it was gentle, and almost embarrassed. “Have I come to you for absolution, Ms. Blake?”

“I don’t think I’m the one to give you absolution.”

“I would like a priest to hear my sins before I die, Ms. Blake, but none will come near me. They are holy, and the very trappings of their calling will burst into flames in my presence.”

“Not true. The holy items only go off if the true believer panics, or if you try vampire powers on them.”

He blinked at me, and I realized his eyes held unshed tears, shimmering in the overhead lights. “Is this true, Ms. Blake?”

“I promise it is.” His attitude was beginning to make me afraid for him. I didn’t want to be afraid for Malcolm. I had enough people in my life that I cared for enough to worry about; I did not need to add the undead Billy Graham to my list.

“Do you know any priests that might be willing to hear a very long confession?”

“I might, though I don’t know if they’re allowed to give you absolution, since technically in the eyes of the Church you’re already dead. You have ties to a lot of the religious community, Malcolm; surely one of the other leaders would be willing.”

“I do not want to ask them, Anita. I do not want them to know my sins. I would rather…” He hesitated, then spoke, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the sentence he started to use. “Quietly, I would rather it be done quietly.”

“Why the sudden need for confession and absolution?”

“I am still a believer, Ms. Blake; being a vampire has not changed that. I wish to die absolved of my sins.”

“Why are you expecting to die?”

“Tell Jean-Claude what I have told you about the stranger or strangers in my church. Tell him about my desire for a priest to hear my confession. He will understand.”

“Malcolm…”

He kept walking, but stopped with his hand on the door. “I take back what I said, Ms. Blake, I am not sorry I came. I am only sorry I did not come days ago.” With that he walked out and closed the door softly behind him.

I sat down at my desk and called Jean-Claude. I had no idea what was going on, but something was up, something big. Something bad.

2

I CALLED JEAN-CLAUDE’S strip club, Guilty Pleasures, first. He’d gone back to being manager there since he had enough vampires to help run the other businesses. Of course, I didn’t get Jean-Claude on the phone first thing. One of the employees answered and informed me that he was on stage. I told them I’d call back, and yes, it was important, so have him call me ASAP.

I hung up and stared at the phone. What was my sweetie doing while I sat in my office a few miles away? I pictured all that long dark hair, the pale perfection of his face, and I was thinking too hard. I could feel him. Feel the woman in his arms as she clung to him. He held her face between his hands to keep the kiss from getting out of hand, to keep her from shredding her own lips against the sharp points of his fangs. I felt her eagerness. Saw inside her mind, that she wanted him to take her here and now on the stage in front of everyone. She didn’t care; she just wanted him.

Jean-Claude fed on that desire, that need. He fed on it, as other vampires fed on blood. Half-naked waiters came onto the stage to help pry her, gently, from him. They helped her back to her seat, while she cried, cried for what she could not have. She had paid for a kiss, and she’d gotten that, but Jean-Claude always left you wanting more. I should know.

He spoke like some seductive wind through my mind, “Ma petite, what are you doing here?”

“Thinking too hard,” I whispered to the empty office, but he heard me.

He smiled with at least two different types of lipstick smeared around his mouth. “You entered my mind while I fed the ardeur and it did not rise in you; you have been practicing.”

“Yeah.” It felt weird saying it out loud in the empty, dim office, especially because I could hear the hum and murmur of the club around him. The women clamoring to be next, waving their cash for him to choose them.

“I must choose a few more; then we may talk.”

“Use the phone,” I said. “I’m at the office.”

He laughed, and the sound echoed through me, shivered down my skin, made things low in my body tighten. I drew away from him, closed the metaphysical links between us enough so I wouldn’t get sucked back into his act. Then I tried to think about something else, anything else. If I’d known enough about baseball, I’d have thought about that, but that wasn’t my sport. Jean-Claude didn’t strip, but he did feed off the crowd’s sexual energy. In another century he’d have been called an incubus, a demon that fed on lust. The thought almost pulled me back to him, but I thought, Think about legal stuff, the law. Something. In this century he just had to put a disclaimer in several prominent places in the club stating, “Warning: Vampire powers will be part of the entertainment. There are no exceptions. By being inside the club, you give permission for the legal use of vampire powers upon yourself and anyone with you.”

The new laws that had helped make vamps legal hadn’t really caught up to everything they could do. You couldn’t do one-on-one mind control, though mass hypnosis was okay, because the call wasn’t as deep, or as complete. One-on-one mind control meant the vampire could call people out of their beds, force them to come to the vampire. Mass hypnosis didn’t work that way, or that was the theory. A vamp couldn’t drink blood without getting the donor’s permission first. You couldn’t use vamp powers to get sex. Beyond that, the law stated that you had to notify humans in your place of business, and beyond that the law got really vague. The last no-no about no vamp powers for sex had been added only last year. It was treated like a date-rape drug, for legal purposes. Except that a vampire convicted of its use was sentenced to death, not trial or jail. Malcolm was right about the double standard. Vampires were people under the law, but they didn’t get all the rights that the rest of the American citizenry got. Of course, most of the rest of the citizens couldn’t tear iron bars from their sockets and use mind control to wipe people’s memories. They’d been deemed too dangerous for jail after a few bloody, and very messy, escapes.

So my job as vamp executioner had been invented. I don’t mean to make it sound like I was the first one with the job. I wasn’t. The ones who took the job first were people who had been slaying vampires when they were still illegal, so you could kill them on sight with no legal problems. The government had actually yanked the credentials of some people who’d had a hard time understanding that they had to wait for a warrant of execution before killing anyone. They’d finally had to put one of the old-style vamp hunters in jail. He was still in jail five years later. That had sent the message they wanted.

I’d come in at the tail end of the old school, but mostly I had never killed a vampire that hadn’t been covered by legal paperwork.

I glanced at my watch. I still had enough time to run home, change into date clothes, get Nathaniel, and make the movie.

The phone rang, and I jumped. Nervous, who me? “Hello?” I made it a question.

“Ma petite, what is wrong?” That smooth voice eased over the phone like a hand caressing down my skin. It wasn’t sexual this time; it was calming. He’d picked up my nervousness. In the middle of feeding the ardeur, he’d missed it.

“Malcolm came to see me.”

“About the blood-oathing?”

“Yes, and no,” I said.

“Why yes, and no, ma petite?”

I told him what Malcolm had told me. Somewhere in the middle of the talk, he shut down the metaphysical link between us, shut it down so hard and so tight that I couldn’t feel anything from him. We could share each other’s dreams, but if we shielded hard enough, we could shut each other out. But it took work, and we didn’t do it often lately. The silence when I finished was so complete that I had to ask, “Jean-Claude, you still there? I can’t even hear you breathing.”

“I do not have to breathe, ma petite, as well you know.”

“It’s just a saying,” I said.

He sighed then, and the sound of it shivered over my skin. This time it was sexual. He could use some of his powers on me and still shield like a son of a bitch. I couldn’t. When I shielded that tight, I was cut off from a lot of my abilities. “Stop that. Don’t try to distract me with your voice. What is it that Malcolm can’t speak of without being killed?”

“You will not like my answer, ma petite.”

“Just tell me.”

“I cannot tell you. I am under the same vow as Malcolm, as all the vampires everywhere are.”

“All vampires?”

“Oui.”

“What, or who, could force an oath like that from all of you?” I thought about it for a second, then answered my own question. “The vampire council, of course, your ruling body.”

“Oui.”

“So you aren’t going to tell me anything about what’s happening?”

“I cannot, ma petite.”

“Well, that is just frustrating as hell.”

“You have no idea how frustrating, ma petite.”

“I am your human servant; doesn’t that make me privy to all your secrets?”

“Ah, but this is not my secret.”

“What does that mean, not your secret?”

“It means, ma petite, that I cannot discuss this with you unless I am given permission.”

“How do you get permission?”

“Pray that I am never able to answer that question, ma petite.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that, if I am able to speak about this openly, then we will have been contacted, and we do not wish to be contacted by this.”

“This, a thing, not a person?”

“I will say no more.”

I knew I could push against his shields, and sometimes crack them. I thought about it, and it was as if he read my mind, and maybe he had. “Please, ma petite, do not push me on this.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad, but I think it is not our bad. I believe Malcolm will come to vampire justice for his crimes, whether we do it or not.”

“So whatever, or whoever, this is, is hunting Malcolm?”

“Perhaps. It is certainly he and his congregation that have the attention.”

“Would whoever this is really frame Malcolm’s people and set up me and the other vamp executioners to do their dirty work?”

“Perhaps. This legal status is very new. I know some of the older levels of vampire politics are puzzled by it. Perhaps some decided to use it to their own advantage.”

“I had a case of that just two months ago, where one vamp framed another for a murder of a woman. I don’t want to kill someone who’s innocent.”

“Is any vampire truly innocent?”

“Don’t give me that fundamentalist shit, Jean-Claude.”

“We are monsters, ma petite. You know that I believe that.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want us to go back to the bad ol’ days and have it be open season on you guys.”

“No, I do not want that.” There was something in the dry tone of his voice.

“You’re shielding so hard, I can’t tell what you’re feeling. You only shield this hard when you’re scared, really scared.”

“I am afraid that you will pick from my mind what I am forbidden to tell you. There is no, how do you say, fudging, on this…rule of law for us. If you learned this secret even in my mind, by accident, it might be grounds to slaughter both of us.”

“What the hell is this secret?”

“I have told you all I can.”

“Do I need to sleep at the Circus of the Damned with you tonight? Do we need to circle the wagons?”

He was quiet again, then finally said, “No, no.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“I think it would be a very bad thing for you to sleep with me tonight, ma petite. Sex and dreams are the times when shields drop, and you might learn what we cannot afford for you to know.”

“Are you saying that I’m not going to see you until this is resolved?”

“No, no, ma petite, but not tonight. I will think about our situation and decide a course of action by tomorrow night.”

“Course of action? What are the possibilities?”

“I dare not say.”

“Damn it, Jean-Claude, talk to me.” I was a little angry, but the tight feeling in my stomach was mostly fear.

“If all goes well, you will never learn this secret.”

“But it’s something that the council could have sent to kill Malcolm and destroy his church?”

“I cannot answer your questions.”

“Won’t, you mean.”

“Non, ma petite, cannot. Has it not occurred to you that this could be a ploy of our enemies to give them an excuse under vampire law to destroy us?”

I suddenly felt cold. “No, it hadn’t occurred to me.”

“Think upon it, ma petite.”

“You mean, they send something, so that if you tell me about it, then it, or they, can kill us. You think someone on the council is counting on the fact that we’re so tightly bound metaphysically that you can’t keep a secret this big from me. And if I find out, it won’t just be Malcolm that they’ll kill, but us, too.”

“It is a thought, ma petite.”

“A very twisty-turny, underhanded thought.”

“Vampires are a very twisty-turny lot, ma petite. As for underhanded, they would think of it as clever.”

“They can think what they like, but it’s a coward’s way.”

“Oh, no, ma petite, we do not want anyone on the council to put their full attention in a challenge to me. That would also be a very bad thing.”

“So, what? I meet Nathaniel for our date, and I pretend we haven’t had this talk?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“I can’t pretend that I don’t know something big and bad has come to town.”

“If it is not hunting us, be grateful, and do not pick at it. I beg you, Anita, for the sake of all you love, do not seek an answer to this riddle.” He’d called me by my real name; it was a bad sign.

“I can’t just pretend nothing is happening, Jean-Claude. Aren’t you even going to tell me to be more careful than normal?”

“You are always careful, ma petite. I never worry that any bad thing will catch you unaware. It is one of your charms for me that you can take care of yourself.”

“Even against something bad enough to scare you and Malcolm this badly.”

“I trust you, ma petite. Do you trust me?”

That was a loaded question, but finally I said, “Yeah.”

“You do not sound certain.”

“I trust you, but…I don’t like secrets, and I do not trust the council. And I have a warrant of execution on a vamp who is probably innocent. I’ve got a second warrant coming by tomorrow. They are both members of the Church of Eternal Life. I may not agree with Malcolm’s philosophy, but his members usually stay away from killing offenses. If I get a warrant of execution for a third member of Malcolm’s church this week, then it’s a frame. The law, as written, doesn’t give me much wiggle room, Jean-Claude.”

“Actually, it gives you a great deal of wiggle room, ma petite.”

“Yeah, yeah, but if I don’t use the warrant in a timely manner, I may have to answer to my superiors. I’m a federal marshal now, and they can call me on the carpet and make me explain my actions.”

“Have they done that to any of the new marshals yet?”

“Not yet. But if I’ve got a warrant, and other murders with the same MO keep happening, I’ll need an explanation as to why I haven’t killed Sally Hunter. The police, whatever the flavor, won’t accept ‘it’s a secret’ as an answer if people keep dying.”

“How many humans are dead?”

“One victim per warrant, but if I hesitate on the warrants, will whoever this is escalate the violence and force my hand?”

“Possibly.”

“Possibly,” I said.

“Oui.”

“You know, this could get ugly really fast.”

“You have used your discretionary powers to get warrants vacated in the past. You saved our Avery.”

“He is not ‘our’ Avery.”

“He would be yours, if you would let him.” There was the faintest of tones in his voice.

“Are you jealous of Avery Seabrook? He’s like only two years dead.”

“Not jealous in the way you mean.”

“Then how?”

“It was my blood he drank when he took oath to me, ma petite, but it is not me he watches. I should be his master, but I think if we both ordered him to do opposite things, I am not certain I would win the contest.”

“Are you saying that my hold on him is stronger than yours?”

“I am saying it is a possibility.”

It was my turn for silence. I was a necromancer, not just an animator of zombies, but a real, true necromancer. I could control more than just zombies. We were still trying to figure out how much more.

“Malcolm said he wasn’t sure which of us was victim and which victimizer anymore.”

“He is foolish, but not a fool.”

“I think I understood that,” I said.

“Then I will be plain. Go on your date with Nathaniel, celebrate your almost-anniversary. This is not our fight, not yet, perhaps not ever. Do not make it our fight, for it could be the death of everyone we love.”

“Oh, thanks, and with that cheery message, I’ll have no trouble going to the movies and enjoying myself.” Truthfully, I felt a little silly about the whole date tonight. Nathaniel wanted to celebrate our anniversary. The trouble was, we couldn’t agree on when our relationship changed from friends to more than friends. So, he’d chosen a date and called it our almost-anniversary. If I hadn’t been too embarrassed, I’d have picked the first time we had intercourse as the anniversary date. I just couldn’t figure out how to explain to friends why that date.

Jean-Claude sighed, and it wasn’t sexual this time, just frustrated, I think. “I wanted this almost-anniversary to go well, tonight, ma petite. Not just for your sake, and Nathaniel’s, but if he can work you through your reluctance to be romantic, then the rest of us might have a chance to celebrate special days with you, as well.”

“And what date would you pick as our anniversary?” I asked, in a voice thick with sarcasm.

“The first night we made love, for that is the night that you truly let yourself love me.”

“Damn it, you’ve thought about this.”

“Why does sentiment make you so uncomfortable, ma petite?”

I’d have loved to answer him, but I couldn’t. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure. “I don’t know, and I’m sorry that I’m such a pain in the ass. I’m sorry that I don’t let you and the rest of the guys do all the romantic gestures you want. I’m sorry that it’s so hard to be in love with me.”

“Now, you are being too hard on yourself.”

“I’m scared, I’m angry, I’m frustrated, and I don’t want to fight with you, because it’s not your fault. But now, thanks to what you just said, I don’t feel like I can cancel the date with Nathaniel tonight.” I thought about what I’d just said. “You bastard, you did this on purpose. You manipulated me into keeping the date with Nathaniel.”

“Perhaps, but you are his first real girlfriend, and he is twenty. It is important to him, this night.”

“He’s dating me, not you.”

“Oui, but if all the men in your life are happy, you are happier, and it makes my life easier.”

That made me laugh. “You bastard.”

“And I did not lie, ma petite, I would love to celebrate once a year the first night you came to me. If your first attempt at a modest celebration fails, then the larger, more romantic gestures will never come to pass. I want them to come to pass.”

I sighed and leaned my head against the phone receiver. I heard him saying, “Ma petite, ma petite, are you still there?”

I put the receiver back to my mouth and said, “I’m here. Not happy, but I’m here. I’ll go, but there won’t be time to change now.”

“I am sure that Nathaniel would much rather you go on this almost-anniversary than that you are dressed a certain way.”

“Spoken from the man who most often dresses me in fetish wear.”

“Not as often as I would like.” Before I could think of a comeback, he said, “Je t’aime,” and hung up. I love you, in French, and he got off the phone while the getting was good.

3

I WAS RUNNING too late to even go home first. A phone call and Nathaniel agreed to just meet me at the theatre. There was no reproach in his voice, no complaint. I think he was afraid to complain, afraid I’d use it as an excuse to cancel the almost-anniversary. He was probably right. I was dating, at last count, six men. When you’re dating that many people, anniversaries seem hypocritical. I mean, wasn’t an anniversary something you did for your special someone? I still hadn’t worked my way through the squirming discomfort of dating this many men. I still couldn’t get rid of the idea that with six men to choose from you couldn’t have a special sweetie. I was still struggling with the idea that they could all be special. When I was alone, not with any of them, not looking at them, or all covered in their metaphysical stuff, I could be all uncomfortable, and feel stupid. I felt stupid and grumpy right up to the moment that I saw Nathaniel standing just inside the doors, waiting for me.

He was five foot six and a half now. He’d grown half an inch in the last month. At twenty, twenty-one in the spring, he was growing into the broad shoulders, filling out in the way that most men do at a slightly earlier age. I actually got carded more at clubs than he did now, which irritated me, and pleased him. But it wasn’t height that made me stop and stare.

I stood in the midst of the Friday night crowd hurrying around me, and for just a few minutes I forgot that something bad enough to scare Jean-Claude and Malcolm had come to town. Yeah, Jean-Claude had told me we were safe, but still, it wasn’t like me to be careless in a crowd.

Nathaniel wore a leather trench coat and a matching fedora. The hat and coat hid most of him, and still managed to emphasize the body underneath. It was like hiding and asking for attention at the same time. He’d added the hat to his winter gear because without it, he had gotten recognized a few times. Customers from Guilty Pleasures had spotted him as Brandon, his stage name. Once we covered the hair, it didn’t happen again.

His hair was in some kind of tight braid, so that it looked like his auburn hair was cut nice and standard short. It was illusion. His hair fell to his ankles, totally impractical, but God, it was pretty.

It wasn’t just the standard ooh, isn’t he pretty that made me stop. It was that suddenly in his new leather trench coat and hat, with his hair all covered, he looked grown-up. He was seven years younger than me, and I’d felt vaguely like a child molester when he first hit my radar. I’d fought long and hard to keep him out of the boyfriend box, but in the end, it hadn’t worked. Now I looked at him like a stranger might, and realized that the only one who still thought he might be a child was me. Standing there looking like a fetish version of Sam Spade, he didn’t look twenty. He looked very over twenty-one.

Someone bumped me, and that made me jump. Shit, that was too careless. I started moving, dressed in my own black leather trench coat, but no hat. I didn’t do hats unless it was freaking freezing. Even with Christmas only weeks away, it wasn’t that cold. St. Louis in the wintertime: freezing one day, nearly fifty the next.

My trench coat was unbuttoned from the waist up, only belted in place. It was colder that way, but I could still reach my gun. Going armed in winter was always full of fun choices like that.

He spotted me before I’d gotten through the outer doors. He gave me that smile that made his whole face glow, so happy to see me. Once I would have bitched, but I was too busy fighting off my own version of the same smile. One of my other boyfriends said I hated being in love, and he was right. It always felt so stupid, like your insurance rates should go up, because you’re impaired. Romantically handicapped.

The face under the hat was too pretty to be handsome. He was beautiful, not handsome. Apparently, no matter how tall he got, or how much he muscled up, that wasn’t going to change. But it wasn’t a delicate face, the way Jean-Claude’s was, or Micah’s was; it was stronger boned than that, higher cheekboned. Something a touch more male in his face—I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something—and when he looked full at you, you never thought feminine, but always male. Had that changed in the last few months? Had I not noticed that, or had it always been like this and I just was so determined to marginalize him that I couldn’t let his face be more masculine than Jean-Claude’s or Micah’s? Did I still equate strength and being a grown-up to being male? Me, of all people? Surely not.

His smile had faded around the edges. “What’s wrong?”

I smiled and went to hug him. “Just wondering if I’m paying enough attention to you.”

He hugged me back, but not like he meant it. He pulled me back so he could see my face. “Why would you say that?”

I finally let myself look full into his eyes. Tonight I was so distracted by him that I’d avoided his eyes almost like he was a vampire with a gaze and I was some tourist human. His eyes were lavender—really, truly the color of lilacs. But it wasn’t just the color; they were large and perfect, and crowned his face with that final touch that just made your heart hurt. Too beautiful, simply too beautiful.

He touched my face. “Anita, what’s wrong?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I was attracted to Nathaniel but this was excessive. I looked away so I wouldn’t be staring directly into his face. What the hell was wrong with me tonight?

He tried to draw me into a kiss, and I pulled away. A kiss would undo me.

His hands dropped away from me. His voice held the first hint of anger. It took a lot to make Nathaniel angry. “It’s just a movie, Anita. I’m not even asking for sex, just a movie.”

I glanced up at him. “I’d rather go home and have sex.”

“Which is why I asked for the movie,” he said.

I frowned at him. “What?”

“Are you embarrassed about being seen with me in public?”

“No.” I let my face show how much it shocked me that he’d even have to ask.

His face was very serious, hurt, ready to be angry. “Then what is it? You won’t even kiss me.”

I tried to explain. “I forgot everything but you for a minute.”

He smiled, his eyes not quite catching up to it. “Is that so bad?”

“In my line of work, yes.” I watched him try to understand. He was beautiful, but I could look at him without being stupid-faced. I moved closer to the smell of the new leather coat. I hugged him, and after a second’s hesitation he hugged me back. I buried my face against the scent of leather and him. Sweet, clean, and underneath that the smell of vanilla. I knew now that it was only partially him, that some of that sweet scent was bath products and cologne, but the scent he wore didn’t smell so lusciously of vanilla on anyone else’s skin. One of those tricks of skin chemistry that changes the scent of the really good perfumes.

“We need to get seats.” He whispered it against my hair.

I drew away from him, frowning again. I shook my head and that only partially cleared it. I reached into my coat pocket for a small, padded velvet bag. I opened it and dug the padding out until a cross spilled into my hand. It lay there silver and inert. I’d half expected it to glow, to show me that some vamp was messing with me. But it lay there, innocent and untouched.

“What is wrong, Anita?” Nathaniel looked worried now.

“I think someone’s messing with me.”

“The cross isn’t showing it.”

“You’re scrumptious, Nathaniel, but it’s not like me to lose focus this badly in public.”

“You think Mommie Dearest is trying again?” he asked.

Mommie Dearest was my nickname for the head of the vampire council, the creator of vampire culture. The last time she’d messed with me, a cross had burned into my hand and had to be pried out by a doctor. I had a permanent scar in my left palm from it. Up to now the cross, in a bag or under my bed, had kept her at bay.

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“There aren’t that many vamps that can get through your psychic shields,” he said.

I slipped the chain over my neck, the silver glittering against the thin silk sweater.

“You sure that’s enough cloth between your skin and the cross?”

“No, but I don’t think it’s Mommie.”

He sighed and tried to keep the frown off his face. “Do you need to skip the movie?”

“No, Jean-Claude said we’d be safe tonight.”

“Okay,” Nathaniel said, “but I don’t like the way you said that. What’s gone wrong now?”

“Let’s find seats and I’ll tell you what little I know,” I said. We managed to find two seats in the back row so my back was to a wall and I could see the rest of the theatre. I wasn’t being paranoid, or at least not more paranoid than usual. I always sat in the back row, if I could manage it.

By the time the previews had finished, I’d told him everything I knew, which wasn’t much.

“And that’s all Jean-Claude would tell you?”

“Yep.”

“Way too mysterious.”

“Understatement,” I said.

The music came up, the lights went down, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember what movie we’d decided to see. I didn’t ask Nathaniel, because it might have hurt his feelings, and besides, in moments, the question would answer itself.

4

THREE HOURS AND some change later, I knew the movie was the new version of King Kong. Nathaniel liked the movie better than I did. The special effects were great, but I was way ready for the ape to die long before he did. Which was a shame, since some of the movie was amazing. My cross hadn’t glowed once, and I hadn’t been more than normally fascinated with Nathaniel. Normally fascinated meant that sitting in date seats in the dark was intimate and fun, but it didn’t make me lose control. I thought about letting my hands wander, and with the other men in my life, I might have, but Nathaniel had less inhibitions than most. I might start something I wouldn’t want to finish in the theatre. Besides, you can’t watch the movie and grope your boyfriend, or at least I can’t.

One thing I had to do after a movie that long was take a restroom break. Riddle me this: Why is it that there is never a line for the men’s room, but the women’s always seems to have one? I did my bit in line, then finally got into the stall. At least it was clean.

The noise died away and let me know I was alone. Long damn line. I tucked and buckled everything back into place. One of the things I liked about shoulder holsters as opposed to carrying on the hip is that you don’t run the risk of dumping the gun in the toilet. Inner pants holsters that don’t go through a belt loop are some of the most precarious for bathroom use. Guns, unlike pagers, do not float.

I smoothed the stockings in place, glad that I wasn’t having to struggle with pantyhose anymore. Garter and stockings really are more comfortable. The bathroom was empty as I pushed the door open. I started for the sinks when I saw the box sitting across one of them. “Anita” was printed on the box in black block letters.

That little dickens. How had Nathaniel gotten in here to leave a present? If he’d been caught in the ladies’ restroom, it could have gone badly. I washed and dried my hands, then opened the box. I had to fold back layers of white tissue paper before I found a mask. It was white and would have covered everything but the eyes from forehead to chin. It was utterly plain, a blank white face staring up at me. Why would he buy me this? If it had been leather and fetish-looking, I might have guessed something more adventurous on the sexual front, but this didn’t look like that kind of mask. Of course, I wasn’t an expert on that kind of mask, so maybe that was what it was for. If so, he hadn’t sold me on the idea. I didn’t like masks, and I was far from comfortable with bondage and submission. The fact that I had leanings that way myself hadn’t made me like it more; on the contrary, it scared me more because of it. You hate most in others what you’re afraid of in yourself.

I tried to find an expression that was neutral, but pleased, and walked out carrying the box. Nathaniel was waiting against the far wall, holding both our coats and his hat. The leather hat got hot indoors. He smiled when he saw me and walked toward me with a quizzical look on his face. “Did someone leave that in the bathroom?”

I showed him that it had my name on it. “I thought you were trying to surprise me.”

“You hate surprises,” he said.

My pulse sped up, not a lot, but a little. I moved us so that the wall was at my back. I was suddenly looking at the people near us, looking hard; but everyone looked innocent, or at least not guilty. Couples holding hands, families with kids in tow: it all looked normal.

“What’s in there?” Nathaniel asked.

“A mask,” I whispered.

“Can I see it?”

I nodded.

He moved the lid and tissue paper, while I kept searching the happy moviegoers for evil intent. There was a couple staring a little too hard at us, but that could be other things.

“It looks like someone started to make a mask and stopped before they finished,” he said.

“Yeah, it looks too blank.”

“Why would someone give you this?”

“Did you see someone carry this in?”

“It’s a big box, Anita. I’d have noticed.”

“Did anyone carry in a bigger-than-average purse?”

“Not one big enough to hide this.”

“You were standing right there, Nathaniel. You had to see.”

We exchanged a look. “I didn’t see this.”

“Shit,” I said low and with feeling.

“Someone was messing with you earlier, and they messed with me to get inside the bathroom,” he said.

“Did you sense anything?” I asked.

He thought about it, and finally shook his head. “No.”

“Double shit.”

“Call Jean-Claude, now,” he said.

I nodded and handed him the box so I could use my cell phone. Nathaniel wrapped the mask back up while I waited for Jean-Claude to pick up. This time he actually answered his office phone himself. “I got a present,” I said.

“What did our pussycat buy you?” he asked, not offended that I hadn’t said hello first.

“Nathaniel didn’t buy it.”

“It is not like you to speak in riddles, ma petite.”

“Ask me what it is,” I said.

“What is it?” and his voice was sliding into that blankness he did so well.

“A mask.”

“What color is it?”

“You don’t sound surprised,” I said.

“What color is it, ma petite?”

“What does that matter?”

“It matters.”

“White, why?”

He let out a breath I hadn’t known he was holding, and spoke softly and heatedly in French for several minutes, until I could get him calmed down enough to speak English to me.

“It is good news, and bad, ma petite. White means they have come to observe us, not to harm us.”

I moved so that my hand covered my mouth as I talked. I wanted to keep an eye on the drifting crowd, but I didn’t want some human to overhear what promised to be a tricky conversation. But I didn’t want to go outside until I found out how much danger we were in. The crowd was both a danger and a help. Most bad guys are reluctant to start cutting people up in a crowd. “What color would mean harm?” I asked.

“Red.”

“Okay, who is they, because I assume this means we’ve been contacted by the mystery whoever.”

“It does.”

“So who are they, what are they? And why the hell this cloak-and-dagger shit with the mask? Why not a letter or a phone call?”

“I am not certain. They would normally have sent the mask to me, as Master of the City.”

“Why send it to me, then?”

“I do not know, ma petite.” He sounded angry, and he didn’t usually get angry this easily.

“You’re scared.”

“Very.”

“I guess we come to the Circus tonight, after all.”

“Apologize to Nathaniel for this ruining his date with you, but oui, you must come here. We have much to discuss.”

“Who are these guys, Jean-Claude?”

“The name will mean nothing to you.”

“Just tell me.”

“The Harlequin, they are the Harlequin.”

“Harlequin, you mean like the French clown?”

“Nothing half so pleasant, ma petite. Come home and I will explain.”

“How much more danger are we in?” The couple was still staring at us. The woman nudged the man, and he shook his head.

“White means they will observe only. This could be the only contact we have with them, if we are very, very lucky. They will watch us, then leave.”

“Why tell us at all, if that’s all they plan to do?”

“Because it is our law. They may pass through a territory, or hunt someone across a territory, much as you hunt wicked vampires across state lines, but if they are planning to be within an area for more than a few nights, then they are bound by law to contact the Master of the City.”

“So this could be all about Malcolm and his church.”

“It could.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“It would be too easy, ma petite, and nothing about the Harlequin is ever easy.”

“What are they?”

“They are the closest thing to police that we vampires have. But they are also spies, assassins. It was they who slew the Master of London when he went mad.”

“Elinore and the other vamps didn’t say that.”

“Because they could not.”

“You mean, if they had told anyone who killed their master, they’d have been killed?”

“Yes.”

“That’s crazy, they all knew it.”

“Among themselves, oui, but not to outsiders, and once the Harlequin leave town the secrecy takes effect once more.”

“So we can talk about them now, but later, when they leave, it’s forbidden to mention them?”

“Oui.”

“That’s insane.”

“It is law.”

“Have I told you recently that some of the vampire laws are stupid?”

“You have never put it quite that way.”

“Well, I’m putting it that way now.”

“Come home, ma petite, or better yet, come to Guilty Pleasures. I will tell you more of the history of the Harlequin when I have you safe with me. We should be safe. It is a white mask. We are expected to act as if there is nothing wrong. So I will finish my work night.”

“You’ve fed the ardeur. You’re done for the night.”

“There are still acts to manage and my voice to lend to a microphone.”

“Fine. We’ll be there.”

Nathaniel whispered, “They’re coming over.”

I glanced up to find the couple that had been staring so hard walking toward us. They didn’t look dangerous, and they were definitely human. I whispered into the telephone, “Are all the Harlequin vamps?”

“To my knowledge, why?”

“We’ve got a pair of humans walking toward us.”

“Come to me, ma petite, and bring Nathaniel.”

“Love ya,” I said.

“And I you.”

We hung up so I could give my attention to the couple. The woman was petite and blond, and embarrassed and eager at the same time. The man was grumpy, or embarrassed.

“You’re Brandon,” she said to Nathaniel.

He admitted it, and I watched his stage smile come on line. He was happy to see her, and all the worry was just gone. He was on.

I didn’t really have an “on” face. I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to do while strange women came up and said things to my boyfriend.

“But you were on stage, too,” she said, turning to me. I’d been recognized as Anita Blake, vampire hunter, zombie raiser, but never from that one night I’d gone on stage at Guilty Pleasures. Nathaniel had picked me out of the crowd instead of some stranger. I’d agreed to it, but I hadn’t wanted to do it again.

I nodded. “Once.” I felt Nathaniel tense beside me. I should have just said yes. Nathaniel worried that I was embarrassed by him, and I wasn’t. It was fine that he was a stripper, but it wasn’t my gig. I was not nearly exhibitionist enough for it.

“I’d finally persuaded Greg to go with me to the club, and he was glad he came, weren’t you?” She turned to the grumpy boyfriend.

He finally nodded, and he wouldn’t look at me. Definitely embarrassed. That made two of us. None of my clothes had come off on stage, but I still didn’t like being reminded of it.

“It was so erotic, what you did on stage together,” she said, “so sensual.”

Nathaniel said, “So glad you enjoyed the show. I’ll be on stage tomorrow night.”

Her face glowed with happiness. “I know. I check the website. But it doesn’t mention your friend.” She nodded at me. “Greg wants to know when you’ll be back, don’t you, Greg?” She was looking at me when she said it.

What I thought in my head was, When hell freezes over. I don’t know what I would have said out loud, because Nathaniel saved us. “You know how you had to persuade Greg to come to the club?”

She nodded.

“I had to persuade her to get on stage.”

“Really?” she said.

“Really,” Nathaniel said.

Greg finally spoke. “Was it your first time on stage?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering how to get out of this conversation without being rude. I’d have been rude, but Nathaniel wouldn’t be. Bad for business, and rude just wasn’t one of the things that he did much.

“It didn’t seem like your first time,” and he looked at me then. The look was the kind you never want a strange man to give you. Too much heat, too much sex.

I looked at Nathaniel. The look said clearly, End this conversation, or I will.

Nathaniel understood the look; he’d seen it enough. “I’m glad you enjoyed the show, and I hope to see you both again tomorrow. Have a wonderful night.” He started to move away, and I followed.

Greg moved closer to us. “Will you be there tomorrow night?”

Nathaniel smiled, and said, “Of course.”

He shook his head. “Not you, her. What’s her name?”

I didn’t want to give him my name. Don’t ask me why, but I didn’t. Nathaniel came to the rescue again. “Nicky.”

I gave him a look, but my back was to them, so they couldn’t see it. Greg said, “Nicky?”

Nathaniel took my arm and kept us moving, balancing the box in his other hand. “When she’s on stage,” he said.

“When will Nicky be at the club?”

“Never,” I said, and walked faster. Nathaniel kept up with me. When we were clear of his, our, fans, his face showed dread. Dreading the fight that was coming.

5

I WASN’T SO angry that I forgot to check out the crowd as we moved, but I had to force the anger down to be able to see straight. I was actually more embarrassed than angry, which meant the fight could be all the worse for it. I hated being embarrassed, and usually masked it with anger. Even knowing that’s what I did didn’t change the fact that I did it. It just let me know why I was angry.

I actually waited until we were in the parking lot to say, “Nicky? What the fuck kind of name is that?”

“One I’d remember,” he said.

I jerked away from him hard enough that he almost dropped the box. “I’m never going to be on stage again; I don’t need a stage name.”

“You don’t want them to figure out your real name, do you?”

I frowned at him. “I’m in the news enough. They’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Maybe, but if you give them a stage name to remember, they’ll think of you as a stripper, not as a federal marshal. You’re embarrassed enough that Detective Arnet saw us on stage that night.”

“Yes, and I’m still waiting for her to tell the rest of the police that she and I work with.”

“But she hasn’t,” he said.

I shook my head.

“She can’t admit she saw you without admitting she was there, and why,” he said.

“Cops go to strip clubs all the time,” I said.

“But she didn’t go to see strippers, she went to see me.”

That stopped me. Made me turn and stare at him. “What do you mean?”

“She came to the club on a night you weren’t there. Since you’ve avoided the club as much as possible, that’s a lot of the time. Can we have this conversation in the car?”

He had a point. I unlocked the car, and we climbed in. “Where’s the other car?”

“I had Micah drop me off, so he’ll have the car if he needs it. I knew you’d drive me home.”

It made sense. I turned on the car so the heater would start working. I finally realized it was a little chilly. My anger had kept me warm even with my coat flapping open. “What do you mean, Arnet came to the club?”

“She paid to have a private dance.”

I stared at him. “She did what?”

Detective Jessica Arnet worked on the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, RPIT for short. It was the branch of local police that I worked with the most. I’d known she had a crush on Nathaniel, but I’d been so busy trying not to admit that I was living with a stripper that I’d kept him too much a secret. Until I brought him as a date to a wedding that Arnet was at. Then the secret was out, and she was mad at me for not telling her we were an item sooner. She seemed to feel like I’d let her make a fool of herself. She hadn’t made a fool of herself, but she had come to Guilty Pleasures for the first time that one night that Nathaniel got me on stage. She was now convinced that I was abusing Nathaniel. Chain someone up on stage and hit them with a flogger a few times, and people think you’re abusing them. Of course, the flogger had been Nathaniel and Jean-Claude’s idea. A part of Nathaniel’s regular show, apparently. What I’d done next had been all me, and Nathaniel. I had marked him, bitten him hard enough to bleed him, on stage. It had been the first time I’d voluntarily marked him like that, not just because the ardeur got out of control, but because he liked it, and I liked it, and I’d promised.

Arnet was convinced that I was Madame de Sade and Nathaniel was my victim. I’d tried explaining that Nathaniel was only a victim when he wanted to be, but she hadn’t bought it. I’d been convinced she would tell the other cops and out me, badly. Living with a twenty-year-old stripper with juvenile arrests for prostitution was bad enough, but getting on stage myself, well, that would have been…oh, hell, bad.

“How private a dance did she get?”

He grinned. “Are you jealous?”

I thought about it for a second, then had to say, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“That’s so sweet,” he said.

“Just tell me about Arnet.”

“She didn’t want the dance. She wanted to talk.” He seemed to think about it for a second, then added, “Okay, she wanted the dance, a lot, but she was too uncomfortable with me to ask for what she wanted. We just talked.”

“About?” I said.

“She tried to get me to admit that you were abusing me. She wanted me to leave you and save myself.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were already worried about Arnet telling Zerbrowski and the other cops what she’d seen. You were in the middle of some messy murder investigation. I didn’t figure you needed the hassle, and I handled it.”

“Has she been back?”

He shook his head.

“Tell me next time, okay?”

“If you want.”

“I want.”

“She can’t tell on you, because she’d be afraid you’d tell them that she has a thing for your stripper boyfriend. She doesn’t want to admit that what bothered her the most about the show you and I did is that she liked it.”

“I didn’t think Arnet swung that way,” I said.

“Neither did she.”

I looked at him, studied that face. There was a look on it now. “Just say it, the look in your eyes, just say it.”

“You hate most in others what you don’t like in yourself.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I thought something almost identical to that earlier tonight.”

“What about?”

I shook my head. “Do you really think giving Greg and his girlfriend a stage name for me will keep them from making the connection to Anita Blake?”

“Yeah, I do. They’ll think of you as a stripper named Nicky and that’s it. You won’t be anything or any more to them than that.”

“Strangely disturbing, but why Nicky, why that name?”

“Because I knew I’d remember it.”

“Remember it, why?”

“Because it was my name when I did porn.”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“Nicky Brandon is the name I used when I did movies.”

I did the long blink, the one that meant I was thinking hard, or too surprised to think. “You gave me your pornography name?”

“Half of it,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say. Was I supposed to be flattered, or insulted? “I declare this fight over until I figure out if we’re actually fighting.”

“Trust me, Anita, this isn’t a fight.”

“Then how come I’m angry?”

“Let’s see: there’s some bad vamps in town messing with us, you always hate it when fans recognize Brandon the stripper, but tonight, for the first time, you got recognized from the one time you went on stage. If you’re embarrassed by my job, you’re even more embarrassed that anyone would think you could be a stripper.”

“I’m not embarrassed about your job.”

“Yeah, you are,” he said.

I started the car. “I am not.”

“Then next time you introduce me to your friends, don’t call me a dancer, call me an exotic dancer.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and started backing up. I wouldn’t do it. He was right. I’d keep introducing him as simply a dancer. “Do you want me to introduce you like that?”

“No, but I want you not to be ashamed of what I do.”

“I’m not ashamed of you, or your job.”

“Fine, have it your way.” But his tone said clearly that he was letting me win, but that I was wrong, and hadn’t won anything. I hated when he did that. He just stopped fighting in the middle of the fight, not because he’d lost, but just because he didn’t want to fight anymore. How do you fight with someone who won’t fight? Answer: you don’t.

The real trouble was, he was right. I was embarrassed about his job. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. When he was a teenager, he’d been a runaway, and a prostitute, and on drugs. He’d been off drugs for nearly four years. He’d been out of “the life” since he was sixteen. He’d done porn, and I knew that. But I didn’t dwell on it. I assumed he’d stopped doing the movies about the same time he stopped hooking, but I wasn’t sure of that. I hadn’t really asked, had I? He was a wereleopard, which meant he couldn’t catch any sexually transmitted disease. That helped me ignore his past. The lycanthropy killed everything that could injure the host body; it kept him healthy. It made it so that I could pretend he hadn’t had more sexual partners than I wanted to know about.

I was trapped at the light across from St. Louis Bread Company when I said, “Want to hear what Jean-Claude told me about the mask?”

“If you want to tell me.” He sounded mad.

“I’m sorry that I’m not completely comfortable with your job, okay?”

“Well, at least you admit it.”

The light changed, and I eased forward. We’d had two inches of snow, and everyone here forgot how to drive in it. “I don’t like to admit when I’m uncomfortable, you know that.”

“Tell me what Jean-Claude said.”

I told him.

“So they may be here for Malcolm and his church.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t demand more answers on the phone.”

“I didn’t know what the happy couple wanted. Jean-Claude said we’re not in danger, so I hung up.”

“It’s not my fault that they recognized us.”

“You. They recognized you.”

“Fine, they recognized me.” He was back to being mad again.

“I’m sorry, Nathaniel, I’m really sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

“No, you’re right. If we hadn’t been out together they probably wouldn’t have spotted you.”

“I am not embarrassed to be seen with you in public.”

“You hate it when fans recognize me.”

“I thought I was pretty cool when that woman passed you her phone number at dinner, when you were out with Micah and me.”

“She waited until you went to the bathroom.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” I turned onto 44 and headed toward the city.

“She didn’t want to intrude on our date.”

“She thought you and Micah were escorts, and that I was paying you for the evening.”

“The last time she saw me that’s what I was doing for a living, Anita.”

“I know, I know. She passed you her number because she wanted to see you again, and the old number wasn’t working. You’re right, she was polite about it.”

“I told her I was on a date-date, and she was embarrassed.”

I still remembered the woman. She’d been slender and elegant and old enough to be Nathaniel’s mother. Thanks to Jean-Claude I knew clothes, and she’d been wearing expensive ones. The jewelry had been understated, but very nice. She was one of those women who headed charity balls and sat on committees for the art museum, and she’d been hiring male prostitutes young enough to be her son.

“I think what bothered me about her was that she didn’t look like someone who would…”

“Hire an escort,” he finished for me.

“Yeah.”

“I had a lot of different kinds of customers, Anita.”

“I figured that.”

“Did you, or did you try never to think about it?”

“Okay, the latter.”

“I can’t change my past, Anita.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“But you want me to quit stripping.”

“I never said that.”

“You’re embarrassed by it, though.”

“For God’s sake, Nathaniel, let it go. I’m embarrassed about being up on stage myself. I’m embarrassed that I fed on you in public.” I gripped the steering wheel so tight it hurt. “When I fed the ardeur off you that night, I fed off the entire audience. I didn’t mean to, but I fed on their lust. I felt how much they enjoyed the show, and I fed on it.”

“And you didn’t have to feed again for twenty-four hours.”

“Jean-Claude took my ardeur and shared it around among you guys.”

“Yes, but he thinks that one of the reasons he was able to do that is that you fed off the crowd, and me. I loved that you marked me in front of the crowd. You know how much I loved it.”

“Are you saying that if I hadn’t gone up on stage and accidentally fed from the crowd, the ardeur would have gotten out of control in the middle of that serial killer case?”

“Maybe.”

I thought about that for a second as I drove. I thought about the ardeur going out of control in a van full of cops, Mobile Reserve cops, our answer to SWAT. I thought about the ardeur getting out of control while I was in a nest of vampires that had killed over ten people.

“If that’s true, then why didn’t Jean-Claude try to get me down to the club again?”

“He’s offered.”

“I’ve refused.”

“Yeah,” Nathaniel said.

“Why tell me now?”

“Because I’m mad at you,” he said. He lowered his head on top of the box in his lap. “Because I’m mad that our date is ruined. I’m mad that some metaphysical crap is going to ruin our almost-anniversary.”

“I didn’t plan this,” I said.

“No, but your life is always like this. Do you have any idea how hard it is to have a normal date with you?”

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to stay in it.” The moment I said it, I wished I hadn’t, but I didn’t take it back.

“Do you mean that?” he asked, in a low, careful voice.

“No,” I said, “no, I don’t mean it. I’m just not used to you picking at me. That’s usually Richard’s job.”

“Don’t compare me with him. I don’t deserve that.”

“No, you don’t.” Richard Zeeman had once been my fiancé, but it hadn’t lasted. I’d broken up with him when I saw him eat someone. He was the head of the local werewolf pack. He’d broken up with me when he couldn’t handle that I was more comfortable with the monsters than he was. At the moment, we were lovers, and he was finally letting me feed the ardeur off him. I was his girlfriend in the preternatural community, lupa to his Ulfric, and he wasn’t shopping to replace me in that part of his life. He was shopping for a completely human woman to replace me in the part of his life where he was a mild-mannered junior high science teacher. He wanted kids and a life that didn’t include full moons and killer zombies. I didn’t blame him completely. If I’d had an option for a normal life, I might have taken it. Of course, Richard really didn’t have the option either. There was no cure for lycanthropy. But he was going to divide his life into pieces and try to keep all the pieces from finding out about the other parts. Sounded hard, hell, sounded like a recipe for disaster. But it wasn’t my life, and so far he was just dating people. If he got serious about someone else, then we’d see how I felt about being the other woman.

“You missed the turn, Anita,” Nathaniel said.

I cursed and braked too hard in the thin snow. I got the Jeep under control, then let us coast past our exit. I’d turn around. You could always turn around. “Sorry,” I said.

“Thinking about Richard?” He tried for neutral and failed.

“Yeah.”

“My fault, I guess; I brought him up.”

“What’s with the tone?” I asked. I turned into a section of town that was in the middle of being gentrified but hadn’t quite made it yet. But we were headed back toward the riverfront.

“If Richard were a stripper, would you be embarrassed by him, too?”

“Drop this, Nathaniel, I mean it.”

“Or what?” There was that first prickling run of energy over my skin. He was angry enough that it was making his beast peek out.

“You’re picking on me tonight, Nathaniel. I don’t need that.”

“I believe that you love me, Anita, but you love me by hiding from what I am. I need you to accept who I am.”

“I do.”

“You tell Arnet that I’m not your victim, but you won’t tie me up during sex. You won’t abuse me.”

“Don’t start this again,” I said.

“Anita, the bondage is part of who I am. It makes me feel safe and good.”

This was one of the reasons I’d fought so long and hard to stay out of Nathaniel’s love life. I did some stuff, nails, teeth, and I enjoyed it, but there were limits to my comfort level, and he’d been trying to push me past those limits in the last few weeks. I’d worried from the beginning that he wouldn’t be happy with someone who was less into the bondage scene than he was, and that was exactly what was happening.

“In some ways you make me feel better about myself than anyone ever has, Anita, but you also make me feel bad about myself. You make me feel like an evil freak, because of what I want.”

I found a parking spot just down the street from Guilty Pleasures’s glowing neon sign. It was unusual to find parking this close to the club on a weekend. Parallel parking is not my best thing, so I concentrated on that, while part of me thought furiously about what to say to him.

I finally got us parked and turned off the car. The silence was thicker than I wanted it to be. I turned as far as the seat belt would allow and looked at him. He stared out the window away from me.

“I don’t want to make you feel bad about yourself, Nathaniel. I love you, damn it.”

He nodded, then turned and looked at me. The streetlight glittered on tears. “I’m terrified that I’m going to drive you away. My therapist says that I’m either a full partner in the relationship, or I’m not. Full partners ask for their needs to be met.”

Truthfully, I’d thought his therapist would be on my side, but BDSM was no longer considered an illness. It was just another alternative lifestyle. Damn it.

“I want you to get what you need out of our…out of us.”

“I’m not asking for that much, Anita. Just tie me up while we have sex. Then do what we would have done anyway. Nothing else.”

I leaned over and brushed the tears from his cheeks. “It’s not the tying up, Nathaniel. It’s that once I say yes to that, what’s next? And don’t tell me there isn’t a next.”

“Tie me up, make love to me, and we’ll go from there.”

“That’s what scares me,” I said. “I say yes to this, and there’ll be something else.”

“And what’s wrong with something else, Anita? What scares you isn’t my needs, but that you might like it.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Maybe not, but it’s true. You like being held down during sex. You like it rough.”

“Not all the time.”

“And I don’t like being tied up all the time, but I like it some of the time. Why is that wrong?”

“I’m not sure I can meet all your needs, okay? It was one of the things that worried me about us as a couple from the beginning.”

“Then are you okay with me finding someone else to meet those needs? Sex with you, bondage with someone else?” He said it fast, as if he were afraid he’d lose his nerve.

I just stared at him. “Where the hell did this come from?”

“I’m trying to find out what the limits are, Anita, that’s all.”

“Do you want someone else?” I asked it, because I had to ask.

“No, but you have other people in your bed, and I’m okay with that, but if you won’t meet my needs, then…”

“Are you saying that if I don’t come across, you’ll break up with me?”

“No, no.” He hid his face with his hands and made a frustrated noise. His energy level swirled back through the car, like hot water spilling across my skin. He swallowed the power back and looked at me. He looked pained. “I need this, Anita. I want to do it with you, but I need it with someone. It’s part of who I am sexually; it just is.”

I tried to wrap my mind around letting Nathaniel play sex games with someone else, then come home to me. I couldn’t do it. He was right; I was forcing him to share me with other men, but sharing him with another woman…“So what, you’d have tie-up games with someone else, then come home to me?”

“I can find a master who doesn’t do sexual contact. I can find someone who will just do the bondage.”

“But bondage is sex for you.”

He nodded. “Sometimes.”

“I can’t do this tonight, Nathaniel.”

“I’m not asking you to; just think about it. Decide what you want me to do.”

“You’re giving me an ultimatum; I don’t deal well with ultimatums.”

“It’s not an ultimatum, Anita, it’s just true. I love you, and I’m happier with you than I’ve ever been with anyone for this long. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d still be together this long. Seven months is the longest relationship I’ve ever had. When I thought it would be like all the rest—a few months, then over—it wasn’t a big deal. I could behave myself for a few months, until you got tired of me.”

“I’m not tired of you.”

“I know that. In fact, I think you’re going to keep me. I didn’t expect that.”

“Keep you? You make yourself sound like a lost puppy that I picked up on the street. You don’t ‘keep’ people, Nathaniel.”

“Fine, pick a different word, but we’re living together and it’s working, and it might last years. I can’t go years without having this need met, Anita.”

“It might last years; you still talk about us like we won’t last.”

“Years is lasting,” he said, “and everyone gets tired of me, eventually.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m not tired of you. Frustrated, puzzled as hell, but not tired.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I know that, and if I didn’t feel secure enough, I wouldn’t make any demands. I’d just go on being unhappy about this, but if you love me, then I can ask for what I want.”

If you love me, he’d said. Jesus. “It must be true love, Nathaniel, because I’m not booting your ass to the curb for this.”

“For what, asking for my sexual needs to be met?”

“Stop, just stop.” I rested my forehead against the steering wheel and tried to think. “Can we please drop this for now, while I think about it?”

“Sure.” His voice sounded hurt.

But his voice could sound hurt; I was out of my depth. “How long have you been saving this conversation up?” I asked, still resting against the wheel.

“I kept waiting for there to be a quiet time, when you weren’t ass-deep in alligators, but…”

“But I’m always ass-deep in alligators.”

“Yeah,” he said.

I rose and nodded. That was fair. “I’ll think about what you said, and that’s all I’ve got tonight, okay?”

“That’s wonderful. I mean it. I was afraid…”

I frowned at him. “You really thought I’d dump you because of this?”

He shrugged and wouldn’t look at me. “You don’t like demands, Anita, not from any of the men in your life.”

I unbuckled my seat belt and slid over so I could turn him to look at me. “I can’t promise that this won’t eventually break me, but I can’t imagine not waking up beside you most mornings. I can’t imagine not having you puttering in our kitchen. Hell, it’s more your kitchen than mine. I don’t cook.”

He kissed me and drew back with that smile that made his face shine with happiness. I loved that smile. “Our kitchen. I’ve never had an ‘our’ anything before.”

I hugged him, partially because I wanted to, and partially to hide the expression on my face. On one hand, I loved him to pieces; on the other hand, I wished he had come with an instruction book. More than almost any other man in my life, he confused me. Richard hurt me more, but most of the time I understood why. I didn’t like it, but I understood his motivation. Nathaniel was so far outside my comfort zone sometimes that I had no clue. That I understood vampires that had been alive over five hundred years better than I understood the man in my arms said something. I wasn’t sure what it said, but something.

“Let’s go inside before Jean-Claude wonders what happened to us.”

He nodded, still looking happy. He got out on his side with the box in hand. I got out, hit the button to make the Jeep beep, and eased between the cars onto the sidewalk. He’d put his hat back on. Nathaniel in disguise. I put my left arm through his, and we walked over the melting snow toward the club. He was still all glowing from the “our” comment I’d made. Me, I wasn’t glowing. I was worried. How far would I really go to keep him? Could I send him to a stranger for slap and tickle? Could I share him if I couldn’t meet his needs? I didn’t know. I really didn’t know.

6

I OPENED THAT metaphysical connection I had to Jean-Claude. Opened it and thought, Where are you? I felt him, or saw him, or some other word that they hadn’t invented yet for seeing and feeling what someone else was doing in another room. He was on stage, using that voice of his to announce an act.

I drew back enough to be solidly on Nathaniel’s arm. Sometimes when I tried mind-to-mind stuff, I had trouble walking. “Jean-Claude is on stage, so we’ll go in the front.”

“Whatever you say,” he said.

Once, in our relationship, he’d meant that. He’d been my little submissive wereleopard. I’d worked long and hard to make him more, to force him to be more demanding. Try to do a good deed and it bites you on the ass.

The bouncer at the door was tall, blond, and way too cheerful for the job. Clay was one of Richard’s werewolves, and when he wasn’t bodyguarding someone, he worked security here. Clay’s gift was avoiding fights. He was really good at calming things down. A much more useful ability for a bouncer than brute strength. Last week Clay had been helping guard my body. No pun intended. There’d been a metaphysical accident, and it had looked for a while like I’d be turning into a wereanimal for real, so I’d had different lycanthropes with me so that whatever I changed into, I was covered. But I had gotten some control over it all, and it looked like I still wasn’t going to turn furry. Clay had been one of my watch-wolves. He was happy to be off the duty. I scared Clay. He was afraid the ardeur would make him my sexual slave. Okay, he didn’t say that exactly. Maybe it was just me projecting my terrors on him. Maybe.

His smile slipped a little when he saw me, his face going all serious. He gave me a hard look as he said, “How’s it going, Anita?” He wasn’t just being polite; as afraid as he was of some of my metaphysical abilities, he’d been convinced it wasn’t a good idea to take all my guards off duty. He thought it was too soon.

“I’m fine, Clay.”

He peered at me, leaning that six-foot frame down to my five foot three. He studied me as the crowd behind us grew to four. His gaze went to Nathaniel. “Has she really been fine?”

“She’s been fine.”

Clay stood up straight and motioned us through. He looked positively suspicious as he did it, though.

“Honest,” Nathaniel whispered as we went by, “not a twinge of anything furry.”

Clay nodded and turned to the next group. He was the gatekeeper tonight. We entered the permanent dimness of the club. The noise was soft, murmurous, like the sea. The music picked up, and the crowd noise both was drowned out and got louder. The murmur of it was drowned out with the rise of the music, but the screams and yells of encouragement were louder.

The woman behind the coat area came out, smiling. “Crosses aren’t allowed in the club.”

I’d forgotten I was wearing one outside my clothes; usually I just tucked it out of sight and got to avoid the holy-item check girl.

I spilled the cross inside my sweater. “Sorry, forgot.”

“I’m sorry, but just hiding it isn’t enough. I’ll give you a claim check just like for a coat.”

Great, she was new and didn’t know me. “Call Jean-Claude over, or Buzz; I get a pass on this one.”

Nathaniel took off his hat and gave her a grin. Even in the dim light I could see her blush. “Brandon,” she breathed, “I didn’t recognize you.”

“I’m in disguise,” he said, and gave her that look that was part mischief, part flirting.

“Is she with you?”

I was holding on to his arm—of course we were together. But I stood there and was quiet. Nathaniel would handle it. Me yelling at her wouldn’t help things. Honest.

Nathaniel leaned over and whispered, “Joan thinks you’re a fan that just grabbed me at the door.”

Oh. I gave her a real smile. “Sorry, I’m his girlfriend.”

Nathaniel nodded to confirm it, as if women claimed to be his girlfriend all the time. It made me look at his smiling, peaceful face and wonder how many overzealous fans he had. How weird did it get?

Joan leaned in to us to whisper over the rising music. “Sorry, but Jean-Claude’s orders are that just because you’re dating a dancer, the holy item still doesn’t get inside.”

On one hand, it was good that she was good at her job. On the other hand, it was beginning to irritate me.

Two of the black-shirted security people came over to us. I think the hat and coat fooled them, too. They didn’t act like they recognized either one of us. Lisandro was tall, dark, handsome, with shoulder-length hair tied back in a ponytail. He was a wererat, which meant somewhere on him was a gun. A quick glance didn’t show it under the black T-shirt and jeans, so it was probably at the small of his back. The wererats were mostly ex-military, ex-police, or had never been on the “right” side of the law. They always went armed.

The other security guy was taller and way more muscled. The weight lifting meant he was probably a werehyena. Their leader had a thing for weight lifters.

“Anita,” Lisandro said, “what’s the holdup?”

“She wants my cross.”

He looked at Joan. “She’s Jean-Claude’s human servant. She gets a pass.”

The woman actually blushed and apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, and you being with Brandon. I…”

I held up a hand. “It’s okay, really, just let us get out of the doorway.” There was a crowd behind us that went out the door. Clay was peeking inside, wondering what was happening.

Lisandro helped us ease through the room away from the door, but not quite to the tables, closer to the drink area. I would have said bar area, but they weren’t allowed to serve liquor. Yet another of the interesting zoning laws about strip clubs on this side of the river.

The weight lifter stayed near the door to help sort the crowd with Joan.

I could finally see who was dancing to the music. Byron was near the end of his act because he was down to a very small G-string. It left the pale, muscled body very bare. His short brown hair curled haphazardly, as if some of his customers had mussed it. A woman was stuffing money down the front of the G-string. I felt him use a small slap of power to capture her just enough to keep her hand out of his pants. It skirted the edge of legal, but the vamps had found that a tiny bit of control could keep them from getting hurt on stage. I’d seen bloody nail marks, and even a few bite marks, on Nathaniel and Jason. It was a lot more dangerous to strip for women than for men, apparently. All the dancers agreed that men behaved themselves better.

Byron writhed around the eager circle of women who surrounded the front of the stage. He laughed and joked. They ran hands over his body and rained money down on his skin. I’d had sex with him once, to feed the ardeur. We’d both enjoyed it, but Byron and I both agreed that it wasn’t our cup of tea. That each other wasn’t our cup of tea. Besides, the weight lifting helped him pass for eighteen, but he’d died at fifteen. Yeah, he was several hundred years old, but his body wasn’t. His body was still that of an athletic teenager. I was still disturbed by the fact that I’d had sex with him. Also, Byron preferred men to women. He’d do bisexual, if it came his way, but he was one of the few men who spent more time ogling my boyfriends than me. I found that disturbing, too.

Jean-Claude was standing near the back of the stage, lost in shadow, letting Byron have his limelight. Jean-Claude turned to look at me, his pale face lost in the darkness of his hair and clothes. He breathed through my mind, “Await me in my office, ma petite.”

Lisandro leaned over and whisper-shouted over the music, “Jean-Claude said to take you through to the office.”

“Just now?” I asked, puzzled, because to my knowledge no one but me should have heard it.

Lisandro gave me a puzzled look back, and shook his head. “No, after you called. He said to take you back to the office when you got here.”

I nodded and let him lead us to the door. Nathaniel had kept his hat and coat on. He didn’t want to be recognized, for several reasons. It was rude to distract the audience from Byron’s show, and “Brandon” wasn’t working tonight. Lisandro unlocked the door and ushered us through.

The door closed behind us, and it was blessedly quiet. The rear area wasn’t soundproof, but it was sound-muffled. I hadn’t realized how loud the music was until it stopped. Or maybe that was just how bad my nerves were tonight.

Lisandro led us down the hallway to the door on the left-hand side. Jean-Claude’s office was its usual elegant black-and-white self. There was even an Oriental screen in one corner that hid an emergency coffin. Sort of a vampire’s version of a rollaway. Only the couch against the wall and the carpet were new. Asher and I had ruined the old stuff with sex that got so out of hand, I’d ended up in the hospital.

Lisandro closed the door and leaned against it, on this side. “You staying?” I asked.

He nodded. “Jean-Claude’s orders. He wants you to have bodyguards again.”

“When did he order that?”

“Just a few minutes ago.”

“Shit.”

“Did your beast try to rise again?” he asked.

I shook my head.

Nathaniel had set the box on Jean-Claude’s black lacquer desk. He took off the hat and coat and laid them on one of the two chairs in front of the desk. “I’ve got to get a lighter-weight hat if I’m going to keep using it for a disguise. The leather is just too warm.” He wiped a thin bead of sweat off his forehead.

“If your beast didn’t try to rise again, then why are you back to needing bodyguards?” Lisandro asked.

I opened my mouth, closed it. “I don’t know how much Jean-Claude will want you to know. I’m not even sure how much anyone is allowed to know.”

“About what?”

I shrugged. “I’ll tell you if I can.”

“If you’re going to get me killed, can I at least know why?”

“I’ve never gotten you hurt before.”

“No, but we’ve lost two of our rats guarding you, Anita. Let’s just say that if my wife ends up a widow, I’d like to know why.”

I glanced at his hand. “You don’t wear a ring.”

“Not at work, no.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t want people knowing you have people that you care about, Anita. It can give them ideas.” His gaze flicked to Nathaniel, just for a moment, then back to me. But Nathaniel had seen it.

“Lisandro thinks I’m a victim. That you need stronger men in your life.”

I went to sit beside Nathaniel on the new white couch. He put his arm across my shoulders, and I settled in against him. Yeah, we’d been fighting, but that wasn’t Lisandro’s business, and it certainly wasn’t his business who I dated.

“You can date who you want, that’s not my beef.”

“What is your beef?” I asked, and let my words take on that slight hostile edge that was almost always just below the surface for me.

“You’re a vampire now, right?”

My, my, news travels fast. “Not exactly,” I said, out loud.

“I know you’re not like a bloodsucker. You’re still alive and everything, but you gained Jean-Claude’s ability to feed off sex.”

“Yeah,” I said, still hostile.

“Human servants gain some of their master’s abilities, that’s normal. You should have gained the ability to help Jean-Claude feed his hungers, but your feeding on lust isn’t an extra for his energy, it’s a necessity for you. I heard what happened the night you tried to stop feeding it. You almost killed Damian, and Nathaniel, and yourself. Remus thinks you would have died if you hadn’t fed the ardeur. If you hadn’t fucked someone, he really thinks you might have died.”

“Isn’t it nice that he shared with everybody,” I said.

“You can be all defensive about it if you want, but it’s weird as hell. Rafael can’t find anyone who’s ever heard of a human servant gaining a hunger or thirst like this.”

“And how weird my life has become is your business, why?”

“Because you’re asking me and my people to risk our lives to keep you safe, that’s why.”

I gave him unfriendly face because I couldn’t argue with his logic. I had gotten two of the wererats killed in the last couple of years. Killed guarding me. I guess he had a right to be pissy.

“It’s your job,” Nathaniel said. “If you don’t like it, ask your king to change your job description.”

“Rafael would take me off duty if I asked, you’re right on that.”

“Then ask,” Nathaniel said.

Lisandro shook his head. “That’s not my point.”

“If you have a point, make it,” I said, and let him hear the impatience in my voice.

“Fine, you’re some sort of living vampire. A master vampire, because you gained a vampire servant in Damian, and an animal to call in Nathaniel.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Lisandro.”

“Jean-Claude chose you as his human servant. He chose one of the most powerful necromancers to come along in centuries. It was a good move to pick you. His animal to call is the head of the local werewolf pack. Richard may have his problems, but he’s powerful. Again, a good choice. You both help Jean-Claude’s power base. You both help him be stronger.” He motioned at Nathaniel. “I like Nathaniel. He’s a good kid, but he’s not powerful. He gained more from you than you gained from him. The same with Damian. He’s a vampire over a thousand years old, and he’s never going to be a master anything.”

“Have you reached your point?” I asked.

“Almost.”

“You know, this is the most I’ve ever heard you talk at one time,” I said.

“We all agreed that whoever had a chance to ask should talk to you.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me and some of the other guards.”

“Fine, what’s your point?”

“Did you have a choice about Nathaniel and Damian?” he asked.

“Do you mean, could I have chosen another wereleopard, another vampire?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Why no?” Lisandro asked.

“One, none of us had any idea that this could happen. Like you said, human servants don’t gain powers like this. Two, I don’t have the control over my metaphysics that Jean-Claude has. Most vamps who gain a human servant or animal to call don’t do that until they’ve got a few decades, or centuries, under their belt. I got thrown into the deep end of the pool without a life preserver. I grabbed who the power threw at me.” I patted Nathaniel’s leg. “I’m happy with the choices, but I didn’t know I was choosing when it happened.”

Nathaniel hugged me one-armed. “We were all surprised.”

“But you have more control of it now,” Lisandro said, “and you know what’s happening.”

“I’ve got more control, yes, but as to what’s happening…pick a topic.”

“Somehow you’ve got three or four different kinds of lycanthropy inside you. But you haven’t shifted into any of them.”

“Yeah, so?”

“But you’re starting to be attracted to the different animals, the way you were to the wolves and the leopards. I’m just saying that if you pick a new animal, can’t it be someone powerful, instead of weak? Why can’t you choose someone who will help you power up, instead of hurting you?”

Nathaniel shifted beside me.

“Nathaniel doesn’t hurt me,” I said, but part of me was thinking about our fight earlier. There was room to get hurt, but not the kind of hurt that Lisandro meant.

“He doesn’t help you either, not the way Richard helps Jean-Claude.”

I could have argued that part. Richard was so conflicted about what he was, and what he wanted out of life, that he crippled the triumvirate among the three of us, but if Lisandro didn’t realize how reluctant a partner Richard was, then I wasn’t going to share it.

“What do you want from me, Lisandro?”

“Just, if we’re going to put our bodies between you and a bullet, can we have some input into the next animal you pick?”

“No,” I said.

“Just no?” he said.

“Yeah, just no. This is so not in your job description, Lisandro, not you, or Remus, or anyone. If you don’t want to risk yourself, then don’t. I don’t want anyone guarding me who feels like it’s a bad idea.”

“I’m not saying this right.”

“Then stop saying it,” I said.

“Stop explaining and just say what you want Anita to do,” Nathaniel said.

Lisandro frowned, then said, “I think Joseph was wrong when he forced you to send the werelion Haven back to Chicago. Joseph keeps trying to feed you his weak-assed pride of lions, and they aren’t any better than Nathaniel. No offense, even Joseph’s brother, Justin, isn’t that much stronger.”

It had taken me a moment to remember who Haven was, because I still thought of him as Cookie Monster. He’d had hair dyed that color of blue, and had sported several Sesame Street tattoos. Haven was also an enforcer for the Master Vampire of Chicago. Haven had helped me handle the lion part of my metaphysical problem, but he’d also picked fights with three of the local werelions, including Joseph, their Rex, their leader. Haven and Richard had had a fight. Richard had kicked his ass, proving that Richard could be damned useful when he wanted to be. But also proving that Haven was way too much trouble to keep around.

“You guys all explained to me how lion society works. If someone that tough, and that powerful, had moved into town, they would have felt compelled to take over the local werelions. The first thing most takeovers do is slaughter most of the pride.”

“I think you could control him.”

“You saw him, Lisandro, please. He’s a thug, a professional thug, with a prison record.”

Lisandro nodded. “I’ve got a record, too, juvie, but some bad stuff on it. My wife straightened me out. I think you could do the same for him.”

“What, a good woman is all a bad boy needs to straighten his life out?”

“If the woman has something that the man wants bad enough, yeah.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means I saw the way he looked at you. I smelled what effect the two of you had on each other. The only reason you didn’t have sex was that your head overruled the rest of you.”

“You know, Lisandro, I liked you better when you didn’t talk this much.”

“I’ve seen Haven’s record. He doesn’t have anything on his sheet that I ain’t got on mine.”

That made me give him the long blink. Because I hadn’t known that about him. “That would make you a very dangerous man,” I said, my voice low and even.

“You’ve killed more people than I have.”

“This conversation is over, Lisandro.”

“If not Haven, then can Rafael put out feelers for some better lion candidates? Joseph is so scared that some big bad lion will come and eat his weak-assed pride that he won’t ever bring anyone to town who will do the job for you.”

I started to say no, but Nathaniel squeezed my arm. “Rafael is a good leader.”

“He can’t interview for new lions. He can bring in new rats, but it’s not his place to bring in new lions,” I said.

“Lisandro is right on one thing, Anita. Joseph is scared. Everyone he’s thrown at you in the last few weeks has been wimpy—not just weak in power, but innocent. Your life doesn’t have room for innocents.”

I stared into those lavender eyes and didn’t like what I saw. I was seven years older, but he’d seen as much violence as I had, or more. He’d seen what our fellow human beings could do, up close and personal. I’d solved crimes of violence, but mostly I hadn’t been the victim. He’d been on the streets alone before he hit ten. Nathaniel was weak in some ways that Lisandro counted, but he was stronger than me in ways that most people wouldn’t understand. He’d survived things that would have destroyed most people.

He let me see in his face what he usually hid, that I was the innocent. That no matter how many people I killed in the line of duty, I’d never really know what he knew.

“Do you think I was wrong to make Haven go back to Chicago?”

“No, he scared me, but you need a werelion, and they need to know the score.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Two of the lions he sent you were virgins,” Nathaniel said. “You’re a succubus, Anita. You don’t give virgins over to something like that.”

“You have to have had bad sex to appreciate really good sex,” Lisandro said.

Nathaniel nodded. “That, too, but what I meant was that we haven’t met a lion yet who we didn’t all think was weak.” He looked at the tall guard by the door. “Some of them were tough in a normal-world sort of way, but we all live in a world where guns, and sex, and violence of all kinds can happen and do. We need someone who doesn’t make us all feel like we’re corrupting children.”

We both looked at Nathaniel.

“What?” he said.

“Is that how you really felt about all of them, even Justin?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Justin’s idea of violence is the kind that has referees, and limits. The fact that he’s Joseph’s enforcer is scary for them.”

“Joseph’s better in a fight,” Lisandro said.

“But neither of them is as good as Richard, or Rafael.”

“Or your Micah?” Lisandro asked.

“I think Micah would do anything it took to keep his people safe.”

“I heard that about him,” Lisandro said.

Since we were talking about one of my other live-in sweeties, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Micah and I were both very practical people. Sometimes practical and ruthless were just different words for the same thing.

“You’re both saying that you don’t think Joseph would do whatever it took.”

“The only thing that’s kept his pride safe is the fact that there just aren’t a lot of werelions in this country. Cat-based lycanthropy is usually harder to catch than other kinds,” Lisandro said.

“Reptile-based is harder to catch,” Nathaniel said.

Lisandro nodded. “True, but there aren’t a lot of lions in this country. The closest is Chicago.”

“They won’t be trying a takeover. Jean-Claude and I made sure of that,” I said.

“But don’t you see, Anita, you and Jean-Claude made sure of it, not Joseph. That makes his threat weak,” Lisandro said.

“Nobody from Chicago will mess with them now,” I said.

“Yeah, but if Chicago noticed they’re this weak, then so will someone else.”

“I didn’t know we had any big prides other than these two.”

“One on the West Coast, one on the East,” Lisandro said.

“Is that where Joseph got his last candidate?” I asked.

“East Coast pride, yeah. But you turned him down, just like all the others.”

“I can’t give your leader permission to shop for lions, Lisandro. It’s against the rules to interfere that much over cross-species lines.”

“Not for you,” Lisandro said. “Remember, Joseph asked you not to keep Haven. The moment he asked you to protect him and his pride, he asked you to interfere. You’re the leopards’ Nimir-Ra, and the wolves’ lupa; you were nothing to the lions. Once he asked for your help, he gave you permission to mess with his lions.”

“I don’t think Joseph saw it that way,” I said.

Lisandro shrugged. “Doesn’t matter how he saw it, it’s still the truth.”

I don’t know what I would have said to that, because there was a knock on the door. Lisandro went all bodyguardy on us. His hand went behind his back, and I knew for sure the gun was there. “Who is it?”

“Requiem. Jean-Claude requested my presence.”

Lisandro glanced at me. I realized he was asking my permission. I liked him better for that. I didn’t really want to see Requiem tonight. I was still embarrassed that I’d added him to my list of food. But he’d been in England, so he’d seen the Harlequin in person, and recently. He’d be helpful. Or that’s what I told myself as I nodded for Lisandro to let him in.

7

REQUIEM GLIDED IN wearing a long, hooded cloak as black as his hair. He was the only vamp I’d ever met who wore a cloak like that.

Byron came behind him, carrying a towel that seemed to be full of something. He was still wearing nothing but his G-string. There was still money stuffed in it. He grinned at me. “Hi, duckie.”

“Hey, Byron.”

He always talked like he had just stepped out of an old British movie: lots of loves and duckies. He talked that way to everyone, so I didn’t take it personally. He up-ended the towel on the couch beside me. It was suddenly raining money.

“Good night,” Nathaniel said.

Byron nodded and started taking the money out of his G-string. “Jean-Claude used that sweet, sweet voice of his during my act. The pigeons always give it up for him.” He slipped off the G-string, letting some bills flutter to the floor. I used to protest the nudity in front of me, but they were strippers, and after a while either you stopped being bothered by the casual nudity, or you didn’t hang at the club. Nudity didn’t mean to the dancers what it meant in the real world. Stripping is about the illusion that the customers can have them—the illusion of sex, not the reality of it. It had taken me a while to understand that.

Byron used the towel to dry some of the sweat off his body. He winced, and turned to show bloody scratches high on one buttock. “Got me from behind, just at the end of m’ act.”

“Hit-and-run, or did she give you extra money for it?” Nathaniel asked.

“Hit-and-run.”

I must have looked puzzled, because Nathaniel explained. “A hit-and-run is when a customer gets an extra grope, or scratch, or something intimate, and we don’t know who did it, and they don’t pay for it.”

“Oh,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t like watching my boyfriends being groped by strangers. It was another reason I stayed away.

“‘The evening star, love’s harbinger, sits before me, and does not even waste a smile upon me.’” Requiem’s greeting to me. It wasn’t what he always said, but it was typical. He’d started calling me his “evening star.”

“You know, I looked up the quote. It’s John Milton’s Paradise Lost. I’m not sure, but I think it’s your very poetic way of complaining.”

He glided in, making sure the cloak showed nothing but the long oval of his face, and even that was mostly hidden by the Vandyke-style beard and mustache. The only color on him was the swimming blue of his eyes: the richest, deepest, medium blue I’d ever seen.

“I know what I am to you, Anita.”

“And that would be?” I said.

“I am food.” He bent over me, and I turned my face so that the kiss he gave was on the cheek and not the mouth. He didn’t fight me on it, but the kiss was empty and neutral, the kind of kiss you’d give your aunt. But I’d made certain it wouldn’t be more. I’d turned away first, so why did it bug me that he’d just accepted the rebuff and not tried to make the kiss more? I didn’t want him pursuing me harder than he was; I’d made that clear, so why did his just accepting the cheek bother me? God only knows, because I had no idea. I was mad at Nathaniel for demanding more of me, and irritated with Requiem for not demanding anything. Even in my own head I was confused.

He glided away to sink into the empty chair near the desk. He made sure the cloak covered him completely, only the tips of his black boots peeking out. “Why the frown, my evening star? I did exactly what you wished me to do, didn’t I?”

I fought not to frown harder, and probably failed. “You bother me, Requiem.”

“Why?” he asked, simply.

“Why, just why, no poetry?” I asked.

Nathaniel patted my shoulder, either reminding me he was there or trying to stop me from picking a fight. Either way, it worked, because I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I wasn’t sure why Requiem got on my nerves lately, but he did. He was one of my lovers. He was food. But I didn’t like it, any of it. He was wonderful in bed, but…there was always that feeling from him that no matter what I did it was never enough. Never what he wanted me to do. There was a constant, unspoken pressure from him. I knew the feeling, but unless you were going to have a “relationship” with a man, it was a pressure you didn’t deserve, or wouldn’t respond to. He was food, and we were lovers; he was Jean-Claude’s third-in-command. I’d tried to be his friend, but somehow the sex had ruined that. I think without the sex we could have been friends, but with it…with it we were neither friends, nor boyfriend or girlfriend. We were lovers, but…I had no words for what was wrong between us, but I could feel it, like an old ache in a wound you thought had healed.

“You told me you were tired of my ‘constantly quoting poetry’ to you. I’m practicing speaking simply.”

I nodded. “I remember, but…I feel like you’re unhappy with me, and I don’t know why.”

“You have allowed me into your bed. I share the ardeur once more. What could any man desire above that?”

“Love,” Nathaniel said.

Requiem looked past me to the other man. There was a flash of blue fire in the vampire’s eyes: anger, power. Requiem hid it, but I’d seen it. We’d all seen it.

“‘Where both deliberate, the love is slight: Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?’”

“I don’t know who you’re quoting,” Nathaniel said, “but Anita doesn’t love at first sight, or at least she didn’t me.”

“He’s quoting from Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe,” Byron said. The other vampire was counting the money he’d rained down on the couch. He had his back to the other vampire. “And what’s bothering him is that he thinks he’s wonderful, and he can’t understand why you don’t love him.”

“Do not tempt me, Byron. My anger seeks only a target,” Requiem said.

Byron turned with his stacked and counted money in his hand. “I can resist anything but temptation,” he said. He glanced at me. “He hates it when you quote back at him.”

“Your tongue doth overstep your purpose, Byron,” Requiem said, his voice purring low with warning.

“My purpose,” Byron said, his gray eyes flashing with a moment of shining power like quiet lightning. He laid his money on the lacquered coffee table and turned to face the other vampire. “I want that glib and oily art, To speak and purpose not.” He sat in Nathaniel’s lap, putting his legs across my lap.

Nathaniel put an arm around him, almost automatically, and gave me a look. The look said, What’s going on? but since I didn’t know, I had no answers. It was like we’d stepped into a fight I hadn’t known was happening. I had my hands in the air, above Byron’s bare legs. I could ignore the nudity most of the time now, but not when that nudity was sitting in my boyfriend’s lap and had flung itself across my legs. My ability to ignore just wasn’t that good.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my hands finally coming to light on Byron’s bare legs, because I felt stupid keeping my hands in the air. If he’d been more on my lap than Nathaniel’s I might have just dumped him on the floor, but whatever was happening he’d involved Nathaniel, too, and that meant I couldn’t simply act. I had to think, too. Simply reacting was so much easier, not always in the long run, but in the short run, it felt so much better.

“Ask Byron,” Requiem said. “I have no idea why he’s acting like this.”

I patted Byron’s calf and said, “Why are you sitting in our laps?”

Byron wrapped his arms around Nathaniel’s shoulders, cuddling his face next to his. He stared at me, giving me a look out of those gray eyes that made me fight off a shiver. Not a shiver of fear, but one that was all about sex. Nathaniel looked faintly puzzled as their faces pressed next to each other. It was the blatant sex look that made me slide out from under his legs and stand up. “I don’t know what game this is, Byron, but Nathaniel and I don’t want to play.”

Byron slid off Nathaniel’s lap and knelt on the far side of him, so that I could still see the two of them clearly. It was like he was doing serious flirting. Byron flirted, but not seriously, more like it was a casual hobby. There was nothing casual about the look on his face.

He slid his hand along Nathaniel’s neck, then grabbed his braid. Grabbed it, and yanked Nathaniel’s neck backward at a painful angle. Nathaniel’s breath came in fast pants, his pulse visible like a trapped thing in his throat.

My gun was just in my hand. I didn’t remember drawing it. I didn’t remember aiming it. My own pulse was hammering in my throat. Years of practice had a gun pointed at Byron’s face. He was staring at me, his gray eyes straight on, face still serious, but not threatening. I didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it was, someone was going to get hurt if it didn’t stop.

“Let him go,” I said, and my voice was as steady as the gun pointed at his forehead. I had a sense of Lisandro moving away from the door, coming toward us. I wasn’t sure if I wanted the interference, or even if I needed it.

“He doesn’t want me to let him go, do you, Nathaniel?” Byron’s voice was very careful, even, as if he finally realized that his game could turn deadly.

Nathaniel’s voice came strangled with the angle of his neck, and the force of the vampire’s hand on his hair, but what he said was, “No, no, don’t stop.”

I finally let myself glance at Nathaniel. I didn’t normally look away from someone I was pointing a gun at, but there was no sense of menace to Byron. Whatever we were doing, I wasn’t sure it was about violence. Nathaniel’s hands were gripping Byron’s arm, but not like he was trying to stop the vampire from hurting him, more like he was just holding on. But it was the look on Nathaniel’s face that made me lower the gun to point at the floor.

Nathaniel’s lips were half parted, his eyes fluttering closed, his face slack with pleasure. His body was tense with anticipation. He was enjoying the pain, enjoying being manhandled. Shit.

Byron let go of Nathaniel abruptly, almost with a throwaway gesture. Nathaniel fell back onto the couch, gasping for breath, his eyes rolled back into his head behind fluttering eyelids. His spine bowed, throwing his head back, making him writhe against the back of the couch.

Byron stood there and watched him. “Duckie, this much reaction, you have been neglecting your boy.”

He was right. I’d have liked to argue it, but he was right. The proof of neglect was writhing on the couch in some sort of ecstasy that I couldn’t even begin to understand. I liked a little force now and then, but it didn’t do this for me. Nathaniel began to grow quiet, eyes still closed, and a smile on his face. I understood for the first time that the violence could be sex for him, really, truly could.

I looked at Byron. “And your point?” I was pretty sure I knew what the point was, but I’d be damned if I’d help him make it.

“I heard rumors that you weren’t doing dominance and submission with the boy, but I didn’t believe it. I mean, how can you be with Nathaniel and not do BDSM? Bondage and submission is the boy’s bread and butter.”

I nodded, and put my gun up. “Do you know how close you came to getting yourself shot?”

“I did once I saw your gun pointed at my face.” The joking was gone again, so serious, and then he smiled. “So exciting.”

“Are you saying you got off on the fact that I damn near shot you?” I laughed a little at the end, but it was a nervous laugh.

“Not got off the way that Nathaniel does, but I like to be dominated sometimes.” He sat down on the couch, squeezed between Nathaniel and the couch arm. He wrapped his arms around Nathaniel’s shoulders again, though he was sitting on his knees so that he couldn’t put their faces next to each other. Nathaniel cuddled in against him, a peaceful look on his face. It creeped me out. But he cuddled Byron’s arms tighter around him, as if he were his favorite teddy bear. He’d never liked Byron that much, and now just a little abuse and he was his best buddy. I did not get it, I just didn’t.

Byron hugged him back and stroked the side of his hair. “I’m a switch, Anita, in every sense of the word.”

I frowned at him. “Switch means bisexual, right?”

“There’s another meaning for it, duckie.”

“Just tell me, Byron. I’m not very good at subtle.”

“It means that I’m both a sub and a dom.”

“Submissive and dominant,” I said.

He nodded.

“What are you offering?” I said.

“I could help you tame your kitty-cat here.”

“How?” I let the word hold all the suspicion it could.

He laughed. “You can put so much menace and doubt into one word, duckie.”

“Answer the question,” I said.

“Feed the ardeur on me and Nathaniel, while I abuse him. If this is a preview, the energy will be amazing.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“I get to have sex with you, duckie.”

I shook my head. “Try again, Byron. You like boys a lot more than you like girls.”

“I get to have sexual contact with Nathaniel.”

I felt my eyes narrow at him. “You’ve never acted like Nathaniel was your type before.”

“I know that he’s unhappy, and I want my friends to be happy.”

“That’s not all of it,” I said.

“Don’t know what you mean, lover.” He settled into the corner of the couch. Nathaniel and he cuddled like they had done it before, though I didn’t think they had.

“He’s doing it for my benefit,” Requiem said.

I looked at the other vampire, who had never moved from his chair. “Explain,” I said.

“Tell her, Byron, tell her why you’re offering.”

“Where has all your poetry gone, Requiem?” Byron asked.

“‘In chains and darkness, wherefore should I stay, And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?’” Requiem said.

“That’s better,” Byron said. “Have you thought about ending it all, duckie? Is the fact that Anita doesn’t adore you that painful to you?”

Requiem just stared at him, and something in that look made Byron shiver. I wasn’t sure if it was a shiver of fear or of other things. If he wasn’t afraid, he should have been. I’d never seen Requiem look at anyone with that coldness before.

“This has the smell of something that will get out of hand and get people hurt. Since part of my job is to protect everyone who could get hurt, talk to me,” I said.

Byron looked at me. “Nathaniel needs his pain, Anita. I’ll help you give it to him, while you’re in the bed with us. You get to supervise but you don’t have to do the dirty work.”

“Did Nathaniel talk to you about this problem?”

“I know what it’s like, Anita, to want a certain kind of touch and be denied it. I spent centuries being given to masters that didn’t give a damn what I wanted or needed. You love Nathaniel and he loves you, but eventually, needs left unanswered can curdle love like milk left to spoil in the sun.”

“So this little demonstration is out of the kindness of your heart,” I said, and let my tone say how little I believed that.

“He’s tried to tell you, duckie, but you didn’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I understand now,” I said.

“But did it help, my little show?”

I wanted to say no, but it would have been a lie. Most vamps could smell or feel a lie, so why bother? “Hate to admit it, but yeah, it helped. Don’t pull shit like this again, but you’ve made your point.”

“Have I?” he said, sliding lower on the couch, so that he and Nathaniel were more intertwined. If it bothered Nathaniel to be that up close and personal with a naked man, it didn’t show. Okay, a naked man who wasn’t one of our sweeties. Had just a little hair pulling made him like Byron that much? Was Nathaniel’s need that great, or had I just neglected his needs that much?

Byron hadn’t done anything that I wasn’t willing to do. He hadn’t done anything bad. Would it be so bad to just tie Nathaniel up and have the sex we would have had without the tying up? Was that so awful? I looked at the two men, cuddled together, the look of peaceful contentment on Nathaniel’s face, and realized that I’d been arrogant. I’d assumed that if our relationship ended, it would be me doing the ending. That I’d dump him for being too needy, or too something. In that instant I realized that he might dump me for simply not trying hard enough to meet his needs. The thought made my chest tight. I loved him, I really did. I could not imagine my life without him. So what was I willing to do to keep him? How far would I go, and did I need help to get there? I’d had sex with Byron once before. I’d fed the ardeur off him. Could Byron teach me how to dominate Nathaniel? Maybe, maybe not. But his little show had proved one thing: that I needed someone to show me how Nathaniel worked. I would never have dreamed that simply pulling his hair, putting a little force behind it, would get such an amazing reaction out of him.

“You look like you’re thinking too hard, lover.”

“I’m thinking about your little show; isn’t that what you wanted?” I asked.

“I wanted it to excite you, but that’s not excitement in your eyes.” It was his turn to frown.

“She is not easily captured,” Requiem said.

“She likes two men at once.”

“Not just any two men,” Requiem said, “just as she does not prefer just any single man.”

“You’re talking about me like I’m not here; I really hate that,” I said.

“Sorry, duckie, but I was hoping that the sight of Nathaniel and me together would do something for you.”

“It puzzled me.”

Byron laughed, and it made his face look younger, gave you a glimpse of what he might have been at a human fifteen when a vampire found him and made sure he’d never see sixteen. “Puzzlement wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

I shrugged. “Sorry.”

He shook his head. “Not your fault, dearie. I don’t do it for you.”

“I don’t do it for you either,” I said.

He laughed again. “The sex was lovely.”

“But you’d have liked it better if it had been Jean-Claude.”

A look slid through his eyes. He actually looked down, lowering his eyes in a show of coyness to hide the look. When he raised his gaze to me again, it was that smiling blankness that he hid behind. “Jean-Claude loves you, duckie; he’s made that abundantly clear.”

I might have asked what he meant by that, but the door opened and the vampire in question glided through. His clothes had just looked dark in the club; his usual black. The clothes were black, but they weren’t usual.

He was wearing a tuxedo complete with tails—though once you made it out of leather, was it still a tuxedo? Braces like silk suspenders slid over the bare flesh of his chest. I stared at that bare skin the way some men stare at a woman’s breasts. It wasn’t like me. I mean, it was a nice chest, but to stop there and not look at his face was just wrong. Because as nice as the chest was, the face was better. I raised my gaze to that face. The hair fell past his shoulders in black curls. The line of his neck was encircled with a black velvet ribbon and a cameo I’d bought for him. Up to the kissable curve of his mouth, the curve of his cheek like a swallow’s wing, all grace and…Swallow’s wing? What the hell did that mean? I would never have described anyone’s jawline like that.

“Ma petite, are you well?”

“No,” I said, softly, “I don’t think I am.”

He moved closer and I had to move my eyes upward, had to meet that midnight blue gaze. It was like back at the movies when I’d first seen Nathaniel. I was too fascinated, too taken with him. I actually had to close my eyes so the vision of him didn’t distract before I could say, “I think someone’s messing with me.”

“What do you mean, ma petite?”

“You mean like at the movie theatre,” Nathaniel said. His voice was closer than the couch. He must have moved toward us.

I nodded, eyes still closed.

Jean-Claude’s voice came from right in front of me. “What happened at the theatre?”

Nathaniel explained. “She had to get her cross out before it got better.”

“But I’m wearing my cross now,” I said.

“It’s inside your shirt now. It was in plain sight before,” Nathaniel said.

“That shouldn’t matter unless the vampire is in the room with me.”

“Try bringing it into the light,” Jean-Claude said.

I opened my eyes a crack, glancing at him. He was still heartrendingly beautiful, but I could think again. “That shouldn’t matter for this.” I stared up into his face, straight into those wondrous eyes. They were just eyes, beautiful, captivating, but not literally. “It’s gone again.”

“What’s going on, duckies?” Byron asked. He walked up to us, looking from one to the other.

“Lisandro, leave us,” Jean-Claude said.

Lisandro seemed to think about protesting, but he didn’t. He just asked, “Do you want me to stay on the door, or go back to the club?”

“The door, I think,” Jean-Claude said.

“Don’t our guards need a heads-up?” I asked.

“This is not the business of the rodere.”

“Lisandro raised a point before you came in, that if we’re going to endanger them, they have a right to know why.”

Jean-Claude looked at Lisandro. It was not a completely friendly look. “Did he?”

Lisandro gave him a flat look back. “I was talking about when Anita picks another animal to call, nothing about your orders, Jean-Claude.”

“All that concerns ma petite concerns me.” There was a dangerous purr to his voice.

Lisandro shifted a little and visibly let out a breath. “No offense, but don’t you want her to pick a stronger beast next time? Someone who will help your power base?”

Jean-Claude stared at him, and Lisandro fought to both look at the vampire and not look—a trick that I’d mastered over the years, but was glad I’d become powerful enough to give up. So hard to be tough when you can’t look someone in the eyes.

“Is my strength the concern of the rats?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Yes,” Lisandro said.

“How?” One word, flat and unfriendly.

“Your strength keeps us all safe. The wererats remember what St. Louis was like when Nikolaos was Master of the City.” Lisandro shook his head, face darkening. “She didn’t protect anyone or anything but the vampires. You think about the entire preternatural community, Jean-Claude.”

“I think you will find it is ma petite who thinks of such things.”

“She’s your human servant,” Lisandro said. “Her actions are your actions. Isn’t that what the vampires believe, that their human servants are just extensions of their masters?”

Jean-Claude blinked and moved farther into the room, collecting me by the hand as he moved. “A pretty conceit, but you know that ma petite is her own person.” His hand in mine felt solid, real, and the world was suddenly safer. Just the touch of his hand and I felt more myself.

“Whatever or whoever is messing with me is still here,” I said, “around the edges somehow, but still here.”

“What do you mean, ma petite?”

“When you touched me, I felt more solid. Your touch chased back a fuzziness I didn’t even know was there.”

He drew me in against his body, so that it was almost a hug. I caressed the butter softness of his leather lapels. “Is that more solid still?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Try touching skin to skin,” Requiem said.

He had stayed in the chair by the desk. We’d moved until we were close to him, not intentionally, at least not on my part.

I kept one hand in Jean-Claude’s, but the other I put against his bare chest. The moment I touched that much of his skin, it was good. “Even better,” I said. I traced my hand over the smooth, firm muscles of his chest. I traced the cross-shaped burn scar. Better still.

“Why did you want to speak to Byron and me, Jean-Claude?” Requiem looked up at us, his face fighting for blankness but failing around the edges. He reclined in the chair, body at ease, but his eyes gave him away: tight, careful.

“You’ve seen this before, haven’t you?” I asked.

“Once,” he said, his voice more neutral than his eyes.

“When?” I asked.

He looked at Jean-Claude. “The wererat should leave.”

Jean-Claude nodded. “Go, for now, Lisandro. If we can tell you more, we will.”

Lisandro looked at me as he left, as if he thought I was the one most likely to tell him the truth later. He was right.

8

BYRON LOOKED AT all of us. His usual joking face was utterly serious. “Someone talk to us poor little peons, please.”

“Did you receive a gift?” Requiem asked.

“Oui.”

“What kind of gift?” Byron asked.

“A mask,” Jean-Claude said.

Byron paled; he’d fed tonight so he had enough color to do it. “No, no, fuck me, not here, not again.”

“What color was it?” Requiem said in a voice that had fallen away to emptiness, the way some of the old vampires could do.

“White,” Jean-Claude said.

Byron relaxed so suddenly he almost fell. Nathaniel offered him a hand that he took. “I’m all weak-kneed, duckies. Don’t scare me like that. White, we’re safe with white.”

Nathaniel helped him back to the couch, but didn’t stay by him. He moved back toward us.

“What color did your master in England get?” I asked.

“Red first, then black,” Requiem said.

“What does red mean?” I asked.

“Pain,” Jean-Claude said. “It is typically a bid to punish a master, to bring him to heel. The council does not use the Harlequin lightly.”

The name fell into the room like a stone dropped down a well. You strained to hear the splash. I leaned my face in against Jean-Claude’s chest. There was no heartbeat to hear. He would breathe only when he needed to speak. I raised my head away from his chest. Sometimes it still disturbed me to lay my ear against a silent chest.

Byron broke the silence. “Red means they fuck with you.”

“Like someone has been doing tonight?” I asked.

“Yes,” Requiem said.

“And black?” I asked.

“Death,” Requiem said.

“But doesn’t white mean they just observe us?” Nathaniel said.

“It should,” he said. I’d begun to dread when Requiem answered in short, clipped sentences. The poetry might occasionally get on my nerves, but the short, choppy words meant something had gone wrong, or he was pissed, or both.

“You said you’d explain more about them when I got to Guilty Pleasures. Well, I’m here. Explain.”

“Harlequin is now merely a figure for jest. Once he was, or they were, the Mesnee d’Hellequin. Do you know what the wild hunt is, ma petite?”

“The wild hunt is a common motif all over Europe. A supernatural leader leads a band of devils, or the dead, with spectral hounds and horses. They chase and kill either anyone who crosses their path, or only the evil, and take them to hell. It depends on who you read whether it’s a punishment to join the hunt, or a reward. It’s usually considered really bad to be outside when the hunt goes by.”

“As always you surprise me, ma petite.”

“Well, it’s such a widespread story that there has to be some basis for it, but it hasn’t been seen for real since the time of one of the Henrys in England. I think Henry the Second, but I’m not a hundred percent on that one. Usually the leader of the hunt is some local dead bad guy, or the devil. But before Christianity got hold of it, a lot of the Norse gods were said to lead it. Odin’s mentioned a lot, but sometimes goddesses like Hel, or Holda—though Holda’s version gave gifts as well as punishment. Some of the other hunts did, too, but generally it was really bad to get caught, or even see them ride by.”

“Harlequin is one of those leaders,” Jean-Claude said.

“That’s a new one on me, but then I haven’t read up on it since college. I think the only reason it stuck with me is that it’s such a widespread story, and it stops abruptly a few hundred years ago. Almost every other legend that has that many witness stories is true. Or at least that’s what I’ve found. So why did it stop? Why did the wild hunt just stop riding, if it was real?”

“It is real, ma petite.”

I looked at him. “Are you saying it was vampires?”

“I am saying that the legend existed and we took advantage of it. The Harlequin adopted the persona of the wild hunt. For it was something that people already feared.”

“Vampires scare people already, Jean-Claude. You guys didn’t need to pretend to be Norse gods to be frightening.”

“The Harlequin and his family were not trying to frighten people, ma petite. They were trying to frighten other vampires.”

“You guys already scare each other; Mommie Dearest proves that.”

“Early in our history, Marmee Noir decided we were too dangerous. That we needed something to keep us in check. She created the idea of the Harlequin. As you say, ma petite, there were so many wild hunts over the face of Europe, what was one more? Vampires begin life as people, and the idea of the wild hunt was something many already feared.”

“Okay, so what does this fake wild hunt have to do with us?”

“They are not fake, ma petite. They are a supernatural troop that can fly, that can punish the wicked and kill mysteriously and quickly.”

“They aren’t the original wild hunt, Jean-Claude; that makes them fake in my book.”

“As you will, but they are the closest thing that vampires have to police. They are taken from all the major bloodlines. They owe allegiance to no one line. They are called upon when the council is divided. They are divided about us, about me.”

“What do they do, exactly?” Nathaniel asked.

“Disguise and subterfuge are their meat and drink. They are assassins, spies of the highest order. No one knows who they are. No one has ever seen their faces and lived. They come to us masked if they mean us no harm. Masked in the manner of Venice when the rich and powerful wore masks, caps, and hats, so all looked alike, and none could be distinguished from the other. If they appear before us in those costumes, then they are merely here to observe. If they appear in the masks of their namesakes, then it could go either way. They could be merely observing, or they could mean to kill us. They would wear their namesakes, both to hide their faces and to let us know that if we do not cooperate they could turn deadly.”

“What do you mean, namesakes?” I asked.

“There is only one Harlequin at a time, but there are other Harlequin as a group name. Whatever names they had once, they have adopted the names and masks of the commedia dell’arte.”

“I don’t know the term,” I said.

“It was a type of theatre that flourished before I was born, but it gave rise to many characters. The women were not originally masked on stage, but there are those among Harlequin’s band that have taken female personas; whether they are actually women or only seek to confuse the matter is open for debate, but does not truly matter. As for namesakes, there are dozens, but some names have been known for centuries: Harlequin, of course; Punchinello; Scaramouche; Pierrot or Pierrette; Columbine; Hanswurst; Il Dottore. There could be dozens more, or a hundred. No one knows how many are in the Harlequin’s raid. Most of the time they will only appear in nearly featureless masks of black and white. They will simply say, ‘We are the Harlequin.’ The best possible scenario is that we never learn who individually has come to our city.”

“How serious a breach of vampy etiquette is it that we get a white mask but they’re acting like it’s red?” I asked.

Jean-Claude and Requiem exchanged a look that I couldn’t read exactly, but it wasn’t good.

“Talk to me, damn it,” I said.

“It should not be happening, ma petite. Either this is an attack by some other vampire powerful enough to fool us all, or the Harlequin are breaking their own rules. They are deadly within their rules; if the rule of law were to break down…” He closed his eyes and hugged me, hugged me tight.

Nathaniel came to stand beside us, his face uncertain. “What can we do about it?”

Jean-Claude looked at him, and smiled. “Very practical, mon minet, as practical as our Micah.” He turned to look at Requiem, whose smile had vanished. “Is this how it began in London?”

“Yes, one of the Harlequin could increase our emotions of desire. But only emotions we already owned. It was very subtle at first, then worsened. Truthfully, what has happened tonight to Anita went unnoticed among us. It simply seemed to be couples finally deciding to consummate their friendships.”

“How did it worsen?” Nathaniel asked.

“I don’t know if it was the same vampire, but they began to interfere when we used the powers of Belle’s line. Making the lust go terribly wrong.”

“How terribly?” I asked.

“The ardeur at its worst,” he said.

“Shit,” I said.

Nathaniel touched my shoulders and Jean-Claude opened his arms to pull the other man into our embrace, so that he hugged us both, and I was firmly in the middle of them. It was as if I could finally catch my breath. “Better and better,” I said.

“The more you touch your power base, the more surety you have against them, at first,” Requiem said.

“What do you mean, ‘at first’?” I asked.

“Eventually, our master was tormented by them no matter who he touched. Whatever he touched turned ill, and whatever touched his skin was poisoned.”

“Poisoned with what?” I asked.

“They turned our own powers against us, Anita. We were a kiss made up almost entirely of Belle Morte’s line. They turned our gifts against us so that the blade bit deep, and we bled for them.”

“They didn’t torment Elinore and Roderick,” Byron said from the couch.

The three of us looked at him, still clinging to each other.

“Not true. She was bothered at first like all of us. So smitten with Roderick she couldn’t do her job.”

“But, how did you say it, when the madness overcame us, they were spared,” Byron said. There was a tone to his voice that held anger, or something close to it.

Jean-Claude hugged us both, and Nathaniel hugged back until it was hard to breathe, not from some vampire trick, but from the strength in their bodies. Jean-Claude eased away, and Nathaniel did the same. Jean-Claude moved us to the desk edge. He leaned upon it, drawing my back in against his body. He held a hand out to Nathaniel and drew him to the desk. Nathaniel sat on the desk, his feet dangling in the air. But he kept his hand in the vampire’s, as if afraid to let go. I guess we all were.

“What do you mean, madness?” I asked.

“We fucked our brains out, dearie.”

I tried to think of a polite way to say it.

Byron laughed. “The look on your face, Anita. Yes, sex is our coin, and we did a lot of it, but you want to have a choice, don’t you?” He looked past us to Requiem. “You don’t like having your choices taken away, do you, lover?”

Requiem gave him a look that should have stopped his heart, let alone his words, but Byron was already dead, and the dead are made of stouter stuff than the living. Or maybe Byron just didn’t care anymore. “Requiem found that men were on the menu, didn’t you, lover?” There was a purring insolence in his voice, bordering on hatred.

I got the implications; they’d become lovers after the Harlequin messed with them all badly enough. Requiem didn’t do men, period. Belle had punished him over the centuries for refusing to bed men. To refuse Belle Morte anything was never a good idea, so he’d been serious about saying no. Someone on the Harlequin’s team was very good at manipulating emotions. Scary good.

I hugged Jean-Claude’s arm tight to me and reached out to Nathaniel. I ended up touching his hip, just running my hand lightly along it. Shapeshifters were always touching each other, and I’d begun to pick up the habit. Tonight I didn’t fight it.

“You are never to speak of it,” Requiem said, his voice low and very serious.

“How much does it bother you to know that I’ve had sex with Anita, too?”

Requiem stood in one swift motion, the black cloak swinging out, revealing that he wasn’t wearing much under the cloak.

“Stop,” Jean-Claude said.

Requiem froze, his eyes blazing with blue-green light. His shoulders rose and fell with his breathing, as if he’d been running.

“I believe that lust is not the only emotion the Harlequin can incite,” Jean-Claude said.

It took Requiem a moment, and then he frowned and turned those sparkling eyes to us. “Our anger.”

Jean-Claude nodded.

The light began to fade, like light moving away through water. “What are we to do, Jean-Claude? If they do not even observe their own rules, we are doomed.”

“I will ask for a meeting with them,” he said.

“You’ll what?” Byron said, his voice squeaking just a little.

“I will ask for a meeting between them and us.”

“You do not seek the Harlequin out, Jean-Claude,” Requiem said. “You hide, cowering in the grass, praying that they pass you by. You do not invite them closer.”

“The Harlequin are honorable. What is happening is not honorable behavior.”

“You are mad,” Byron said.

“You think one of them is disobeying the rules,” I said, quietly.

“I hope so,” Jean-Claude said.

“Why hope so?” I asked.

“Because if what is happening is being done with the full weight and approval of the Harlequin behind it, then Requiem is correct, we are doomed. They will play with us, then destroy us.”

“I don’t do doomed,” I said.

He kissed the top of my head. “I know, ma petite, but you do not understand what force is against us.”

“Explain it to me.”

“I have told you, they are the bogeymen of vampirekind. They are what we fear in the dark.”

“Not true,” I said.

“They’re bloody frightening, lover,” Byron said. “We do fear them.”

“The bogeyman of all vampires is Marmee Noir, Mommie Dearest, your queen. That’s who scares the shit out of all of you.”

They were quiet for a heartbeat or two. “Yes, the Harlequin fear the Queen of Darkness, our creator,” Jean-Claude said.

“Everyone fears the dark,” Requiem said, “but if the Mother of All Darkness is our nightmare, then the Harlequin are the swift sword of the dark.”

Byron nodded. “No arguments from me on that one, duckie. Everyone fears her.”

“What are you suggesting, ma petite?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m saying, I’ve stood in the dark and seen her rise above me like a black ocean. She’s invaded my dreams. I’ve seen the room where her body lies, heard her voice whisper through my head. Tasted rain and jasmine choking on my tongue.” I shivered and could almost feel her moving restless in the dark. She lay in a room with windows, and they kept a fire below her, a continuous watch. She’d fallen into a “sleep” longer ago than most of them remembered. Once I’d thought they watched to celebrate her awakening, but I’d begun to realize most of them were as afraid of her as I was, which meant they were scared shitless. Marmee Noir liked me for some reason. I interested her. And from thousands of miles away, she messed with me. She’d made a cross melt into my hand. I’d have the scar until I died.

“Speak of the devil and you bring him closer,” Requiem said.

I nodded and tried to think of something else. Oh, yeah, I knew what to think about. “The Harlequin are just vampires, right, which means they’re subject to your laws, right?”

“Oui.”

“Then let’s use the law against them.”

“What do you propose, ma petite?”

“This is a direct challenge to our authority. The council has forbidden any Master of the City to fight in the United States until the law decides whether you guys are staying legal or not.”

“You’re not suggesting that we fight them?” Byron said.

“I’m saying that we act in accordance with the law,” I said.

“Don’t you understand, Anita,” Byron said, “the Harlequin are who we turn to when the bad things happen, sort of. They are the police for us.”

“When the police go bad, they aren’t police anymore,” I said.

“What are they?” he asked.

“Criminals.”

“You cannot seriously suggest that we are to fight the Harlequin?” Requiem said.

“Not exactly,” I said.

“What exactly then?”

I looked up at Jean-Claude. “What would you do if someone powerful moved in on us like this?”

“I would contact the council in hopes of avoiding open war.”

“Then contact them,” I said.

“I thought not everyone on the council liked us,” Nathaniel said.

“They do not, but if the Harlequin are breaking the law, then that would take precedence over more petty concerns,” Jean-Claude said.

“Have you forgotten how petty the council can be?” Requiem said.

“Non, but not all on the council have forgotten what it means to live in the real world.”

“Which council member will you contact first?” Byron asked.

There was a knock on the door. All of us with heartbeats jumped. Nathaniel gave that nervous laugh, and I said, “Shit.”

Lisandro’s voice: “There’s a delivery for you, Jean-Claude.”

“It can wait,” he said, his voice showing some of the strain.

“The letter with it says you’re expecting it.”

“Enter,” Jean-Claude said.

Lisandro opened the door, but it was Clay who walked in with a white box in his hands. A box just like the one I’d found in the restroom. I think I stopped breathing, because when I remembered to breathe, it came in a gasp.

Clay looked at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Who delivered this?” Jean-Claude asked.

“It was just sitting by the holy-item check desk.”

“And you just brought it in here,” I said, my voice rising.

“No, give me some credit. We checked it out. The note says Jean-Claude is expecting it.”

“What is it?” I asked, but was afraid I knew.

“A mask,” Clay said. He was looking at all of us now, trying to see why we were so upset.

“What color is it?” Jean-Claude’s voice was as empty as I’d ever heard it.

“White.”

The tension level dropped a point or two.

“With little gold musical notes all over it. Didn’t you order it?”

“In a way, I suppose I did,” Jean-Claude said.

I stared up at him and moved away enough so I could see his face clearly. “What do you mean, you suppose you did?”

“I said I wanted to meet with them, did I not?”

“Yeah, but so what?”

“That’s what this mask means, ma petite. It means they wish to meet, not to kill us, or torment, but to talk.”

“But how did they know what you’d said?” Nathaniel asked.

Jean-Claude looked at me, and there was something in that look that made me say, “They’re listening to us.”

“I fear so.”

“When was the mask delivered?” Requiem asked.

Clay was still looking at us, as if waiting for us to throw him a clue. “We’re not sure. I went on break about thirty minutes ago. It must have come while I was off the door.”

“How long have you been back on the door?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Maybe five minutes.”

“They were listening,” Requiem said.

“They knew what Jean-Claude was going to say,” Byron said, and his voice held more panic than most vampires would have shown. He just couldn’t quite keep all the emotion out of his face and voice.

“What is going on?” Clay asked.

“Something big and bad has come to town,” Lisandro said. “They won’t tell us about it, but they’ll expect us to fight it, and die because of it.” His voice sounded bitter.

“What are the rules about telling our soldiers about…them?” I asked.

Jean-Claude took in a deep, deep breath, and shook, almost like a bird settling its feathers. “Mutable.”

“Mutable—oh, it depends.”

He nodded.

Then I had a smart idea. “I believe we’d know if someone was listening in on us metaphysically, especially another vampire.”

“They are very powerful, ma petite.”

“Lisandro,” I said.

He came to his version of attention; he gave me all his concentration. There was a demand to his dark eyes. If I widowed his wife, he wanted to know why. I thought he deserved to know why, but first things first. “I need this room swept for bugs.”

“What kind of bugs?”

“Anything that would let someone listen to us.”

“You think they are relying on technology, ma petite?”

“I don’t believe that any vampire could spy on us like this without our sensing it.”

“They are very powerful, ma petite.”

“They are fucking ghosts, lover,” Byron said.

“Fine, they’re ghosts, but it doesn’t do any harm to look for technology. If the room is clean, then we can blame it on spooky stuff, but let’s look for tech first.”

Jean-Claude looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. “It would be interesting if they used listening devices.”

“Did you look for bugs in London?” Nathaniel asked.

Byron and Requiem exchanged a look, then both shook their heads. “It never occurred to us, duckies. I mean this is the bloody…” Byron licked his lips and stopped himself before saying their name, just in case. “They are ghosts, bogeys, walking nightmares. You don’t expect the bogeyman to need technology.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“It means that most vampires don’t use technology much. If these guys use it a lot, then it would seem like magic, if you didn’t know what it was.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Requiem said.

I nodded.

He stared at me. “My evening star, you are full of surprises.”

“I just don’t think like a vampire.”

“Does Rafael have someone he trusts to clean a room of such things?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Yes,” Lisandro said.

“Then do it.”

“How soon do you need it?”

“We said we wanted to meet with them a minute or two ago, and the mask arrives with the invitation,” I said.

“So, like yesterday,” Lisandro said.

“Or sooner,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ll make the call.” He hesitated at the door. “I’ll put someone on the door, and I’ll use a phone outside the club.”

“Good thinking,” I said.

“It’s what I do.” Then he was gone.

“Where do you want this?” Clay asked, motioning with the box.

“Put it on the desk with the other one, I guess.”

He put it beside the first one. Jean-Claude didn’t seem to want to touch it. I was the one who opened it and found the white mask staring sightless up at me. But this one looked more finished, with gilt musical notes decorating the face. I touched a note and found it was raised above the rest of the mask. The note with it said only, “As you requested.”

“Is there writing inside the mask?” Jean-Claude asked.

I lifted it out of the tissue paper. Inside the smooth bow of the mask was writing. “Do not read it out loud, ma petite.”

I didn’t, I just handed it to him. Inside the mask was written “Circus of the Damned,” and a date that was two days away. The date was written backward with the day first, then the month, then the year like they wrote it in Europe. They’d chosen one of Jean-Claude’s own businesses for the meeting. Was that good, bad, or neither? Did it mean we had home-court advantage, or that they were planning to torch the place? I wanted to ask, but didn’t want our enemies to hear the question. If we did find bugs in this office, we’d have to look everywhere. All the offices, all the businesses, my house, all of it.

I was praying we found bugs, because the alternative was that these vamps were so good that they could plant psychic bugs inside our brains. You could find and destroy mechanical shit in the rooms; if they were good enough to use magic inside our heads, then we were fucked. We’d die when they wanted us to die, or we’d live, and either way it would be their idea, and not ours. I never thought I’d pray to have our offices turn out to be bugged. Funny, what turns out to be the lesser evil some nights.

9

DAWN HAD COME and all the vampires were asnooze in their coffins when I finally got a few minutes to try Edward again. I’d called twice while Lisandro’s experts searched everything. They had found bugs, but not where they were listening to us, like listening posts. Hours of work later and we were clean. We actually got lucky. The bugs weren’t the smallest and latest cutting-edge technology. Which meant they needed to be close to the clubs to hear. Probably something mobile like a van, the experts said. The tech was good, but not the latest and greatest. Which probably meant the Harlequin didn’t know how to hack phone lines and computer systems. Probably. But even the listening devices we found were pretty high tech for a bunch of ancient vampires. Made me wonder what other wonders of modern technology they might be willing to use. Most vamps relied on vampire powers. I wasn’t sure the Harlequin did. In fact, I was betting they didn’t. Ancient vampires and armed with modern shit; it just wasn’t fair.

I wanted to even those odds, so I was in Jean-Claude’s bathroom with my cell phone, trying one last time to reach Edward.

I dialed the number, and had almost given up when I heard the phone click over. The voice that answered the phone was thick with sleep. For a second I thought it was Edward, so I said, “Edward?”

The voice cleared a little and said, “Anita, that you?” The voice was male, but definitely not Edward. Shit.

Edward was engaged to a widow with two kids. Lately when I wanted to be sure I’d get him the first time, I called Donna’s house, not his. They weren’t officially living together, but he spent more time at her place than at his own. “Hey, Peter, sorry, forgot the time difference.”

I heard some movement, as if he’d rolled over and taken the phone under the covers with him. “It’s all right. What’s up?” His voice had spent the last year breaking and finally settled into a deeper bass that still startled me sometimes.

“I just need to talk to Ted,” I said, hoping he hadn’t heard the Edward earlier.

“It’s okay, Anita,” and he gave a laugh that still held a lazy edge of sleep. “I know who Edward is, but you’re lucky I answered the phone. Mom or Becca would have asked questions.”

This was the first I knew that any of Edward’s new family knew his secret identity. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Peter knowing, or about any of them knowing. They knew what he did, sort of, the legalish parts, but they didn’t really know who Edward was, or at least that’s what I had believed until now.

I checked my wristwatch, which had gone on along with a robe. I did quick math in my head and said, “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for karate class?”

“They’re painting the dojo.” he said.

I would also have asked why he had a phone in his room, but he wasn’t my kid. I mean, sixteen was a little young for your own phone, wasn’t it?

“I placed first in the karate tournament last Saturday,” he said.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“It’s not like real fighting, not like you and Edward do, but it’s still cool.”

“I’ve never won first place in a martial arts tournament of any kind, Peter. You’re doing good.”

“But you have a black belt in judo, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re training in other martial arts, right?”

“Yeah, but…”

“A tournament is just kid stuff, I know, but Edward says I have to wait until I’m at least old enough to sign up for military service before he’ll take me on anything real.”

I did not like the sound of that at all. “Eighteen, right.”

“Yeah”—he sighed so heavily—“two years.” He made two years sound like forever. I guess at sixteen it is.

I wanted to tell him that there were other lives to live that had nothing to do with fighting, guns, or violence. I wanted to tell him that he couldn’t follow in his almost-stepfather’s footsteps, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t my place to say it, and Peter wouldn’t have listened anyway. I was in the same business as his “dad,” so I was cool, too.

“Is Ted there?”

“Anita,” and he sounded chiding, “I know his real name.”

“Yes, but you’re right, I should never have said Edward when calling this number. It should be Ted until I’m sure who I’m talking to. I’m practicing.”

He laughed again. I didn’t think I was that funny. “Ted’s here.” I heard that slide of cloth again. “Though at eight on a day we don’t have school, Mom and Ted are probably still in bed.” He must have rolled over to look at a clock.

“I didn’t mean to call this early,” I said, “I’ll call back later.”

His voice sobered. “What’s wrong, Anita? You sound all stressed.”

Great, I couldn’t even control my voice enough to fool a teenage boy. Truth was, I’d finally realized that I wasn’t just asking Edward to come hunt monsters, I was asking him to leave his family to come hunt monsters. Edward used to live to find bad things that could test his skills. He lived to be better, faster, meaner, quicker, more deadly than the monsters he hunted. Then he’d met Donna, and suddenly he had other things to live for. I wasn’t sure he’d ever walk down the aisle with her, but he was the only father the kids had, and the only husband Donna had. Her first husband had been killed by a werewolf. An eight-year-old Peter had picked up his father’s dropped gun and finished off the wounded shapeshifter. He’d saved his family while his father’s body was still twitching on the floor. In some ways Edward fit in just fine. Edward picked Becca up from ballet class, for God’s sake. But…but what if I got him killed? What if I got him killed and Peter and Becca lost another parent because I was too chickenshit to handle my own mess?

“Anita, Anita, are you there?”

“Yeah, yeah, Peter, I’m here.”

“You sound strange, like, scared almost.”

Peter was too damned perceptive for comfort sometimes. “I just…” Oh, hell, what could I say that would fix this? “Let Edward sleep in, don’t wake them.”

“Something’s wrong, I can hear it in your voice. You called because you’re in trouble. That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked.

“I’m not in trouble,” I said. In my head, I added, yet.

Silence on his end of the phone for a heartbeat. “You’re lying to me.” He sounded accusatory.

“Well, that’s a hell of a thing to say,” I said, with as much indignation as I could muster. I wasn’t lying, not really, I was just fudging the truth. Okay, fudging like double chocolate with three kinds of nuts, but it still wasn’t completely a lie.

“Your word, your word of honor,” he said in a very serious voice. “Tell me you didn’t call to get Edward’s help with some nasty monster problem.”

Shit. “You know you’re being a pain in the ass here,” I said.

“I’m sixteen. I’m supposed to be a pain in the ass, or that’s what Mom says. Give me your word that you’re not lying to me, and I’ll believe you. Give me your word, and I’ll believe everything you’ve said, and I’ll hang up, and you can go back to not being in trouble.”

“Damn it, Peter.”

“You won’t give your word and then lie, will you?” His voice held question, and almost wonderment, as if he didn’t quite believe it.

“No, not as a general rule, no.”

“Edward said you wouldn’t, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. But you really won’t, will you?”

“No,” I said. “Happy now?”

“Yes,” he said, though his voice didn’t sound exactly happy. “Tell me what’s wrong. Why do you need Edward’s help?”

“I need to talk to Edward, but I won’t tell you why, or what it’s about.”

“I’m not a baby, Anita.”

“I know that.”

“No, you don’t,” he said.

I sighed. “I don’t think you’re a baby, but you are a kid, Peter. You’re grown-up for sixteen, but I’d like to keep some of the darker shit away from you until you reach at least eighteen. If Edward wants to share with you later, that’s his lookout.”

“You might as well tell me, Anita. If I ask, he’ll tell me.”

I hoped he was wrong, but was afraid he was right. “If Edward wants you to know, he’ll tell you, Peter. But I am not going to tell you, and that’s final.”

“Is it that bad?” he asked, and I heard the first thread of worry.

Shit, again. I just couldn’t win conversations with Peter. I’d only had a handful of them lately, but he always seemed to talk me into a box. “Get Edward on the phone, Peter, now.”

“I can handle myself in a fight, Anita. I can help.”

Shit, shit, and double shit. I was not going to win this conversation. “I’m hanging up now, Peter.”

“No, Anita, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” And his voice went from that cynical grown-up to an almost childlike panic. The panic had worked better before his voice deepened. “Don’t hang up, please, I’ll get Ted.” The phone hit wood so hard, I had to put the phone away from my ear. He came back on, saying, “Sorry, dropped the phone. I’m getting dressed. I’ll go knock on their door. If it’s bad enough for you to call Edward, then you need to talk to him. I’ll stop being a kid and just get him for you.” He was a little angry with me, but mostly frustrated. He wanted to help. He wanted to grow up. He wanted to fight for real, whatever the hell that meant. What was Edward teaching him? Did I really want to know? No. Would I ask? Yes, unfortunately, yes. God, I did not need another problem on my plate right now. I thought about trying to lie to Edward, say I’d just called up to chat about the latest issue of Mercenaries Quarterly, but if I wasn’t up to lying to Peter, Edward was absolutely out of my weight class.

10

I SAT ON the edge of the bathtub, waiting for Edward to come to the phone. I’d insisted on privacy for the phone call, though I’d told Jean-Claude and Micah who I was trying to call. Jean-Claude had said only, “Help would not be unwelcome.” The comment said, clearly, that he was worried. The more worried I realized he was, the more worried I got.

I heard noise over the phone, movement. The phone was picked up, and I heard Edward’s voice say, “Hang up the other extension, Peter.” A second later he spoke directly into the phone. “Anita, Peter said you needed help, my kind of help.” His voice was that empty-middle-of-nowhere accent. It was his normal voice; when he was playing Ted Forrester, good ol’ boy, he had a drawl.

“I didn’t say I needed help,” I said.

“Then why did you call?”

“Can’t I just call to chat?”

He laughed, and the laugh was strangely familiar. I realized it was an echo of Peter’s laugh earlier, or maybe Peter’s laugh was an echo of Edward’s. They weren’t genetically related, I knew that, so what was with the laugh? Imitation, maybe.

“You would never call me just to chat, Anita. That’s not what we do for each other.” He laughed again, and murmured, “Called to chat,” as if the idea were too ridiculous for words.

“I do not need you to be condescending, thanks anyway.” I was angry and had no right to be. I’d called him, and it was me I was angry at. I was wishing I hadn’t called—for so many reasons.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, not taking offense. He knew me too well to let a little angry outburst bother him.

I opened my mouth, closed it, then said, “I’m trying to decide where to start.”

“Start with the dangerous part.” There, that was Edward, not start at the beginning, but start with the dangerous part.

“I did call for backup, but I have other backup already. It’s not you, but it’s not a bunch of amateurs either.” I was being honest. The wererats were almost completely ex-military, ex-police, or ex-criminals. Some of the werehyenas were the same flavor of professional. I had help. I shouldn’t have called Edward.

“You sound like you’re trying to talk yourself out of asking me for help,” he said, and his voice was curious, not worried, just curious.

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because Peter answered the phone.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “Hang up the phone, Peter,” Edward said.

“If Anita’s in trouble, I want to know about it.”

“Hang up the phone,” he said, “and don’t make me ask again.”

“But…”

“Now.”

I heard the phone click.

“Well,” I said.

“Wait,” he said.

I sat on my side of the phone in silence, wondering what we were waiting for. Finally Edward said, “He’s off.”

“Does he listen in on phone conversations a lot?”

“No.”

“How do you know he doesn’t?”

“I know…” He stopped himself, and said, “I don’t think he does. I think you’re a special case for Peter. He’s in Donna’s old room. I told him he could keep the phone if he behaved. I’ll talk to him.”

“If he’s in Donna’s old room, where are you and she sleeping? Not that it’s any of my business,” I added.

“We put a master suite on the house.”

“Have you moved in, then?”

“Pretty much.”

“You sell your house?” I asked.

“No.”

“I guess Batman can’t sell the bat cave.”

“Something like that.” But his voice, which had started a little friendly, was not friendly now. It was empty, the old pre-Donna Edward talking to me. He might be talking about domestic bliss and raising teenagers, but he was still the coldest killer I’d ever met, and that person was still in there. I wasn’t sure whether I couldn’t bear the thought of him watching Becca at ballet class, or would have paid to see him sitting with all the other parents waiting for their leotard-clad darlings.

“If I lied well enough I’d just make something up and hang up.”

“Why?” he asked, in that empty voice.

“Because Peter answering the phone made me realize that it’s not all fun and games anymore. If I get you killed, then they lose another father. I don’t want to have to explain that to Peter, or Donna, or Becca.”

“But especially Peter,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Since you can’t lie to me, just tell me, Anita.” His voice was a little softer now, a little feeling to it. Edward liked me; we were friends. He’d miss me if I were gone, and I’d miss him, but there was still a little question on whether one day we’d find ourselves on the opposite sides of a problem, and have to finally see which of us was the better man. I was hoping that day would never come, because there was no way for me to win the fight now; dead or alive, we’d both lose.

“Do you know what the Harlequin are?” I asked.

“French clowns?” he said, and let himself sound puzzled.

“Do you know them in any other context?”

“Twenty questions isn’t like you, Anita; just talk.”

“I just wanted to see if I was the only vampire hunter extraordinaire who was totally in the dark about this. It makes me feel a little better that you don’t know about them either. Apparently Jean-Claude is right; they really are a big, dark secret.”

“Talk,” he said.

I talked. I told him what little I knew about the Harlequin and his band. It really wasn’t that much.

He was quiet so long that I said, “Edward, I can hear you breathing, but…”

“I’m here, Anita. Just thinking.”

“Thinking what?” I asked.

“That you always let me play with the best toys.” And his voice wasn’t empty now, it was eager.

“And what if these toys finally manage to be bigger and badder than you and me?”

“Then we die.”

“Just like that,” I said. “You wouldn’t have regrets?”

“You mean Donna and the kids?”

“Yes,” I said, and I stood, starting to pace the bathroom.

“I would regret leaving them.”

“Then don’t come,” I said.

“And if you get killed, I’d always believe that I could have saved you. No, Anita, I’ll come, but I will bring backup.”

“Not anyone too crazy, okay?”

He laughed, that chuckle of true delight that I’d heard maybe six times in the entire seven years I’d known him. “I can’t promise that, Anita.”

“Fine, but Edward, I’m serious. I don’t want to get you killed on them.”

“I can’t stop being who I am just because I love Donna, Anita. I can’t stop being what I am because I’ve got the kids to think about.”

“Why not?” I asked, and I was thinking of a conversation Richard and I had had when we thought I was pregnant. He’d expected that if I were pregnant I’d stop being a federal marshal or vampire hunter. I hadn’t agreed.

“Because it wouldn’t be me, and they love me. Donna and Becca may not know everything that Peter does about me, but they know enough. They know what I had to do to save the kids when Riker took them.”

Riker had been a very bad man. He had been doing illegal archaeology digs, and Donna’s amateur protection group had gotten in their way. It actually hadn’t been Edward or me that first got the kids on Riker’s radar. Nice to know we weren’t completely to blame for what happened. Riker had wanted me to do a certain spell for him, which truthfully I hadn’t been necromancer enough to do, but he wouldn’t believe me. He tortured the children to get my, and Edward’s, cooperation. Six-year-old, now eight-year-old, Becca had gotten a badly broken hand. Peter had been sexually molested by a female guard. We’d had to watch on videotape. We’d killed Riker and all his people. We rescued the kids, and Edward had made me give Peter my backup gun. Edward decided in that moment that if we lost, he preferred Peter to be killed resisting, rather than taken again. I hadn’t argued, not after what they’d done to him. I had watched Peter empty my gun into the body of the woman who’d hurt him. He’d kept dry-firing into her body until I wrestled the gun away from him. I still saw his eyes when he told me, “I wanted her to hurt.”

I knew that Peter had lost some of his innocence the night his father died and he had to pick up a gun to protect his family. He’d taken a life, but I think he thought it was killing a monster, and that didn’t really count. Hell, once I’d thought the same thing about monsters. Killing the woman who had hurt him had taken more from him, a bigger piece of his soul. I couldn’t even imagine how big a piece the sexual abuse stole away. Had it been better for him to have his revenge so quickly? Or had it cost him more?

I’d told him the only truth I had that night: “You killed her, Peter. That’s as good as revenge gets. Once you kill them, there isn’t any more.” Revenge was always the easy part; the hard part was living with it afterward. Living with what you’d done. Living with what they’d done to you, or those you loved.

“Anita, are you there? Anita, answer me.”

“Sorry, Edward, I didn’t hear a damn thing you said.”

“You’re a thousand miles away inside your own thoughts. That’s not a good place to be in the middle of a firefight.”

“It hasn’t come to a firefight yet,” I said.

“You know what I mean, Anita. I have to round up my backup and arrange transport. That’ll take a day or so. I’ll be there as soon as I can, but you need to watch your back until I get there.”

“I’ll do my best not to get killed before you get here.”

“This isn’t funny, Anita. You seem seriously distracted.”

I thought about it for a moment, then realized what was wrong. I was happy for the first time in my life. I loved the men I was living with. I, like Edward, had a family to protect, and mine wouldn’t be tucked safely in New Mexico while we cleaned this up. “I just realized that I’ve got my own family here, and I don’t like them being on the firing line. I don’t like that a lot.”

“Who are you worried about?” he asked.

“Nathaniel, Micah, Jean-Claude, all of them.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting your new lovers.”

It took me a minute to realize. “You’ve never met Micah and Nathaniel. I’d forgotten that.”

“Jean-Claude can handle himself, Anita, as well as anyone in this situation. It sounds like the shapeshifters have you covered for now. Micah is head of the local wereleopards. He didn’t get the job on his winning personality. He’s a survivor and a fighter, or he’d be dead already.”

“Is this supposed to be a pep talk?” I asked.

He gave a sound that was almost a laugh. “Yeah.”

“Well, you suck at it.”

He laughed then. “Which of your lovers is cannon fodder, Anita? Who are you really the most worried about?”

I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and said, “Nathaniel.”

“Why him?”

“Because he’s not a fighter. I’ve taken him to the gun range and he knows the basics.” Then I remembered a moment when Chimera, a very bad guy, had come to town. I remembered an ambush, when Nathaniel had been with me. I’d forgotten. He’d killed someone, and I’d forgotten. I hadn’t even thought how it might have affected him. Some leopard queen I was. Fuck.

“Anita, you still there?”

“Yeah, I just remembered something that I guess I was trying to forget. Nathaniel shot someone, killed him to save me. One of the wererats had gotten killed, and he picked up the guy’s gun and used it just like I’d taught him.” I was suddenly cold down to my toes. All the awful things that people had made Nathaniel do over the years while he was on the street, and it had been me that forced him to kill. He’d done it out of love, but motive didn’t change the end product. Someone was still dead.

“He’ll do, Anita.” There was a tone to Edward’s voice, approval maybe.

“You know, I hadn’t thought about what he’d done until just now. What kind of person forgets that?”

“Did he seem messed up about it?”

“No.”

“Then let it go,” Edward said.

“Just like that,” I said.

“Just like that.”

“I’m not good at letting go.”

“No, you’re not.”

“How much does Peter know about your real life as assassin to the undead and furry?”

“That’s my call, Anita, not yours.” His voice wasn’t friendly now.

“I’d love to argue, but you’re right. I haven’t laid eyes on Peter since he was fourteen.”

“He turned fifteen that year.”

“Oh, so not two years since I saw him but more like a year and a half. That gives me so much more room to bitch at you for introducing him to the scary stuff.”

“I’m just saying that he wasn’t a kid when we met him. He was a young man, and I’ve treated him like one.”

“No wonder he adores you,” I said.

It was Edward’s turn to be quiet.

“I can hear you breathing,” I said.

“You know how I said we don’t chat?”

“Yeah.”

“I finally realized, just now, you’re the only person I can talk about this with.”

“What, Peter?”

“No.”

In my head I went through the list of things that Edward could only talk to me about; nothing came to mind. “I’m all ears.”

“Donna is pushing for kids.”

That stopped me. It was my turn to be at a loss for words. I managed to stumble out some words, the wrong words. “Really? I mean, I guess I thought she was too old to start over.”

“She’s only forty-two, Anita.”

“I’m sorry, Edward. I didn’t mean it that way, I just never saw you with a baby.”

“Ditto,” he said, and he sounded angry now, too.

Worse yet, I felt my throat closing tight, my eyes burning. What the fuck was wrong with me? “Do you ever wish you had a life where you could see babies and shit like that?” I asked, and fought to keep the sudden rise of emotion under check.

“No,” he said.

“Never?” I asked.

“You thinking about a baby?” he asked.

Then I told him something I had never expected to tell Edward. “I had a serious pregnancy scare last month. False positive and everything. Let’s just say it made me reassess some parts of my life.”

“The biggest difference between us, Anita, is that if I have a baby with Donna, she carries it, not me. You would have a lot more trouble doing it.”

“I know, the whole girl thing.”

“Are you seriously thinking about babies?”

“No, I was relieved as hell when I found out I wasn’t pregnant.”

“How’d your lovers take it?”

“You know, most normal people would call them boyfriends.”

“No one woman could date as many men as you have in your life, Anita. You can fuck them, but you can’t date them. I’m having enough trouble having a relationship with one woman; I can’t imagine juggling a half dozen of them.”

“Maybe I’m just better at relationships than you are,” I said, and my voice was not friendly. I wasn’t close to tears; I had the beginnings of a nice anger warming me up.

“Maybe; girls usually are better at it.”

“Wait a minute. How do you know how many men I’m sleeping with?”

“You and your little harem are big news in the preternatural community.”

“Are we?” and I let it be hostile.

“Don’t be that way; I’d be bad at my job if I didn’t listen to my sources. You want me good at my job, right? Ted Forrester is a legal vampire hunter, a federal marshal, just like you.” It had creeped me out when I’d discovered Edward had a badge. It just seemed wrong. But too many of the vampire hunters had failed the firearms test; for the newer ones, too many hadn’t made it through the more detailed training. The government had turned further afield to get enough vampire hunter/federal marshals to cover the country. Edward had been grandfathered in on the firearms training, no sweat. But the fact that Ted Forrester had stood up to government scrutiny meant either that Edward had some high-placed friends or that Ted Forrester was his real identity—the name he’d gone into the military with, his actual true name. I’d asked him which it was, and he wouldn’t answer. Of course Edward wouldn’t answer. Such a mystery man.

“I don’t like being spied on, Edward, you know that.” Did Edward know about the ardeur? How long had it been since I’d filled him in on the metaphysics in my life? I couldn’t remember.

“How did your lov…boyfriends take the news of the almost-baby?” he asked.

“Do you really care?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t care,” he said, and that was probably absolutely true.

“Fine,” I said, “pretty well. Micah and Nathaniel were ready to rearrange their lives to play daddy and nanny, if I decided to keep it. Richard proposed, and I turned him down. Jean-Claude seemed like he always was: cautious, and waiting for me to decide what wouldn’t piss me off.” I thought about that. “I think Asher was pretty sure it wasn’t his, so he didn’t offer too much comment.”

“I knew you were living with Micah and Nathaniel. But when did Jean-Claude start sharing you with other vampires? I didn’t think master vamps shared well.”

“Asher is sort of an exception for Jean-Claude.”

He sighed. “Normally I’d enjoy playing with you, Anita, but it’s early, and I know you’ve had a hard morning.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked, and I couldn’t keep the suspicion out of my voice.

He made a sound halfway between a chuckle and an mmm sound. “I’ll tell you the rumors I’ve heard, and you tell me how big a lie they are.”

“Rumors,” I said. “What rumors?”

“Anita, thanks to my new status I hang with a lot of creature killers. You’re not the only one who’s got ties to the monsters in their town. Admittedly, you have the most…intimate ties to them.”

“And that means what?” I asked, and didn’t try to keep the irritation out of my voice.

“It means no one else is fucking their local Master of the City.”

Put that way, it was hard to argue with the intimate part. “Fine.”

“The Harlequin only come if you’ve gotten high enough on the radar to attract the council’s attention, for good, or not so good, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I could just ask you what you’ve been doing, you and your vampires, that has attracted their attention, but I think it’ll go quicker if I ask which rumors are true. I need to get off the phone and start gathering backup. The backup may take longer than transport or the weaponry.”

“Ask,” I said, not sure I wanted him to ask at all.

“That Jean-Claude has become his own bloodline and broken from his old mistress.”

I was surprised, very surprised. “How the hell did that rumor get started?”

“We’re wasting time, Anita, true or false?”

“Part true. He is his own bloodline. That makes it so he doesn’t have to answer to his old mistress, but he hasn’t broken with Europe. He’s just stopped being Belle Morte’s beck-and-call boy.”

“That you’ve got a string of lovers among Jean-Claude’s vamps and the local shapeshifters.”

I really didn’t want to answer this question. Was I embarrassed? Yes. “I don’t see what my love life has to do with the Harlequin coming to town.”

“Let’s just say that the answer to this question will decide me on whether I ask something else, something I didn’t believe. Now I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Wonder what?” I asked.

“Answer the question, Anita—do you have a string of lovers?”

I sighed and said, “Define string.”

“More than two, three, I guess.” He sounded uncertain.

“Yes, then.”

He was quiet for a second, then continued. “That Jean-Claude makes everyone, male or female, fuck him before they can join his kiss.”

“Not true.”

“That he makes the men fuck you?”

“Not true, and someone’s having a better fantasy life with my life than I am.”

He gave a small laugh, then said, “If you had told me no on the first question, I wouldn’t even ask this next one, but here it is. That you’re some kind of daywalking vampire that feeds off sex instead of blood. I don’t believe that one, but I thought you might be interested in what some of your fellow monster hunters are saying about you. I think they’re just jealous of your kill count.”

I swallowed hard, and went back to sit on the edge of the tub.

“Anita,” he said, “you’re awfully quiet.”

“I know.”

“Anita, it’s not true. You’re not a daywalking vamp.”

“Not the vampire part, not exactly.”

“How not exactly?”

“Do you know the term ardeur.”

“I know the French word, but that’s not what you mean, is it?”

I explained, briefly, as coldly as I could, just the facts, what the ardeur was.

“You have to fuck people every few hours, or what?”

“Eventually I die, but before that I start draining the life out of Damian and then Nathaniel.”

“What?”

“I have a vampire servant and an animal to call.”

“What!” I’d never heard him sound so astonished.

I repeated myself.

“There isn’t even a rumor about this, Anita. Human servants can’t have vampire servants; it doesn’t work that way.”

“I know that,” I said.

“Nathaniel is your animal to call?”

“Apparently.”

“Does the council know this?”

“Yep.”

“Well, shit, no wonder they sicced their dogs on you. You’re lucky they didn’t just kill you.”

“The council is divided on the appropriate action to take about Jean-Claude and us.”

“Divided how?”

“Some of them want us dead, but it’s not a majority vote. They can’t agree.”

“So the Harlequin come to break the tie, is that it?” he asked.

“Maybe; honestly, I’m not sure.”

“Is there anything else you’ve done that might make them decide to kill you quicker, like before I can get there?”

I thought about the fact that I might be a panwere. I thought about a lot of things, then sighed. Then I thought of one thing that we’d done that might bother the other Masters of the City in the United States enough to cry for council help. “Maybe.”

“How ‘maybe’? Anita, can you wait for me to get backup, or do I need to get a plane and get my ass to St. Louis? That’s what I need to know.”

“Truth, Edward, I don’t know. Jean-Claude and I did something back in November that was pretty powerful. It might be enough to scare the Harlequin.”

“What did you do?”

“We had a little private get-together with a couple of the visiting Masters of the City. The two that Jean-Claude calls friends.”

“And,” he said.

“And Belle Morte interfered from all the way in Europe. She messed with me and the Master of Chicago.”

“Augustine,” he said. “Auggie to his friends.”

“You know him?”

“Of him,” Edward said.

“Then you know how powerful he is.”

“Yes.”

“We rolled him, Edward.”

“Rolled how?” he asked.

“Jean-Claude and I fed off him; we both fed the ardeur off him. We fed on him, and through him we fed on every person he had brought to our lands. We did this massive feed on them all. It was an amazing power rush, and all of us, vamps, beasties, anyone tied to either Jean-Claude or me by metaphysics, gained power from it.”

“I’ll contact the backup I want; they can join me later. I’ll be on the ground in”—he paused as if checking his watch—“four hours, five at the outside. I’ll be in St. Louis before sundown.”

“You think it’s that serious?” I asked.

“If I were a vampire, and you had a vampire servant, I might kill you just for that. But if you guys rolled Augustine, one of the most powerful masters in this country, then yeah, Anita, they’ll be nervous. I’m just surprised the Harlequin didn’t hit St. Louis earlier.”

“I think they needed the excuse of Malcolm and his misbehaving church. The council is truly divided about Jean-Claude and his power base. I think maybe the council wouldn’t agree to let the Harlequin near us, but now that they’re here checking out the Church of Eternal Life, well, two birds with one stone.”

“Sounds reasonable,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, Anita.”

“Thanks, Edward.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll see you in a few hours, Anita. Watch your back like a son of a bitch; if these guys are masters they may have wereanimals and humans to do their daywalking. Just because the sun is up doesn’t make you safe.”

“I know that, Edward. I probably know that better than you do.”

“Maybe, but be careful until I get there.”

“I’ll do my best.” But I was already talking to an empty phone line. He’d hung up. I hung up, too.

11

NATHANIEL WAS ASLEEP in Jean-Claude’s red silk sheets. Jean-Claude himself was in Asher’s room for the day, but he’d made a point of telling me he’d had the sheets changed to red because the three of us look so lovely against red. Micah’s eyes caught the light from the partially opened bathroom door. His curly brown hair was a heavy darkness around the delicate triangle of his face. The door was our version of a night light here, since there was no bedside lamp, and the other light switch was across the room by the door. Micah’s eyes caught that faint glow and glittered with it. His eyes were leopard eyes, or looked like leopard eyes. A doctor had told him that the optics were still human, but the eyes themselves weren’t. Splitting hairs, I guess. Chimera, the same bad guy who’d made the ambush that caused Nathaniel to pick up a gun and shoot for real, had also forced Micah into animal form so long that he couldn’t come all the way back. His eyes were never human. I’d asked him once what color they’d started as, and he’d said brown. I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t picture his face with anything but the green-gold of the eyes he’d come to me with. They were simply Micah’s eyes; anything else would have made it the face of a stranger.

His voice was quiet, that voice you use when you’re trying not to wake someone in the room. “What did he say?”

“He’ll be here in four or five hours. His backup will be following.” I came to the edge of the bed.

“What backup?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“No.” Truthfully, it had never occurred to me to ask.

“You trust him that much?” Micah asked.

I nodded.

Micah rolled under the red silk so he could reach my hand. He tried to draw me onto the bed, but in a silk robe, on silk sheets, I’d learned better. They were too slippery. I took my hand back and undid the robe’s sash. He lay back and watched me with that look a man can get—the look that is part sex, part possession, part just male. It’s not a look that has much to do with love, not the kind that includes hearts and flowers anyway, but it has everything to do with being together, being real. Edward was right. Micah was my lover. Not my boyfriend. We dated. We did movies, theatre, picnics even, at Nathaniel’s insistence, but in the end what had drawn us together had been sex. Lust like a forest fire that could have burned our lives down around our ears, but instead had saved us. Or that’s how I felt. I hadn’t really asked him in so many words.

“Serious face,” he whispered.

I nodded and let the robe slip to the floor. I stood in front of him naked and had the feeling I’d had from almost the first moment, that my skin was thick with need. He reached for me again, and this time I let him help me climb up on the big bed. The bed was big enough that he could draw me down beside him without either of us touching Nathaniel’s sleeping form.

In November, when Jean-Claude and I had rolled Augustine of Chicago, we’d also figured out something else. My instant lust for Micah, and his for me, had been vampire powers. Not Jean-Claude’s, or Augustine’s, but mine. My vampire powers, mine and mine alone. My powers may have started with Jean-Claude’s marks, but they had mutated with my necromancy and become something else, something more. I was like a vampire of Belle Morte’s line, and all of her line had powers dealing with sex and love, though not real love, not usually. That was beyond most of Belle’s line. My version of her ardeur allowed me to see the strongest need in someone’s heart, and my own, and meet those needs. When Micah had come to me, I’d needed a helpmate, someone to help me run the shapeshifter coalition that we’d just established. Someone to help me with the wereleopards that I’d inherited when I killed their old leader. I’d needed help and someone who didn’t see my cold-blooded practicality as a bad thing. Micah had met those needs, and I had given him his greatest wish, to have his own wereleopards safe from Chimera, the sexual sadist who had taken them over. I’d killed Chimera, freed them all, and Micah had moved in with me. Just like that. It had been so unlike me, and in November we’d realized why; my own vampire tricks had made us a couple.

Micah was under the silk and I was on top of it. His hands danced down my body as our lips found each other. We must have moved too much because Nathaniel made a small noise. It made us freeze in midmotion and look at him. His face was still peaceful, eyes still closed, his hair a gleam in the near dark.

Vampire powers had made Nathaniel my animal to call, and made us love each other, too. It was real love, true love, but it had begun with vampire mind tricks. But Belle Morte’s powers cut both ways. As Auggie had said, “You can only cut someone as deep as you’re willing to be cut.” Apparently, I’d been willing to be cut to the heart.

Nathaniel stirred in his sleep again. His face flexed, frowned. He made another small sound. It was his bad dream sound. He’d had more nightmares of late. His therapist said it was because he felt safe enough with us to explore his deeper pain. We were his safe haven. Why did safety raise all the shit deeper? It seemed like it should have been the other way around, didn’t it?

We reached for him at the same time—Micah’s hand going for the bare paleness of his shoulder, my hand going for his cheek. We stroked him wordlessly. Most of the time petting him in his sleep was all it took to chase the bad things away. Real-life bad things weren’t so easy.

There was a soft knock on the door. We both looked toward it and Nathaniel stirred, one arm pulling out of the covers. He blinked awake, his eyes confused, as if he expected to be somewhere else. He saw us and visibly relaxed. He smiled, and said, “What is it?”

I shook my head, still lying pressed in Micah’s arms. Micah said, “Don’t know.”

I called, “What?”

It was Remus, one of the ex-military werehyenas. They’d been hired after Chimera nearly destroyed the bodybuilders and martial artists of the hyenas. As Peter had said, it wasn’t real. The hyenas had liked showy muscle that had never seen real battle. They’d learned that just because muscle is pretty doesn’t mean it’s the real deal. “It’s the Ulfric. He wants in.”

Ulfric, wolf king, Richard Zeeman was at our door. The question was, why? I wanted to ask what he wanted, but he might take it wrong, so I looked at Micah.

He shrugged, lying back, one arm still curved around me, holding me along the line of his body. I stayed propped up so I could see the door, and so most of my nakedness was covered. Richard was my lover, but he didn’t share nearly as well as everyone else did. I wouldn’t get out of bed for him, but I wouldn’t make it as bad as it could be by flaunting either. No matter what I did, we’d probably end up fighting. When we weren’t having sex, that’s what we did. We fought and had make-up sex, and he let me feed the ardeur off him. It wasn’t much of a relationship lately.

“Anita”—Richard’s voice—“let me in.”

“Let him in, Remus,” I said.

Nathaniel rolled onto his back so that the covers pooled at his waist, and the expanse of his upper body was naked to the light that came in through the door as Richard came inside. He hesitated at the door, watching us in the rectangle of light from the hallway. His hair had finally grown out enough to go a little past his shoulders in heavy chestnut waves. His hair looked black with a nimbus of gold around it now, but his hair was brown with highlights of gold and copper when the light hit it just right. He was wearing jeans and a jean jacket with a heavy wool collar. He had a small suitcase in one hand. He set it down on the floor as he came through the door.

I caught a glimpse of the guards in the hallway as he shut the door. Claudia, wererat and one of the few other women who carried a gun besides me, looked a question at me. I shook my head. It was my way of saying, Let it go. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but I couldn’t figure out a way to refuse him access to the bedroom without starting a fight. I didn’t want to start the fight.

“May I turn on the light?” he asked, very polite.

I looked at the other two men. They nodded, and shrugged. “Sure,” I said.

I was left blinking into the sudden glare. It wasn’t that bright a light, but after almost complete darkness it seemed bright. When my eyes adjusted I could finally look at Richard. He was as he had always been: six feet one inch of handsome masculinity. Perfect cheekbones and a nearly permanent tan showed that somewhere back in all that Dutch blood was something darker and less European. I’d always bet on American Indian, but they actually didn’t know. He was almost heartrendingly handsome. So why hadn’t my new vampire powers made us the perfect couple, too? Because for my abilities to work you had to know what you wanted, what you really wanted. Richard didn’t know that. He was too conflicted, too full of self-loathing, to know what his heart’s desire was.

He looked at the coffin that sat near the far wall, closer to the door than to the bed. “Jean-Claude?” He made it a question.

“Damian,” I said.

He nodded. “So if you start draining him of life you’ll be able to check on him.” Richard had actually carried Damian’s nearly lifeless body to me once, so I could save the vampire.

“Yes.” I pulled up the sheet so that my breasts were more covered. It bared a little more of Micah’s chest, but that was okay. His body was already blocking all but the upper curve of my hip from Richard’s sight. Covered was better until I knew what Richard wanted.

“Where’s Jean-Claude sleeping?”

“Asher’s room,” I said.

He had left his suitcase by the door, but he was in the middle of the floor, halfway between the door and the bed. He licked his lips and wouldn’t quite look at us. He was nervous—why?

“Jason has his new girlfriend bunking with him.”

“Perdita, Perdy,” I said. She’d come to us from the master of Cape Cod. She was a mermaid. A real live mermaid. The first I’d ever met. Though I’d never seen her look anything but human. I was told she really could be part fish, but I’d never seen it.

Richard nodded.

Micah moved against me and let me know he’d thought of something. Oh. “Do you want to stay here with us?” Micah asked.

Richard closed those perfectly brown eyes, the color of milk chocolate. He took a deep breath, let it out slow, then nodded.

We all exchanged a look, which was almost finished by the time he opened those eyes. We must have looked surprised, though, because he said, “I’m a shapeshifter; we like big puppy piles for sleeping.”

“Most of you guys do,” I said, “but you’ve never willingly slept with me and any of the other guys.”

“This is who you are, Anita. This is who we both are.” He shoved his big hands into his jacket pockets and looked at the floor. “I was on a date when I got the call that some insanely powerful vampires are in town.” He looked up, and his face held that anger that he’d gotten from me through Jean-Claude’s vampire marks. He shared my rage at the world, and it had made him even harder to deal with. “I had to call it an early evening, and I couldn’t explain to her why.”

“We had to cut our date short, too,” Nathaniel said.

Richard looked at him; it was not an entirely friendly look, but his words were civil. “You guys were trying to celebrate some kind of anniversary.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Sorry it got ruined.”

“Sorry your date got cut short,” I said. My, we were being terribly polite.

“They found bugs in my house, Anita. My dates, my phone calls, everything recorded.” He rocked on the heels of his boots.

“I know,” I said. “Same for us.”

“The Circus is the most secure place we have, so I’m here for the duration.”

“Scary,” I said.

“The scary part is that I might be endangering the kids I teach. If it’s not fixed by Monday, maybe I should take a leave of absence.”

He seemed to be asking my opinion and I didn’t know what to say, but Micah did. “We’ve all been blindsided by this. Let’s get some sleep.”

Richard nodded his head, a little too rapidly, a little too often. There were guest rooms in the underground. There was even a couch big enough for him to use in the living room. So why was he here?

“I can stay?” He asked it without looking at us.

“Yes,” Micah said.

“Yes,” I said, my voice soft.

He looked up. “Nathaniel?”

“I’m not dominant to anyone in this room; I don’t get a vote.”

“It’s polite to ask,” Richard said.

“Yes,” I said, “it is. I appreciate it.”

“So do I,” Nathaniel said, “but you don’t have to ask. It was your bed before it was ours.”

That seemed a little impolitic, but strangely Richard smiled. “Nice of someone to remember that.” But he didn’t sound angry as he said it. He picked up his suitcase and started walking toward the bed. He walked past the bed, and we all watched him. He put the suitcase down beside the armoire in the corner that held extra clothes for all of us. He knelt, opened the case, and began to unpack. He took his jacket off first and put it on a hanger in the armoire. Then he took out shirts, socks, and underwear and put them in the drawers. He unpacked as if we weren’t there. We all exchanged looks again. This was too weird, entirely too civilized for Richard. The other shoe had to drop soon, and all hell would break loose, wouldn’t it?

Micah moved the covers, letting me know to get off them enough to get under them. He was right; discretion was the better part of valor. We were all three under the red silk sheets when Richard finally finished putting everything away—including one trip with a toiletry kit to the bathroom. He left the door wide open so he had plenty of light, then walked to the light by the door and turned it off. It was so normal, it scared me. I hadn’t seen him this reasonable in months, maybe years. My shoulders and arms were tight with tension. It felt like the quiet before the storm, but I couldn’t tell if the tension was just me projecting. Richard and I could share each other’s dreams, let alone thoughts, but right now he and I were shielding so tight that nothing got through. We were separate from each other metaphysically, or as separate as Jean-Claude’s marks would let us be. It was safer that way.

Richard walked to the bed, his eyes downcast, not looking at us. He sat down on the bed near me. The three of us scooted back a little to give him more room. He must have felt the bed move, but he ignored it. He pulled off his boots and let them fall to the floor, then socks. He took off his T-shirt and I was suddenly looking at the muscled expanse of his naked back. His hair caressed the edges of all that bare skin.

I fought the urge to touch him. I was afraid of what would happen. Afraid that he would take it wrong.

He had to stand up to undo his belt, unbutton the fly. The sound of the buttons coming undone jerked things low in my body. Richard had been the man who taught me the joys of button-fly jeans.

Micah’s arm curled around my waist, drawing me in closer to his body. Was he jealous?

Richard hesitated. As a shapeshifter nudity should have been second nature, maybe first, but he didn’t like being nude in front of my other lovers. He just didn’t. He stripped the jeans down in one motion. If he’d been wearing underwear, he wasn’t now. The sight of him nude did what it always did: it made me catch my breath and think about touching him. All Richard had to do to win any fight with me was to strip. I just couldn’t argue with him when he looked so scrumptious.

He let the jeans hit the floor, then turned toward the bed. His eyes were still downcast, his hair spilling forward around his face. He finally looked up, and our eyes met. I didn’t try to keep my face blank. I let him see what I thought of him beautiful and nude before me. Even with Micah’s body pressed against me in the bed, Richard was still beautiful.

He smiled, half shy, and half the old Richard. The Richard who had known how much I loved him, and how much he meant to me. He lifted the covers up and slid under them. He was tall enough that he had no trouble getting into the bed without help. “Scoot over…please,” he said.

Micah scooted, moving me with him a little. Richard slid into the space we’d made. I felt the bed move, which meant Nathaniel had moved, too. The bed wasn’t a king-size, it was an orgy-size bed. We’d had more people than this on it at the same time, sometimes even for sleeping.

Richard scooted down until he was almost pressed to the front of my body, but not quite. Micah’s hand was still around my waist. “I’m not sure where to put my hands,” Richard said.

Micah laughed, but it was a good guy laugh. “I know what you mean.”

“Where do you want to put them?” Nathaniel asked.

I glanced over my shoulder and found that Nathaniel was peering over Micah’s more slender body at us.

“I’m nervous, tired. I want to be touched and held.”

“You’re a shapeshifter,” Micah said. “We all like skin contact when we’re shaky.”

Richard nodded. He was propped up on one elbow, and he made even Nathaniel look small. Richard was one of those large men who didn’t seem that large until moments like this; then you appreciated the full physical presence of him. “I brought wolves with me. They’re in one of the guest rooms. I could have my puppy pile. I didn’t have to come here for that.”

I swallowed hard enough that it hurt.

Micah said, “Then why are you here?”

“I’m tired of running from myself.”

I wasn’t sure that answered the question, but Richard seemed to think it did, and I felt Micah nod behind me. “Stop running.”

“I’m not sure I know how.”

It was like I wasn’t there, as if whatever issues they were discussing had less to do with me than with the two of them. Maybe the three of them—or did Nathaniel feel as left out as I did?

“This is a good start,” Micah said.

Richard nodded, then finally gave me the full attention of those eyes. Those eyes that I once thought would be the eyes I woke up with every morning. Lately he hadn’t slept over much. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Do what?” I whispered.

“I want to kiss you, but I don’t want to have sex with everyone in this bed.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant he didn’t want to have sex while the other men were in the bed or if he didn’t want to actually have sex with them. I was pretty sure both were true.

“I’ve been wanting to touch you since you took off your shirt,” I said. There, that was the truth. Maybe if we told the truth we’d be okay.

He smiled, and it was Richard’s smile. That smile that he sometimes gave that let you know he really did know how lovely he was to look at. He usually came off humble, but then he had that smile.

He leaned in toward me, his hands still chastely to himself. Our lips touched, his hair spilled along my cheek. Micah’s hand eased from around my waist, letting me know I could move where I wanted to move. Or that’s how I took it. I let my hand rest against the swell of Richard’s chest. His hand cupped the side of my face. We kissed, and his lips were still as soft, as full, as kissable as they had always been. My hand slid down the curve of his chest to his waist. He pulled me in against his body, and the kiss grew to something fuller, deeper. My body fell against his, my hand tracing across his back, not sure whether to touch lower. His body was already growing with need. I wanted to react to that need, but he’d said he didn’t want to have sex with all of us in the bed, and no one was leaving.

He drew back from the kiss, breathless, panting, eyes laughing. “God, how do you do that to me?”

My own voice came breathy. “You, too.”

He laughed, then his gaze slid past me to the other men. His eyes darkened for a moment. “I can’t, I can’t, not yet.”

“Truthfully, Richard, this is more than I ever thought you’d do with Micah and Nathaniel.”

He nodded. “Me, too.”

“Would it totally spoil things if I asked what changed your mind?” Nathaniel asked it. I’d wanted to ask it, but I wouldn’t have.

Richard looked across the bed at the other man. “It’s none of your business.”

“No, it’s not,” Nathaniel said.

Richard bowed his head, then nodded. “Okay, I love Anita. I’m trying to learn to love all of her, even the part that wants to live with two other men.” His eyes were uncertain, a little angry.

Nathaniel said, “My therapist told me that if I’m an equal partner in our relationship I need to ask for what I want. Did yours tell you that you need to resolve your feelings about Anita?”

Richard ignored the question. “What did you ask Anita? What aren’t you getting from her?”

“I’ll answer yours, if you’ll answer mine.”

Richard nodded, as if that was fair. “Yeah, my therapist says I have to either come to terms with Anita’s life, or move on.”

“You know I’m into the bondage and submission scene?” Nathaniel said.

I wanted not to be naked in the bed with them while they had this conversation, but if they could be honest, I could lie there and let them do it. “I know. Raina talked about you a lot.” Raina had been the old lupa of the wolf pack. She’d taken Richard’s virginity and trained Nathaniel to be a good little pain slut.

Micah and I looked back to Nathaniel. It was like a therapy tennis match.

Nathaniel nodded. “Anita won’t do it with me, and I want her to.”

“She’s not much more comfortable with that side of herself than I am,” Richard said.

“I know,” Nathaniel said.

“Did she agree to do it?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you going to leave her if she doesn’t come across with it?”

Micah and I lay back between them, feeling superfluous.

“I’ve asked permission to have someone else abuse me, but save sex for Anita.”

Richard looked at me, finally, and I wished he hadn’t. “You really know how to pick them, don’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, but it was hard trying to sound indignant naked in a bed with three men.

Richard laughed, a good, open laugh. He kissed me hard and fast. I lay there and frowned at him. “It means let’s go to sleep.”

He settled on his side, facing me. I hesitated a second, then turned onto my other side. It started a chain reaction with Micah and Nathaniel following suit. It took us a while, but finally we were all settled. Richard’s body spooned along the back of mine, Micah against me, and distant Nathaniel against him. My hand went over both of them, so I could still touch Nathaniel. Richard had the hardest time figuring out where to put his arm. He finally seemed to think, To hell with it, because he let his arm follow the line of mine, so he was both holding more of me and helping me hold the other two men. For sex, it would have been fun, but for sleeping, I thought I’d have trouble relaxing. But either it had been a long night, or the sensation of being held between Richard and Micah’s body was more comforting than I realized. Nathaniel went to sleep first, as he always did. Micah and Richard went at almost the same time. Sleep wrapped over me, Richard’s breath warm against my neck.

12

I WOKE IN a tangle of bodies. I was on my back with Micah and Richard half on top of me, as if even in their sleep they had fought over who would touch the most of me. The scent of their skins had mingled into a rich perfume that tightened my body. But I was still pinned and not comfortable at all. I was so tangled that I couldn’t even rise enough to see Nathaniel on the far side of Micah. I thought the uncomfortable position had been what woke me; then I caught movement at the foot of the bed. I held my breath. Was it one of the guards? Somehow I knew it wasn’t.

The faint light from the half-open bathroom door didn’t really show me anything. It was almost as if the light were being sucked at by the dark, as if eventually the darkness would swallow the light completely. My pulse was thudding in my throat, so hard I could barely breathe past it, and swallowing hurt. I knew who was in the dark, and I knew I dreamed. But just because it’s a dream doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.

“What is that?”

I screamed, a short, sharp scream. I was looking into Richard’s face. He was awake. He started easing up to sit, and I moved with him. He tried to shake Micah awake, but I didn’t bother. I’d had this dream before.

“Wake them up,” he whispered, eyes searching the darkness.

“Her animals to call are all cats; they won’t wake.”

“Who…Marmee…”

I stopped the words with fingers against his lips. “Don’t,” I whispered. I don’t know why we were whispering. She would hear us. But there’s something about being in the dark when you know the predator is out there, that makes you whisper. You try to be small and quiet. You pray that it passes you by. But this wasn’t a predator, exactly; this was the entire night, given life and substance, and a mind. I smelled jasmine and summer rain, and other scents of a land that I had never seen except in vision and dream. The land where Marmee Noir had begun. I had no idea how old she was, didn’t want to know. I was a necromancer. I could have tasted her age on my psychic tongue, but I didn’t know if I could swallow that many centuries. I feared I’d choke.

“Necromancer.” Her voice eased through the night like a sweet-scented wind.

I managed to swallow past the beating of my heart. “Marmee Noir,” I said, and my voice was only a little hoarse. It was better with Richard beside me, awake. His arm wrapped around me as if he felt it, too, that together we were more here. Maybe our accidental sharing of dreams, Richard and me and Jean-Claude, had a purpose. One we just hadn’t understood until now.

I leaned into the curve of Richard’s body, and his arm tightened. My hand on his bare chest let me feel the beat of his fear against my palm.

The darkness gathered, almost the way light will narrow down to a point of brightness, except this was darkness compacted, squeezed down as if a small black hole were forming in front of our eyes. The black hole took on the vague shape of a woman in a cloak.

I thought, very carefully, in my head at Richard, “Don’t look at her face.”

“I know the rules,” he said out loud. He had heard me; good, great. Mind-to-mind talking was still not my best thing in dream or out of it.

“Do you truly believe that not looking upon my face will save you?”

Great, she read minds, too. I’d had much lesser vamps be able to do it. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Tell me again why Micah and Nathaniel won’t wake?” Richard asked, his voice soft, but not a whisper anymore. It was too late for whispering. She’d found us.

“Necromancer,” she said.

“Cats are her creatures to call, all cats, so she can keep them out of the dream. Jean-Claude was with me last time and she was able to keep him out, too. She doesn’t do wolves.”

“Your wolf will not save you this time, necromancer.”

“How about mine?” Richard said, and a low growl trickled out from between his lips. It raised the hair on my arms, and that part of me where the beasts waited, stirred. The best I can describe it is that the place is like a cave where my animals wait. They walk up a long corridor to get to me. Since they’re inside me, that can’t exactly be right. But it’s the visualization that works for me.

In dream, though, the wolf inside me could come out and play. My wolf was pale, white and cream with a black saddle and marks on her head. She crouched in front of me and joined her growl with Richard’s. I dug my free hand into her fur and found it like last time: soft, coarse. I could feel the vibration of the growl through my hand, feel the muscle and meat of her body. She was real, my she-wolf. She was real.

Richard stopped growling and stared at the wolf. She turned eyes that were brown and glowing to him. My eyes when vampire powers had filled them. They stared at each other, then she turned back to the darkness. When Richard looked down at me, his eyes were the amber of his wolf.

“Your master has left you both with the last piece undone,” she said. Her voice floated around the almost-body she’d formed from the shadows. She came to the foot of the bed.

The wolf crouched, and growled, that sound that was absolutely serious. It was the last warning sound before violence.

She didn’t try to touch the bed. She actually stopped moving. I remembered seeing her body in that distant room jerk when my wolf bit her in dream last time. Had it hurt her enough to make her hesitate? Had it hurt her enough to make a true threat? God, I hoped so.

“You can still be enslaved to any master stronger than he, and there is no one stronger than me, necromancer.”

I clung to the wolf’s fur and Richard’s body. “I believe that last part, Marmee Noir.”

“Then why has your master left this door open?”

The question puzzled me.

“I do not know that expression on your face. I have been too long without humans.”

“I’m puzzled,” I said.

“I will help you not be puzzled, necromancer. I came tonight to make you mine. To shatter your triumvirate and make you my human servant. I do not need to share blood to own your soul.”

I was trying to breathe past my pulse again, and having trouble doing it.

“You won’t touch her,” Richard said, and his voice sounded gravelly, the beginnings of the change in the sound of his words.

“I think you are right, wolf. I think it would be a battle with you by her side. I am not ready for battle, not yet. But there are others who know what Jean-Claude has not done.”

“Who?” I managed to ask.

“Do I need to say the word?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to say it, but Richard said, “It’s against your laws to say it out loud. A killing offense, Jean-Claude said.”

She laughed, and the darkness tightened around the bed like a giant’s fist. You knew, could feel, that it could crush the bed and everyone on it, if it wanted to. “That is not the trick I have come to play, wolf, but fine: Harlequin. They know you are not safe. They know that I am close to waking. They fear the darkness.”

“Everyone’s afraid of you,” I said. The wolf had begun to relax under my grip. You could only hold on to emergency mode for so long. Apparently, we were talking, not fighting. Fine by me.

“True, and I would have taken you tonight. I planned on it.”

“You said that already,” Richard said, his voice a little more human, but sullen.

“Then let me not repeat myself, wolf.” Her anger was not hot, but cold, as if an icy wind danced across my bare skin. Richard shivered beside me. I didn’t think I’d have to caution him to be nice. That flex of power explained it nicely. “By tomorrow they will be upon you, and I do not want them to have you.”

“Have me, how?” I asked.

“I will allow Jean-Claude to have you, because you are already his. But no one else. I would prefer you were my human servant, but Jean-Claude is acceptable. No one else, necromancer. I will destroy you before I allow the Harlequin to make you their slave.”

“Why do I matter to you?”

“I like the taste of you, necromancer,” she said, “and no one else can have you. I am a jealous Goddess, and I do not share power.”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. I nodded as if that made sense to me.

“A parting gift, necromancer, wolf.” The shadowed form vanished, but she wasn’t gone. The darkness suddenly had weight and grew thicker, as if the night itself could become so thick it would eventually crawl down your throat and choke you. She’d done almost exactly that to me before. The scent of jasmine and rain was thick on my tongue.

The wolf growled and Richard echoed her. “Can you bite that which you cannot find?” Her voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. “My mistake was trying to be too human for you. I do not repeat mistakes.”

The wolf crouched, but Marmee Noir was right, there was no body to bite here now. I had to find a way to visualize a target for my wolf. I struggled to believe that my wolf could bite the night itself.

Richard grabbed my shoulders, turned me to him. His eyes were still amber and inhuman. He kissed me. He drew back enough to say, “I can taste her power in your mouth.”

I nodded.

He kissed me again, and this time he stayed with our mouths pressed together. He poured that warm, rising energy that was shapeshifter into me. He pushed it into me through our mouths, his hands, our bodies. I kept my grip on my wolf, but the rest of me I gave to Richard, and gradually I could taste pine, and leaf mold, rich and thick and foresty. I smelled the musk of wolf fur. I smelled pack. I smelled home, and the last taste of jasmine vanished under the taste of Richard’s power, Richard’s wolf, and finally, at the end, simply the taste of Richard. The sweet, thick taste of his kiss. The dream ended with a kiss.

13

I WOKE ON the floor of Jean-Claude’s bedroom with Nathaniel staring down at me. I glanced to my right and found Richard on the floor with Micah beside him. There were guards in the room, and the smell of burning.

Richard’s first words were, “You all right?”

I nodded.

His second words were, “What’s burning?”

“The bed,” Micah said.

“What?” I asked.

“The cross in its bag that you have underneath your pillow got hot enough that it set the pillow on fire,” Micah said.

“Shit,” I said.

Claudia appeared above me with a fire extinguisher in her hands. “What the hell happened, Anita?”

I stared up at her, and there was a lot of her to stare up at. She was one of the tallest people I’d ever met, and lifted weights in a serious fashion. Her black hair was in its usual tight ponytail, her face free of makeup, and still strikingly beautiful.

“That bitch queen vampire came again, didn’t she?” Remus said.

I tried to sit up, but if Nathaniel hadn’t caught me, I’d have fallen back to the floor. The last time I’d fought off the darkness, I’d been damn near killed by my own beasts trying to tear their way out of my human body. Apparently today I’d just be weak. I could live with that.

Remus was standing scowling at the foot of the bed. He was tall, muscled, and blond, but his face was a crisscross of scars, as if he’d been badly broken and put back together again. When he was angry enough, his face mottled, and you could see the pale lines against the flushed skin of his face. He almost never made eye contact with anyone. I think because he didn’t want to see in others’ faces what they thought of his own. But when he got upset enough he’d meet your eyes, then you could see how lovely the eyes were, all green and gray with long lashes. Tonight I got a good dose of the eyes.

I leaned into the warm curve of Nathaniel’s body and said, “Yeah, it was the Mother of All Darkness.”

“At least your beasts aren’t trying to tear you apart this time,” Claudia said.

“Yeah,” I said, “at least.”

Then I felt something stirring inside me, as if something big and furred had brushed the inside of my body. “Oh, shit,” I whispered.

Nathaniel leaned in and sniffed just above my face. “I smell something. Cat, but it’s not leopard.” He closed his eyes and breathed in deep. “It’s not lion.”

I shook my head.

Richard said, “She said it was a parting gift.”

I looked inside myself, in that place where the beasts waited. There was a gleam of eyes, then a face came out of the shadows. A face the color of night and flame: tiger.

“Oh, shit,” I said louder, “tiger.”

“Crap,” Claudia said.

To my knowledge there was only one weretiger in the entire St. Louis area. Christine worked as an insurance agent and was miles away. She’d never get here in time for me to share my beast with her and keep it from tearing me apart. Either Marmee Noir had decided it was time for me to finally be a shapeshifter for real, and she’d chosen tiger, or she meant to kill me. If she couldn’t have me, no one could. Possessive bitch.

But I was better at controlling the beast than I had been the last time she tried this. I called the other animals. We could play metaphysical tag for a while, at least. The black panther looked frail compared to the great striped beast. The wolf growled and flared its ruff of fur. The tiger stared at them, waiting. The lioness came from the darkness last, almost the same size as the tiger. They were animals that should never have met in the wild, never have tried their great strengths against one another. But the inside of my body was a lot weirder than any zoo. The beasts stared at the newcomer, and we waited. By calling them all at once, I kept myself from trying to turn into any single one of them. But eventually my body would choose, and when that happened there had to be a weretiger in the room.

“Call Christine,” Micah said. He’d helped me learn this control. He knew what I was doing.

“Jean-Claude warned me that Anita might be collecting more kitty-cats,” Remus said, “so we went shopping.” He turned to one of the guards by the door. “Go get Soledad. We need her ASAP.”

The man went out the door at a jog. Remus turned back to me. “She’ll do what needs doing.”

“She’s a wererat?” I managed to say.

“She’s pretending to be one of Rafael’s rats, but she’s a tiger. We had to promise to keep her secret before she’d agree to stay in town.”

“She’s probably running from an arranged marriage. Tigers are weird about keeping it in the family,” Claudia said.

“What?” I said.

“We’ll explain later, promise,” Claudia said.

Remus said, “Most of the solo tigers I’ve met all hide what they are really well. Most of them can even hide their energy enough to pass for human.”

I wanted to look at Richard, but didn’t dare. Even the thought made the wolf stand up straighter and think about coming closer. Once Richard had played human for me, and I’d been fooled. I buried my face against Nathaniel’s arm, smelled his leopard, and the wolf quieted, but the leopard began to pace.

I still didn’t have a werelion to call my own. I wasn’t even sure we had a lion in the place tonight, but I should have known that Remus and Claudia would think of it. “We better send for the lions, too,” she said.

Remus just looked at the door. One of the other guards opened the door, then hesitated. “Which one?”

“Travis.”

The guard went. I would have protested the choice, but of the few lions we had he was probably one of the best. None of the local lions really appealed to me—they were too weak. My lioness didn’t want food, she wanted a mate. I’d worked hard not to give her one. Eventually she’d pick one whether I liked it or not. Or that was the prevailing theory. Since what I was doing metaphysically was pretty much impossible, it was just a theory. None of us truly knew how all this was going to turn out. I sat in Nathaniel’s arms and tried to think evenly about all the beasts. But Nathaniel was too close, and the scent of his skin too real. The leopard turned and began to pace up that corridor that led to pain.

I gripped Nathaniel’s arm. “I can’t hold them.”

Richard crawled to me and put his arm by my face. The musk of wolf was there, to slow the leopard and send it circling around, not trying to come out. But now the wolf paced toward the light. Not good.

Travis got there before Soledad. His blond-brown curls were tousled from sleep, his face still not wholly awake. He was wearing the bottoms of a pair of cotton pajamas, and nothing else. They’d dragged him from bed with no time to do anything. He was a college student and I wondered briefly if his Rex, lion king, had made him stay here with us instead of going to class.

He knelt by my legs and didn’t even react to the fact that I was nude. Either the guard had explained the problem or he could feel it. His sleepy face began to clear, and an intelligence that was both too acute and one of his best features began to fill his gold-brown eyes. He held his wrist out to me, and the lioness began to pace. The three of them played tag with my beasts. As one moved, they traded whose skin I was smelling. But it would not last; eventually my body would pick someone.

The tiger moved up, and there was no tiger to smell. But the others distracted me, calling their beasts, keeping us playing our metaphysical musical chairs, except I was the chair.

I waited for the tiger to try to tear me apart as the other three beasts had done periodically, but the tiger sat there, waiting. Wolf, leopard, lion; the three men played me like a game of tag, putting their bare skin close enough for me to smell it, touch it, and the tiger waited. Then a thing happened that had never happened before with any of the other beasts—the tiger began to fade; like some monstrous version of the Cheshire cat, it began to fade in pieces. I settled back in Nathaniel and Richard’s arms, with Travis kneeling beside us. Travis was close, but not as close as the other two. My mistake. The tiger fading had made me let my guard down. Big mistake. The leopard and wolf paced around each other. The lioness saw her opportunity and charged past them, up that long black tunnel inside me. The leopard and wolf were still circling each other. The lioness didn’t care about them. She just wanted to be real.

Richard put his wrist near my face, but it was too late for simple measures. The lioness hit my body as if it were a wall. It felt like a small car crashed into me from the inside. The impact jerked me off the floor, tore me out of their surprised hands. My body hit the floor and they tried to cradle me, but it was too late. The lioness stretched inside my body, trying to fit all that huge cat inside me. There was no room. I was too small. The lioness was trapped, trapped in a small, dark space. She reacted like any wild animal; she tried to destroy the trap. Tried to claw and bite her way out of it. The trouble was, my body was what she was trying to tear her way out of.

I shrieked, while the muscles in my body tried to tear themselves off my bones. You try to forget how much it hurts, and then it’s happening and you can’t forget. Can’t think, can’t be, can’t do anything but hurt!

Weight, pressing me down, hands holding my wrists on the floor. Something pinning my lower body. I opened my eyes and found Travis above me. The lioness screamed her frustration, because she’d seen him before. She didn’t like him. She didn’t want him. Travis tried to grab my face in his hands, tried to take my beast into him, but the lioness was too close to the surface, and we agreed on one thing. Travis was weak. We didn’t want him.

I bit him, sank teeth into his wrist. The lioness meant it to chase him away, and so did I, but the moment that hot blood spilled into my mouth, all I could taste was lion. I could taste Travis’s beast in his blood and that was enough. I looked up at him with his blood spilling out of my mouth, and I shoved my beast into him. I gave the lioness what she wanted. I gave her a body that could make her real. The lioness spilled out of me in a rush of heat and power that felt like it was taking my skin with it. I screamed, and Travis’s screams echoed mine.

One minute Travis was staring down at me, the next second he exploded, bits of skin and meat and liquid spraying over me. A lion rose above me, shaking its maned head, staggering as it straddled me, as if even in lion form he hurt. He made a sound halfway between a roar and a moan, and fell to his side beside me. I lay there, my body aching from my toes to the roots of my hair. God, I hurt, but it was fading, a bone-grinding ache, but it was fading. As it faded, I was able to pay attention to the fact that I was covered in that clear, warm goo that shapeshifters seem to lose instead of blood when they change. The more violent the change the more of it there seems to be. I’d given my beast to Travis, and even though it wasn’t exactly my beast, it was as if my lioness did go to him, for a while. The pain faded enough so I could think about something else, and the first thought was that when Haven had taken my beast, he hadn’t been weakened by it. Hell, Nathaniel, Micah, even Clay and Graham didn’t collapse like Travis did. He was weak. I needed someone strong.

Then I had other things to worry about, because the wolf decided she wanted a chance. She ran up that tunnel like a pale ghost. I had time to say, “Wolf,” then she hit me, and I was back to writhing on the floor.

I reached out, and Richard was there. He wrapped his arms around me, held me tight while my body tried to tear itself apart. He pinned my face with one strong hand. He called his beast. His power hit mine, and it felt like my blood was boiling. I shrieked, tried to tell him to stop. He leaned in to kiss me, while his power combined with mine to boil me alive. I tried to give him my wolf, but I couldn’t. It couldn’t get past the weight of his power.

His power began to push my beast back like boiling water pushing a forest fire back. It worked, but it felt like my skin was singeing and smoking as he forced my beast back. He drove it back to that place deep inside me. He drove it back, and it went whimpering. I whimpered with it, because it felt as if my body had been burned with power. I tried to look down at my body, and the world swam in streamers of color and nausea. I’d seen Richard force people to swallow their beasts before, but I’d never known that it hurt.

When my vision cleared, Richard was smiling down at me. He looked pleased. “I wasn’t sure it was going to work,” he said, and there was strain in his own voice as if it had cost him something, too.

I whispered in a voice that was broken from screaming, “That hurt.”

His smile faded around the edges, but I didn’t have time to worry about his hurt feelings, because the leopard spilled up into me like poison trying to find a way to drip out of my skin.

Nathaniel’s arms found me, but Micah took me from him. Micah wrapped his arms around me, pinned me to his body. My leopard knew his, knew the smell and taste of it. The energy went into him like a huge hot breath. It washed over his human body, and fur followed the power, like turning a shirt inside out. Micah was one of the smoothest shifts of any wereanimal I’d ever seen. Only Chimera had changed more easily and less messily than he did.

I was left clasped to the front of his furred body. Held by a body that was half man and half leopard. Travis had only two shapes: lion and human. Every other wereanimal in the room had three: animal, human, and half-and-half. Once I’d thought you had to be powerful to do the half-human form. But I’d been spending too much time around really powerful wereanimals. Now, I thought that only the weak couldn’t do it.

I let Micah hold me, but I was too weak to hold him back. He laid me gently on the floor and lay down on his side beside me, propped up on one elbow. I stared up into his black-furred face, a strangely graceful mix of cat and human. His eyes looked just as at home in this face as his other one. They were both Micah to me.

“Did you do that to make a point?” Richard’s voice, angry.

Micah looked up at him and spoke in that gravelly purr that he had in this shape. “What point would that be?”

“That I caused her more pain making her swallow her beast than you did by taking it.”

“I took her beast because I’m not powerful enough to make her swallow it, and because being forced to swallow it can hurt, a lot.”

“So I cause her more pain, and you come off the hero.”

If I hadn’t been exhausted, and aching from head to toe, I’d have told Richard to stop it, not to fight, but I was too tired. He’d slept over. He’d helped me with Marmee Noir. It had all been going so well. I didn’t want it to go badly. Damn it, damn it.

“I called her leopard, instead of letting Nathaniel do it, because I can do this.” He moved away enough so he wasn’t touching me, and then it was like magic. It was as if the black fur were tiny flames that spilled off and blew away in the wind of his power, and everywhere the black blew away there was skin underneath. Everyone else looked as if they were being torn apart and remade, or pulled inside out when they shifted. The best you could hope for was to have the other body melt away and the beast, or the human, pull itself out of the other form. But Micah, Micah just changed. One minute leopardman, the next human again. If I hadn’t seen Chimera shift from one form to the other like water spilling back and forth between hands, I’d have said Micah was the best at shifting I’d ever seen.

Micah looked up at Richard. “Nathaniel would have been trapped in leopard form for hours.”

I couldn’t see Richard’s face because I was turned to Micah, and it seemed like too much effort to turn my head the other way. But I heard the disbelief in his voice. “It’s supposed to cost if you change back before six hours, sometimes longer. Aren’t you exhausted?”

“No,” Micah said.

“Are you disoriented at all?”

“I wouldn’t want to jump to my feet, but give me a few minutes and I’ll be fine.”

“I’ve never seen anyone who can shift back and forth like that.”

“I’ve seen one other who was better,” Micah said.

“Who?”

“Chimera,” and just saying it caused Micah’s face to take on that serious, sorrow-filled expression that I knew too well.

I reached up to touch his arm. I’d have liked to touch his face, but those extra inches seemed too much effort. He smiled down at me, as if he knew what even that small effort had cost.

A woman’s voice said, “If this guy could change shape easier than that, I’d have liked to meet him.”

Soledad came to stand over us. She wasn’t as tall as some of the guards, well under six feet, but from flat on the floor, she looked tall enough. She was slender but curvy, with hair cut boy short and dyed a shade of yellow that didn’t occur in nature. With the hair you’d expect more makeup, but she usually did lipstick and just enough liner to accent her brown eyes. She stared down at me with that look she usually had, like she thought something was funny and would laugh any minute. I’d realized a few days ago that it was her version of a blank face.

I might have asked her what she was thinking, staring down at me, but the tiger flashed inside the darkness in me. No, please, no, I thought.

Soledad stared down at me. The smile slipped away from her face, and I saw something I hadn’t expected for a moment: fear. I might have asked what she was afraid of, but the tiger started racing up that long dark hallway inside me. I reached up to her.

She hesitated.

Claudia said, “Do your job, Soledad.”

She leaned over to take my hand, saying, “In this world I would rather live two days like a tiger than a hundred years like a sheep.”

I might have asked what she was quoting, but the moment her hand touched mine, the tiger sped up. It bounded down that hallway, and I braced for the impact.

14

THE IMPACT NEVER came. The tiger hit my skin, my body, and kept going. I didn’t give my beast to Soledad; it just washed out of me and into her. It didn’t hurt me; it was as if all that went down my hand to hers was power. It just happened to look like a tiger. I wasn’t sure that was it at all because Soledad didn’t change shape. She half-collapsed around me, catching herself with her free hand so she didn’t fall on top of me. Her breath came in sharp pants, as if something hurt, but I wasn’t feeling it. I was just holding her hand and watching her face.

She managed to whisper, “You don’t hold tiger inside you.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. My voice still sounded hoarse from all the screaming, but at least I could talk above a whisper.

“What’s wrong?” Claudia asked from behind us.

“I think Marmee Noir couldn’t turn me into a tiger,” I said. I kept looking at Soledad’s face, though. She still looked hurt. I asked, “Are you all right?”

She nodded, but her lips were pressed in a tight, thin line. I think she was lying to me about being all right.

“I think she’s hurt,” I said.

Claudia knelt beside us. “Soledad, are you hurt?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me you aren’t hurt,” Claudia said.

Soledad just kept shaking her head. Claudia helped the other woman to her feet, and Soledad’s knees wouldn’t hold her. Claudia had to catch her, or she’d have fallen to the floor. Remus came on the other side of her and helped ease her to the edge of the bed. He asked, “What’s wrong with her?”

“I’m not sure,” Claudia said.

Soledad found her voice. “That was not a weretiger.”

I tried to sit up, and Micah had to help me. Richard moved in on the other side to help me sit between them. “It was Marmee Noir,” I said.

“Who?” Soledad asked.

“The Mother of All Darkness, the queen of the vampires.”

“It smelled like tiger, not vampire,” she said.

“Tigers are one of her animals to call,” I said.

Soledad shook her head and leaned against Claudia for a moment. “All right, I admit it, I don’t feel so good.”

“Why didn’t she bring her beast?” Nathaniel asked.

“Anita isn’t a weretiger, so the tiger couldn’t be as real as the rest of the beasts,” Micah said.

“What do you mean?” Richard asked.

“We’d been wondering if Anita is picking up beasts because she survived attacks, or if it’s vampire powers, and she’ll collect animals to call as if they are types of lycanthropy. I think this answers the question. She’s never been attacked by a weretiger, and Chimera didn’t hold tiger as one of his shapes.”

“So why try to call tiger?” Richard said. “Why not call one of the cats Anita already has?”

“I don’t know,” Micah said.

I had a thought. “She’s been inside my head deep enough to know that I didn’t think we had a tiger nearby. She said she wanted to make me hers, but if she couldn’t have me, then…”

“She meant for the tiger to tear you apart,” Richard said, softly.

“Or she was trying to make you a tiger from a distance,” Soledad said. “I don’t think she knew what would happen. I don’t think she cared what would happen. The power that brushed me didn’t think like a tiger.”

“What did it think like?” I asked.

“A serial killer, a butcher. Tigers only hunt when they’re hungry. This thing hunts because it’s bored.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that sounds like Mommie Dark. Sorry you got a taste of her, Soledad.”

She gave a weak smile. “My job to take the hits for you, right?” But she was pale, and looked as close to fainting as I thought I’d ever see one of the guards.

“Chimera might not have been a tiger,” Remus said, “but he did hold hyena, snake, and bear, at least those three more. Why doesn’t Anita react to them, too?”

Micah shrugged. “She’s never been attacked by them. She seems to need to be bled by an animal first.” He stroked his hand down my bare back. It reminded me that we were nude, but strangely because everyone else treated it like it was nothing, so could I.

Richard settled in closer to my other side, as if that one touch of Micah’s made him have to touch me, too. Or maybe he was just nervous and letting himself take comfort. I looked for bad motives for Richard. I didn’t mean to do it, but he’d hurt me so badly and so often that I finally realized I looked for the negative in him, not the positive. I took a deep breath in and let it out slow.

“You all right?” Remus asked, but his eyes did a slide to each side of me, as if he knew what was wrong.

I nodded, and the movement was too fast. I ached, but it was sharper than that. The pain would fade, but damn, I didn’t know how the real wereanimals did it. Changing completely had to hurt worse than this in-between stuff.

Remus asked, “Do you know why you don’t react to all of Chimera’s animal forms?”

“Jean-Claude thinks maybe I need a vamp with that animal to call to mess with me before the beast rises.”

“So a combination of the attacks you’ve survived and vamp powers,” he said.

“Something like that,” I said.

Richard moved his hand across my shoulders, drawing me in against his body, and away from Micah. I tried not to tense up, but failed. He stopped in midmotion and just kept his hand on me. The movement that had been so natural was suddenly awkward. Awkward moments when I’m naked make me want clothes.

“Then you should react to us, the hyenas, because we’re Asher’s animal to call and he has messed with you, Anita. Messed with you so much he almost killed you.”

I tried not to think about Asher, tried not to dwell on what we had done together the last time we’d been allowed alone together. His bite was orgasmic; combine that with actual sex and it was an experience you’d give your life for, and I’d almost done just that.

Micah touched my shoulder. “Anita, don’t.”

I jumped and looked at him, startled. He was right, I’d almost thought too hard about Asher. Just the memory could come back and duplicate the pleasure, at the most inopportune moments, or the most embarrassing. I shoved thoughts of Asher and his hair like spun gold as far away as I was able. But he never seemed to be too far from my thoughts lately, not since the night that we’d both gotten so caught up in his ability to bring pleasure….

Micah grabbed me, hard, and turned me to look at him. “Anita, think about something else.”

I nodded. “You’re right, you are right.”

“You’re still having flashbacks to that night?” Richard made it a question.

I nodded.

He touched my back again, tentatively, gently. Not trying to move me away from Micah, but just touching me. That I could deal with. “Hard to compete with someone who can make you orgasm just from remembering.”

I turned and looked at him. He looked away, as if he wasn’t certain I’d like what I saw on his face. I already knew he was jealous of the other men. I couldn’t even blame him, I guess. He let all that heavy hair fall forward, to help hide his face. It wasn’t as long as Asher’s hair, but the gesture was similar. Asher used his hair to hide the scars that the old Inquisition had given him centuries ago when they’d tried to burn the devil out of him with holy water. Was Richard mimicking that hiding gesture on purpose, or by accident?

Travis, the lion, gave a gasping breath. It turned my attention to him and away from Richard. Micah let go of me so I could run my hand down the soft furred side of the lion. Travis’s lion was a pale straw gold. He rolled over on his stomach and looked at me with a perfect lion face, but the look out of that face wasn’t lion. The look said, clearly, that there was still a person in there. Lions just didn’t give you that disgusted look.

“I’m sorry it hurt,” I said.

He shook his head hard enough to fluff his mane. It was dry. I never understood that, but though changing shape was wet work, the product at each end was always mostly dry. The floor or bed would be wet, people around them could be wet, but they were dry. I’d asked all the lycanthropes in my life how that worked, and they didn’t know either.

“I’ll take Travis to find food,” Nathaniel said. He stood there, still nude, still covered in some of the gunk that had managed to miss the lion.

“You’ll need to shower,” Micah said.

“I’ll catch one in the group showers.”

Nathaniel was quietly counting himself out for the morning feed—morning sex. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t fed last night before bed. The ardeur hadn’t risen, and we hadn’t woken it on purpose.

I looked toward Damian’s coffin, but the bed blocked my view. “Shit,” I said, softly.

“Jean-Claude says that you can practice going longer between feedings,” Nathaniel said.

“But I have to feed now.” I sounded disappointed and couldn’t help it. Having sex when you wanted to was one thing; being forced to have sex because you might die was different. I didn’t like to be forced to do anything, even things I enjoyed.

“I’ll take Travis to the food area, and I’ll clean up.” He looked at the two men still beside me. I caught a quick flash of feeling. He was out of here. He could stand his ground when he needed to, but Nathaniel didn’t really like to play the king-of-the-hill games, especially when I was the hill. He knew it pissed me off, so he opted out most of the time. Micah, too, sometimes. They lived with me, which meant they had to understand me better than some of the other men in my life. Okay, better than Richard. There, I’d said it, at least in my head. He usually turned everything into a pissing contest. Trouble was, I felt like I was the one getting pissed on.

“Who did you feed on last?” Richard asked.

“Me,” Micah said, and looked at the other man.

They had a moment where they just looked at each other, and like last night in the bed, I felt superfluous. “I don’t know how to do this,” Richard said.

“Just say it,” Micah said.

“I don’t want to have to ask your permission to have sex with Anita.”

Micah laughed then, a sharp, surprised burst of sound. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“Well, I don’t,” Richard said.

“It’s not my permission you need, Richard,” Micah said.

Then Richard seemed to get it, because he looked at me. He actually had the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“How did you mean it?” I asked, and tried to keep the words as neutral as I could.

“I’m trying to get along with the other men in your life. I don’t know how to do that, Anita. I want to ask you to feed on me, but I feel like I have to ask for everyone’s okay, not just yours; am I wrong?”

I felt my face soften. He was trying so hard. I touched his hair. There was an edge of drying goop in it. I guess I was a bigger mess since Travis had been practically on top of me when he shifted. Violent shifting is always messier. “We need to get cleaned up,” I said.

He gave me uncertain eyes.

“I’ll go with Nathaniel to the showers,” Micah said, standing up. He petted Travis’s back. “Come on, ol’ lion, we’ll get you fed.”

Micah bent over and gave me a quick kiss and a reassuring smile. He did his best to let me know it was all right with him. One of my favorite things about Micah was that he usually made things better, easier, not worse.

He walked out with the huge, slinking form of the lion on one side and Nathaniel on the other. Nathaniel blew me a kiss from the door, but didn’t try for a kiss on the lips. I wasn’t sure why, but I’d have liked the kiss.

Richard touched my arm, gently. It made me look at him. Whatever he saw on my face didn’t make him happy. His eyes showed it. Since I didn’t know what was in my eyes, I couldn’t change it. Whatever he saw on my face was what was there to see.

He gave a smile that left his eyes sad. “Let’s use the bathtub and clean up.” He looked down, his hair sliding around his face. He took a breath deep enough that it moved his shoulders up and down. “If that’s all right with you.”

I touched his arm. “A nice hot bath would help with the aches. Does it hurt this much to shift completely?”

Richard frowned, thinking, then shook his head. “No, I mean it hurts while you’re doing it sometimes, but with practice, no. You seem to be stuck at the early stages when it hurts the most.”

“Great,” I said.

I heard water running in the bathroom. Remus or Claudia had sent someone in to start the bath. The tub was big; it took a while to fill.

Richard stood up and offered me a hand. He’d moved so that I had his body in profile—the smooth, strong line of his hip to stare at instead of other things. I appreciated the modesty. Sometimes when he wasn’t modest, I just didn’t think very clearly. Of course, it wasn’t just his manhood that made me go wow. I stared up the line of his body, from feet, to the muscled swell of calf, thigh, the tight curve of his ass, the waist that led up to the swell of that chest, those shoulders. He held one muscled arm down at me, and I followed that arm to the face. That face. It wasn’t just that he was handsome, or that his newly long hair framed it all, but the eyes. Pure brown, deep, rich, and full of a weight that was just Richard. A weight of personality and strength that once I’d thought would be enough to sustain me. I saw all of it in seconds, so that I was able to not just give him my hand in his, but wrap my other hand around his wrist. A wrist thick enough that I couldn’t hold it between thumb and forefinger. He was just too big. He pulled me gently to my feet.

It hurt to stand, and I swayed, clutching at him. He put his other hand at my back to steady me. “Let me pick you up, Anita, please.” He knew I didn’t like to be carried. It made me feel weak, but tonight I hurt, and I knew that it would mean something to him to do it.

I whispered, “Yes.”

He smiled, that smile that brightened his whole face. He picked me up in his arms, and I cuddled in against the strength of him. Just holding me in his arms, I could feel the potential in his body, so strong.

I let my head rest in the curve of his shoulder and didn’t fight the fact that I was small in his arms. Once it had bothered me, but some part of me had grown up, or accepted it. Maybe I just didn’t need to be the biggest, baddest ass in the room anymore. Maybe I was finally old enough to let someone else be the one in charge. Maybe.

I draped an arm around his neck and breathed in the scent of him. It loosened something tight and frightened in the center of my being. It felt a little like the rabbit was cuddling with the wolf, but if a lion can lie down with a lamb, why not?

15

ONE OF THE younger guards was bent over the tub. I couldn’t remember his name in that moment. He looked up and seemed startled, as if he hadn’t expected us. “Remus told me to fill the tub.” He sounded a little breathy. I remembered his name then: Cisco. He was eighteen, and I’d declared him too young to guard my body. But it hadn’t been his age alone that had made me suggest he go elsewhere. He’d had problems around the sex and me. Apparently he was getting his second chance to see if he could be cool around the sex.

“We’ll take it from here,” Richard said.

“Remus was really clear that I am to follow every order exactly.”

I sighed. “Cisco, just go.”

He took his hand out of the water, shaking droplets off it. “Okay.” His eyes were too wide, his face too bothered by us. He was a wererat; no lycanthrope should have this much problem around nudity. But it wasn’t the nudity, I didn’t think, but the fact that we were going to have sex. That bothered him. I’d declared that I was a twenty-one-or-older zone. Cisco’s face made me think I needed to make that rule stick.

I got a flash of the gun at his hip as he moved past us. Remus said Cisco had one of the best scores on the firing range of any guard. But high scores weren’t the only thing you needed to be a bodyguard.

The bathroom door closed, firmly. Richard stood there, holding me as if it were effortless, as if I weighed nothing and he could have done it all night. Sometimes it bugged me to know how much stronger the men were than I was, but not this morning. This morning it seemed comforting.

“Can I say something without you getting mad?” Richard asked.

I tensed, I couldn’t help it. “I don’t know.”

He sighed, but he said it. “Cisco seems too young to be doing this.”

“I agree.”

He moved his head against the top of mine, as if he’d glance down at me if my face was where he could have seen it. “You agree?”

“Yeah, he’s been weird around me since…” I didn’t say it out loud, because I didn’t want to upset Richard either. But Cisco had been in the room when I’d had sex with London, one of our British vamps, for the first time. Cisco had had trouble not seeing me as a piece of ass since that moment. He was young, young in ways that weren’t just about how old he was. “Since he saw some stuff,” I finished, and hoped Richard would let it be.

He did. He carried me to the edge of the tub. The water was very loud, rushing into the huge tub. Jean-Claude had explained to me that the swan spout that filled it was hooked up to a system that filled the tub extra fast. I had a tub almost that big at home, and apparently my system was like his, a quick fill. Since I had bought the house with the tub and system in place I hadn’t realized there was anything special about it. High-tech tubs, who knew? Richard hugged me, and again I got a flash of that amazing strength. “I want to check the water, but I’m really enjoying carrying you.”

“Me, too,” I said.

He rested his face against my hair. “Really?”

“Yes,” I said, and I would have whispered it, except the water was loud enough that true whispering wasn’t possible.

He stepped into the water with me in his arms. I laughed and lifted enough to see his face. “Shouldn’t you check the temperature first?”

The look on his face made the laughter leak away. Eager, amazed, just so many emotions. Lately when we’d been together the only thing I’d seen in his face had been lust. We’d both shut down our emotions, kept ourselves safe. It had had that feel of sex at the end of a relationship, when sex is all you have left, and it isn’t enough.

“The temperature’s fine,” he said, his voice soft. He knelt down, still holding me. He folded all that six feet and change down into the water, and just above his waist the water hit me. It was warm, almost hot. The water slid over my body like another set of hands, gliding, exploring. He was right, the temperature was fine.

He whispered against my hair, “How much do you hurt?”

“I ache all over.”

“We’ll get cleaned up first, then let your body soak in the water. Hot water helps.” He kissed my forehead, then lowered us both down into the water, so that he was almost floating with me held across his chest. He let go of me with one arm, so he could half-swim, half-pull us to the water faucet. My legs trailed out into the water, but the rest of me was held tight to his chest. He sat down against the side of the tub. The water came to his upper chest, which meant it was almost chin deep to me. He kept me pinned to the front of his body, and I was okay with that. Touching was good.

“Enough water?” He made it a question.

“Yes,” I said.

He reached back and turned off the water, then settled down with me cuddled against the front of his body. The height difference was enough that to keep my chin above water I couldn’t cup my body against anything but his chest and stomach, with the rest of my body mostly floating. It was probably just as well; if too much of him touched me, I tended to get distracted. We were going to let some of the aches and pains drift away before we got distracted. He kissed the side of my face, and I settled into his arms, and the warm, warm water.

It was relaxing, or should have been, but there was a kernel of me that couldn’t relax completely. What was wrong?

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re tense.”

I sighed. “I don’t know.”

His hand slid down the side of my body to cup my hip. “It seems like unless we’re having sex, you get tense when we’re alone.”

“I don’t mean to,” I said.

He wrapped his arms around me and forced my body lower as he rose, so that certain parts of his anatomy were touching me. He wasn’t as hard as he got, but even partially erect he was a special treat. The feel of him pressed to the back of my butt felt wonderful. It made me writhe against him, which made his body react, growing, moving against my body. It was all involuntary, and I loved knowing that I affected him like that. He pushed against me, and it brought a small sound from my lips.

“So quick, so eager. God, I do love that about you.” He whispered it against my face.

“I wanted to make love to you months before you’d say yes.”

“I was afraid.” He nuzzled my neck, biting just a little.

That little biting made me writhe more. The aches and pains were starting to fade under the first wave of endorphins, those happy little chemicals. “Afraid of what?” I whispered.

He bit harder, and my spine bowed with it. “You.”

“Why?”

He cupped his mouth around the side of my throat and bit down. I cried out for him; my nails clawed at his arms. I finally had to say, “Enough, enough.”

He eased back and turned me in the water so that I was facing him. He drew me in against the front of his body, and he was hard and eager now. The feel of him against the front of my body made me cry out.

He cupped my ass, pressed me harder against the front of him. I pushed at his body, almost like I wanted to get away, but that wasn’t what I was thinking. It was just almost too much, for some reason. The feel of him so eager, so big, trapped between our bodies. It was almost too much.

He shuddered, head back, his voice panting, “God, Anita, God, I love the way you react to me. I do love it!”

I wrapped my body around him, pressed the length of him against the most intimate part of me. It made me cry out and press myself tighter against him.

He pushed me against the side of the tub and moved his hips away enough to try to angle himself for my opening. I didn’t protest, until the tip of him started inside and my body let me know that the combination of water—which is not a lubricant—lack of foreplay, and his size meant this wasn’t going to work.

I half-patted, half-slapped his chest. “Too big, you’re too big.”

“The water,” he said, breathy. He leaned his hands on the sides of the tub, face down, the head of him still inside me. “If you release the ardeur, we can do it.”

“But I’ll be sore afterward, and so will you.”

He moved his hips a little, and the sensation, even tight, made me catch my breath. “Not too sore,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “trust me. I don’t want to be walking funny tomorrow.”

He raised his head enough to frown at me. “We’ve never done it before like this—how can you be so sure?”

Shit. I stared up at him with his body halfway inside mine and didn’t know what to say. The truth was Micah and I had done it, but that seemed impolitic, to say the least, in this moment. I tried to think of something that wouldn’t make him feel bad. But I waited too long.

He said, “Just say it, Anita, just say it.”

“I want to make love with you, Richard. I don’t want to fight.”

He pulled back enough so he wasn’t inside me anymore. He stayed with his arms on either side of the tub, framing me. The look on his face was cautious now, almost as if he were steeling himself for bad news. It wasn’t the look I wanted on his face right now.

“Say it, Anita.” His voice sounded tired.

“I tried it with someone else.”

“Why did it hurt?”

“Don’t make me say this, Richard, please.”

“Say it,” and his voice was harsher now.

I sighed. “Fine, because he was too big for it not to hurt.”

“Who?”

“Don’t do this, Richard.”

“Who?” This time it was a demand.

I gave him angry eyes. “Who do you think?”

“I don’t know; you’ve added at least two men to your list, and I’ve never seen either of them erect.”

I ducked under his arm and half-swam to the other side of the tub. “Tell me what you want me to say, Richard.”

“Is it your two new vampires?”

“Are you wanting to know how you measure up to Requiem and London? Is that what you’re actually wanting to know?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

I crossed my arms under my breasts, the water helping, since they floated. “I cannot believe you’re asking this.”

“It’s an easy question, Anita.”

“Do you actually want to know if you’re bigger than they are?”

“I’m so jealous of them that I can’t see straight, so yeah, I want to know. I want to know that I’m still the best-endowed man in your bed.”

“You know, I don’t actually get out a ruler and measure everybody.”

“So they are big.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” I covered my face with my hands. “No, no, they aren’t as well endowed as you are. Happy?” I lowered my hands and found that it wasn’t a happy look on his face.

“Then who is?”

I’d managed for months not to have this discussion, this specifically, with anyone. Of course, it would be Richard who pushed it. “Micah, okay? Micah.”

“Is that why you love him?”

“Jesus, no, Richard, you should know better than most that a really big cock is not enough to win my heart.”

“Then why him? Why are you living with him and not me?”

I sighed. We weren’t going to have sex. We were going to have therapy. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, I did not want to do this. “Don’t do this, not now, not today.”

“I need to understand what went wrong before I can move on, Anita. I’m sorry, but I do.”

I shook my head and tried to settle into the water, but it wasn’t soothing anymore. It was just wet. “Fine. Do remember, I’m living with Nathaniel, too. You always seem to forget him, or discount him.”

“He’s not dominant, Anita. In the world of wereanimals that makes him discountable.”

“But in the world of my affections, Richard, he is not discountable.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t, and I’m sorry you don’t, but it’s still the truth. I’m living with Micah and Nathaniel, not just Micah. The fact that Nathaniel isn’t a dominant doesn’t make me love him less.”

“How can you sit there, like this, and tell me you love someone else? Don’t you know how much that hurts me?”

“You wanted this talk, not me. I wanted to make love. I wanted to clean up, feed the ardeur, and be together, but you had to get all hung up on the size of everyone’s equipment. I know it’s a guy thing to worry about that, but this wasn’t the time to bring it up.”

“You’re right, it was stupid, but I’m stupid around you, Anita. You make me say things, do things, that I know are bad for the relationship.”

“I don’t make you do anything. You choose to say and do things that spoil stuff. Your choice, not mine.”

“Fine, you’re right. I choose to say and do this shit. I could have let it go and we’d be having sex right now, and it would be great sex. But I really do want to know what Micah has that I don’t. What magic does he have that made you move him into your house, live with him, when you wouldn’t do it for me?”

God, we were going to do the big fight. The fight. I did not want to do this, ever, but I especially didn’t want to do this with the Harlequin in town, and heaven knew what nasty surprises headed our way. “Jean-Claude explained to you that it was partly vampire powers that drew Micah and me together.”

“You’re a succubus, a vampire that feeds on sex; yeah, he told me.”

I saw something on his face. “You don’t believe him.”

“I don’t believe it’s permanent. I think if you could get enough space between yourself and Jean-Claude’s power, it would go away.”

“Richard, this isn’t Jean-Claude’s power anymore; it’s mine.”

He shook his head, his arms crossing over that lovely chest. “You aren’t a vampire, Anita. You can’t have vampire powers. They’re still part of the triumvirate we have with Jean-Claude.”

“Richard, this is real. You can’t wish it away.”

“What, that you’re some kind of sex-crazed demon? I don’t believe that. It’s more of Jean-Claude’s power, or Belle Morte’s, or even Marmee Noir. Jesus, Anita, you have had so many vampires running through your mind, you don’t know what is you and what is them anymore.”

There was some truth to what he was saying, but…“Richard, I have forged a triumvirate of power with Nathaniel and Damian. That’s me, not Jean-Claude. That’s real.”

He shook his head again. “There’s got to be a way to undo it.”

I just stared at him. This was not the talk I thought we’d be having. “Richard, I am a succubus, me, not Jean-Claude, not Belle Morte, not Mommie Dark, me.”

“Humans can’t be succubi.”

“Maybe not, but then humans can’t have a vampire servant or an animal to call, and I have both of those.”

“Because you’re Jean-Claude’s human servant.”

“Richard, you saw what happened when I tried to undo that connection. I would have died and taken Nathaniel and Damian with me.”

He settled back into the water, giving me angry eyes. “Jean-Claude told me the theory. That your version of the ardeur helps you see the deepest desire in someone’s heart and grant it, and make them into what you most need. Micah needed his people safe; you killed Chimera for him. You needed what from Micah?”

“A helpmate, a partner, someone to help me run the furry coalition, and help me run the wereleopards that I’d inherited when I killed their old master.”

“I could have been your partner,” he said.

“You didn’t want to be my partner. You want your own life, not to be just an adjunct to mine.”

“What does that mean? That I won’t give up my job for you?”

“That I needed someone to do the coalition full time, and you have your career.”

“That can’t be all Micah is to you.”

“He’s there for me, Richard. He’s there for me and the people I love. He doesn’t fight me all the time. He says yes more than he says no.”

“And I just say no.”

“Sometimes.”

“Nathaniel needed to belong to someone; now he belongs to you. I get that. But what did he do for you?”

“I needed a wife,” I said.

“What?”

“I needed a 1950s wife to make my life run smooth. I needed someone to be my wife, and he’s really good at it.”

“And I want you to be my wife, is that it?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Why didn’t your ardeur look into my heart and see what I most needed, and make us into the perfect couple, too?”

“I thought Jean-Claude explained all this to you.”

“I asked him why not me, and he said the power was unpredictable. But that wasn’t the truth, was it?”

“Not all of it,” I said, and cursed my vampire lover for being a chickenshit.

“Tell me all of it,” Richard said.

“Micah knew what he wanted: his people safe at any cost. He said from the moment he came to me that he’d do anything, be anything, to be in my life. The ardeur made that happen for him. Nathaniel wanted a home and to be loved for himself, not just for sex, and the ardeur made that happen. Both of those desires are very clear. Do you know what you want most, Richard? Do you have one single heart’s desire?”

“I want you.”

I shook my head. “That’s not your deepest darkest wish, Richard.”

“I should know what my deepest wish is, Anita.”

“Richard, if a genie appeared before you right now, what would you wish? Really, truly, if you could have anything, what would it be?”

“You.”

“Liar,” I said.

He sat up, and that otherworldly energy swirled through the room. “How dare you?”

“Richard, be honest with yourself. What would you have if you could have anything, no matter how impossible?”

He blinked at me, and the energy level in the room seeped away. He stared at me. “I don’t want to be a werewolf.”

“That’s your deepest wish, Richard, and the ardeur can’t give you that. I can’t be that for you, so the ardeur doesn’t work between you and me, because what you want most doesn’t have anything to do with sex and love.”

He stared at me and sat back in the water, almost like he was faint. “Oh, my, God.” He whispered it.

“We thought at first you were just too conflicted for the ardeur to pick and choose, but I was the one who figured it out.”

“You’re right,” he said. A look of soft horror covered his face. He looked at me, and such pain filled his eyes. “I did this to myself.”

I shrugged.

“I was so afraid I’d become a monster that I took the inoculations against lycanthropy. That’s how I caught it.”

“I know,” I said softly.

“And I lost you because I hate what I am more than I want you.”

“You haven’t lost me, Richard.”

He looked at me, and I had to fight to keep meeting that look. “You’ll never be just mine. We’ll never have a life together.”

“We can be part of each other’s lives, Richard.”

“Not in the way I want.”

“Maybe not, but, Richard, don’t throw away what we have. Was it so bad last night, sleeping with all of us? Was that so awful?”

“No,” he said, “and if I hadn’t been in bed with you, then Marmee Noir could have done something awful to you. You need me to protect you.”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“But I can’t live with two other men, Anita. I can’t share my bed with them every night. I just can’t.”

My eyes felt hot, my throat was tight. Damn it, I would not cry. I managed to say, “I know.”

“Then where do I fit in your life?”

“Where do I fit in yours?” I asked.

He nodded. “That’s fair.” But that was all he said.

I sat on my side of the tub feeling lost and horrible. Only Richard could make me feel this bad; only he managed to cut me this deep. Damn it.

I felt Nathaniel like a distant tug. He wasn’t feeling well, which meant that Damian, in his coffin, would be feeling worse. Damian hadn’t woken for the day yet, and I needed to feed the ardeur before he tried to wake. Jean-Claude had explained to me that if one morning I didn’t have enough energy to make Damian’s body wake, he would never wake again. He would simply remain dead, forever.

“I’ve got to feed, Richard, now. Nathaniel is starting to feel bad, and I won’t risk killing Damian.”

Richard nodded. I expected him to say he’d get someone else for me to feed on, but he didn’t. “We need to do enough foreplay so you can feed from me.”

“We’re fighting, that’s not good foreplay.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to be with me now?” He said it low, careful, as if he were balancing a world of emotions on a very thin stick. One wrong comment and the stick would break and the world would fall. Shit.

“I’m saying I don’t have time for lengthy foreplay. I need to feed, right away. I’m trying not to cry; that’s not conducive to sex. Not for me, at least.”

“I’m sorry, Anita.”

“Don’t be sorry, Richard. Fix it. Fix yourself, fix us, or don’t fix us. But whatever you’re going to do, we need to do it now. I won’t risk lives because we’re having another fight.”

He nodded his head as if that were fair. Maybe it was. He started moving toward me through the water.

“What are you doing?” I asked, and sounded suspicious.

“I want you to feed off me, Anita.”

“I’m pissed and hurt, and that doesn’t lead to sex for me.”

“If I leave you’ll still be pissed and hurt. You’ll still have trouble concentrating on the sex, won’t you?”

I couldn’t argue his logic. I almost said, But the others are smaller than you, and this is one situation where bigger isn’t better. But I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t want to hurt him that badly. I also knew that if Richard and I couldn’t come to some kind of understanding, one day we’d be finished as a couple. He’d always be Jean-Claude’s wolf to call. He’d always be bound to us in a triumvirate of power, but we’d be broken up. It would be like being trapped in a relationship with someone you’d divorced but could never completely get rid of. A little slice of hell, that.

He was kneeling in front of me, the water just above his waist. The edges of his hair were wet, but the top was still dry, and still held some of the slick stuff that had gotten on us when I ripped Travis into his animal form. Truthfully, a little mess wasn’t enough to take away from how handsome he was, but the constant fighting was. The picking at it all, and his deep unhappiness with being a werewolf, that was unattractive. I gazed up at him, all that way to the nearly heart-stopping face, so handsome. Handsome enough that I’d have been embarrassed around him in high school. But handsome and well-endowed wasn’t enough to keep letting him hurt me like this. I stared up at him, and for the first time my heart did not leap up, and neither did my libido. I was tired of the fighting. I was tired of his inability to accept our reality. He didn’t believe I was a succubus. He thought it was something that would go away if we got me away from Jean-Claude. Didn’t he understand that there was no going away from Jean-Claude, not for either of us? His comments said no, he didn’t understand that, and that made me sad.

He stood up. He stood up with water dripping down his body. I was suddenly staring at a certain part of his anatomy with water drops decorating it. We all have our weaknesses, and one of mine was water. Richard had dated me long enough to know that. He was betting that seeing him wet was enough to distract me from being mad at him. I had a moment to decide to hold on to that angry sadness, or do what I wanted to do. Do what the suddenly rapid pulse in my neck wanted to do. I felt Nathaniel sway against a wall. I went to my knees, steadied my hands against the warm, wet sides of Richard’s thighs, and lowered my mouth to his body.

16

I LICKED THE water off him with the tip of my tongue. I drank water from the looseness of his body, licking water from the testicles where they hung so heavy and large. I licked and drank the water until his body lengthened and hardened. I couldn’t reach the tip of him now, not without wrapping my hand around the base of him and lowering all that hardness toward my mouth. He made small noises for me, and when I gazed up his body, the eyes that looked back had changed to wolf amber. Sex was supposed to be about losing control, but all lycanthropes could never completely lose control—because to lose control for them meant to change shape. At least once a year some new lycanthrope lost control and cut up a lover during sex. Sometimes the lover survived, sometimes they didn’t, sometimes they got to be furry, too.

I drove my mouth over him until my lips met my own hand. I used the hand to squeeze and pulse around him, but it also kept me from having to try to take all of him in my mouth. I could deep-throat, but it wasn’t always the most comfortable position, not with someone Richard’s size. I could raise the ardeur and do it, do it all, but…

I rose off his body, enough to talk. “I’d raise the ardeur and finish like this, but you’re too strong. You keep me out except during intercourse.”

He looked down at me, and it was almost a look of pain. “I want you to do whatever you want to do.”

“Will you lower your shields and let me feed?”

“I’ll try.”

I shook my head and squeezed him tight at the same time. It threw his head back, made his hands reach to empty air for something to hold on to. He liked to hold on to things when we did this. But his hands found only air, and he looked down at me with a shudder that ran up the length of his body. Just feeling him shudder in my hand brought a cry from me. “God, Richard, God!”

He reached down and grabbed my arms, pulled me up out of the water. I had to let go of him as he came out of the water with me in his arms. He threw me onto the marble around the tub edge. It was cold and hard, and I started to protest. Richard’s fingers found my opening. He shoved his finger inside me, and just doing oral sex on him made me wet, but the water had kept me tight. Even one finger seemed big. He moved it in and out and around, and I cried out for him.

He put two fingers inside me, and he actually closed his eyes, concentrating, searching, until he found that spot, no bigger than a fifty-cent piece, that spot just inside and to the front of the opening. He found it, and flicked his fingers back and forth across it. There hadn’t been enough foreplay for a full-blown G-spot orgasm, but it still felt good, so good. It made me spread my legs wider for him, made me angle my hips for him. He took that for the invitation it was, and drove his fingers inside me harder and faster, until I cried out for him again.

“You’re wet,” he said, in a voice that was a little strangled with need.

I nodded, breathless.

He started to angle himself to enter me, but I put a hand on his chest. “Condom.”

“Shit,” he said, but he went to his knees and riffled through the pile of towels behind us. Condoms lived in the bathrooms and bedrooms of any place I was alone with the men. The pregnancy scare in November had made me unwilling to count on just the birth-control pill. He was cursing under his breath by the time he got the condom on, but he turned back to me, his body hard, eager. Just the sight of him like that, knowing what we were about to do, made things low in my body tighten. Small orgasms before he even entered me.

Even wet and eager, he had to work himself inside me. I writhed around him, just from the feel of him working his way inside. I gazed up at him, let my eyes see his face, the wolf eyes in his face as he fought himself, his arms supporting him above me, so that most of his body was above me, so that I could see him as he pushed his way into me.

“Feed, Anita, feed, please.”

A please like that usually meant that a man was close. I called the ardeur to life. I called it, like coaxing a spark to life, to flame, to burn. The power spilled over me, through me, and into him. The ardeur poured over us in a warm wash of power. It opened my body to him so that he could push in and out of me. I could watch him in the mirrored walls around us, his body above mine, pushing in and out, in and out. He knew with the ardeur on us he didn’t have to be careful, and he wasn’t. He pushed all that length into me as hard and fast as he could. He grabbed my hips, lifted my lower body off the marble, held me in his big hands as he pounded himself into me, so hard and fast that our bodies made a wet, thudding noise. The end of him found the end of me, so that each stroke hit as far into my body as it could, and still he came in and in, so hard, so fast, he was almost a blur in the mirrors. He wasn’t human, and he had speed and strength that wasn’t human. Once he’d worried that he’d hurt me, but we’d found that I wasn’t human-fragile anymore. We’d found that Richard could be as rough as he wanted, and he wouldn’t break me. He was that rough now, then he found a new speed, a new hardness. It was as if he’d always been holding back, and I just hadn’t known it. Faster, harder, until he was a blur in the mirrors, pounding himself inside me, until I cried out, orgasming around him, body spasming. I felt his body spasm inside me, felt his body buck against mine. All movement ceased, his head flung backward, eyes closing. His fingers dug into my ass, holding us both in that moment, as his body spasmed and went inside mine, with him buried as deeply inside my body as was possible to be. In that frozen moment, as our bodies rode each other, the ardeur fed. I fed. I fed on Richard’s energy, fed on the part of him that was wolf, and human. I fed on all of him, took in every last delicious inch of his power, as I took in every last delicious inch of his body. When he let himself go like this, he gave so much energy.

He lowered me back to the edge of the marble tub. He slid out of me, and even that made me writhe. He collapsed onto his side, because there wasn’t enough room for his shoulders otherwise. He lay gasping with his head near my waist. I managed to move my hand enough to touch his hair, but that was all I could manage. My pulse was still thundering in my ears.

He found his voice first. “Did I hurt you?”

I started to say no, but the endorphins were fading around the edges. There was already an ache beginning between my legs. To Micah I would have said, A little, but to Richard I said, “No.” He had more issues than Micah did.

I felt his hand slide clumsily over my thigh, as if he couldn’t quite make his hand work just yet. He brushed between my legs. I said in a voice that was half-laughing, “Not again, not yet.”

He raised his hand so I could see that he had blood on his fingertips. “Did I hurt you?” His voice sounded surer of itself and less post-coital.

“Yes, and no,” I said.

He managed to raise himself up on one elbow. “You’re bleeding, Anita. I hurt you.”

I looked at his fingertips. “A little, but it’s a good hurt. I’ll remember what we did with every ache.”

His face closed down, and he stared at the blood on his fingertips as if it were an accusation.

“Richard, it was wonderful, amazing. I didn’t know you’d been holding so much of yourself back.”

“I should have kept holding back.”

I touched his shoulder. “Richard, don’t do this. Don’t make it bad when it was good.”

“You’re bleeding, Anita. I fucked you so hard you’re bleeding.”

I thought of one thing to say, but wasn’t sure if it would make things better or worse.

He moved away from me to sit on the edge of the tub with his legs dangling over the side. He washed the blood away.

“I’ll be all right, Richard, honest.”

“You can’t know that,” he said.

I rose, and I ached, deep inside my body. Maybe more than normal. I rose enough to see the blood on the marble, but there wasn’t much of it. “If this is all the blood, then I’ll be fine.”

“Anita, you’ve never bled after sex before.”

Truth time; I prayed that it was the right choice. “Yeah, I have.”

He looked at me, frowning. “No, you haven’t.”

“Yeah, I have, just not with you.”

He started to say, “Who…Micah?” He said the word like he wasn’t happy to say it.

“Yes.”

“This much blood?” he asked.

I nodded and sat up; now that the endorphins were leaving at a rapid rate, the marble felt cold. I held my hand out to him. “Help me back into the tub.”

He took my hand almost automatically, as if he did it because it was there more than because he wanted to. He helped me slide back into the tub. I made a small pain noise. I was hurt, no doubt about that, but I wasn’t broken. I’d had this hurt before with Micah. I didn’t want it this rough every night, but I could do it, and when it was the right time, it was amazing.

“Has he hurt you this badly before?”

“It isn’t hurt the way you say it, Richard. I’m not hurt, I hurt; it’s not the same thing.”

“I don’t see the difference.”

I lay back in the water, easing into it, letting the abused parts of my anatomy relax a little at a time. Strangely, the ache inside me was the only ache. The muscle soreness was gone, washed away on a wave of sex and the ardeur. Good for that.

“I wanted to fuck you, Anita. I wanted to fuck you as hard and fast as I could, and I did.”

“Didn’t it feel wonderful?” I asked.

He nodded. “It did, but if I hurt you, then think what I could do to someone who doesn’t have vampire marks to make them harder to hurt. Think what I could do to a human woman.”

I settled back into the water enough to wet all my hair, then sat up so I could look at him. He looked so sad, lost. “I’ve heard the stories, Richard. Broken pelvises, crushed organs, women and men who needed surgery to put themselves back together.”

“When we’re with humans we always have to be careful of them.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I didn’t know if you could take this, Anita. I didn’t know if I would break you. The thought that I might fuck you until I pushed my way into parts of your body that should never be touched, excited me. I didn’t want to do it, but the possibility of it excited the hell out of me. How sick is that?”

I blinked at him, not sure what to say. “I’m not sure it’s sick at all. You didn’t do it. You just thought about it. The thought excited you, but you didn’t rip me apart to make it come true. I think maybe it’s like a lot of violent fantasies: if the reality happened, it wouldn’t be sexy at all, but the thought of it, a violent thought in the middle of sex, can drive the sex to the next level.”

“Weren’t you afraid of me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I trusted you not to hurt me,” I said.

He took off the condom and said, “There’s blood on the condom.”

“I’m not hurt, Richard, or at least no more than I wanted to be.” Truthfully, maybe I was more hurt than I wanted to be. A pleasant ache between the legs was fine, but I was starting to hurt somewhere close to my belly button. That usually meant you’d overdone it. But I couldn’t say that to Richard.

He looked at me. “You flinched just now.”

I closed my eyes and floated back in the water. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

I felt the water move, knew he’d gotten in the tub. I sat up, but he was already standing over me. There was something menacing about the way he loomed over me. Most of the time I could ignore how physically large he was, in every way, but sometimes, like now, he made me see it. He wasn’t trying to be intimidating, or I didn’t think he was. Not on purpose, anyway.

That otherworldly energy began to flow off him as if the water were getting reheated. I moved so I was sitting against the side of the tub. Standing up wouldn’t help; he’d still loom over me. Besides, my stomach, or rather lower things, were beginning to cramp. I wasn’t entirely certain I could stand up without bending over. That wouldn’t help the situation. Was I hurt? Was I really hurt? Not a question I wanted to have to ask.

“You’re hurt, really hurt, aren’t you?”

His question was a little too close to what I’d just thought. We could accidentally share thoughts and feelings. I fought to put the shields back in place. Sex can bring them crashing down.

He knelt in the water, putting an arm on either side of me. He leaned in, the heat of his power beating against my body. It made things low in my body tense, and that hurt. I fought not to make little pain sounds. I managed not to, but Richard put his face against the side of mine and whispered, “Are you hurt?”

“Please, Richard.” I whispered it.

“Are…you…hurt?” His power pulsed through me, and this time I made a small sound, but not a good one.

“You’re going to raise my wolf if you don’t control your power better.” I said it through gritted teeth. One, I was hurting; two, I was getting angry.

He leaned in against my face and drew a deep breath. He was smelling my skin. His power was like a warm, wet heat pushing against me. I was shielding as hard as I could against him, his power, all of it. I thought of rock, stone walls to hide behind and put them in his metaphysical way.

He spoke against my cheek, his breath hot on my skin. “Pain has a smell to it, did you know that?”

“No. Yes.” I’d smelled it myself once, twice, when the beast was first prowling around inside me.

“Are…you…hurt?” He said each word, slowly, carefully, his lips brushing against my cheek as he spoke.

Another cramp hit me, and I fought not to bend over my stomach. I fought to sit in the water, with him pressed against me, and not react. He’d implied he could smell I was hurt. Most lycanthropes can smell a lie. I said the only thing I could say: “Yes.”

He kissed my cheek and said, “Thank you.” Then he stood up and climbed out of the tub. He reached for one of the towels in the pile that always seemed to be in the bathroom.

“Where are you going?” I asked, though frankly I was ready for him to go.

“Away from you,” he said.

I let myself fold over the next cramp. I didn’t fight that it hurt. He wanted to be a bastard, fine. When I looked up again, he had the towel wrapped around his waist. He’d swallowed all that otherworldly energy, as if when he covered his nakedness, he’d covered more than just his body.

“I’ll send for a doctor.”

“No, not yet.”

“Why not yet?”

“Because it may pass.”

He frowned at me. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

“I’ve had cramping before—not this bad, truthfully—but it faded.”

“Micah.” He said the name like it was a curse.

“Yes.” I was tired of protecting Richard’s ego. Frankly, in that moment, I was tired of Richard.

“He always gets there before I do.”

“There isn’t a single thing that Micah got to do that you didn’t have the chance to do first.”

“My fault again,” he said.

“Your choices,” I said. I couldn’t keep the strain out of my voice. Fine, let him know how much I was hurting.

“I love that,” he said.

I frowned up at him, my hands pressed over my abdomen. “What?”

“That sound in your voice, I love it. The last time I heard it was in Raina’s voice.”

I frowned harder. “What are you talking about?”

“You know that she was a sexual sadist, and God knows she was, but she also liked pain. She liked rough sex from both sides; dishing it out and being the dish.”

I couldn’t frown harder so I said, “I actually did know that. I have some of her memories, remember.”

“That’s right, you carry her munin, her ghostly memory.”

The munin were the ancestral memories of the werewolves. When a wolf died, they ate a little bit of the deceased and made them a permanent group memory. For real, not just ritual—though most werewolves couldn’t “talk” as directly as I could with Raina’s munin. It was supposed to enable you to access memories, get advice, but Raina had done her best to try to possess me for real. I had almost complete ability to keep her contained inside me. She wasn’t like the beasts, or the ardeur. Raina was something I could keep caged. Using her powers, that was chancier.

“You used her to heal the cross burn in your hand. Maybe you could use her to heal yourself now?”

I looked at him. The cross-shaped burn on my hand was a shiny, permanent scar. Raina’s ability to heal was something I had retained. It had been one of the reasons that Richard had made her munin, instead of leaving her body to rot. She’d been a sexual sadist and tried to kill us both, but she had been powerful. So I could sometimes use her abilities to heal myself and others, but the cost was always high. I could cage her inside me, ignore her, but if I let her out, well, she demanded payment. Her payment was usually painful, or sexual, or both.

I shook my head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea right now.”

“Have you ever seen memories of her and me together?”

“Some. I try to steer clear of them.”

“The last time I was able to do what we did today was with her.” He looked at me, his face almost peaceful, waiting.

“You miss her.”

“I miss some things about her. Remember, Anita, I was a virgin. I didn’t understand how unusual what she was teaching me was.”

“Nothing to compare it to,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“There are other sexual positions where you can be as rough as you want, and I won’t hurt this much afterward, Richard. Part of it is that you don’t do it this rough during the ardeur. The ardeur steals my ability to guard myself.”

“Don’t you understand, Anita? I hate, and I love, that I hurt you. I love the sound of strain in your voice. I love the thought that my body did this to you. That just flat does it for me. That I was so big, so powerful, so violent, that you’re hurt inside. You’re right, if I hurt you enough for hospitals, it wouldn’t be fun. That I wouldn’t enjoy. Raina tried to get me to enjoy that level, but for that she had to turn to Gabriel.”

Gabriel had been in charge of the local wereleopards before I had to kill him. He’d being trying to rape and kill me, on film, at the time. Raina had been offstage urging him on. They’d made a lovely couple, in that lower-circle-of-hell sort of way. I’d sent them to hell together on the same night; talk about a double date.

“Yeah, Gabriel liked it serial-killer bad.”

“So did Raina,” Richard said, “though not her body, not for the worst of it.”

“I’m told a good dominant in the bondage and submission scene never asks of their sub what they aren’t willing to do to their own body.”

“That’s the rule,” Richard said, “but we both know that Raina wasn’t a good dominant.”

“No,” I said, “she wasn’t.”

“The cramping easing?” He made it a question.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“Your face is smoothing out. You’re not clutching as much at your stomach. And I watched Raina work through the same kind of pain, a lot. She said one of the things she liked about me was that I could be as rough as she wanted in exactly the way she wanted it.”

“For future reference, don’t ever fuck me this hard in that position again, okay?”

He nodded. “What position do you like?”

I opened my mouth, closed it. Tried to think of how to phrase it. “I don’t like it this rough on a nightly basis. After a session even close to this rough, it takes a day or two to feel like doing it again.”

“You’ll have to feed the ardeur in a few hours.”

“There are gentler ways to feed it, Richard.”

“Not with Micah there isn’t.”

“Well-endowed doesn’t mean you can’t be gentle, Richard.”

He nodded. “You’re right.”

We stared at each other a moment. Something on his face made me say, “Raina really fucked you up, didn’t she?”

He nodded. “Yes, she did. When she found out I enjoyed it rough, she wanted to make sure I’d never be able to get my needs met anywhere but with her. She meant to keep me, Anita, and if she hadn’t tried to include Gabriel, I might have stayed with her.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” I said.

He gave me sad eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because you’re a good person, and if it hadn’t been Gabriel it would have been someone or something else. Raina couldn’t resist pushing people past their boundaries. She’d have kept pushing until she broke you; it’s what she did.”

He nodded and took in a breath deep enough that it rocked his broad shoulders. “I’ll clean up in the group showers.”

I wanted him to go, but…He’d tried so hard. He’d actually saved me from Marmee Noir. “You can clean up here.”

He shook his head. “No, I can’t.”

The way he said it seemed odd. “Why not?”

“Because I like the idea I hurt you. I like it a lot. I don’t trust myself not to hurt you again.”

“I’d say no, Richard. You respect no.”

He nodded. “But I also know the effect we have on each other. I don’t trust myself not to try to seduce you again, so that I can push myself inside you while you’re still bleeding from the first time.” He closed his eyes and a shudder ran down him from head to feet. I didn’t think it was because he was repulsed by what he wanted to do; no, it was a shudder of anticipation. He was being honest with me, with himself, about what he wanted.

“I like it rough sometimes, Richard, but not that rough. Sorry.”

He nodded and gave me a sad smile. “Raina helped me enjoy intercourse too rough for anyone else. She made Nathaniel like pain in a way that most people wouldn’t even survive.”

“I know.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t. You think you know, but you can’t imagine it. I saw some of what she taught him to enjoy.”

“He doesn’t talk like you ever saw him with her,” I said.

“Blindfolds, earplugs, nose plugs; you can’t see, hear, or smell who’s in the room. She invited me over once, tried to get me to help her, but torturing was never anything I liked. Raina found that disappointing.”

I swallowed and tried to think of something useful to say; nothing came to mind. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

“I don’t know why I told you that. Did I want to shock you? Did I want you to think less of Nathaniel? Less of me?” He shook his head and started for the door again.

I was ready for him to leave because I didn’t know what to do with the mood he was in, and I really didn’t want more sex. The hard cramps had passed, but I was hurting, and would be for a while.

He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Do you realize that most of the men in your bed are ones that she was with?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

He turned and looked over his shoulder at me. “Jean-Claude was with her and Gabriel; it was the price she demanded from him. You know she made Jason a werewolf?”

“Yeah.” I’d actually shared that memory with Jason. She’d tied him to a bed and cut him up while she fucked him. She hadn’t cared whether he lived or died. I’d been inside her head on the memory, and she hadn’t cared. She really was serial-killer material, because her pleasure had meant more to her than Jason’s life.

I got a whisper through my head. “Think harder, Anita.”

I shivered, and that made my lower body hurt. “Go, Richard, go, okay?”

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I need not to think about her so hard.”

“She talked to you?”

I nodded.

“You think you have her under control, and maybe you do, but you might just think on this. Jean-Claude, me, Jason, Nathaniel, all of us were hers first. Maybe there’s a reason you’re attracted to her old lovers.” With that very unsettling thought, he left, closing the door behind him. I was happy that Richard was doing therapy; it was helping, honest. The trouble was, he seemed to want me to do therapy with him, and that I wasn’t ready for.

17

I DID A quick cleanup, and then realized I had no clothes in the bathroom. My robe was lying in a heap beside the bed. Great. I wrapped the towel more securely around my hair, then wrapped one of the bigger towels around my body. One of the good things about being short was that the towel covered me from armpits to ankles. The funny thing was that almost no matter who was in the other room, they’d probably seen me nude at least once. I should have just walked out and gotten my clothes out of the armoire and ignored everybody. But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t that comfortable around my own nudity. There were days when I was pretty sure I’d never be that comfortable.

Worse yet, my gun was outside in the bedroom. My clothes I could live without, but that I’d left my gun in the other room said just how much Richard affected me. He made me forget myself, even the parts of me that almost no one else could drive from my mind. For some reason I just couldn’t go out there unarmed, I don’t know why. I just couldn’t do it. I was still aching all the way up to almost my belly button. The cramping had mostly stopped, but I was feeling stupid and vulnerable. I wanted a gun. It would make me feel better. There, that was the truth. I’d started hiding guns in the places where I spent a lot of time. They were for emergencies. This wasn’t an emergency, but…hell with it, it was my gun. If I felt the need, screw it.

I knelt down by the sink and opened the cabinet doors. I had to reach back and up into the plumbing to find it, but there was my Firestar duct-taped among the pipes. There’d been a couple of times when I’d been separated from my carry guns and needed a gun. So I’d given into my paranoia and hidden a few around. The Firestar wasn’t my main backup gun anymore, so it lived here as the ultimate hideaway. I brought the gun out into the light and laughed. There was writing on the tape. It read, “Anita’s gun,” in Nathaniel’s handwriting. He’d been with me the day I did it. Apparently he’d added his own little touch when I wasn’t looking. He’d handed me the pieces of tape. Had he written on it then, and I just hadn’t noticed, or had he come back later? I’d ask him.

It left me smiling and shaking my head as I took the tape off the gun. I’d have put it in my pocket, if I’d had one. The gun was very visible against the white towel. I tried the grip in my hand, squeezed it a little. A tightness in the center of my body eased. What does it say about your life when a gun makes you feel this much safer?

I checked to make sure the gun was still loaded, because any time a gun has been out of your sight, you damn well better check. Never trust anyone else that a gun is either loaded or unloaded; check it yourself. Gun safety 101.

Towel tucked tight under my arms, and gun in hand, I opened the door. I thought for a moment the bedroom was empty, but then Clay and Graham stood up near the fireplace. They’d been sitting in the room’s only chairs.

“Clay, shouldn’t you be in bed somewhere? You just got off work at Guilty Pleasures.” I looked at the bed and found it stripped down to the slightly singed mattress. My gun had been there somewhere.

As if he read my mind, Clay said, “Your gun is in the bedside table.”

I didn’t check to make sure he was telling the truth. One, I trusted Clay; two, I had a gun in one hand and the other hand helped hold the towel in place. I was armed and out of hands. “Thanks, but why aren’t you in bed?”

“After they found the bugs in all the businesses, Jean-Claude asked us to do double shifts.” He ran his hand through his short blond curls. Early twenties looked better on no sleep, but he still looked tired.

“Don’t I even get a hello?” Graham asked. I looked at him and couldn’t fight a frown. He was about the same size as Clay: six feet tall, but his shoulders were much broader. Graham was muscled in a way that only serious weight lifting would give you. His black hair was so long on top that his dark eyes peered out from the hair. The bottom of his hair was freshly shaved, very short, so that it looked like two different haircuts put together. He wasn’t wearing the black T-shirt that was standard bodyguard wear. He was wearing red. The red shirt was a new addition to the bodyguard uniform. Most of them were still in black, some with the appropriate club name and “Security” written on them, or just plain black. Red meant the guard was okay with being emergency food for the ardeur. It had been Remus’s idea originally. He’d come up with it after I’d nearly killed Damian, Nathaniel, and myself from not feeding the ardeur enough. I thought the red shirt idea was a joke until the first guard showed up wearing one.

Strangely, since the red shirt policy went into effect, I’d gained a much better control over the ardeur. Let’s hear it for fear, embarrassment, and sheer stubbornness. Graham had been trying to get into my pants for months, so no big surprise that he volunteered. What creeped me out was some of the other guards who’d done it. Men I hadn’t known thought of me in a sexual way. I mean, it’s one thing to suspect a man lusts after you, but absolute confirmation, well, that made me uncomfortable.

“Hey, Graham, nice shirt,” I said, and I was happy that it sounded hostile.

“Why are you mad at me? It’s not my rule. Be mad at Remus, or Claudia, or Jean-Claude. It’s their rule that you are not to be alone in a room unless accompanied by a man willing to feed the ardeur.”

“Since when?” I asked.

“Since this mysterious bad guy came to town. No one’s giving details, but apparently the people who give us orders are worried that the bad guys will use magic to make the ardeur go out of control. So you have to have food at all times.” He didn’t sound happy about it. Maybe my being pissy was finally rubbing off on Graham. Good.

“We’re short of red shirts today, Anita,” Clay said.

“Why?”

“Because the guard is doubled around all of Jean-Claude’s businesses. He’s having to renegotiate with Rafael and Narcissus for more people.”

“I guess we pay more money, we get more men,” I said.

The two men exchanged a look. “Maybe,” Clay said.

I was getting cold standing there in nothing but a towel, so I went to the armoire for clothes. “What else could they be negotiating for except money?” I said. I stared at the double door of the armoire, because the towel was slipping, and I had a gun in the other hand. I’d never been good at getting a towel to stay fastened. It wasn’t like both of the men hadn’t seen me naked. But…damn it.

“Power,” Clay said. “Everyone wants a closer tie to Jean-Claude now that he’s his own vampire bloodline. And Narcissus is seriously freaked that Asher’s new animal to call is hyena.”

“Freaked how?” I asked. I tucked the arm with the gun tight on the towel and tugged on the door of the armoire. It stuck.

“We’re wolves, not hyenas, so this is all secondhand,” Clay said. “Narcissus wants guarantees that Asher won’t try to run his clan.”

I finally got the door opened; yea for me. “Asher isn’t powerful enough to do that.”

“Maybe,” Clay said, “but Narcissus is worried about it. He wants to negotiate now before it’s an issue.”

I had black jeans in hand, but I really needed the second hand to get the other clothes.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Graham said. He stalked toward me. He was angry enough that as he got closer I got little bits of it, like embers from a fire hitting my skin. He grabbed the edge of the jeans in my hand. I held on. We glared at each other. “I’ll just hold the clothes for you, Anita. That’s it, okay?”

It was a reasonable idea. It was helpful. So why didn’t I want to do it? Because Graham seriously bugged me. His persistent pursuit of sex with me, with no pretense of emotion, let alone love, really hit my buttons wrong. Of course, if he’d lied about me being the love of his life, that would have pissed me off more. God. I let go of the jeans. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “Thank you.”

Graham blinked down at me as if I’d never said thank you to him before. Maybe I hadn’t. Shame on me then. He put his life on the line to keep me safe. So he was a lech; at least he was an honest lech.

I looked up at him. This close I could see the slight uptilt of his brown eyes. His mother was Japanese, which got him the hair and eyes. The rest of him looked like his blond and blue-eyed father had cloned himself. Meeting his parents by accident one night hadn’t made me like him better. In fact it had made it worse. His parents seemed like good people. Would they be ashamed to know how much of a horndog their only child was? It seemed likely.

I shook my head and turned back to the armoire. I’d concentrate on getting dressed. That would help me feel better. I always felt better with clothes on. Grandma Blake’s influence. There was a woman who thought naked meant bad.

I was getting low on shirts here. My choices were black or red. Black made me look like one of the bodyguards, and red, well, red looked like all the red shirts were my people, like a special Anita Blake uniform. I picked up one of the black shirts, put it back, picked up a red shirt, put it back.

“Anita, just pick a shirt,” Graham said.

“I hadn’t realized until this moment that my normal off-duty clothes are the same as the uniform for you guys.”

“Why is that a problem?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, and that was the truth.

“Then pick red. I promise that just because we’re dressed like we match, it’s not a date, okay?” He finally sounded angry.

I sighed. “I’m sorry that it bugs me that the red shirts mean that people want to fuck me. It does bug me. It really does.”

“The color of my shirt didn’t change anything about how I interact with you,” Graham said. “I’ve been honest from the beginning about what I’d like to do.”

I nodded. “You know, Graham, I was just thinking that. You’ve been honest. I say I like honest, but I guess I don’t like honest past a certain point.” I grabbed the red shirt. I needed to grow up about this issue and buy some different-colored clothes. I added jogging socks and black jogging shoes to the pile in Graham’s arms. I did the mental list and finally realized I didn’t have any underwear in the pile. I opened the bottom drawer in the armoire. Strangely, there was plenty of lingerie. Jean-Claude had gotten me to the point where I didn’t own any simple underwear. Everything had lace, or fishnet, or something on it. I had learned to buy two to three pairs of the panties to one matching bra. You could wear bras longer than underwear.

I finally stood up with bra and panties in hand. I started to put them on the pile, but caught Graham’s look. I’d picked a red bra to go under the red shirt. It was one of the thinner red baby-doll tees, so I’d picked something that wouldn’t show through. The bra and panties were both red satin. The bra was a push-up bra because it got my breasts up and out of the way of my shoulder holster, or rather out of the way of drawing the gun. A moment ago I hadn’t thought a thing about it. I’d picked what worked under the shirt. Now, I was suddenly very aware that the underwear was nice underwear.

I met Graham’s eyes, and there was such heat in them. It was written all over his face that he wanted to see me in the bra and panties. Bare on his face, in his eyes, that he’d give a great deal to see me in the lingerie, and do something about it.

Heat washed up my face. I blushed embarrassingly easily sometimes. This was one of those times. If he’d been one of my boyfriends, I’d have reacted to that look, that demand. We could have gone into the bathroom and let that heat wash over both of us, maybe. But he wasn’t my boyfriend, and his wanting to fuck me wasn’t enough reason for me to fuck him. When I’d had the pregnancy scare last month, the fact that I hadn’t had sex with Graham, that he wasn’t on the maybe-daddy list, had filled me with such relief that I knew he wasn’t going to be one of my sweeties. The pregnancy scare had put a lot of things in perspective. I was now back to looking at men thinking, if I got pregnant by accident, how big a disaster would it be? Maybe a few months from now I wouldn’t be so freaked, and that wouldn’t be a question that I thought of so strongly. Then again, maybe it still would be. I had had a false positive on a pregnancy test. It had scared the hell out of me.

I looked up into his face. He was handsome. There was nothing wrong with him, exactly, but I still remembered how happy I was that he wasn’t on the list of men who might have made me pregnant. If you get knocked up, it should be by someone who’s at least a good friend, and Graham wasn’t even that. He was my bodyguard, and he’d been emergency food, but he wasn’t my friend. He wanted to fuck me too badly to be my friend. Any man who would rather have sex with you than anything else is never going to be your friend. Friends want what’s best for you more than they want sex. Graham’s priorities were there on his face, in his eyes, in the tension of his body as he held my clothes.

“You’re blushing,” he said, and his voice sounded hoarse.

I nodded and looked down, away from that look. Maybe the blushing would stop if I wasn’t meeting his eyes.

He touched my face, the barest tips of his fingers on my chin. “After everything I’ve seen you do with all the other men, you’re blushing because I’m looking too hard at you.” His voice was softer now.

“You think I can’t be embarrassed, because I’m a whore.”

“Not true.” He tried to turn my face up to his. I stepped back from him so he couldn’t touch my face.

“Isn’t it?” I asked, and this time the face I gave him held the beginnings of anger.

“I see you with the other men and I want you—why is that wrong? I’ve watched you have sex with multiple men while I’m in the room. What am I supposed to think?”

“Oh, Graham.” This from Clay. He’d stayed on the far side of the room, out of it, but those two words let me know that Clay got it. Clay understood the mistake that Graham had just made.

“I can fix that, Graham.”

“Fix what?”

“Fix it so you’re not conflicted anymore about me.”

“What are you talking about?” The fact that he hadn’t realized where I was going was also a point against him. He wasn’t a quick thinker.

“You’re off my detail.”

He clutched the clothes to his oh-so-broad chest. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t guarantee that the ardeur won’t get out of hand and I’ll lose control enough to fuck in front of my guards again. Since it bothers you so much, Graham, I can fix it so you never have to watch again.”

“I don’t…” The first hint of unhappiness came over him. He finally saw where we were going.

“You are off my detail. Put my clothes in the bathroom on the edge of the sink and go find Remus or Claudia. Tell them that you need to be replaced. I’m sure that there are places you can guard that will be far enough away from me.”

“Anita, I didn’t mean it the way…”

“The way it sounded,” I finished for him. “Yeah, you did.”

“Please, Anita, please, I…”

“Put the clothes in the bathroom and go tell someone that you need to be replaced. Do it now.”

He looked behind him at Clay. Clay put his hands up in a push-away gesture, as if to say, Don’t look at me.

“This isn’t fair,” Graham said.

“What are you, five? Fair, fuck fair. You just said out loud that watching me fuck other men makes you want to fuck me. I can fix that. You don’t have to watch anymore.”

“Do you really think any man who’s watched you fuck someone didn’t want to be that man? All of us think the same thing. I’m just honest about it.”

I looked across the room at Clay. “That true, Clay?”

“Oh, please, do not drag me into this.”

I gave him a hard look.

He sighed. “No, actually, that’s not how all of us feel. For myself, I’m scared shitless of your idea of sex. The ardeur scares me.”

“How can you say that?” Graham asked. He turned toward the other man with my clothes still clutched in his big arms.

“Because it’s the truth, Graham, and if you would think with something higher than your belt buckle you’d be scared, too.”

“Scared of what?” Graham said. “It’s the most mind-blowing sex that any vampire line can give a mortal. I’ve had more of a taste of it than you have. Trust me, Clay, if she’d ever fed off you, even a little, you’d want more.”

“That’s exactly what scares me,” Clay said.

I had a thought, a bad one. I had fed on Graham in small ways when the ardeur was new. I’d given him the smallest taste of it that I could. We had never been naked together. We had never touched each other in any area that was considered sexual. But just because I thought it hadn’t been enough contact to addict him to the ardeur didn’t mean I was right. The ardeur could act like a drug, and I’d learned through some of the vampires that how easily addicted to it you were varied from person to person. Had I addicted Graham to the ardeur without meaning to? Was his reaction to me my fault? Shit.

Graham turned back to me with my clothes crushed against his chest. He looked panic stricken. “Please, Anita, please, don’t do this. I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry.” His eyes glittered through the fringe of his hair. I think he was on the verge of tears. I was reminded that he was under twenty-five by a few years. He was so physically big that sometimes you forgot how young he was. We were only about four or five years apart, but his eyes showed that he was younger than I had been at the same age. I wanted to touch his arm, comfort him, apologize to him. Tell him I hadn’t meant this to happen. But I was afraid to touch him. I was afraid I’d make things worse somehow.

“Graham,” and my voice sounded gentle, a voice for soothing frightened children and ledge jumpers, “I need you to find Remus or Claudia and bring them to me, okay? I need to talk to them about some of the things that happened last night. Can you do that for me? Can you find one of them and bring them to me?”

He swallowed hard enough that it sounded painful. “You won’t kick me off your detail?”

“No,” I said.

He nodded too fast, too often, over and over. He actually started for the door with my clothes still in his hands. It was Clay who took the clothes from him. When the door closed behind him, Clay turned to me. We stared at each other.

“He’s addicted, isn’t he?” Clay asked.

I nodded. “I think so.”

“You didn’t know either?”

I shook my head.

“You look pale,” he said.

“You, too,” I said.

“You haven’t fed that much from him, right? I mean, you didn’t even get naked together, right?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“I thought it took more than that to addict someone to it.”

“So did I,” I said.

Clay seemed to shake himself, like a dog coming out of water. “I’ll put your clothes in the bathroom for you. I’ll call Claudia and tell her we need a new red shirt.”

“I think once she sees Graham she’ll figure it out.”

“He hid it pretty well, Anita. I think by the time he finds them, he’ll have his shit together. It may not show.”

I nodded. “You’re right.”

“I mean, he has a radio on him, too. He didn’t think to use it.”

“The radios are new,” I said.

“The wererats have been handing the radio setups to some of the guards. When they found all the high-tech listening devices, I think they decided that we needed to go higher-tech ourselves.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said. I felt Jean-Claude wake. Felt it like a hand caressing my body. It caught my breath in my throat.

“What’s wrong?” Clay asked.

“Jean-Claude’s awake.”

“Good.”

I nodded. Good was right. I let Jean-Claude feel how much I wanted him to be with me. I wanted him to hold me and tell me it was all going to be all right. In that moment, I wanted him to comfort me, even if it was all lies. Graham’s face had been all the truth I wanted for a little while.

18

I WAS DRESSED by the time Jean-Claude knocked on the bathroom door. His “Ma petite, may I come in?” was uncertain of its welcome. I guess he thought I’d blame him for the ardeur having addicted Graham. There’d been a time, not too long ago, that I might have. But it was too late for blame. Blame wouldn’t fix it, and I wanted it fixed. I wanted Graham free of the ardeur, if we could manage it. I’d freed others of the ardeur, but they’d been completely rolled by it. I’d never had anyone this addicted from such a small piece of it. Or maybe I had, and they were hiding it, too? God, I wish I hadn’t thought of that.

“Ma petite?”

“Yes, I mean, come in. God, please come in.”

The door opened. He stood framed for a moment before I flung myself onto him, burying my face against the furred lapels of his robe. I clutched at the heavy black brocade, pressing myself tight against him. His arms enfolded me, lifted me off the ground and moved us both inside the room. One arm held me close, the other hand reached back and closed the door behind us. The move was so fast I didn’t have time to protest or think about it.

He let my feet touch the floor. “Ma petite, ma petite, what is so very wrong?”

“Me,” I said. “I’m wrong.” I spoke calmly, I didn’t yell, I just happened to be talking with my face against his robe.

He drew me away from him enough for him to see my face. “Ma petite, I felt your distress, but I do not know what has caused it.”

“Graham is addicted to the ardeur.”

“When did this happen?” he asked, his face gone to careful blankness. He was probably unsure what expression wouldn’t upset me.

“I don’t know.”

He studied my face, and even that careful blankness could not hide his concern. “When did you give Graham a stronger taste of the ardeur?”

“I didn’t. I swear, I haven’t touched him again. I’ve worked really hard not to touch him.” The words came faster and faster, until even to me it sounded hysterical, but I couldn’t stop.

Jean-Claude put a finger on my lips and stopped all the protest. “If you have not touched him again, ma petite, then he cannot be addicted to the ardeur.”

I tried to say something, but he kept his finger touching my mouth. “The fact that Graham wants you is not proof of addiction, ma petite. You underestimate the pull of your sweet self.”

I shook my head and moved my face back so I could speak. “He’s addicted, damn it. I know the difference between lust and addiction. Ask Clay if you don’t trust me.” I pulled away from him; it didn’t feel comforting to touch him anymore.

“I trust you, ma petite.” He was frowning now.

“Then take my word for it. Graham is addicted, and I don’t know when it happened. Do you understand? I’ve avoided him. I’ve done everything I can to keep him away from the ardeur and still let him be a bodyguard. Today I tried to fire him from my guard detail.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He was panic stricken. He was nearly in tears. I’ve never seen him like that. He only calmed down when I told him I wouldn’t replace him on my detail.”

“The ardeur is not so easily caught, ma petite. The few touches that Graham has had are not enough to addict him.”

“I saw it!” I was pacing the room now.

“I think you need a cross, ma petite.”

“What?” I asked.

He went to the door, opened it. “Could you please get one of the extra crosses out of the bedside table?”

I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. The red shirt seemed to blaze against my pale skin and dark hair. The scarlet seemed to be some sort of accusation like a scarlet woman, the scarlet letter. The last thought stopped me, as if the hysteria had hit a stumbling block. I could think for a second. Scarlet woman, the Scarlet Letter; this wasn’t me thinking. Shit. I was being messed with.

My gun and holster were still beside the sink; I hadn’t had time to put it on before Jean-Claude came. I put my hand on the butt of the gun and squeezed. That was me; I was me. The gun wasn’t a magical talisman, but sometimes all you need to get someone out of your head is to remind yourself who you are—who you really are, not who they think you are, or who they think you think you are, but you, the real you. The gun in my hand was me.

“Ma petite, I would prefer you step away from the gun until you are wearing a cross.”

I nodded. “I’m being messed with, aren’t I?”

“I believe so.”

“It’s daylight, early daylight. If the vampires that are messing with us are in town, they shouldn’t be able to do this.”

“They are the Harlequin, ma petite; now you begin to see what that means.”

I nodded again, clutching at the gun as I’d cluthced at Jean-Claude earlier.

“Ma petite, if you would step away from the gun?”

“The gun is helping, Jean-Claude. It’s reminding me that all the hysterics isn’t me.”

“Humor me, ma petite.”

I looked at him. His face was still that beautiful blankness, but there was a tension to his shoulders, the way he held his body. Clay was behind him in the doorway, and he wasn’t even trying to hide that he was worried. “I’ve got the cross,” he said.

I nodded again. “Give it to me.”

He glanced at Jean-Claude, who nodded. Clay walked forward with his hand in a fist. “You may want to step outside, Jean-Claude,” he said.

“I cannot leave you alone with her.”

“Won’t the cross react to you?”

“Non, for I am doing nothing to her.”

I held my left hand out toward Clay. “Just give me the cross.”

“By the chain,” Jean-Claude said.

“Good thinking,” I said. “I don’t need another cross-shaped burn scar.”

Clay held his fist out to me, then opened it so that the cross dangled from a thin gold chain. If a vampire had been in the room causing trouble, that would have been enough to make the cross glow. Hell, even in Clay’s hand, it might have glowed. The cross just hung there. Were we wrong? Was I wrong?

“Touch only the chain, ma petite. Caution is better.”

If he hadn’t repeated that, I might have just grabbed the cross, but at the last second I touched the chain. Clay let it go, and it swung, delicate and golden, in my hand. For a heartbeat, I thought we’d been wrong. Then the cross burst into a brilliant yellow glow. I had to turn my eyes away from it. I had a thought of what it might be doing to Jean-Claude, but I could see nothing past the golden light. I called to him. “Jean-Claude!”

A male voice that I wasn’t sure of said, “He’s out of the room. He’s safe.”

I yelled, “Clay, Claudia!” I wanted a voice I knew out of the brilliant yellow light.

Claudia’s voice, a little farther away. “Clay got Jean-Claude out.”

With that worry out of the way, I could concentrate on the other problem. If the vampire that had been messing with me was in the room, then the cross would have driven him away. Hell, when Marmee Noir messed with me, a cross like this had driven her away. So why wasn’t this working on the Harlequin?

The chain grew warm in my hand. If this kept up it would get hot. Shit. If I threw the cross down, it would stop glowing, but would the vampire attack again? Would he enter my mind again, without my knowing it? God, these guys were good. Scary good.

“Anita, what can I do to help?” The man’s voice again. I recognized the voice now: Jake, one of our newer bodyguards.

“I don’t know,” I said. I yelled it, as if the light were sound and I was having trouble hearing over it. I prayed, Help me, help me figure this out. I don’t know if it was the prayer, or if the prayer helped me think; chicken/egg, I think, but I knew what to do. With the cross blazing in my hand I could feel the vampire, now that I thought to look for it. I was a necromancer, and that meant I had an affinity with the dead. I could feel the other’s power like a seed in my back. As if he’d marked me somehow. That seed had let him inside me over and over since the movies last night. I wanted that seed gone.

I thrust my power into that spot, but I should have known better. With Jean-Claude’s power I might have just ripped it out of me, cast it aside, but my power was different. My power liked the dead.

I touched the mark the vampire had made in my body. I didn’t understand how he’d done it, and I didn’t care. I wanted it gone. But the moment my necromancy touched it, it was as if a door blew open inside my head. I caught a glimpse of stone walls and a male figure. I smelled wolf. I tried to see clearly, but it was as if darkness ate at the edges of the picture. I concentrated on that image, willed it to be clear. Willed the man to turn and show me…He turned, but there was no face. I was looking at a black mask with a huge false nose. I thought for a moment I could see his eyes, then the eyes filled with silver light, almost a soft light. Then that soft, silver light shot out of the mask and slammed into me. I came back to myself airborne, falling. I didn’t even have time to be afraid.

19

I HAD A blurred image of black marble, glass. A second to realize that I was about to hit the mirrors around Jean-Claude’s tub. I tried to both tense and relax for the impact. A dark blur passed me, and when I smacked into the mirrors, there was a body behind me. A body that wrapped itself around me and took the impact as we hit the glass and the wall underneath. I heard the glass break, and we slid in a heap at the edge of the tub. I lay there, stunned, breath knocked out of me. It suddenly seemed very important to hear my own heartbeat. I blinked at nothing for a moment or two. Only when the body under me groaned did I turn my head enough to see, in the mirrors that weren’t cracked, who I’d landed on. Jake lay in a heap against the spiderweb cracks of the glass. He was one of the newest members of Richard’s pack, though not new to being a werewolf, and had only been a bodyguard for a few weeks. His eyes were closed; blood trickled down from his short, dark curls. He wasn’t moving. I gazed up, past us, and saw that some of the jagged pieces were missing. There was a huge piece that sparkled as it moved away from the wall and begin to fall toward us. I grabbed Jake and pulled with everything I had. I pulled like I didn’t expect him to move, but I forgot that I was more than human strong. I pulled, and he moved, moved so hard and sudden that we ended up in the bathtub. I was suddenly underwater with his weight on top of me. Before I could panic, he startled awake, grabbing my arms, and jerked us both to the surface. We came up gasping, as the glass tinkled like sharp raindrops where we’d just been lying.

“Shit!” This from the doorway.

I blinked water out of my eyes to see Claudia in the room. There were more guards crowding in behind her. Claudia strode into the room and lifted me bodily out of the tub. Other hands lifted Jake. He fell to his knees when they got him out. It took two of them to carry him into the bedroom. I walked on my own, but Claudia kept her hand on my arm. I think she expected me to collapse, too. Other than being wet, everything seemed to be working. But I didn’t bother telling her to let go of me, with the grip she had…. Call it a hunch, but she wouldn’t have done it anyway. I’d learned to argue carefully with Claudia; it upped my chances of winning the arguments.

Claudia half-led, half-pulled me into the bedroom. The room was nearly black with bodyguards. A handful of red shirts stood out like berries in a muffin—though “muffin” didn’t quite cover the level of adrenaline-charged readiness. There was so much tension it felt as if I should have been able to walk across it. Some of them had guns out, pointed at the floor or ceiling.

I stood there dripping wet, searching the crowd for Jean-Claude. As if she understood what I was doing, Claudia said, “I sent Jean-Claude outside. He’s safe, Anita, I promise.”

Graham stepped out from the crowd. “We thought it might be a plot to hurt him.” He looked and sounded fine now. There was no sign of the earlier panic.

“How you feeling?” I asked.

He gave me a puzzled grin. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with standing wet in the colder air. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?” he asked.

“Shit,” I said.

Claudia turned me toward her. “What’s going on, Anita?”

“Hang on a minute, okay?”

Her grip on my arm tightened enough that it hurt. She probably could have crushed it if she’d been this muscled and human, but combine the workout with being a wererat and she was very strong.

“Watch the grip, Claudia,” I said.

She let me go and wiped her hand against her jeans to get rid of the water. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said. A sound of ripping cloth took my attention from Graham. Jake was on his knees by the armoire. Someone had ripped his shirt down the back. The bare back was bleeding, a lot. Cisco, one of the youngest of the wererats, was picking glass out of that once-smooth skin. Jake was a werewolf, and he was this hurt. It meant that if it had been my back, I’d be going to the hospital.

“Thanks, Jake,” I said.

“Just doing my job, ma’am.” His voice hesitated at the end as Cisco and another guard started picking glass out of him.

“Did anyone check his scalp for glass?” Claudia asked.

No one said yes. She called out, “Juanito, check him for glass.”

Juanito was another newer guard. I’d been introduced to some of them when the word went out that we needed more men, but the tall, dark, handsome man was a stranger to me. I’d nodded at him, that was about it. At least Jake had been here a few weeks. Juanito meant “little Juan,” but he didn’t match his name. He was six feet at least, slender but muscular. He was not a little anything, as far as I could tell.

“I’m not a medic,” he said.

“I didn’t ask,” Claudia said.

He just stood there staring at her, clearly not happy.

“I gave you an order. Follow it,” she said. I hadn’t heard that tone in Claudia’s voice often. If I’d been him I’d have done what she said.

He moved to the kneeling werewolf and started picking through the wet curls. He didn’t do it like his heart was in it, though. Cisco and the other guard seemed to be taking their job seriously.

Graham brought a large towel from the bathroom and started picking up the bloody pieces of glass that were already on the floor. Cisco and the others started dropping the glass onto the towel. It looked like red rain and sharp little pieces of hail.

“How bad is Jake hurt?” I asked Claudia.

“Not bad, but we don’t want the skin healing over the glass.”

“That happen often?” I asked.

“Often enough,” she said.

I looked back at the men and found that Jake’s back was smoothing even as I watched. “Is it just me or is he healing fast even for a shapeshifter?”

“It’s not just you,” Claudia said. “He heals faster than almost anyone I’ve ever met.”

The three guards were searching frantically along his body, trying to stay ahead of his skin as it flowed over the wounds. Juanito had gotten over his reluctance and was now searching Jake’s hair with fumbling fingers, desperately searching through the curls. “I’m not going to get them all! He’s healing too fast!”

“The glass you miss, you get to cut out,” Claudia said.

“Shit,” he said, and worked faster.

Jake made almost no sound while everyone picked at his wounds. He stayed silent and motionless under their hands. I’d have been cursing and at least flinching.

Graham had apparently picked up all the stray glass he could find, because he wiped his fingers on the towel and stood up.

“Graham, you wearing a holy item?” I hoped he’d say no.

“No,” he said.

Relief flooded through me, and I shivered. I was cold from the wet clothes and the reaction to the accident. No, not accident. The Harlequin had tried to kill me. Fuck. I hadn’t understood; even with everyone’s warnings, I hadn’t understood. I was like a kid who’d poked a kitten with a stick and found a tiger staring at me.

“Talk to us, Anita,” Claudia said.

There were so many people in the room that they couldn’t all know about the Harlequin. How to explain without overexplaining? “The bad guys messed with Graham, a lot, and he doesn’t remember it.”

“What are you talking about?” Graham asked. “No one’s messed with me.”

“Ask Clay,” I said. “He saw it, too.”

Claudia hit the radio in her hand and called for Clay to join us when he could. Then she turned to me. “From the top, Anita, all of it.”

“I can’t give you all of it until I talk to Jean-Claude.”

“This cloak-and-dagger shit is getting old.” This from Fredo: slender, not too tall, and dangerous. He was the only wererat who carried a gun sometimes but preferred knives, lots of them.

“For me, too,” I said, “but you guys have to know about Graham now, not later.”

“We’re listening,” Claudia said. She was very serious, almost threatening. She didn’t like the cloak-and-dagger stuff either. I didn’t blame her.

I told them, though I toned it down for Graham’s embarrassment’s sake.

Claudia said, “A vampire, in daylight, from a distance, messed with Graham?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” she said.

“Not in daylight, from a distance, no, it shouldn’t be.”

“You’re telling me as a vampire executioner that you’ve never seen anything like this?”

I started to say no, then stopped. “I’ve had a few Masters of the City mess with me from a distance when I was sleeping, and in their territory.”

“But that was at night,” she said.

“True,” I said.

We stared at each other. “Are you saying these guys…” She stopped herself.

I waited for her to finish; when she didn’t, I said, “Holy objects need to be mandatory for everyone.”

“It didn’t help you much just now,” she said.

“It kept them from messing with my head as bad as they messed with Graham’s. He doesn’t even remember.”

“I know you wouldn’t lie,” Graham said, “but because I don’t remember, I don’t believe it.”

“That’s what makes vampire mind tricks so dangerous,” I said. “That very thing. The victim doesn’t remember so it didn’t happen.”

Jake’s voice came with only a slight edge of strain to it. “What did you do to get the cross to do that?”

“It wasn’t the cross,” I said.

There was a flash of blade as Juanito searched Jake’s dark curls for the right spot. Apparently they were going to have to cut some of the glass out. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t let myself do that. Jake had gotten hurt because of me. The least I could do was watch the cleanup.

“What was it, then?” he asked, the last word hissed as the blade cut into his scalp.

“I…I’m not sure how to explain it.”

“Try,” he said, through gritted teeth.

“I tried to fight back with my necromancy and they, he, didn’t like it.”

Juanito shook the piece of glass onto the bloody towel, then turned back to search through the now-bloody curls.

“He?” Claudia asked.

“Yeah, definitely he.”

“Did you see him?” Jake asked, and his breath went out sharp as another piece of glass went on the towel.

“Not exactly see, but I felt him. The energy was definitely male.”

“How was it male?” Jake asked, his voice thin with pain.

I thought about it. “I thought I saw a male figure for an instant, and the…” I almost said mask and stopped myself. “But that could have been illusion. Except that the power felt male.”

“What else did you get?” His body shuddered as Cisco worked on his back, apparently finding more glass he’d missed. Crap.

I answered, though I probably shouldn’t have, but he’d taken my hit. I felt like I owed him. “Wolf, I smelled wolf.”

He cried out under the knives. “That hurt!”

“I’m sorry,” Cisco muttered. “I’m really sorry.”

Juanito said, “Got it.” He raised bloody fingers from Jake’s hair. Something glittered in his hands that wasn’t the knife. “That’s the last of it, all I can find.”

“Hope I can return the favor sometime,” Jake said.

“If I apologized like Cisco, would you be less pissed?”

“Yes,” Jake said.

“Fine, I apologize.”

“I accept it.”

Cisco moved back from him and laid something that looked like solid blood on the towel. “That’s it for your back, too.”

“Thanks,” Jake said. He tried to get to his feet, but fell against the armoire so hard it shuddered. Hands reached to help him, covering his arms in bloody prints of his own blood.

He pushed them away. “I’m all right.” Then he fell to his knees.

“Help him,” Claudia said.

Cisco and Juanito reached for him again. Jake waved them away.

I walked the few feet to them. I knelt in front of Jake, so that I could meet his eyes without him straining. He rolled brown eyes up to me. His normally handsome face seemed strained and tired. He was a little too masculine handsome for my tastes. I liked men a little softer looking, but I could still appreciate the view. Except now the view was hurting too badly to be admired.

“I’d be in the hospital or worse now, Jake. Thank you.”

“Like I said, it’s my job,” but his voice was strained.

“Let them help you, please.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “What do you think the wolf smell meant?”

“I think it was the vamp’s animal to call. Some vamps smell like their animal.”

“Most vampires smell like vampires to me,” he said.

“I’ve met a couple that smelled like their animals to call.” I didn’t add out loud that those had been Auggie, Master of Chicago, and Marmee Noir. Auggie was about two thousand years old, and Mommie Dearest was older than dirt. Which put this vampire in very powerful company.

“You’re thinking something, what is it?” he asked.

I might not have answered him, except he’d gotten himself hurt protecting me. It made me feel guilty. “That the only two vamps I’ve ever known who smelled that much like their animals were Auggie, Master of Chicago, and the Mother of All Darkness.”

“I’ve heard of Augustine, but the Mother of All Darkness, I’m not sure who that is.”

“She’s the Mother of All Vampires,” I said.

His eyes widened, then flinched. “Powerful shit.”

“Yeah,” I said, “powerful shit. Let them take you to the doc, okay?”

He gave a small nod. “Okay.”

Cisco and Juanito picked him up under the arms. They did it like he wasn’t tall and muscled, and weighed at least two hundred pounds. Super-strength did come in handy. He got his feet sort of under him as the guards parted and let them through. By the time they had the door, Jake was almost walking upright. Almost.

20

THIS TIME I chose a black shirt, because my last clean bra was hanging up to dry in the bathroom. I was never entirely comfortable without a bra. I wasn’t sure whether the fact that the black baby-doll shirt was tight enough that it helped support my breasts was a good thing or not. I think I would have preferred the shirt to be looser. Tight felt better, but it looked like I’d done it on purpose, rather than just running out of clothes. Also, braless the shoulder holster fit, but if I had to draw the gun I’d brush the edge of my breast. It was a small irritation, but it could make you hesitate for a second. Sometimes a second was enough to get you killed. I stood in the bathroom, grumpy and uncomfortable. It was like my skin was too small. Itchy with embarrassment and swallowed anger. I searched myself, with the same “eyes” that let you see images in your head, for that spot where the Harlequin had marked me. It was gone, but I could still see the spot like a bruise. A metaphysical bruise, as if their touch had hurt me in a way that would last.

I dried my hair a little more with a towel and actually scrunched some hair-care product in the curls. I was half embarrassed that I used stuff on my hair, but Jean-Claude had convinced me there was no shame to a little pampering. It still felt girlie to do it. Should you be worried about your hair frizzing when you wear a gun at least twelve of any given twenty-four hours? Seemed like you shouldn’t.

There was a soft knock on the door. “What?” I asked, and even to me it sounded angry. Shit.

“I’m sorry, Anita, but Jean-Claude sent me to check on you.”

“Sorry, Clay, it’s just been one of those days already.”

“Breakfast is waiting in the living room,” he said through the closed door.

“Is there coffee?” I asked.

“Fresh, from the guards’ break room.”

I took in a deep breath, let it out, and went for the door. Coffee. Everything would be better after coffee.

I expected Graham to be with Clay, but it was Sampson. He wasn’t a guard. In fact, he was sort of a visiting prince. He was the eldest son of the Master Vampire of Cape Cod, Samuel. Their vampire group wanted a closer tie with us, and one way to do that was for Sampson to audition as my new pomme de sang—apple of blood, like a kept mistress. It had been Nathaniel’s job until he moved up the power structure to my animal to call. Now I needed a new snacky bit, whether I liked it, or whether I didn’t. The ardeur needed more food. So far I’d managed to avoid having sex with Sampson. Since he was almost as embarrassed about the whole situation as I was, well, it hadn’t been that hard to avoid. It wasn’t that he wasn’t handsome. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a fall of dark curls that were identical to his father’s. He even had his father’s hazel eyes. In fact, he was one of those sons who looked like the father had cloned himself, except he was a few inches taller, and somehow softer. But then Samuel was over a thousand years old. You didn’t survive that long in vampire society by being soft. You certainly didn’t rise to be Master of the City by being soft, and you sure as hell didn’t stay there by being anything but hard.

Sampson smiled at me, and it was a nice smile, boyish, a little bashful. He was wearing a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled back and the collar loose. The shirt was untucked over dress slacks. He was barefoot. His mother was a mermaid, a siren, and it made Sampson react more like a shapeshifter sometimes. He didn’t like shoes, though he did like clothes better than my furry friends. Maybe water is colder?

“We’re shorthanded, remember?” Clay said.

“I remember.” Though I didn’t sound happy about it.

“Am I that big a disappointment?” Sampson asked, but his smile widened, and his eyes twinkled with it. He never seemed to take my bad moods personally. Of course, I’d met his mother, Thea. She was like the ocean: calm one minute, rising up to kill you the next. I think she’d sort of broken him to the thought that women were moody.

“Thanks for volunteering to be food so the red shirt guards could be elsewhere,” I said, and my voice sounded nicely dry and sarcastic.

“I heard you’d already fed the ardeur,” he said.

I nodded.

He held his arm out to me. “Then allow me to escort you to your master, and real food.”

I sighed, but I took his arm. Sampson was supposed to have been a short-term loan. To the larger vampire community he was here to try out for the position of pomme de sang. That was half the truth. The other half was that his mother was a siren, and the last of her kind. She was a genetic queen among the merfolk, magical, powerful, and most of that magic was sexual in nature. All mermaids could be alluring to mortals, but sirens could force you to wreck your ship. They could call you down to the sea and drown you and you’d enjoy it. They were sort of like master vampires, except more specialized, and more rare. Like I said, Thea was the last of her kind, unless her sons could be brought into their full power.

Problem was, the only way to bring a siren into their power was sex with another siren. Since Thea was the last of her kind and her sons were the last potential of her bloodline, well, it was all too Oedipus Rex for comfort.

She actually had no problem with doing the job herself. She’d been worshipped as a goddess once a few thousand years ago. Gods and goddesses married each other all the time, or at least fucked. But Samuel, though a thousand years old, was more conventional. He told her if she approached Sampson again for it, he’d kill her. Furthermore, if she approached their seventeen-year-old twin sons at all, he’d kill her. Again, so Greek tragedy. But if their sons could be as powerful as Thea, or even close, then suddenly Samuel’s family would rule the East Coast. They just would. They were our allies and friends. Jean-Claude had called Samuel friend for a few centuries. Them powerful didn’t seem like a bad idea.

The idea was that the ardeur might be similar enough to siren power that I might be able to bring Sampson into his sirenhood. If I could, great. If I couldn’t, then Thea had promised to leave her sons alone and accept that she was the last of the sirens. That her sons being half human, or half vampire, depending on how you looked at it, meant they weren’t mermaid enough to be what she was. See why I’d agreed to keeping Sampson around for a while? I mean, I was like their only chance to avoid a family tragedy of epic proportions. But it still made me feel squeachy.

But I slid my left arm through his arm. I let him lead me to the door, with Clay ahead of us doing the bodyguard thing. Though, frankly, since I was the only one armed, I didn’t feel all that protected. The only wolf I’d seen with a gun had been Jake. Jake had a military background, so Richard had given him permission to carry weaponry. I’d asked Richard’s permission to take some of the wolf guards to the shooting range and see who could handle a gun. He’d said he’d think about it. I had no idea why he had a problem with the werewolves being armed, but he was Ulfric, wolf king, and his word was law. I was lupa, but in wolf society that’s more like an uber-girlfriend. It’s not a queen, and it’s not equal. I preferred leopard society; it was less sexist. Nimir-Ra truly was equal to Nimir-Raj.

We were still in the stone corridor, with the draped walls of the living room in sight, when I heard enough voices to know it was a lot more than Jean-Claude waiting for me. Clay lifted to one side the heavy spill of drapes that made up the living room walls so Sampson and I could enter.

Jean-Claude and Richard had to turn on the couch to look as we entered. Jean-Claude’s face remained pleasant and welcoming as he stood. Richard’s face clouded over, his gaze flicking to Sampson on my arm. Richard fought to control his emotions, the effort visible on his face and in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands flexed. I appreciated that he was trying.

I appreciated the effort enough that I let go of Sampson’s arm and went to Richard. I leaned over the couch and kissed him on the cheek. He looked surprised, as if it had been a long time since I had kissed him first. There were, after all, so many choices. Micah stood across the room, setting his plate down on the glass coffee table with the rest of the food that someone had brought into the underground. Nathaniel was sitting on the floor by the table. He smiled at me, but he stayed where he was. He’d wait his turn for his greeting. I went to Jean-Claude next because he was closest. If we were doing formal we did the greetings more formally, but at breakfast with just us we tried not to sweat the niceties. Sampson had been raised in a kiss of vampires that did it old-school, which meant they all did the Miss Manners version, vampire style, no matter the hour or the event. By those rules I’d already made three mistakes. One, I had let go of Sampson’s arm. You stayed on your escort’s arm until someone more powerful got you off that arm, or until your escort introduced you to someone he was willing to give you up to. Two, I’d greeted someone in the room before I’d greeted the Master of the City. Three, I’d greeted a wereanimal ruler before greeting the highest-ranking vamp in the room. Old-school meant that no one was more important than the vampires. The exception to this rule at Sampson’s home was his mother, Thea. Technically she was Samuel’s animal to call, but if Sampson’s father had any weakness it was Thea, so you ignored her at your peril. She was queen to Samuel’s king no matter what vampire rules said.

Jean-Claude was in one of his very formal white shirts, with a real cravat held in place with a silver and sapphire stickpin on his chest. He’d even put on a black velvet jacket with matching silver buttons. It was very militaristic. The shirt I’d seen before, or one like it; the jacket was new—to me, at least. I hadn’t seen it yet, but I was pretty sure somewhere in the underground there was a huge room full of nothing but Jean-Claude’s clothes. The pants were actually cloth but fit tighter than any dress slacks I’d ever seen. The tight pants smoothed into thigh-high boots that were black and leather and had silver buckles up the side of them from ankle to midthigh. He was way too dressed up for just a family breakfast. When he drew me into his arms, the curls that brushed my face were still damp from the shower. If he took the time to bathe, he’d take the time to dry his hair.

“You seem tense, ma petite,” he whispered into my own damp hair.

“You’re way too well dressed for breakfast, and your hair is still damp, which means you dressed in a hurry. Why the rush?”

He kissed me gently, but I didn’t close my eyes or relax into the kiss. He sighed. “You are too observant for comfort at times, ma petite. We were going to allow you to finish your breakfast before we discussed business.”

“What business?” I asked.

Micah came up beside us. I went from Jean-Claude’s arms to his, and found that Micah, too, was too dressed up. He was in charcoal-gray dress pants and a pale green silk shirt, tucked into the pants. He was even wearing shiny dress shoes that were a few shades darker than the pants. Someone had French-braided his still-damp hair, which gave the illusion that his hair was very short and close to his head. It left his face bare so that all I could see was how very pretty he was. The bones of his face were damn near feminine. Somehow with some of his curls to distract the eye you didn’t notice it as much. The green shirt made his chartreuse eyes green, green like seawater with sunlight through it, swimmingly green with gold light caught in it.

I had to close my eyes to say, “What business?”

“Rafael has requested a breakfast meeting,” Micah said.

That made me open my eyes. “Clay told me Rafael was wanting something other than money for the extra guards.”

Micah nodded.

“Rafael is our ally and our friend, right? Why are you guys dressed up and all serious?” I looked around the room. When I caught sight of Claudia, she looked away. She looked uncomfortable, as if whatever Rafael wanted embarrassed her. What the hell could it be?

Nathaniel came to us, his ankle-length hair unbound and still heavy with water. He’d dried it, but it just took a while for that much hair to dry completely. This wet, the hair looked closer to a simple deep brown than the nearly copper auburn that it was. He was still carrying the couch cushion he’d been balancing his plate on, though the plate was on the table. He carried the cushion in front of his waist and groin. All I could see below the cushion was a pair of cream-colored leather boots that hit him midthigh.

“What aren’t you wearing behind that cushion?”

He threw the cushion behind him with a flourish and a grin. He was wearing a G-string that matched the boots, and that was it. I’d seen the outfit before, but never this early in the morning. “Not that I don’t appreciate the view, because I do, but isn’t it a little early for fetish wear?”

“All my dress shirts here are silk. My hair’s so wet it would stain them.” He pressed himself into my arms, and my hands curved under all that heavy hair and found it was still very wet, so wet that the skin of his naked back was cool and slightly damp to the touch. He was right, silk would have been ruined. My hands curved lower until I found the round, tight bareness of his buttocks. He flexed under my hands and I had to close my eyes and take a breath before I could say, “Why are you wearing this for a meeting with Rafael?”

Micah answered, “We thought it might remind Rafael what exactly being close to us means. Rumor has it, he’s vanilla.”

I stepped back from Nathaniel, because I had trouble thinking when I was touching any of my men naked. “Say that again.”

Richard’s voice, so unhappy that I knew the news was bad. “Rafael wants you, too?”

“I’m lost,” I said.

“Rafael has put himself forward as a candidate to be your new pomme de sang,” Jean-Claude said, his voice as bland and emptily pleasant as he could make it.

I just gaped at him. I couldn’t even think of anything to say.

Nathaniel touched my chin and closed my mouth, gently. He kissed my cheek, and said, “It’s okay, Anita.”

I swallowed and stared into that peaceful face. He smiled gently at me. I shook my head. “Why would he ask this? Rafael doesn’t do anything without a reason.”

Claudia cleared her throat sharply. We all turned to her. She looked as embarrassed as I’d ever seen her. “He’s afraid that Asher’s ties to the werehyenas will make them have closer ties to Jean-Claude and you than we do, the rats.”

“He’s my friend,” Richard said. “I am not friends with the werehyenas’ leader.”

“But Rafael isn’t friends with Jean-Claude, or Anita. It’s just a business arrangement with them. Asher is their lover, and his animal to call is the hyena now, so that makes the hyenas more essential to your plans than us.”

“The rats are our allies and friends,” I said, “and nothing personal to the hyenas, but I trust the rats a heck of a lot more one-on-one as guards than most of the hyenas.”

Claudia nodded. “With a few exceptions the hyenas are amateur muscle, and Rafael doesn’t recruit amateurs.”

“You guys are important to us, Claudia. Where the hell did Rafael get the idea that we’d dump him for Narcissus?” I asked.

She shrugged those wonderfully muscled shoulders as much as the muscles would allow. “He wants a closer tie to Jean-Claude, that’s all I know.”

I looked at Jean-Claude and Richard. “I don’t have to do this, right?”

“No, ma petite, you do not, but we must hear his case for it. I agree with not doing it. I think the other wereanimals would take it badly if you made someone’s king your new pomme de sang.”

“The other wereanimals are already jealous of Anita’s ties to the wereleopards and the wolves,” Sampson said. He’d walked around us to help himself to food and to take one of the chairs by the fireplace. I’d sort of forgotten he was there. He had that ability to blend into the woodwork when he wanted to. Not magic, just tact.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Those are our animals to call. We’re supposed to have a tighter bind to them.”

“True, but you, Anita, carry the strain for lion and at least one other lycanthrope strain. There are those among the community who believe they know why the doctors can’t identify that fourth strain in your body.” He took a bite of croissant, and I was suddenly hungry. With all that was happening, my stomach rolled and let me know there were other hungers besides the ardeur.

“What’s their theory?” I asked. I went to the table and started putting food on one of the white china plates. We had take-out food every morning, but by God we ate off real plates with real silverware. Though the silverware was actually gold-plated, so that there was no problem with everyone using the utensils. Real silver can burn the skin of a lycanthrope. Not burn as in blister, but burn as in itch and hurt.

“Chimera attacked you in lion form, which explains the lion lycanthropy, but he was also a panwere. You’ve discussed that you may be able to add new types of lycanthropy until you shapeshift for the first time, haven’t you?” Sampson asked.

“Yeah, we’ve discussed it, as a theory,” I said.

“Some in the shapeshifter community would like you to try to take on as many of their beasts as you can before you shift, so that they’ll have a tighter alliance with Jean-Claude.”

I looked at Claudia. “Is that true? Have people been suggesting that?”

“There has been talk.”

“Is that really what Rafael wants?” I asked. “I mean, he knows that Richard and I don’t want to put him in my bed, but is that just a ruse? He offers sex, I say no, and then he does a counterproposal of what…trying to give me rat-based lycanthropy?”

“I’m not sure what he plans to say,” she said.

I looked at Sampson. “How do you know all this?”

“I was raised in what amounts to a royal court, Anita. You live and die on your intelligence information.”

“I’ve noticed that Sampson has an almost uncanny ability to elicit confidences,” Jean-Claude said.

“You rolling them with mermaid tricks?” I asked.

He shrugged and took another bite of croissant.

“Using mind tricks on people without their permission is punishable by law,” I said.

“The law actually states that it’s illegal to use vampire tricks, telepathy, or witchcraft to elicit information without permission. I’m not using any of the three.”

“I could make a court case that mermaid power is a form of telepathy.”

“But I’m not reading their minds; they’re volunteering information to me. That’s not telepathy at all. Besides, this isn’t a court case, this is about how to swim through the rocks in your path.”

“And you have a suggestion,” I said, and let it sound as suspicious as I wanted it to.

He laughed and wiped his hands on the white napkin in his lap. “You can avoid the sex question by saying that I’m the next candidate, which is true. I can simply not give up my place as next in your bed. Their king knows I am the eldest son of another Master of the City, and I have prior claim to your affections.”

“And it will get you in her bed sooner,” Richard said; he sounded suspicious, too.

Sampson gave him a patient look with just an edge of impatience. “I have been here for months and not pushed my claim. Partly because, until Anita tries to bring me into my siren abilities, my mother will leave my brothers alone. I’m not at all convinced that the ardeur is similiar enough to my mother’s powers that Anita can awaken me to that other power. If I sleep with Anita and it doesn’t work, then my family is back to the same problem.”

“Your mother promised that if I couldn’t bring you into your sirenhood, she’d accept that she was the last siren, and she’d leave you and your brothers alone.”

He laughed and shook his head. “She’s not human, Anita, or a vampire; her word doesn’t mean what you think it means. She wants us to be sirens, and I don’t believe she’ll accept your failure gracefully. But as long as I’m here trying, then she’ll wait.”

“And she’ll leave your little brothers alone,” I said.

He nodded. “But my mother won’t wait forever, Anita. One of the reasons she traded Perdita to you as a blood donor was so Perdy could keep an eye on me.”

“She’s a spy?” I made it a question.

“I know she’s enjoying dating your Jason, but yes, she’s a spy. My father will accept and encourage that I’ve been a gentleman about everything, but my mother will lose patience with it.”

“We can send Perdita back when you go,” Richard said.

“She’s spying on me, not on you.”

“Your mom doesn’t trust you not to fudge on this,” I said.

“No, she doesn’t. She knows how much I want to avoid her doing anything that will force my father to kill her. He adores her, but if she forces sex on me or my brothers he will do what he vowed. He will slay the woman he loves above all others. It would destroy him, and our family.”

“You have been most patient,” Jean-Claude said.

I wanted to argue, but couldn’t. I nodded. “You have been.”

“So just like that he gets to fuck you,” Richard said.

I sighed. “You’ve done so well today, Richard. Don’t spoil it.”

“And how would you feel if I picked one of the women here in the underground to have sex with while you fuck Sampson?”

I looked at him. I thought of several things to say, none of them helpful.

“You wouldn’t like it, would you?” he said.

“No,” I said, not sure what else to say.

“Then don’t expect me to enjoy sharing you.”

“I don’t expect you to like it, Richard. I don’t think Jean-Claude likes it either, or Micah.” I looked at Nathaniel. I both frowned and smiled.

“I like sharing,” he said, with a smile.

“Good for you,” Richard said. “I don’t.”

“You’re having sex with the human women you’re dating,” I said.

“Some of them, yes I am.”

“You’re doing that by choice; I’m doing this because I have to.”

“You’ll still enjoy it,” he said.

“Would it make you happier if the sex were bad?”

“Yes.” He stood up, and let me finally see that he was wearing nice jeans and a red T-shirt. He’d probably refused fetish wear, and I didn’t think he had any dress clothes here. “Yes, it would make me feel better if I didn’t know you’d enjoy it.”

“I don’t know what to say to that, Richard, I really don’t.”

“I’m not having sex with anyone but Anita, and I don’t have a problem with this,” Micah said.

“No, of course you don’t, because you’re perfect,” Richard said.

Micah looked at me, as if asking how much fight to have.

“Don’t fight,” I said. “Let’s eat, then we’ll talk about what to say to Rafael.”

“And just because she says ‘don’t fight,’ you won’t fight, will you?” Richard asked.

“Usually, no,” Micah said.

“Sometimes, Micah, I hate you,” Richard said.

“Right back at you,” Micah said with a smile.

Richard’s power slapped along my skin like tiny bites of heat. But Micah was closer, and when his power flared, too, it was like standing too close to an open oven. “Stop it, both of you.”

“Mon chat, mon ami, we do not have time for this.”

“I am not your friend,” Richard said. “I am your wolf to call, but that does not make us friends.”

Jean-Claude took a deep breath, let it out, and went very still. Still in that way that the old ones could go, so that you felt if you looked away they’d vanish, even though they were standing right there. His voice when it came was neutral, pleasant, in an empty, impersonal way. “As you like, Richard. Mon chat, and mon lupe, we do not have time for this.”

Richard turned toward him, his power filling up the room like hot bathwater that had gotten out of hand. You thought you were having a nice relaxing bath, and suddenly you were drowning. My pulse sped up, and the wolf inside me stirred.

I closed my eyes and started breathing, deep and even, breathing from the soles of my feet to the top of my chest. Deep cleansing breaths, to still that movement deep inside me. To isolate me from what Richard was doing. It was his power, not mine. I did not have to respond to it. Part of me believed that, but part of me knew better. His power and mine had married too tightly.

“Don’t call me that,” Richard said.

“If you are only my wolf to call and you are not my friend, then what else can I call you?” Jean-Claude’s voice was very flat when he said it. I realized suddenly that he was angry, too. Angry at Rafael? Angry at the Harlequin? Angry at everything?

“Not that, not just wolf.”

“You take insult where none is intended, but if you will find insult where none is meant, then perhaps I should try harder to insult on purpose.”

The sound of the heavy outer door banged loud in the charged silence. It made me jump. “Rafael is here,” Claudia said. Her voice managed to sound relieved and worried all at the same time, as if she was happy to cut the fight short, but worried what her king would do.

Richard was glaring at Jean-Claude, and the vampire was finally letting his anger show on his face when Rafael walked through the far drapes. Rafael was tall, dark, and handsome. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the six-foot, darkly Hispanic man in his nicely cut business suit. He’d left the tie off, so that the white dress shirt framed the hollow of his neck like an invitation. That last thought didn’t sound like my own. I glanced at Jean-Claude, wondering if it was his. He’d fed on someone’s blood today, I could tell that much, but I knew that sometimes he lusted after powerful blood the way that other men lusted after pretty women. What I hadn’t known until that moment was that he lusted after Rafael as food.

Another surprise was behind him. Louie Fane, Dr. Louis Fane, teacher of biology at Washington University, and live-in boyfriend of one of my best friends. Ronnie, Veronica, Sims would probably have told me boyfriend sounded too junior high school. She’d have probably preferred the term lover, but it was my interior dialogue so I could use the words I wanted. Besides, Ronnie’s continuing campaign to make her and Louie’s relationship about sex and not emotion was her problem, not mine. Though sometimes she made it mine.

Louie was five foot six, slender, but not weak looking. Today his arms were covered, but when they were bare fine muscles played in his forearms. His hair was straight and dark, and cut short, freshly so, because I’d seen him only last week and it had been past his ears; now it wasn’t. His face was softly squared, almost the only hint that his mother had been from Ecuador. That and the black eyes, darker even than my own.

I was surprised to see Louie. Don’t know why; he was Rafael’s second-in-command. How did a mild-mannered college prof get to be second banana in an animal group made up mostly of mercs and ex-criminals? By being smart, and not nearly as soft as he looked.

“Rafael, King of the Rodere of St. Louis, welcome,” Jean-Claude said. The formality of the greeting set the tone.

“Jean-Claude, Master of the City of St. Louis, I am honored that you have invited me into your home.” His gaze went to Richard. “Ulfric of the Thronnos Rokke Clan, friend and ally, thank you for seeing me so early in the day.”

I was close enough to hear the sharp intake of breath, and I thought Richard would say something that went with that almost violent breath, but he let the air out slowly. It shuddered a little on its way out, and he spoke almost normally. “Rafael, King of Rats, friend and ally, there’s plenty of food, help yourself.”

“Thank you,” Rafael said, and some tension I hadn’t realized was there went out of his broad shoulders, as if he’d worried about Richard’s reaction, too.

Louie went to Richard, and they did that guy handshake/hug, where you grip forearms and sort of bump shoulders. I heard him say, “Sorry about this.”

If Richard said anything, I didn’t hear it because Micah was talking to Rafael. “Are the leopards so unimportant that you do not even greet their king or queen?”

Of all the people in the room, I hadn’t expected problems from Micah. From the look on Rafael’s face, him either. “I meant no disrespect, Nimir-Raj.”

“Yes, you did,” Micah said.

“Micah…,” I said.

He shook his head at me. “No, Anita, we can’t let an insult like this go. We can’t.”

Richard said, “You finally find something worth fighting for, Micah?”

He gave Richard a cold look. “What would you do if Rafael had ignored you and greeted every other leader in the room?”

Anger flashed over Richard’s face, then smoothed out. “I wouldn’t like it.”

“Jean-Claude, you need to teach your cats better manners,” Rafael said.

That got my attention, and not in a good way. I moved to stand by Micah. Nathaniel moved up with us, though a little behind us. We were king and queen; you didn’t stand in front of the royalty, even if you were living with them.

“We aren’t pets,” I said.

“You are Jean-Claude’s human servant, and the leopards have no connection to the Master of the City except through you, Anita. They are not linked directly to the vampires of this city.”

I felt movement around us as the bodyguards shifted nervously. Rafael didn’t even look at them. I did. I looked at Claudia, and she actually blushed. “Whose side are you on if the flags go up?” I asked.

“Do you actually believe you could challenge me?” Rafael said, and he sounded amused. I ignored him and kept my gaze on Claudia. Micah had his attention on Rafael, and I knew he’d let me know if I needed to look at the big man.

“Come on, Claudia, Fredo, talk to me. You’re our bodyguards, but he’s your king. If it goes bad, can we depend on you, or not?”

“They are my people,” Rafael said. “They owe their loyalty to me.”

I finally looked at him. It was not a friendly look. “Then they need to leave this room, now. We need hyena and wolves in here, now.”

“They are no match for my people,” Rafael said.

“Maybe not, but at least I can trust who they’ll jump for.”

Clay had hit his radio and was relaying my request.

Rafael looked at Jean-Claude. “Are the leopards in charge here, Jean-Claude? It is what I had heard, but I had not believed it.” He had turned away from us as if we didn’t matter.

I had a horrible urge to draw my gun, but knew I’d never get it out in time. Not with Claudia and Fredo in the room. And besides, I wouldn’t really shoot him over an insult, and you never draw a gun unless you’re willing to use it. I wasn’t willing to use it, but I was really wanting a way to wipe that arrogance off Rafael’s face.

Wolves and hyenas spilled into the room, at a run. We now had more of our people in the room than we did wererats. The tightness in my stomach eased a little.

“Rafael,” Richard said, “why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” he asked. “Treating the leopards as the lesser power they are supposed to be?”

Richard let his face show the surprise he felt. “Are you purposefully trying to bait Anita?”

“I have come to negotiate with the Master of the City and his triumvirate of power. His animal to call and his human servant.”

“I’m also the leopard’s queen, and they are my animal to call,” I said. “You can’t insult one half of my power base while you try to negotiate with the other.”

“Exactly,” Rafael said.

“What?” I asked.

“You have made your point, Rafael,” Jean-Claude said.

I looked from one to the other. “Not to me, he hasn’t.”

“I’m confused, too,” Richard said.

“I have worked for years to build the wererats into a force to be reckoned with, bargained with, a force not to be treated lightly. Though I may dislike Narcissus, he, in his own way, has also built the werehyenas up into a force to be reckoned with.” He motioned at us, the only three leopards in the room. “The leopards were the playthings of the wolves when Raina was their lupa. Gabriel, the leader of the leopards, was her pawn. Then Anita killed both of them. She became lupa to the wolves and tried to protect the leopards. I was happy that the leopards had a true protector, someone who did not just use them. No group deserves the treatment that they suffered at Gabriel’s hands.” He walked toward us, slowly, nothing menacing in that movement, but I fought an urge to step back. Somehow I wasn’t sure I wanted him that close to me, to us.

Rafael spoke as he moved calmly toward us. “Then Anita became more than just a human with extraordinary powers. By all accounts she may truly be a shapeshifter one of these moons.”

“So what?” I asked. “So what if I finally turn furry for real?”

“Leopard is not Jean-Claude’s animal to call, it is yours. Yet you are not a vampire. You are leopard queen, but not a wereleopard. The wolves’ lupa, but not a werewolf. Now the lions are yours to call. If Joseph and his pride would only give you someone worthy to choose, you would have another animal to bind to you. The lions are weaker even than the leopards, but if you find a mate among them, they will move up, they will be powerful, and they do not deserve it.”

I was beginning to see what his point was, and I even understood why he’d put himself forward as food. “You do everything according to the rules,” I said, “and then this metaphysical wild card comes out of nowhere and suddenly animal groups that are weak by your standards have more ties to Jean-Claude. The leopards are a small group, but they’re intimate with the vampires, so they’re powerful. You think the same thing will happen with the lions.”

“Yes,” Rafael said.

“You are serious about being Anita’s pomme de sang,” Richard said, “because it’s the only way you can see getting closer to the power structure.”

Rafael nodded and looked at the other man. “I am sorry, my friend, but if I cannot guarantee my people’s safety through strength of arms and traditional methods, then I am willing to whore myself for their safety.”

“I do not hold the leopards above you in esteem,” Jean-Claude said.

“If there was a choice between saving the rats and saving the leopards, who would you choose?”

“There will not be a choice like that,” Jean-Claude said.

“Perhaps not, but there might be a choice between the hyenas and the rats. Narcissus is not my friend, and now Asher’s animal to call is his people.”

“Asher is not master here,” Jean-Claude said.

“No, but you love him, have loved him for centuries. That is a powerful bond, Jean-Claude. If Asher whispered sweetly enough, would you deny him and his animals? Or would you side with him over my people?”

“Are you planning on challenging the hyenas to a war?” Jean-Claude asked it almost jokingly. But I knew that tone of voice; it was the tone he used when he was worried he was right.

“No, but we are not animals, any of us,” Rafael said.

“Our master would not start a war with you, rat king.” This from Remus.

Rafael shook his head. “You are one of the reasons that I fear a war, Remus. When your Oba, your leader, was only recruiting martial artists and weight lifters, pretty muscle that had never known a real fight without referees, I did not worry, but you are the real thing, Remus. He has hired several ex-military, ex-police.”

“He did that because of what happened when Chimera took over his men,” I said. “Narcissus learned the difference between a bouncer and a soldier. He learned it the hard way. He lost a lot of his men to Chimera.”

“And you killed Chimera for him,” Rafael said, giving me all the attention of those dark eyes.

“I killed him for all of us. He wouldn’t have left the rats alone either.”

Rafael came to stand in front of us. I fought the urge to grab Micah’s hand. Rafael hadn’t done anything threatening, just being six feet tall and standing over us. Usually tall didn’t intimidate me, but there was something about him today. Something bad.

“We were too powerful for Chimera to attack, and he did not hold rat lycanthropy in his body.”

“He tried to take over several groups that he didn’t hold the lycanthropy for,” I said.

“If I had any liking for men, I’d offer myself to Jean-Claude and be done with it.”

I didn’t even try to keep the shock off my face. I did grab Micah’s hand, as if the world had gotten shaky and I needed something to cling to. Rafael did not say things like this.

“But men do not interest me, so I do the next best thing. I offer myself to you, Anita. Because you protect those in your bed. And something about you brings power to your lovers. I do not understand it, but Nathaniel is the perfect example of one of the least wereanimals becoming something so much more, just because of you, Anita.”

Nathaniel moved to touch my shoulder. I jumped, then eased into the touch, and a little away from this strange version of Rafael. He was afraid. I could feel it.

“What has Narcissus done to make you think your rats are in danger?” Jean-Claude said.

Rafael glanced at him. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing. I give you my word of honor that I have heard nothing, but you are cautious and thoughtful. This is not like you, Rafael; only something serious, and dangerous, could make you come to us like this.” Jean-Claude sat down on the couch and said, “Sit with us, eat, and tell us what Narcissus has said or done to make you willing to say such things to ma petite.”

Rafael closed his eyes, his hands in fists. “Your word of honor that you don’t know. Then it can’t be true.”

“What cannot be true, mon ami? Talk to us. We are allies and friends; posturing and threats do not become us.”

Micah pulled me away from Rafael and closer to the food. We weren’t backing away from the rat king; we were just going to eat. Sure, but it saved face, and I was hungry. No matter what emergency was happening, I still hadn’t even had coffee. One of the side effects of the ardeur and the almost-lycanthropy was that I couldn’t not eat. Not without consequences, like sex I’d regret later, or having my body almost tear itself apart because it couldn’t decide what animal it most wanted to be.

We actually got everyone settled with food, and Rafael stopped being all strange and scary. He sat on the love seat with Louie, with his guards at his back. We took the couch. It was big enough that everyone but Nathaniel had a seat. He curled up at my feet and made the scanty leather outfit work for him. The only one in the room who knew how to be more seductive at the drop of a hat was Jean-Claude, and he was all business. Though to him, sometimes seduction was business, but not this morning.

I nibbled on a croissant and a variety of cheese and fruit, and for the dozenth time wondered how to put a real kitchen into the Circus underground. Breakfast takeout was too damn limited. But the coffee was good. I sipped it black, because the first cup should always be black. It’s the morning slap in the face that lets you know you’re awake.

“Now,” said Jean-Claude, “Rafael, my friend, talk to us. What has Narcissus said or done to alarm you so?”

“He said that he would offer himself to Anita as a pomme de sang, and with that, and his tie to your love, Asher, he would be the second most powerful animal group in St. Louis, after the wolves.”

“He said this to you?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Not to me personally, no.”

“Then how did you hear of it?”

“One of my rats likes the way that Narcissus makes love. Narcissus is beside himself now that Asher’s animal to call is hyena. He had offered himself to Asher as Asher’s animal to call, and been turned down.”

News to me, I thought.

“Asher was flattered,” Jean-Claude said, “but we both felt it would make the other groups nervous if Narcissus was so honored.”

I fought not to look at Jean-Claude, because shouldn’t someone have mentioned it to me? I sipped coffee and tried to keep my face blank, not always my best thing. I drank the coffee too fast to enjoy it, but it kept me from giving anything away, or I hoped it did.

“But Asher goes to Narcissus’s club, and he enjoys the entertainment,” Rafael said.

Narcissus’s club was a bondage and submission club, and entertainment could cover a lot of ground. I hadn’t known that Asher was going over there. I know that it feels good to be around your animal. I liked being around the leopards, and the wolves, and even the lions. But…it was like a lot was happening and I’d been out of the loop. I didn’t like that.

“Asher enjoys what the club has to offer, but he has turned down Narcissus’s more personal offers, again because he thought other animal groups might take it badly if he were to show such favor to Narcissus,” Jean-Claude said.

“Narcissus seems to think that it’s only a matter of time before Asher gives in to his charms.”

“He does not know Asher as well as he believes,” Jean-Claude said.

“Asher enjoys the bondage,” Rafael said.

Jean-Claude shrugged, that wonderful Gallic movement that meant everything and nothing. Which meant Rafael might be right. Again, news to me. What else was my vampire “master” keeping from me?

“If Narcissus can seduce your Asher, he will do so. He will try to seduce you,” Rafael said.

“Narcissus has tried to seduce me in the past. He failed,” Jean-Claude said.

“He says the old Master of the City, Nikolaos, gave you to him several times. He has bragged of your body and what he did to it.” Rafael studied Jean-Claude’s face as he said it, as he’d studied mine. It looked like he was even making eye contact, not always wise with a vampire.

Jean-Claude gave him a lovely, blank face. “He has not bragged to you.”

“You are certain of that?” Rafael said.

“Very. He had a tendency to talk during…during. He might have talked of me while he was doing similar things to someone else. In fact, I would be surprised if he had not. He enjoyed comparing and contrasting his lovers, and his victims.”

“So you were his lover?”

“No, I was his victim. Nikolaos gave me to him with no safe word, no way to stop him from doing what he wished with me, except my own poor art of persuasion.”

Rafael laughed, an abrupt and unhappy sound. “‘Poor art,’ false modesty from what I hear. Narcissus would give a great deal to have you back as his…victim.”

“So he has said.”

“He seems confident that Asher is the key to your bed. And if not Asher, then Anita. He believes sincerely that he will find a way to your libido again through them.”

Finally something I could address without revealing that I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening with Asher and the hyenas. “You don’t have to worry about me and Narcissus. He’s really not my cup of tea.”

Rafael nodded, his face still serious. We couldn’t seem to get a smile out of him this morning. “Am I your cup of tea, Anita?”

I felt Richard stiffen beside me. I glanced around him to Jean-Claude. “Can I talk plainly without upsetting the political apple cart here?”

“Talk, and we shall see.”

Not a rousing endorsement, but I’d take what I could get. “You’re handsome, and if it was a date, we could talk, but you want to skip to sex, and I’m just not that casual about it.”

He gave me a look. It was a very judgmental look. I gave him an unhappy look back.

“Yeah, I have a lot of lovers, but they aren’t casual lovers, Rafael.”

He let out a breath, sipped some coffee, then said, “Perhaps not, but there is something about being your lover that seems to up the power level of every man that you…give yourself to.”

“Not true,” I said.

“Name a single lover you have had who has not gained power from it.”

“I can name three: London, Requiem, and Byron,” I said.

“The first two were master vampires before you slept with them. It’s hard to judge how much power they arrived in St. Louis with, and how much they may have gained. Byron you slept with only once. Once doesn’t seem to be enough.” He sat his coffee down on his plate. “Fine, your regular lovers gain power.”

“I think you overestimate me.”

Rafael handed his plate to Louie, who stood and put it on the coffee table, as if he’d been told to do it. Rafael looked at me. He looked at me as if he would see through me to the other side. It was a look to study, weigh, and measure a person. I tried not to squirm under that gaze, but it was hard work.

“What?” I asked.

He looked at Jean-Claude. “She doesn’t know, does she?”

“I am not certain that I know what you mean,” Jean-Claude said.

“Jean-Claude, every lover Anita has gains power. Asher was a master vampire in name only, almost, but since he’s been in her bed he’s gained enough power to have his own territory if he didn’t love you both too much to leave. Nathaniel was everyone’s victim; now he is becoming someone to be reckoned with. You, personally, have gained more power than you ever dreamed.”

“And you believe that it is ma petite who has given me power, not that I have shared my power with her?”

“She has her own triumvirate of power, Jean-Claude. Her own vampire servant in Damian.”

“I am not the power behind the throne, Rafael. Trust me, Jean-Claude is plenty powerful enough for both of us.”

“He is, but he gained most of that power after you became his lover.”

“I gained powers after he made me his servant,” I said, “not the other way around.”

“I’ve been talking to some of the wererats in Europe,” Rafael said. “They speak of your Belle Morte, the creator of your bloodline. They say that she could give power to her lovers, if she chose.”

“Belle Morte does not choose to share power with anyone,” Jean-Claude said.

“No, but she can; through sex, she can make her lovers more powerful. Legend has it that once she made kings and emperors through her touch. She changed the face of Europe through her bed.”

“She ruled from her bedroom, that is true, but not in the way you think. She chose only the powerful, only those who could give her something she wanted. And I did not gain power in her bed. I was her pawn for centuries. As was Asher.”

“Masters of the City often kill their own vampire children if they become too powerful, true?” Rafael said.

“Some do.”

“But isn’t it strange that so many of the vampires who were nearly powerless around Belle Morte have gained power the longer they are away from her?”

“What are you saying, Rafael?”

“I have heard rumors that some masters can retard the powers of their followers.”

“Some can, but I do not believe Belle is one of them.”

“Why not?”

He gave that shrug again.

Frankly, the rats were a little too well informed for comfort. I’d seen a master vampire gain new powers once in America and far enough away from his old master. But I wasn’t sure it was on purpose; I’d actually begun to wonder if some powerful masters gave off a sort of hormone that retarded the power of those around them. No way to test it, but I’d seen some of what Rafael was saying.

“There are rats in every city,” Sampson said, and like last time it was as if we’d all forgotten him.

Rafael nodded. “There are.”

I had this image of hundreds of rats scampering in the walls, hearing things, and what they heard, the rat king heard. Did it work that way? For real? I wanted to ask, but in this mood, I wasn’t sure how he’d take the question.

“I am the son of two powers, but you did not concern yourself that you had insulted me,” Sampson said.

“I don’t know what you are to Jean-Claude and Anita.”

“So you would ignore me, and see if it got a reaction?”

Rafael nodded.

“I am the next lover in line for Anita.”

“Why have you waited so long?”

“It is the lady’s privilege to keep a man waiting.”

They were supposed to be talking about me, but it was like I was missing the conversation, or not truly understanding it all.

“Would you allow me to jump ahead of you in line?”

Sampson shook his head. “No.”

He looked at Jean-Claude. “Is this your final word, that the sea king’s son is more important than I am, than my rats are, to you?”

“That is not what is being said here, Rafael,” Jean-Claude said.

“I believe that any animal that comes to your bed, or Anita’s bed, is more important to you, Jean-Claude. Deny it if you like, but the proof is in the pudding, eh?”

“The proof is in the eating of it,” Jean-Claude said, “for all puddings look sweet.”

“Do I or any of my people look sweet to you?” he asked.

I felt Claudia’s reaction from across the room. A flare of power, like a metaphysical slap to remind us how really powerful she was. That one splash of heated energy said loud and clear that it didn’t matter how tasty anyone thought she was, she wasn’t playing.

Rafael let out a careful breath and rotated his neck, as if that slap of energy had been more energetic the closer you’d been to it. “I would not force any of my rats into someone’s bed. But if some would choose it, would you take them as blood or flesh donors?”

“Define flesh,” I said.

“Sex,” he said.

Richard shifted beside me on the couch. “The rats don’t give blood to anyone. It was one of your first rules as king. Nikolaos tortured you because you forbade your rats to feed her vampires.”

“She was unstable, and farther away from her was safer for my people. Closer to Jean-Claude seems safer.”

“You’d really let your rats be blood whores?” Richard sounded almost shocked.

“I would.”

“You think that if some of your rats come into our bedrooms, your people will be that much safer?” Micah asked.

“If our positions were reversed, what would you do?”

“Not this,” Richard said.

“I am asking the Nimir-Raj,” Rafael said.

Richard shifted uncomfortably on one side of me while Micah seemed to settle back more comfortably. “I’ve already done what you’re suggesting.”

Rafael nodded. “You offered yourself to Anita and Jean-Claude and now your pard, though one of the smallest groups in the area, is one of the most secure groups in all of St. Louis. How many of your leopards donate blood to the vampires?”

“Most of them.”

Rafael spread his hands, as if to say, See?

I wanted to argue with them, but I tried to be honest. Was his reasoning sound? Through us, Micah was in charge of the furry coalition hotline, which meant he was beginning to be the go-to guy for most of the lycanthropy community. He was the liaison between us and the larger community. His television time was even going up. He gave good sound bite.

The leopards had fewer members than almost any other group, yet no one messed with them. Because I, or Jean-Claude, or our people, kept killing anyone who fucked with them.

I looked at the rat king. “Damn,” I said, softly.

“Yes,” he said.

I glanced down the couch at Richard and Jean-Claude. “He’s not wrong, is he?”

“I cannot argue with some of his reasoning,” Jean-Claude said.

“No,” Richard said, “he’s not right.”

“I didn’t say he was right, Richard, just that he’s not wrong,” I said.

“That makes no sense. If Rafael isn’t wrong, then he has to be right.” Richard turned his body so he was facing me, and blocked my view of Jean-Claude—those broad shoulders of his getting in the way.

“He’s right that our lovers are safer. He’s wrong if he thinks we’d leave the rats out to dry if someone threatened them.”

“You are tied to us only by money and contracts,” Rafael said. “I would feel better if you were tied with more intimate things.”

“You have our word that we will honor our treaty with you,” Jean-Claude said.

“But you have a treaty with the hyenas, as well, and I do not believe that Asher will keep refusing the bounty that Narcissus is shoving at him.”

“Do not make the mistake of thinking Asher is weak. He is not,” Jean-Claude said.

“You are in love with him; you do not see him clearly.”

“I could say to you that you are not in love with him, and you do not see him clearly because of it.”

“Order him not to be intimate with the hyenas and I will be content with it.”

“I would rather not give such an order,” Jean-Claude said.

“You have no right to ask that of Jean-Claude, or Asher,” Micah said.

“What would you do if you were me, Nimir-Raj?”

“I would have offered myself less confrontationally. If refused, I’d have offered others of my people until some became food and hopefully one, or more, would catch someone’s eye for sex.”

“Am I going about this wrong?”

“Yes.”

“It is an area of politics I am unprepared for,” Rafael said. “Teach me, Micah. Help me.”

Micah sighed. He scooted to the edge of the couch and looked past Richard to Jean-Claude. “What do you want me to do?”

“Help him, if you can.”

Micah leaned back and looked at me. He just looked at me, and the look was enough between us. I shrugged and said, “Help him, I guess.”

Micah settled back against the couch and put an arm across my shoulders, which made Richard move a little farther away. I don’t think Micah meant to make Richard move. I think he wanted to touch me, and after last night there’d been the possibility that Richard wouldn’t mind an accidental touch. But apparently Rafael’s issues had raised some of Richard’s own. Hell, it had raised some of mine. I just wasn’t sure which ones yet.

“Blood donors would be welcome,” Micah said, “and some of your rats have already offered to feed the ardeur for Anita.”

“But she has touched none of them,” Rafael said.

“You haven’t sent her anyone she likes enough, yet.”

“Help me pick them.”

“Guys,” I said, “guys, I am still sitting right here, okay? Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

“Then you pick,” he said.

I slumped and let my hair hide my face. Shit. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“She likes pretty men,” Richard said, “and that’s not what you hire for.”

I looked up at him, sitting right beside me, talking about what kind of man I liked. “I thought you’d be having a fit about this,” I said.

He frowned, but said, “I don’t like it, but Rafael is right, about us keeping our lovers closer and safer.”

“If you care for someone enough to have sex with them, then you’re supposed to take care of them,” I said.

“Exactly,” Richard said. “It’s how you feel about it.”

“And what’s wrong with the way I feel about it?”

“Nothing,” he said, “but it means Rafael is right. You do take care of your lovers. You just do.”

“Don’t you?” I asked.

He looked surprised for a second, then gave a smile that left his eyes tired and more cynical than I’d ever seen him. “No, sometimes it’s just about fucking.”

I gave him wide eyes.

“I’d love it to always be hearts and flowers, but the one woman I love more than any other doesn’t want me, so what am I supposed to do while you sleep with six or seven other guys? Wait my turn? Watch?”

We had company, or I might have pointed out to him that he had watched before, and he had waited his turn, and he’d even helped Jean-Claude make love to me. But we had company, and I didn’t want to fight with him.

“So you don’t take care of everyone that comes to your bed?”

“I take care of my wolves, but if they aren’t pack, sometimes the sex proves that it won’t work.”

“So you break up with them after the sex?”

“Sometimes.”

I gave him a look.

“You know who I keep comparing them to, Anita.”

It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t want to marry Richard. I was allowed to want the men I wanted, and love who I wanted. “So it’s my fault that you’re sleeping around, and that you’ve turned into one of those men who break up with a woman after one night of sex?”

He gave me a long look out of those chocolate-brown eyes. “If the shoe fits…,” he said, with an unpleasant smile.

I guess we were going to fight after all. “It isn’t me you keep comparing everybody to, Richard, it’s Raina.”

He actually blushed under the permanent tan of his skin. It was maybe the second time I’d ever seen him blush. “Don’t, Anita.”

Micah had gone very still beside me, as if he were wondering if he should take his arm out from between us.

“You back off of me, and I’ll back off of you,” I said.

“Richard,” it was Louie, “we had this talk, remember?”

Richard stood up, and his power washed around the room like a wind from the mouth of hell. It actually hurt where it touched. “I remember the talk.” He stared down at me, and there was such hatred on his face. “I tried last night, Anita, I really tried.”

My throat was tight, and my eyes burned. I was already regretting what I’d said, would have done anything to take it back. “I know you did, Richard.” My voice sounded small.

“But it’s never enough, is it?”

I took a deep breath and stood up. We faced each other. I wanted to run away, but I stood there and watched the hate and pain on his face, the way his big hands kept flexing into fists. His anger breathed through the room like some sort of invisible burning beast.

“I don’t know what to say, Richard.”

“What would be enough?” he asked.

“What?” I asked.

“What would be enough? Move in with you and Micah and Nathaniel? Move in here with you and Jean-Claude? What do I have to do to win with you, Anita?”

“It isn’t about winning, Richard. God, don’t you understand that?”

“No,” he said, “I don’t.” He pointed at Jean-Claude. “Him I get. I feel his pull, too. He’s my master, too.” He pointed at Micah. “But him, I don’t get him. He’s in my place in your life, don’t you understand that?”

I nodded, and tried to breathe past the tight burning in my throat and eyes. I would not cry, damn it. “I understand that,” I said.

He pointed at Nathaniel, who’d gone very still beside the couch. “How can you share her with that?”

It was Micah who figured out that he was the one Richard was talking to. “Nathaniel is not a that, Richard.” Micah’s voice held a thread of anger.

“Do you fuck him? Do you let him fuck you? Or do you just fuck Anita at the same time?”

The unshed tears were going away on a hot wave of anger. I fed the anger, embraced it, called it sweet names, because I’d rather fight than cry.

“The way you and Jean…,” I started to say.

Jean-Claude called the fight. He called it with a push of power that staggered both of us. I nearly fell, and Richard looked ashen. We both turned and looked at the vampire. His eyes were glittering blue pools, like the night sky was on fire.

“Enough of this.” His voice whispered through the room like an echo of bats, bouncing off the curtains.

I knew he was our master, but I’d never felt him do anything like this to us. Never felt him simply throw his power into us and stop us in our tracks. I hadn’t known he had it in him.

“We are in danger here, do you not understand that? Most of our guards are wererats. If Rafael pulls them out, we do not have enough guards to keep ourselves safe.” He uncurled from the couch and walked toward us, his long black curls moving in the wind of his own power.

We watched him come toward us like small birds that wanted to fly from the snake, but couldn’t make ourselves move.

“I am sorry, mon lupe, that you wish her to marry you and abandon the rest of us. I am sorry, ma petite, that you still love him, and that some part of you wishes you could do exactly what he wants. I am sorry that I have bound you together into such pain. But there is no time for this. We need Rafael and his people. He knows that, or he would not have come like this.” Jean-Claude stood in front of us, and his power pushed so that I swayed in the wind of it. I knew he’d gained in power, but I hadn’t understood, until that moment, just how much. “I will pick a blood donor among the rats. I will urge others of my vampires to do the same. You, ma petite, must choose one of his people for food. You must embrace Sampson, or do something for him that will allow his honor to step aside and let you take one of the wererats ahead of him as food for your ardeur.”

He stopped in front of us, close enough that he could have touched us. For the first time in years, I prayed that he wouldn’t touch me. If he did, I’d do anything he asked.

He touched Richard’s arm, and he shuddered under that light touch. He closed his eyes and swayed. I touched Richard’s other arm, and I thought, No. No, don’t do this.

My necromancy opened inside me in a rush that left me wide-eyed, open-mouthed. Because it wasn’t just my necromancy. I felt it like an offering to Jean-Claude. If he could figure out how to use it, it was his to command while he touched us.

Richard breathed, “Don’t, please, don’t.”

I wasn’t sure which of us he was talking to. I stared at Jean-Claude, and felt my eyes go. I saw the room through that vampiric flame, but it wasn’t someone else’s powers taking over my eyes, it was me. If there’d been a mirror I knew my eyes would have been filled with a black-brown light of my own eyes, as if I were the vampire.

Richard collapsed to his knees between us, with our hands still on his arms. He whispered, “Oh, God.” I looked down at him, and he gazed up at me with eyes turned to brown flame. Not my fire taking over him, but his own true brown eyes turned to vampire fire.

21

RICHARD WAS STARING at himself in the bathroom mirror. His big hands clung to the marble sink edge as if he were trying to leave an imprint of his hands on the stone. I’d tried to be comforting. I’d tried to be reassuring. Nothing I said had helped. Jean-Claude had been with us, but Richard truly didn’t want to talk to him. He seemed to blame Jean-Claude for this new sign that his humanity was slipping away.

“The glow will fade, Richard,” I said, not for the first time. Since he wouldn’t let me touch him, I was left to lean against the far side of the sink and wall, arms crossed under my breasts. I’d already checked on my bra that was hanging by the towels. It was still too wet to wear.

He shook his head. “This is what my eyes would look like if I were the vampire.”

I wasn’t sure it was a question, but I answered it anyway. “Yes.”

He looked at me, and it was unsettling to see his tanned and very alive face set with eyes that I’d only seen in the faces of the undead. It didn’t match, that life and those eyes. His fear came off him in waves, so that his power bit and flitted against my skin like hot ash from a windy fire.

“You’re not afraid of this. Why, why aren’t you afraid of this?” he asked.

I shrugged and tried to put into words something I was trying not to think about. “I’m treating this the way I treat an emergency in the middle of a police investigation, Richard. You don’t get too hung up on the horrible details or you stop being able to function. You keep moving forward, because you have to.”

“This isn’t your job, Anita. This isn’t my job!” The air was suddenly close and hot. I was bathed in his power, and it was hard to breathe past it. The wolf that was always inside me now, stirred.

“You’re going to raise my wolf, Richard.”

He looked away from me, and nodded. “Mine, too.”

The wolf began to pad up that metaphorical corridor inside me. I shivered and started to back away toward the door. I needed out of this hot bath of power. “You’re the Ulfric, Richard. Control yourself.”

He turned and looked at me through a curtain of his own thick hair. His eyes were still glowing, but now they were wolf amber, like twin suns in his face. A low, threatening growl trickled from his lips.

“Richard,” and it was a whisper.

“I could make you change,” he said in a voice that was more growl than word.

“What?” I whispered.

“I can force my wolves to shift. I can smell your wolf, Anita. I can smell her.”

I swallowed a lump that hurt and bumped into the door. It made me jump. I hadn’t realized I was that close to it. I reached back for the knob, and Richard was suddenly there, towering over me. I hadn’t seen him move. Had I closed my eyes for a second? Had he played with my mind? Or had he just been that quick?

His power pressed against me like a hot mattress, like I was being suffocated by it. I managed to breathe out his name. “Richard, please.”

He leaned over me, lowered that handsome face with those sun-drenched eyes to my face. “Please what? Please stop, or please don’t stop?”

I shook my head; I couldn’t get enough air to speak. My wolf hit the surface of my body and the impact of it drove me off my feet. Richard caught me, hands on my arms, kept me on my feet. The wolf inside me started digging; it wanted out!

I tried to scream, and it was as if with every breath I was breathing in more of Richard’s power. He jerked me off my feet, wrapped me against his body. I could feel something moving low in my stomach; I swear I could feel the wolf’s claws digging through my flesh, trying to meet Richard’s body. It was trying to get to him, trying to answer the call of its Ulfric.

The pain was incredible; it was like being ripped apart from the navel outward, like some horrible parody of giving birth. I screamed, not with air, but with my mind. I sent every metaphysical ability I had, and screamed for help.

I heard voices shouting on the other side of the door, but it was as if voices didn’t mean anything to me anymore. As if it were just noise. But I could smell Richard’s skin, smell the musk of the wolf inside him. He lowered his face to mine, and I smelled my skin through his mind. Soap, shampoo, the hair-care product, but underneath that was me, my skin, my scent. He drew a sharper breath, cupping his hand against my skin so the scent blew back into his face. He drew it in as if it were the sweetest of perfumes; wolf. I smelled of wolf, and forest, and pack.

The door shuddered against my back. Something heavy thudded against it. Richard picked me up, arms around my thighs, putting my upper body by his face. He didn’t ask in words; he asked with his eyes, with his power, with that smell of wolf. He asked me to come to him. He called to that part of me that had stopped scratching, and was listening, smelling him. He called to the wolf inside me, in ways that my human brain couldn’t even begin to understand. I was still too human to answer him in the way he wanted. Still too human, still too…human.

But the wolf wasn’t human, and it answered him. It threw itself against the wall of my body, as if I were a door and all it had to do was get through it. It threw itself against my flesh, so that it staggered Richard backward into the room as he tried to hold me, while the wolf tore at me. His power pressed down my throat like a hand that was trying to help the beast, and stole my air, my words.

It was as if hot, burning liquid ran through my veins. I burned with it, but I knew what that heat was: beast, wolf. I knew now why the lycanthropes ran hot close to the moon; they were burning up with their beast. It was a new pain, a pain that my wolf and I shared, as if she was burning up, too.

I didn’t know the door had burst inward. The first hint I had that the guards were in the room was them standing around us. I couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of blood and heartbeats in my head. They pulled at Richard, tried to tear me out of his arms, and he wouldn’t let me go. Finally a fist smashed into his face, blood ran in a crimson wash, and his beast poured over him, and me.

The fire poured out from underneath my nails. I raised my hands in front of my face, wondering how fire was pouring out from underneath my nails, but it was blood. Blood pouring like burning rain from underneath my nails.

Richard’s body like thick water against me, fur flowed, muscles shifted, and it was as if his beast was tied to mine, so that as he shifted, he was dragging my wolf with him. Dragging it in blood and fire, out of my body. I would have done anything, agreed to anything, if the pain would only stop. I wasn’t thinking that if I shifted, I would lose my leopards. I wasn’t thinking that if I shifted Richard would win. I wasn’t thinking anything but Make it stop, please, God, make it stop! If someone had said the only way to make it stop was to be a wolf, I wouldn’t have argued. I’d have grabbed it. Just make it stop!

I felt Jean-Claude’s power, felt it like a cool soothing wind. I still hurt; the wolf was still there trying to fit all that tooth and claw into my smaller body, but it was better. I could hear again, and what I heard was chaos. Screams, shouts, Claudia’s voice above the rest, “Ulfric, don’t do this!”

Jean-Claude’s voice floated through my head, and through Richard’s, because Richard had tied us that close. “My marks keep her human, Richard; all you can do is destroy her.”

Richard bellowed, “She’s mine!” He was standing over me. I didn’t even remember being on the floor. Richard wasn’t human anymore. He was that movie wolfman, except that his fur was the color of cinnamon, and he was very male, not that smooth sexless Barbie-doll look from the movies. From my angle everything about him looked monstrously large. Partly the angle, and partly the pain.

The wolf inside me stretched my body, trying to force claws out from under my nails. Trying to stretch more body out than I had to give it. I had air now, thanks to Jean-Claude, and I used it to scream. I finally screamed the pain, shrieked it, and somehow it helped. I was still human, I could still speak. I screamed, “Nooo!”

Clay appeared above me, face scared. “Give me your wolf, Anita.”

A clawed hand appeared and jerked him back, out of sight. Richard had pulled him back. “No,” he growled, “no, my pack does not stop this.”

“Not your pack,” Jean-Claude’s voice now, in the room somewhere, “my pack, for all that is yours is mine; by vampire law, they are my wolves, not yours.”

I turned my face and saw him in the doorway. He stood there, beautiful, cold, his eyes glittering with that cool fire. I reached out to him with my bloody hands. I screamed, “Help me!”

Richard was suddenly airborne. Too quick for the bodyguards, too quick for anyone. He hit Jean-Claude, and they both rolled out of sight into the bedroom beyond.

Clay was back at my side. He was bloody, and I couldn’t tell if he was wounded or had just gotten blood on him. “Give me your beast,” he said.

He was disobeying a direct order from his Ulfric. But in that moment I didn’t care. I grabbed his arm, and he pressed himself to my mouth, let me kiss him. More than ever before I felt the wolf pour out of my mouth. I choked on fur and blood and things that couldn’t be real. I choked, and Clay stayed pinned to me while his body struggled to get away. He forced himself to stay against me, forced his body to take my beast, but it hurt too much not to struggle. I knew now just how much it hurt, and I was sorry, but I didn’t stop.

His body exploded above mine; wet, thick things covered my eyes, and only my hands told me that fur and muscle were above me now. My body still ached, but the wolf was gone, gone like a hole in my heart, an empty space where something should have been.

Someone else’s hand smoothed the gunk from my eyes so I could blink up into Rafael’s face. He was crying. I’d never seen him do that. It scared me. What would make Rafael cry? What was happening?

Gunshots exploded in the other room, so loud, so horribly loud. I sat up and fell back down. “Help me,” I said to Rafael.

He picked me up, as if I were a child, and carried me to the other room. I didn’t protest, I would have been too slow; but what I saw in the bedroom said that we’d all been too slow.

The first thing I saw was Jean-Claude sitting on the floor, his white shirt in bloody tatters, blood trickling from his mouth. The guards were standing in a semicircle with guns out. Richard’s wolf form was crouched at the center of that circle. I could see his heart thudding frantically in the open air. It was a killing wound, but he still crouched there, growling at them. I could see him about to spring, and I knew that the guards wouldn’t let that happen. It was one of those moments when everything slows down, when the world becomes crystal-edged, the colors brighter, the edges of everything sharper; you see everything in painful clarity. Seconds to see my world about to go up in flames.

Jean-Claude’s voice whispered through my head, “I am sorry, ma petite, there is no time.” I thought he was apologizing for the fact that they were going to shoot Richard, until I felt his power. It didn’t wash over me, it didn’t press against me like Richard’s had; his power simply was there and did what it wanted. I felt it almost like a series of tumblers in a lock: click, and he took Richard’s blood lust, like a cup in his hand; click, and he turned that blood lust into another kind of lust; click, and he spilled it into me.

There was a blink, where I saw Richard’s head go down, watched his body begin to change back to human. Knew they wouldn’t have to shoot him now. A blink, to be relieved, then the ardeur ripped through me as surely as the beast had done earlier. My body forgot that it hurt. My body forgot that it was bloody and aching. My body forgot everything except one thing. The ardeur did what it always did: it washed over the man I was touching and carried him away with me. I was already on the floor with him on top of me before I remembered who I’d be looking up at. Rafael, the rat king, who was going to get to be food after all.

22

RAFAEL CARRIED ME out to the hallway with my legs wrapped around his waist, my arms around his shoulders, my mouth feeding at his. He stumbled at the door and almost fell, having to catch his hands on the doorjamb. He put a hurried hand around me, but he was in no danger of dropping me. He’d have had to pry me off him for me to fall. I was drowning in the taste of his mouth, the scent of his skin. He smelled smoky, not like cigarettes, but wood smoke, and salt, like some food that had been smoked and salted, until the meat was flavored and tender and so ready to eat. I felt his need. I just knew that it had been a long time for him. So much need, so much power, so long denied. He was a feast waiting to be eaten. The last wasn’t my thought. We fell against the wall outside the door. The sensation of him falling against me, bruising me into the wall, made me cry out. He leaned heavier against me and even through our clothes I could feel him hard and ready. I cried out again and pressed myself against him, but there were too many clothes in the way. I moaned into his mouth, too eager for words.

Rafael tore himself from my lips. He used one hand to keep my face from touching his so he could look into my eyes. “Your eyes,” he whispered, “like blue fire.” Blue, but my eyes were brown, I thought. Then Jean-Claude’s power washed the hesitation away. He filled my head as he filled my eyes. It was my mouth but Jean-Claude’s words that said, “A fire that burns just for you, Rafael, just for you.” In that moment it was true. We wanted only Rafael, needed only him.

I felt him fall into our eyes. There was a moment when he swayed forward, his hand catching on the stone wall behind me. He stared into our eyes, and his face didn’t smooth out and become empty, waiting for orders like every other vampire victim I’d seen—no, his face filled with need, want; months, years, of denial, all there in his face and a heartbeat later it was in his hands where they tore my shirt. His mouth fed at my breasts, biting, sucking, rough enough that he drew back and tried to fight clear of our power. A small spark inside him was afraid he’d hurt us. We laughed, and it was an odd mixture of Jean-Claude and me, so that for a moment my laugh slithered over Rafael’s body and made him shiver. I bit his neck, sudden and sharp, digging my teeth into that smooth, dark flesh. He balled his hand in my hair and pried me off him. His neck bled where I’d bitten him. He drove his mouth into mine, so hard that teeth grazed on teeth. He kissed me with tongue and lips until he ate the taste of his own blood from my mouth.

He ripped my jeans apart at the seam. My body jerked with the strength of it. The sensation of the heavy cloth tearing around my body brought a small noise from me. My panties ripped and again the feel of it made me cry out. I ground myself against the front of him, but all I could touch was cloth. That hard, eager flesh was still out of reach.

I cried my frustration and he fumbled at his belt, one-handed. He was making small, frustrated noises by the time he got the belt open, the pants unbuttoned. But I was too tight against him for him to unzip.

“Climb me,” he said, in a voice choked with need.

I managed to say, “What?” before his hands showed me what he wanted. He lifted me up a little higher on his body. I used my hands and arms on his broad shoulders to help climb a little higher. I wrapped my legs higher on his body, so he was left to unzip without seeing what he was doing, his hands feeling around my naked ass as he tried to free himself of his pants. He made a sound that was half shout and half word. I think the word was Please, but I wasn’t sure.

The tip of him brushed along my bare skin, and I let my body slide those few inches lower, so he could guide himself to my opening. It was not a good angle for the first time; we didn’t know the exact angle to have without being able to see what we were doing. He made a small inarticulate sound, then I felt the head of him enter me. I froze with him barely breaking the surface of my body. Froze so he could push his way inside. He hesitated in the middle of that first thrust, stopped with most of him still outside me. His body shuddered, his hands balancing against the wall, and the other hand finally free to touch my body again. His eyes closed as he traced his hand up my nearly bare back. He whispered through gritted teeth, “So tight, so wet. I won’t last long.”

Normally, longer was better, but in that moment I knew that we needed to feed. Jean-Claude let me know that we needed this energy. We needed him to give us what he had to give.

“Fuck me,” I said, and drove my body down the length of his, and found there was even more of him than I’d thought. When he was pressed as tight as I could make him, it was my turn to close my eyes and shudder. My turn to whisper, “Fuck me, Rafael, feed me, fuck me, Rafael, feed me!”

With every word I drove my body up and down on his, drove him in and out of me. The angle was not the best for me to move without his help, but with the last word, he used his hands to cup my ass and drive my body into the stone wall with one hard thrust of his body. He drove himself into me over and over, grinding me into the stones, and the roughness of the stones. It was what I wanted, too.

I wanted him to take me, to drive all that need, all that denial into my body. The ardeur tried to feed, but he was a king and it could not get past his shields. A tiny thought of panic from Jean-Claude, quickly swallowed, but he was urgent that we break Rafael. I might have protested, but the ardeur was all I could feel, and it wanted to break him.

Rafael was so hard, so very hard, the kind of hard a man only gets when he’s denied himself a very long time. He drove all that hard, long length into and out of me, fast and faster, hard and harder. His breathing changed, and I said, “Yes, yes, please, Rafael, please.”

Part of that please was, Please let us feed, let us in, drop all that protection, let us in, let us in. I tried to find a rhythm, but his body, his hands, pinned my lower body against the wall. He would do the work; he didn’t want the help. Thrust after hard thrust and I felt my body filling up with the pleasure of his body pounding inside mine, his hands so strong, pinning me, his body as hard and eager inside me as any man I’d ever felt. And just like that, the pleasure took me, brought me, brought me screaming, clawing, biting. Brought me writhing and dancing around him. He cried out and his body gave one last deep thrust that made me scream again. He shivered against me, eyes fluttering, and his shields crashed down. The ardeur fed on his body, on the warmth of him inside me, on his need, and his release. In the midst of that pleasure that made me tear Rafael’s skin and cry out as his body spasmed inside mine, I felt Jean-Claude.

He’d chosen Rafael because he was king and through their king we could feed on his people. Jean-Claude reached through Rafael’s body, our bodies, to the wererats. As we’d fed once on Augustine and his people, now we fed on Rafael and his. I felt Claudia stagger, felt Lisandro fall to his knees, felt the wererats try to run, or fight, or keep us out, but they couldn’t. They’d given their protection over to their king; when he fell, they were ours. Ours for the taking, ours for the raping, ours for the eating. We fed, and fed, and fed; some faces I knew, some faces I didn’t. They became a blur of startled eyes and upturned faces. We fed on them all.

Rafael felt what was happening and tried to protect them, to fight us, but it was too late. His body was married to mine and all that hard-won control was gone inside my body in the feel of his hands on me.

Jean-Claude took that power and threw it into our vampires, all those in the city who owed their life spark to his power as Master of the City. He forced them all awake, some ten hours or more earlier than they’d ever woken from death. I didn’t understand why he’d used the power for that, until when the last vampire had come clawing to wakefulness, he let the power go back to him, and Richard, and he let me feel how terribly hurt they were. He’d used the power to force the lesser vampires awake, because if he lost consciousness he was afraid he would drain them of power and they would all die for good. He was afraid that he would drain them dry through his ties as Master of the City, in much the same way we’d been able to feed on Rafael’s rats, except the vampires would die.

I couldn’t breathe, my heart was touching stone, and I couldn’t breathe. Richard’s body, oh, God, oh, God, he was dying. Jean-Claude tried to heal him, and that forced me to feel what Richard’s claws had done to the vampire’s body. His heart stuttered, hesitated. Sweet Jesus, no, Richard had stabbed him in the heart. Jean-Claude fed the power we’d taken into their injuries, and it should have been enough, but it was as if there was something in Richard’s injuries that ate the power, but didn’t heal him. I saw something like a shadow on Richard’s back.

Jean-Claude whispered, “Harlequin.”

We were dying; my chest squeezed tight and tighter. I couldn’t breathe. I only half-felt when Rafael lowered me to the floor and tried to get me to say something to him. I used my last bit of air to whisper, “Help us.”

Rafael said, “Anything.” His shields were still down. I took their energy again, but not to feed, to strike out.

Jean-Claude cried out in my mind, “Non, ma petite.” But it was too late; with my last thought, before darkness swallowed us all, I took the power of Rafael and the wererats and I struck out at that phantom on Richard’s back. If I could have thought clearly, I might have thought, Die, but the darkness was eating us, and all I had time to do was strike. I saw her—no, them—two cloaked figures in a dark room, a dark hotel room. Two white masks lay beside them on the bed. One sat, the other knelt behind her. They were both petite and dark-haired. They looked up, startled, as if they could see me and what came with me. I got a good look at the pale, upturned faces, the long brown hair, one a shade darker than the other, one with brown eyes, one gray, both glowing with power. They’d combined their powers; somehow they’d combined to hit us. I don’t know what they saw, but they both cried out. The kneeling one tried to shield the other with her body, and then the power hit them. It sent them crashing to the floor, and into the night-stand. The lamp fell over on top of them and shattered. It knocked over the phone and a notepad. I read the name of the hotel on the notepad. I knew where they were. They fell into a heap and didn’t move again. My last waking thought was, Good.

23

PAIN, PAIN, AND lights stabbing into my eyes. Voices: “I’ve got a pulse!” “Anita, Anita, can you hear me!” I wanted to say yes but I couldn’t remember where my mouth was, or how to use it. Darkness again, then pain shot through the dark again. I came to, my body convulsing on a gurney. There were people all around me. I should have known one of them, but I couldn’t remember who she was, only that I should have remembered who she was. My chest hurt. I smelled burning, something was burning. I saw those little flat paddles I’d had used once before on my chest. I realized I was what was burning. The thought didn’t mean much to me. I wasn’t afraid, or even excited. Nothing seemed real. Even the pain in my chest was fading. The world started going gray and soft around the edges.

Someone slapped me, hard, across the face. The world was real again. I blinked up into the face of the woman I should have known, and didn’t. She yelled my name, “Anita, Anita, stay with us, damn it!”

Everything went soft again; the gray ate the world like mist. Someone hit me again. I blinked up into the woman’s face again. “Don’t you die on me, damn it!” She hit me again, and the world hadn’t even gone gray.

I knew her now. Doc Lillian. I tried to say, Stop hitting me, but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to say the words. I did my best to frown up at her, though.

A man’s voice said, “She’s stable.”

Lillian smiled down at me. “You’re breathing for three, Anita. If you keep breathing, they won’t die.”

I didn’t know what she meant. I wanted to ask, Who won’t die? Then something cold and liquid seemed to flow through my veins. I’d had something like it before, and my last thought before a different kind of darkness took me was, why was Lillian giving me morphine?

I dreamed, or maybe I didn’t. But if it was heaven, it was too scary, and if it was hell, it wasn’t quite scary enough. I was at a ball, everyone in glittering clothes, centuries before I was born. Then the first couple turned to me, and they were masked. Everyone was wearing the Harlequin’s white masks. I stumbled back from the dancers and found that I was wearing a silver-and-white dress that was too wide to be graceful, and too tight through the ribs to let me breathe well. One of the couples bumped me and my heart was suddenly in my throat. My chest was tight and tighter, as if some huge fist were crushing my ribs. I fell to my knees and the dancers moved wide around me in a spill of skirts and petticoats. Their dresses brushed me as they whirled faceless around me.

A voice came to the dream, Belle Morte’s purring contralto: “Ma petite, you are dying.”

The hem of a crimson dress was at my hands. She knelt beside me. She was still the brunette beauty who had nearly conquered all of Europe once. All that dark hair piled atop her head, leaving her neck in that pale, white curve that we’d always loved. We…I tried to feel the rest of that we, but where Jean-Claude should have been was awful blankness.

She leaned over me as I fell to the floor. “He is almost gone, our Jean-Claude,” she said. Her amber-brown eyes didn’t seem worried. She was simply making an observation. “Why do you not ask for my help, ma petite?”

I wanted to say, Why would you help us? but there was no air to say anything. My spine tried to bow in the tightness of the corset, as I gasped like a fish left to die on the shore.

“Oh,” she said, and with a flick of her will the dream changed. We were in her bedroom, on her huge four-poster bed. She knelt above me, with a huge knife in her hand. The world was going gray. I wasn’t even afraid.

My body jerked, the corset gave, and I could suddenly breathe a little better. My chest still hurt, and I breathed too shallowly, but I could breathe. I looked down to find that she had cut the bodice of the dress all the way through the corset, so that there was a line of bare skin from my neck to my waist. She laid the knife beside her knees and spread the stays of the corset a little wider, as if she meant to skin me out of the dress, but she went back to kneeling beside me, in her red, red dress. Her skin seemed to glow against the crimson cloth.

“What happens in my dreams can be very real, ma petite. Corsets here made your breathing there harder. You don’t have enough breath to spare.”

“What’s happening?”

She lay down beside me, her head on the pillow I was lying upon. A little too close for comfort, but I didn’t have the energy to spare for moving. “I felt Jean-Claude’s light snuffed out.”

“He’s not dead,” I whispered.

“Can you sense him?”

It must have shown on my face, because she said, “Shhh, you are correct, he is not gone completely, but he is close to the edge. You are keeping him, both of them, alive. You and your second triumvirate of power. Something Jean-Claude did in this new emergency has taught you better control of the power between you and your other triumvirate; your kitty and your vampire.”

I swallowed, and it hurt, though I couldn’t remember why it should. “Nathaniel, Damian.” I was feeling a little better, well enough to be afraid. I’d almost drained both of them to death once, or twice.

“Do not fear for them. They are well enough, but they are feeding for you, giving you their energy as they are supposed to do in emergencies,” she said, and stroked my forehead, tracing down the edge of my jaw. It was an idle movement, like the way you’d stroke the curve of a couch you were sitting on. “The masks of the Harlequin were in your mind, ma petite. Have they come to your territory?”

I wanted to tell her to stop calling me ma petite, but air was precious, so I answered, “Yes.”

“Show me,” she said.

Not Tell me, but Show me. I said, “How?”

“You are of Belle Morte’s line. How do we trade power?”

I frowned up at her.

“Kiss me, and but think of it, and I will know what you know.”

I don’t know if I would have kissed her voluntarily, because I didn’t get a chance to decide. She pressed those ruby lips to my mouth, and I was suffocating again. I couldn’t breathe. I pushed at her, and she thought inside my head, “Think of the Harlequin.” It was as if it were an order, and my mind did what she asked.

I thought of the meeting with Malcolm and his fear. I went back through the date with Nathaniel and the mask in the bathroom. The second mask with the musical notes on it, and the meeting planned. The mark on me, and the scent of wolf, and Jake keeping me safe. Then the last memory, where I saw my men dying, and the ghost on Richard, and the feeding with Rafael. She slowed the memory there, lingering on the rat king’s powers, then let the memories go back to speeding along, and using Rafael’s power to attack the one that had attacked us. It was the last memory that she slowed down completely. She stared at the pale faces of the vampires, the long dark hair, the glowing eyes, brown and gray respectively. Belle Morte studied the faces of the other vampires. She whispered, “Mercia, and Nivia.” The memory ended, and Belle Morte was simply lying beside me, propped on the pillows.

I whispered, “You know them.”

“Yes, but not that they were Harlequin. It is a deep, dark secret who is, and who is not, one of them. They are spies, and secrecy is their life blood. By their hands the Harlequin have broken their most profound taboo.”

“What taboo?” I asked.

“They are neutral, ma petite, utterly neutral, or how can they dispense justice? Did they give you a black mask? I did not see it in your memories.”

“No, only the two white.”

She laughed, and her face shone with joy. My heart hurt, but not from a physical blow. It hurt the way it sometimes does when you see someone you once adored do something to remind you why you loved them, and you know that that laugh will never again be for you.

“They have broken the law then, the law they swore to uphold. Unless they deliver the black mask, they are not allowed to bring death. For Mercia and Nivia, it means true death, but for their fellow Harlequin it means something worse.”

“What?” I asked.

“Disbandment. They will be no more, and those who are not killed will be forced to go back to their bloodlines, their old masters. To be neutral the Harlequin are freed of their ties to their creators. They are a law unto themselves, but if they are breaking the law, then they will be broken.”

“Why does that”—I had to draw a breath to finish—“make you so happy?”

She pouted out that full lower lip and said, “Poor thing, so hurt. I will help you.”

“Appreciate the offer, but”—and I had to work for breath—“help us, why?”

“Because you alive are witness enough to destroy the power of the Harlequin.”

“Why,” breath, “do you care?”

“They were once the private guards of the Mistress of the Dark. She is waking, I know that now.”

“But when she wakes,” breath, “she won’t have them.”

“Precisement,” Belle said.

“But you need me, us, alive.”

“Yes,” she said, and she looked at me the way that a hawk must look at a wounded mouse, eager, anticipatory.

“Make you mad?” I whispered, and had to cough. It wasn’t my throat that was closing off. I didn’t think it was Jean-Claude’s. Something bad was happening to Richard.

“I don’t hate you, ma petite,” she said. “I don’t hate anything that is useful to me, and you are about to be very useful, ma petite.”

“Anita,” I whispered.

“Anita, Anita,” she purred as she leaned our faces closer, “if I want you to be my ma petite, you will be. Jean-Claude is near death and he protected you from me. I will save you all, but I will do it in a way that you will not like.” She leaned our faces close, and the hand that had been caressing my face was suddenly firm and solid as metal against my cheek, keeping me turned toward that lovely face. She began to lean in for a kiss.

I spoke before our mouths touched. “A win-win situation, for you.”

“Oh, yes.” She whispered it against my lips, then kissed me. But she didn’t just kiss me, she opened the ardeur between us. One moment all I could think about was breathing, Just keep breathing, and that I really didn’t want her to touch me, and the next she was kissing me, and I was kissing her back.

My hands slid over that satin dress, and the body underneath, and my hands knew that body—though my hands were smaller than they should have been. Jean-Claude’s memories kept getting in the way, coloring what was happening. When her mouth found my breast, and sucked, it startled me, because the body I was remembering didn’t have breasts. She bit me, driving dainty fangs around my nipple. It made me cry out, brought my body writhing off the bed. She raised a bloody mouth and smiled at me, her eyes filled with amber light. She climbed my body and pressed that bloody mouth to mine. I kissed that mouth as if it were air, and food, and water, all rolled into one. I marveled at how small her mouth was, how dainty. How I’d longed to kiss this mouth again. I knew in this moment what I had never known from Jean-Claude, how much it had cost him to leave her. They say that once you love Belle Morte you never stop, and I knew in that kiss, with her body on top of mine, that it was true. He still loved her, would always love her, and nothing would change that, not even me.

The ardeur started to feed then, at that bloody kiss, but this was Belle Morte, the creator of the ardeur. You did not feed from her and stop. You fed until she stopped you.

The knife cut us out of the dresses, and where it nicked the skin we licked and drank each other’s blood, and it didn’t seem wrong, or a bad thing to do. The taste of her blood was sweet, and slow, and I knew that vampire blood was not a meal, but it could be foreplay.

I ended up on top of her, and my body kept forgetting that it wasn’t male. I pressed her to the bed, with my body between her legs. But I could not do what I was remembering. I swore in frustration, because more than anything in the world in that moment I wanted to pierce her body. I wanted to plunge parts that I did not have into parts of her that I did.

She lay underneath me with that dark hair spilling around her body, across the silk of the pillows. Her lips parted, her eyes filled with that eager light. I knew what she was, knew it better through Jean-Claude than most. I knew that she would slit my throat and make love in the blood while I died, but in that moment with her looking up at us, I didn’t care. I just wanted her to keep giving us that look.

She laid me back against the sheets and began to kiss her way down my body. I watched her eyes roll up, watching my face, as she licked, and bit, and drew small pinpricks of blood where dainty fangs pierced too close. It wasn’t my memory that made me writhe at the sight of her over my groin. At first, it felt wrong, because I was expecting a different sensation, but Belle had spent two thousand years learning about pleasure, and she knew this pleasure, too. I gazed down at her with her mouth between my legs, and her tongue found me, traced me, licked me, and finally she sucked me, lightly at first, then deeper and deeper, until fangs bit deep as she sucked me, and I wasn’t certain if it was the pleasure that brought the orgasm, or the pain. The ardeur fed, and fed, and fed.

I screamed, and writhed, and clawed at the pillows, and only after I lay back boneless, eyes fluttering blind with pleasure, did she raise her face from my body.

She stared up at me with eyes that glowed so bright, she looked blind with power. She laughed, and the sound trailed down my body and made me cry out again. “I do see what he sees in you, ma petite, I truly do. I have fed you enough to keep you all alive, but Mercia and Nivia, and any of the Harlequin that took part in this, will have to kill you before you can testify against them. They will not know that I know.”

I tried to say, tell people, but my mouth couldn’t work quite yet. Hell, if there’d been an emergency I couldn’t have rolled off the bed, and it wasn’t the medical emergency part that kept me lying there. It was a few thousand years of practiced sex that made me lie there and look at her, or try to look at her. The world was still white-edged with orgasm.

“I believe that they have allies for their illegal activities among the council, so I must go slowly here, but you need to be well there.” She smiled at me, and it was the smile that Eve must have used in the Garden of Eden; Want a bite of apple, little girl? “I will send a call out to my bloodline in your territory. Jean-Claude is still too hurt to stop it. I will talk to them as of old, before they had Jean-Claude’s new power to hide behind. When you wake, you will need powerful food for the ardeur. You must share that power with Jean-Claude and your wolf.”

I managed to whisper, “I don’t know how to do that.”

“You will,” she said, and she came to straddle my body, leaning in until our lips met. I could taste my body on her mouth. We kissed, and the dream broke, and I woke, with the taste of her kiss on my lips.

24

I WOKE GASPING in a room that was too bright, too white. There was something in my arm that hurt when I tried to move it. I couldn’t think where I was, couldn’t think about anything but the smell and taste and feel of Belle Morte. I woke crying her name, or trying to. My voice was a harsh croak of sound.

Cherry’s face appeared beside the bed. Her ultrashort blond hair and overly dark Goth makeup couldn’t quite hide the fact that she was pretty. She was also a registered nurse, though she had lost her job at the local hospital when they found out she was a wereleopard. “Anita, oh my God, oh my God.”

I tried to say her name, and couldn’t make words.

“Don’t try to talk. I’ll send for the doctor.” She got me water and one of those bendy straws, and let me take a minute sip. I heard a door open and close, running feet getting farther away. Who had she sent for the doctor?

Cherry’s eyes were shiny, and only after her eyeliner began to run in black tears down the pale makeup did I realize she was crying. “They say it’s waterproof, but they so lie.” She let me have another sip of water.

I managed to croak, “Why does my throat hurt?”

“I…” She looked solemn again. “We had to intubate Richard.”

“Intubate?” I made it a question.

“Put a tube down his throat. A machine is doing his breathing for him.”

“Shit,” I whispered.

She wiped at the black tears again, smearing them worse. “But you’re awake, you’re all right.” She nodded, over and over, as if that would make it more true. I was almost sure that away from me, her leopard queen, she was more controlled as a nurse, but she sure did cry easily for a medical professional.

There were soft footfalls, and Doctor Lillian was at my bedside. Her graying hair was in a careless knot at the back of her neck, with strands of hair flying about her slender face. Her pale eyes smiled along with her lips. Relief was plain on her face for a moment.

“Did you slap me?” I asked.

“I didn’t think you’d remember that.”

“You did slap me, didn’t you?”

“It was a close thing, Anita. We almost lost you all.”

“Cherry says Richard is hooked up to machines, that he’s not breathing on his own.”

“That’s right.”

“Shouldn’t he have healed by now?”

“It’s only the night of the same day, Anita. You haven’t been out that long.”

“It feels longer.”

She smiled. “I’m sure it does. I think now that we’ve got his body breathing, he will heal, but if we hadn’t been able to keep his heart and lungs going…”

“You’re worried.”

“His heart stopped, Anita. If he were human I’d be worried about brain damage from lack of oxygen.”

“But he’s not human,” I said.

“No, but he is very hurt. He should heal perfectly, but in truth, I’ve never seen a lycanthrope come back from an injury this severe. His heart was pierced by a silver bullet. It was a killing shot.”

“But he’s not dead,” I said.

“No, he’s not.”

I looked up at her. “Jesus, you don’t give good medical blank face either.”

“Jean-Claude is in a sort of coma. Asher tells me that it is a type of hibernation while he heals himself, but truthfully, vampire medicine is confusing. They’re dead, so how unhealthy can they be? We hooked him up to brainwave monitors, and that’s letting us know he’s still in there.”

“But if you didn’t have the monitors?” I asked.

“I’d think he was dead,” she said.

“We’re not dead.”

She smiled. “No, you’re not. Nathaniel has been eating for five, and he’s still lost two pounds in less than a day. Damian has taken more blood than any vampire should be able to hold, and still he feeds. Asher says they are helping fuel the three of you.”

I nodded, remembering what Belle had said. “He’s right.” I thought about letting my thoughts of Nathaniel and Damian find them for me, let me see them. But I was afraid I’d mess it up. Afraid that somehow I’d cut off the energy they were feeding us, or take too much. Apparently it was working, and I was simply grateful that it was working the way it was supposed to. Belle had said that I’d learned from Jean-Claude how to do it, but she was wrong. I think Jean-Claude had done it for us before he passed out, because I had no idea how it was working. I very carefully didn’t make my shields between me and the boys any stronger, or weaker. I just tried to maintain. It was working; don’t fuck with it.

“The vampires are worried that if the lesser vamps go to sleep for the day, Jean-Claude is so injured that he won’t have enough energy to wake them again.”

I nodded and swallowed past a sore throat that wasn’t my sore throat, but it felt like it. Like I was trying to swallow past something huge and hard, and plastic. “Richard is awake enough to feel the tube in his throat, because I can feel it.”

“I don’t know if that’s good news or bad, Anita. It will be a while before his body catches up with the machines, I think.”

“We need Jean-Claude awake before dawn, awake enough so he doesn’t drain the little vamps to death,” I said.

She looked at me very seriously. “That is what the vampires have been discussing.”

I felt vampires. I felt them outside the door. I heard voices arguing, men arguing. I said, “Tell the guards to let Asher and the others in.”

She looked a question at me, but went to the door. But seeing who came through the door first made me smile, and somehow I felt it would all work out. We would be safe, because Edward was here.

25

HE SMILED DOWN at me, shaking his head. Standing there, looking down at me, he looked pleasant, and like the end product of a few generations of WASP breeding; blond hair, blue eyes, maybe a little short at five foot eight, but he would have fit in in so many places. Then the polished charm began to melt away, like magic. I watched the real Edward fill his eyes and turn them from warm to cold as a deep winter sky. The color of his eyes was the same, but the look in them wasn’t. The face was still and showed nothing. If I hadn’t had vampires to compare with, I’d have said Edward gave better empty face than anyone I knew.

Once, seeing Edward at my bedside would have meant he’d come to kill me. Now, it meant I was safe. We were all safe, or as safe as we could be. Edward couldn’t do much about metaphysical powers, but I trusted him to take care of the Harlequin’s weapons and fighting skills. The magic was my department, but no one did armed combat better than Edward.

“Hey,” I said, and my voice still sounded dry.

His lips twitched. “Couldn’t stay alive for just a few more hours, huh?” His voice held an edge of the smile that had been there, then settled to that empty middle-of-nowhere voice, no accent, no hint of where he’d started life.

“I’m alive,” I said.

“They had to restart your heart twice, Anita.”

Lillian, who had made herself scarce, came to stand beside him. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t scare my patient.”

“She likes the truth,” he said, without even looking at her.

“He’s right, doc,” I said.

She sighed. “Fine, but let’s ease her into it; she’s been mostly dead all day.”

It took me a second to realize she’d made a joke. Edward gave her a look, then turned back to me. “According to the vamps, we don’t have time to ease you into it.”

“Tell me what’s been happening,” I said.

“There’s too much, Anita. If I tell you everything, it will be dawn and your little vampires will be dead for good.”

“Tell me what I need to know, then,” I said.

“Jean-Claude used a lot of energy to wake every vamp in the city before he passed out.”

“I was there when he did it.”

“Don’t interrupt,” and he was way too solemn for my comfort. “The vamps and shapeshifters came up with a plan that they think will net the most power for you to feed into Jean-Claude and Richard in the shortest amount of time.”

“Why are you telling me this? Why not Asher, or…”

“You interrupted,” he said, eyes cold, and face still so serious.

“Sorry,” I said.

Lillian made a noise that made us both look at her. “You said she’d take the news better from you, but I didn’t believe you. I believe you now.”

He gave her a look.

“Sorry, I’ll stand over here and stop wasting time.” She moved away from us.

He continued, “I don’t like the plan and you’re going to hate it, but I’ve listened to their reasoning and it’s the best plan we’ve got.”

I raised a hand.

He actually smiled, but it never quite reached his eyes. “Yes.”

“You think it’s a good plan?” I asked.

“I couldn’t come up with a better one.”

I looked at him. “Really?”

He nodded. “Really.”

The fact that he couldn’t come up with a better plan said a lot. Said enough that I didn’t argue. “Okay, tell me the plan,” I said.

“You feed the ardeur on the head of another animal group, and take their energy the way you did the wererats’.” He didn’t flinch or hesitate, even though he’d only known about the ardeur for a few hours. He’d landed in the middle of a crisis of metaphysical proportions and it hadn’t fazed him, or if it had, it didn’t show. In that moment I loved him, in a guy-buddy sort of way. He’d never fail me, or fuck with me, and I loved him for it.

“Which animal group?” I asked.

“The swans,” he said.

I gave him surprised face. “Say again?”

He smiled, that cold smile, but it was a real smile; he was amused. “I take it the swan king is not your buddy.”

“Not in that way. He and all the heads of the animal groups have been over to the house for dinner, but…” I shook my head and swallowed past that feeling of something in my throat that wasn’t there, like a phantom pain. “I’ve never thought of him in that way, and there are larger, more powerful groups in St. Louis than the swans.”

“You knocked most of the wererats cold when you fed on their king,” Edward said.

“I did what?”

“You heard me.”

I remembered Jean-Claude’s voice in my head, saying no when I went back for that last bit of energy from Rafael. “I didn’t mean to,” I said.

Lillian peered around Edward’s shoulder. “You’re just lucky I was one of the few who didn’t go down.”

“Why didn’t you?”

She looked thoughtful, and sad, and then shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“We don’t have time to worry about the why,” Edward said.

“Agreed,” Lillian said.

I just nodded.

“The wererats still aren’t a hundred percent, Anita. You did a real number on them. We can’t afford for you to do the same to the werehyenas.”

“Not a problem. Narcissus is sooo not on my to-do list.”

His lips twitched, almost a smile, and then he gave in and laughed. “I’ve met him now, and…” He just shook his head, and said, “I wouldn’t want to do him either, but he did come through for us. He let us have all the werehyenas that we asked for.”

A thought occurred to me. “If most of our muscle were knocked out, why didn’t the Harlequin attack us?”

He nodded. “I don’t know why they didn’t attack.”

“They’re supposed to be this uber-fighting team. Sort of you as a vampire—they should have attacked.”

“Asher and the other vampires have speculated a lot why the Harlequin didn’t push the advantage. I’ll tell you all of it later, but right now…” He made a movement as if he’d take my hand, and then his hands fell back. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

I frowned at him. “You know I do.”

“Then I’ve got the defenses covered, Anita. But only you can channel enough energy to Jean-Claude to keep the little vampires alive.”

I wanted to ask so many things, but he was right. I had to trust Edward to do his job, and I did, but…“There aren’t that many swanmanes in the city,” I said.

“We asked the werelions first, but their Rex refused.”

“Joseph refused to help us?” I was shocked, and let it show.

“Yes.”

“We’ve bent over backward for the lions. Hell, I saved his life once, or twice.”

“His wife said he wasn’t having sex with anyone but her.”

“This isn’t about sex, Edward.”

He shrugged.

“The lions would let the vampires die.” I said it out loud, because I needed to hear it. I couldn’t quite believe it.

“That’s how I’d take it,” he said.

We looked at each other, and I felt my eyes go as cold as his. I think we were thinking the same thing. The lions would suffer for this. Ungrateful bastards.

“Less than two hours, Anita,” he said.

I nodded. “Which means we don’t have time to be wrong, Edward. Are the swans enough energy?”

“Donovan Reece is the king of every swanmane in this country.”

“I know. He has to travel from group to group, looking in on them, settling problems. He’s also begun talking to other cities about how well our furry coalition is doing here. He’s not trying to start another coalition, just talking about it. We’ve actually had some phone calls from other cities, wanting details about how it works.”

“A politician,” Edward said.

I nodded. “Being swan king is an inborn power; I think you actually do come with the skills you need. Donovan says that usually a swan queen is born in the same generation, so they rule together, but for whatever reason there was no baby born with the birthmark, or the power to help him. It means he has double the duty.”

“He says that he leaves his swan maidens in the care of your leopards when he’s gone for a while.”

I nodded. “There’s only three of them in town.”

“They’ve stayed over at your house,” Edward said.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“They need someone to look after them sometimes.”

“Donovan said that, that you took care of his people. He says you rescued them once, and almost got killed doing it.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“He says that if you risk your life for his people, he would do the same for you, so what’s a little sex between allies?”

“He didn’t say that last part,” I said.

Edward grinned and shook his head. “Okay, but he did say, ‘I would risk my life for Anita and her people. This is a small thing you ask of me.’”

“That sounds like Donovan,” I said.

“He’s offering to let you feed on every swanmane in the United States. There’s maybe one to six in most major cities.”

“I had no idea there were that many of them.”

“I don’t think anyone did but Donovan. He gave up a lot of intelligence, Anita. He didn’t make me promise not to use it against him if I got a contract from someone who wanted me to go swan hunting.”

“Edward…”

He held up a hand, stopping me. “I’ll promise you, if you ask.”

We looked at each other a second, and then I said, “Promise me you won’t use anything you’ve learned against any of the animal groups.”

“I won’t hunt any more swans,” He said.

“No, Edward, I mean it. You’re going to have to learn things about vampires and the shapeshifters that you could use against them. I need your word of honor that what you learn won’t come back to haunt them, or me.”

His face went to that cold, empty look. It was almost the look he used when he killed, except for a hint of anger in his eyes. “Even the lions?” he asked.

“They’re members of our coalition.”

“That mean they’re off limits?”

“No, it means we have to kick them out of the coalition before we do anything to them.”

He smiled then. “So honorable.”

“A girl’s got to have standards,” I said.

He nodded. “As long as the lions answer for it, I’m cool.”

“One crisis at a time, but yeah, they’ll answer for it.”

He gave that cold, pleased smile. It was Edward’s usual smile, the real one. The smile that said the monster was home, and happy to be there. I didn’t need a mirror to know that the smile I gave back was almost a match for it. I used to worry about becoming like Edward. Lately, I counted on it.

26

WHATEVER WE WERE going to do with the local lion pride had to wait. One emergency at a time. Funny how when Edward comes into my life, or I come into his, we’re almost always running from one emergency to the other. The difference this time was that the emergency couldn’t be handled at the point of a knife or gun barrel. A flamethrower wouldn’t even help, though Edward had probably brought one. How would he get it through airport security? It’s Edward; if he wanted to, he’d manage to get a Sherman tank through security.

I had less than two hours to feed. Less than two hours to keep Willie McCoy, with his loud suits and louder ties, alive. The love of his life, Candy, tall and blond and gorgeous, and so in love with the small, not-so-handsome vampire. I thought of Avery Seabrook, who I’d stolen away from the Church of Eternal Life. Avery with his gentle eyes, so newly dead that even to me he still felt alive sometimes. I thought of so many of the lesser vamps who had jumped ship from Malcolm’s church to us in the last few months. I couldn’t let them die, not if I could save them. But I so didn’t want to have sex with Donovan Reece.

There was nothing wrong with him. He was tall, pale, and handsome in a preppy, clean-cut sort of way. He was an inch shy of six feet, broad shoulders tucked into a baby-blue sweater that complemented a milk-and-cream complexion so perfect it looked artificial, but it wasn’t. The faint pink blush on his cheeks was just his own blood flowing under that white, white skin. He was as pale as a Caucasian vampire before they’d fed. But there was nothing dead about Donovan. No, there was something incredibly alive about him, as if at a glance you could tell that his blood ran hotter. Not hot as in passion, but hot as in hot to the touch, as though if you spilled it into your mouth it would be hot, like sweet, metallic cocoa.

I had to close my eyes and hold up a hand before he got right beside the bed. I spoke with my eyes still closed. “I’m sorry, Donovan, but you hit the radar as food.”

“I’m supposed to be food.”

I shook my head. “Not food for the ardeur, but food-food. I’m wondering what your blood would taste like going down.”

“I was afraid of this.” A female voice. I opened my eyes to see Sylvie, Richard’s second-in-command, his Freki. She was a little taller than me, short brown hair, a face that could be pretty in makeup, but she usually didn’t sweat it, so that your eyes had to adjust to the plainness of her eyes and skin before you could realize that she was pretty just as she was. With the right makeup, she’d have been beautiful. I wondered if people thought that about me sometimes. Since I was wearing a hospital gown, and probably looked like shit, who was I to comment?

Sylvie filled the room with a prickling run of energy. She was small and female and had managed to fight her way to second-in-command of a large pack of werewolves. She’d have probably been in charge if I hadn’t interfered a few times. Richard could have beaten her physically, but Sylvie had the will to win, the will to kill, and there are fights when that will win the day over superior strength. Then, a while back, Richard had called her challenge, and he had hurt her, badly. He’d proven that he had the will to back the strength. On one hand, I was glad; it meant the question was answered. On the other hand, it had cost Richard a piece of himself that he’d never get back. I mourned that piece of him, almost as much as he did.

“You were afraid of what?” Edward asked from near the door. I hadn’t realized he’d followed Donovan back in.

“Anita is like a new lycanthrope. It means her hungers are not under her control completely. Donovan may be powerful, but he’s a prey animal, and her beasts smell that,” Sylvie said.

I nodded from the bed, my hand falling to the white sheet. “What she said.”

Donovan looked at me; his blue-gray eyes, as changeable as the sky, had gone to rainy gray. “Would you really tear my throat out?”

“Probably a gut wound, actually, soft underbelly.”

He raised those soft, pale eyebrows.

“No oral sex,” Sylvie said, and anyone else would have said it with humor; she was utterly serious.

The door opened behind them. I got a glimpse of some tall, dark-haired man who I didn’t recognize. He looked too young to be standing there, but then there were a couple of other guards that I thought the same thing about. Then the doorway was full of people and I had to look at them, but I promised myself that I’d talk to Claudia about putting an age limit on the guards here. I’d voted out Cisco for being eighteen, but apparently I hadn’t made it clear that it was the age, not Cisco himself, that was the problem. If we all survived today, I’d make that more clear. No, not if, when. When we survived. To think anything else, well, it had to be when.

I looked for Asher in the vampires who came first through the door, but he wasn’t there. It was as if Requiem read my mind, or at least my face, because he said, “Oh, my evening star, you look eagerly past me, as if I am not here. Asher wakes seventh among us. When dawn comes he will die, but those who stand before you now have a chance to remain awake long enough to see this through.” His face was a glimpse of white flesh between the black of his hooded cloak and the beard and mustache. His hair was lost in the blackness of the hood. The only true color to his face was the brilliant blue of his eyes, with that hint of green in them like sea water in the sunlight he would never see again.

London, with his short dark curls and black-on-black suit and shirt, came next. He always looked like a cross between an executive Goth and a movie hit man. His nickname for centuries had been “the Dark Knight.” Yeah, long before Batman, there was London. He was also almost perfect food for the ardeur. Feeding me actually gained him power, instead of draining him. But like all the secondary abilities in Belle Morte’s bloodline it was a double-edged blade. He was the perfect food, but he was also almost instantly addicted to the ardeur. One feeding had undone centuries of abstinence when he’d fled Belle’s slavery. One feeding and he’d been more tightly bound to me than any civil ceremony could have made us. But feeding, even from London, wouldn’t be enough for what we needed now. He smiled at me and came to take my hand. He knew he wasn’t the love of my life, nor I his, and we were both okay with that. He would be the leading contender to be my pomme de sang, if only he were available in daylight. His hand was warm in mine, which meant he’d fed on some willing donor. So many people were willing to open a vein these days, there was no reason to force anyone. People lined up for it.

He raised my hand and laid a gentle kiss on the knuckles. “We are here to see that you do not eat the swan king for real.” His smile widened and filled his dark eyes with happiness. Requiem and other vamps who had come from England with him said they’d never seen him this relaxed, and hadn’t even known he could smile.

I smiled back at him and nodded. “That would be bad.”

Jason peeked around the much taller man. He grinned at me, but there was a flinching around his spring-blue eyes, a hollow look that said he’d been crying. I held out my other hand to him. London moved out of the way so Jason could hug me. He practically climbed into the bed to do it. We were friends, and sometimes lovers, but his reaction surprised me. I patted the top of his short blond hair, sort of awkwardly, and it wasn’t just the IV that made it awkward, though that pulled. That was sooo going to have to come out before I fed on Donovan.

“Jason,” I said, “it’s all right.”

He shook his head against my shoulder and raised a tear-stained face. His voice was thick with tears as he said, “Liar.” He tried to smile, but didn’t quite make it.

I touched his face with my free hand. “Jason, I…” I didn’t even know what to say. This reaction was more than a friend’s reaction. Then I thought, maybe the grief wasn’t for me. His Ulfric and his master were both near death. If they died, his world would never be the same. The next Master of the City might not have a use for him as a pomme de sang.

I tried to cup his face, but the IV caught again. “Can someone get this out of me? I can’t feed the ardeur hooked up to tubes.”

Lillian threaded her way through the growing crowd and took out the needle. I carefully looked away at the crucial moment. I was better than I used to be, but I still didn’t like seeing needles go in or out of my flesh. It just creeped me.

Jason moved away enough for the doctor to work, but he kept my hand like it was a lifeline. Jason was usually so together that sometimes I forgot that he was only twenty-two. He was actually the same age as some of the werelion college students that Joseph had let me choose from. His excuse on the age had been that older lions had jobs and families. At the time I hadn’t questioned, but now, well, I’d probably be questioning everything the lions did for a while.

“I’m your wolf in case your beast decides to rise,” Jason said.

“I thought Sylvie…”

She spoke from in back of the crowd of shapeshifters. “With the ardeur raised in the room, I’m not staying. Nothing personal, Anita. I mean you’re cute, but I don’t do women, and with you this weak, and Jean-Claude out of it, I don’t want to take the chance that this thing spreads through the room.” She came to the bed and patted my shoulder, a little awkwardly. She wasn’t much better at the buddy thing than I was. “The wolves will do everything they can to get you all through this.”

“Better than the lions,” I said.

“It’s not their Rex in the next room, it’s our Ulfric,” she said, and there was a flare of her beast, like the hot breath of the monster in the dark. I shivered, and she shut the power down. “Sorry, I’m going.” With that she went for the door. As she went out, someone else came in, and I cried out, “Micah!”

He didn’t exactly run to me, but it was close. He was still wearing the dress shirt and slacks I’d last seen him in, but they were covered in dried stains. Blood dried to black and brick red. Maybe I stared at the bloodstains, because he unbuttoned it as he came and threw it on the floor. For once, seeing his chest and shoulders bare didn’t make me think of sex. All I could think of was whose blood it was, Richard’s or Jean-Claude’s. Micah said, “Don’t reach out to them with power, Anita.”

“How did you know that’s what I was thinking?” I asked.

He smiled, but his eyes were tired, relieved to see me up and around, but tired. “I’m your Nimir-Raj.” That was often his answer to things when I asked how he read me so well. He was Nimir-Raj to my Nimir-Ra, and that seemed answer enough for him. He kissed me, and I expected Jason to let go of my hand so I could hug Micah, but he didn’t. Micah and I glanced at him, and I saw the fear naked in Jason’s eyes for a moment. I’d never seen his eyes like that. That one look let me know how terribly close we’d come to dying, and how close we still were. One look, and I knew that we weren’t out of the woods yet.

I looked up into Micah’s chartreuse eyes. “It’s not just the little vampires that the energy is supposed to save, is it?”

Jason’s hand tightened on mine. Micah hugged me, and I put my free hand over that smooth, warm, permanently tanned skin. I breathed in the scent of his neck, so precious to me. “Tell me,” I whispered.

He drew back enough to see my face. “When Jean-Claude dies at dawn he could take you and Richard with him.” I searched his solemn face and found only truth there. Truth, and fear, behind his eyes, hiding better, but it was there.

I called out, “Lillian!”

She was there. “Yes, Anita.”

“How likely is it that Jean-Claude will drag us with him?”

“Truthfully, we don’t know, but it’s a possibility, and we’d rather not find out.” She touched my forehead the way a mother takes a temperature. “Feed on Donovan, Anita. Take the energy he offers so we don’t have to worry about it.”

“You’re not sure this will work, are you?”

“Of course we are.”

“I don’t need to be a vamp or a shapeshifter to know that was a lie,” I said.

She stepped back, suddenly brisk and all professional. “Fine, we aren’t certain, but it will be enough energy to save some of you. Whether all of you will be saved, we just don’t know. This is new science here, Anita. New metaphysical science, which is always an uncertain thing.”

I nodded. “Thanks for telling me the truth.”

“You asked,” she said.

Edward came up through the crowd. “They told me it would work.”

“We said it was the best idea we had,” Lillian said. “That is not the same thing.”

Edward nodded. “All right, I heard what I wanted to hear.” He gave me a very serious look. “Don’t die on me. The other bodyguards would never let me live it down.”

I smiled. “I’ll do my best to protect your reputation.” I had a thought. “Now you get to wait outside.”

“What?” he said.

“I don’t think I can have sex in the room while you watch. Sorry.”

He grinned at me. “I guess I’d have trouble in front of you, too.” Then he did something that surprised me. He moved Jason away from my hand and took it, firm and certain, in his. He held my hand, and we looked at each other for a long moment. He opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. “If you die, I promise the Harlequin will pay for it.”

Apparently, the secret was out, and we were just calling a spade a scary shovel. I nodded. “You didn’t have to say it, I knew you would.”

He smiled, squeezed my hand, and left. I almost called him back. Surrounded by men I loved, and had sex with, but strangely I felt safer with Edward in the room. But the danger I was about to face wasn’t his kind of danger. In the room or out of it, Edward couldn’t help me now.

27

I DIDN’T SO much raise the ardeur, as simply stop fighting it. My control of it had grown to the point where I had to give it permission to feed. I had to unleash it. Maybe if the beasts inside me hadn’t risen at nearly the same time, I wouldn’t have thought of the ardeur as something on a leash. Something on a chain, yeah, a chain with a leather collar at the end of it. Yeah, something leather and metal studded, and tight.

I’d thought they had too many guards in the room, until I got close to Donovan Reece. Then part of me thought sex, and three or four other parts of me wondered what the flesh under all that skin would feel like between my teeth. Donovan had requested that the other men turn their backs and give us what privacy they could. They’d done it. Some had done it with a look that said it was silly, but they’d done it. Then Donovan took his clothes off. He stripped like a pale, white dream. The ardeur had made certain that his body was ready for me. He lay against the front of his body like something carved of ivory and blushed with the first pink of sunrise. He was as pale as a vampire, but he was dawn, he was sunlight on water, he was moonlight on wings. I heard the sound of birds calling in the night. I’d never known swans had a voice, almost like geese, but…no. No, not geese, swans.

Donovan’s voice came strained. “You’ve undone my control of my power. Something about the ardeur has stripped me bare of more than my clothes.”

I found I could still talk, above the feel of a night’s sky and moonlight, though it was like seeing double, as if the vision in my head threatened to be more real than the man beside me. “My version of the ardeur gives you what you want most, sometimes.” I leaned in beside his cheek and whispered into that perfect curve of ear. “What do you want most, Donovan Reece?”

He turned to me, and his eyes were a dull gray. “Not to be king.” He rolled us over so that he was suddenly looking down at me. His body was still pressed to the front of mine, not inside, but the sensation of him hard and firm trapped between our bodies made me cry out. He leaned over me, pressing that weight against me. He wrapped his arms around me, which put my face into his chest. I’d have trouble breathing with him on top. But he seemed to realize it and raised his upper body enough to curl around me, until his face was next to mine. “Can you give me what I most want, Anita?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

“Try.”

“It may not work the way you think it will.” I tried to think past the ardeur, past the feel of his body against mine, tried to think past the warm scent of his skin. The ardeur had a mind of its own, and a funny way of granting desires. I didn’t trust what would happen if that was what he truly wanted.

“Give me what I want, Anita.” He raised his upper body above me.

“I can’t control the ardeur that well, Donovan.”

He raised himself so that his upper body was in a half push-up, which pushed his lower body harder against mine. I whimpered for him.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

I had to open my eyes to answer him. “Not hurt, no.”

Something in my voice, in my unfocused gaze, made him smile. “No, not hurt,” he said, smiling down at me. His eyes were bluer than I’d ever seen them, as if something about this moment had chased the gray from his eyes.

I realized that his request to not be king had made me tone back the ardeur. It scared me, because the ardeur was a power unto itself. It did things, decided things, that I didn’t understand. If Jean-Claude had been able, I would have asked him. Of course, I had people I could ask. It was just going to be awkward to ask. One of the other reasons that Requiem and London were in the room was that they had more centuries of experience with the ardeur than I did. As victims, true, but still they knew it in ways I’d only begun to glimpse.

I put a hand on Donovan’s chest, to push him away, to give me breathing space. We were in a hurry, but we weren’t in such a hurry, were we? I mean, if he were dead, he wouldn’t be king. Sometimes the ardeur was a very literal thing. But I’d forgotten that the white hairs on his chest weren’t hair, but feathers. The moment my palm touched the silk of the feathers and the heat of his chest, I forgot what I was going to ask. My hands found his body, and he was hot to the touch, as if his temperature had spiked.

“Your skin, it’s hot.”

“I told you, you took my control away.” He leaned in as he said it, keeping his shoulders up, but lowering his head for a kiss. I could feel his heart thudding against the palm of my hand. I could feel it in a way that I hadn’t been able to feel since the ardeur was new to me. I felt his heart like it was something holdable, as if I could reach into his chest and cup it, caress it. I was suddenly very aware of all the blood rushing through his body. I could hear it, feel it, like warm ribbons running just under his skin. I could smell it, hot, metallic, sweet. I had closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see his face, watch him kiss me, but it wasn’t the human part of me that was the problem. Closing my eyes didn’t take away the feel, the weight, the scent of his skin, and of what lay so close under all that flesh.

He kissed me. He kissed me for the very first time, and I didn’t care. I moved away from those soft lips, and kissed my way along the line of his jaw. Kissed my way onto his neck. He seemed to take it as an invitation, because the hard length of him pushed between my legs. I opened for him, but put my hand on the back of his neck, holding his neck close to my kisses. His hair was the softest I’d ever touched, but it meant almost nothing to me. I could smell what I wanted, smell it like candy just under his skin.

He pulled against my hand. His voice was strained as he said, “Anita, I need a better angle.”

I kept my hand pressed into his neck, brushed by that soft hair, held him where a few kisses more would put me where I wanted to be. I felt him now, pushing against my opening, but not quite there. Normally, that distracted me from other things, but not tonight. Almost without thinking I moved my hips, my legs, angled my body for him. He entered me, and that did distract me. It made my eyes fly open wide, made me cry out and writhe underneath him. But I never let go of the back of his neck. I pressed my face in tight against his, as I raised my hips off the bed, my legs in the air so he could push himself in and out of me. I cried out under the strength of his body.

“Let me rise, Anita. Let me look at you.”

“No,” I whispered, “not yet.”

He pushed against my hand at his neck again. I put my other hand on his back. I held him in place and kissed over the pulse in his neck. It jumped and beat against my lips like something alive. Like a trapped bird in a cage of flesh. I would set it free. I would let it pour into my mouth, and…There was a moment of sanity, a heartbeat of, no, then Jean-Claude’s power breathed through me, his hunger, both his hungers, and there was no more doubt. There was only the press of Donovan’s pulse against my mouth, his body thrusting inside mine, my hips rising to meet him, and my mouth on his neck.

I bit him and tried to be gentle, but gentle wasn’t what I wanted, wasn’t how I felt. The sensation of his flesh in my mouth, caught between my teeth, as I bit slowly down, harder, and harder, felt so good. But what I wanted to do was bite more, take more of his flesh into my mouth, into me. The fluttering heat of his pulse like a frightened butterfly beat against the roof of my mouth. It was like a caress, urging me on, begging me to free that dancing bit of life.

Donovan lifted me up off the bed, his arms locked around me as he went to his knees. The movement startled me, made me ease back from the biting.

His voice was shaky. “Too much teeth, Anita.”

He knelt on the narrow bed, his arms wrapped around me, his body no longer inside me. My legs were wrapped around his waist. I must have done it automatically when he moved. He’d stopped making love to get me to stop trying to eat him.

His neck had a perfect impression of my teeth like a purplish-red bruise in the white perfection of his flesh. Blood traced down his shoulder and back where my nails had gone into that smooth skin. I could have said so many things, but the one thing I said was the one that amazed me most. “You broke the ardeur’s hold.”

“I may not be a predator, Anita, but I’m still a king; that means I have to give myself to you. You can’t just take it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s all right, I’m not angry. Just don’t tear my throat out, or carve my back up, okay?”

“I’m not sure she can help it,” Micah said. I looked out from the man in my arms to find not just Micah but all the men crowded around the bed. Remus seemed to be arguing with Requiem and London. Too low to hear, but body language said it all. I met Micah’s eyes and asked for help with a look. I’d thought of Donovan as just meat, just food. The sex hadn’t been enough to distract me from blood, and meat.

Donovan asked, “What can I do to keep myself safe?”

Requiem came to the bed, his black cloak tight around him. “If you are strong enough to sit up with her as you did, then you are strong enough to hold her down.”

“We can’t guarantee your safety, Reece,” Remus said.

Donovan looked at the guard. He shifted his grip from my waist to lower, but there was no wavering, as if he could have held me forever. It answered whether the swanmanes were stronger than normal humans; they were. “I know you cannot guarantee my safety.”

“She could tear your throat out before we could move,” Remus said.

“If it gets that out of hand, we interfere,” Micah said.

“Interfere how?” Remus asked.

“Grab her, help Donovan hold her down.”

“The ardeur will spread to anyone who touches her,” Remus said.

Micah nodded. “I know.”

Remus shook his head, a little too rapidly. “I can’t do my job then. I can’t keep Reece safe.”

“Because you won’t risk the ardeur spreading to you.” Micah made it a statement, not a question.

“Yes,” Remus said.

“Then leave,” London said.

“We need a senior guard in here,” Remus said. “Who do I send in my place? Bobby Lee is still in South America. Claudia, no. Who replaces me?” He sounded tormented, torn between duty and what? Duty and fear? Duty and the ardeur?

“We are out of time for niceties, Anita,” Requiem said. “I speak for the vampires. If the lesser among us are to be saved, it must be now.” There wasn’t a poetic allusion in the statement. Things were bad when Requiem stopped quoting poetry.

It was almost as if his words brought the ardeur crashing back. One moment I was almost neutral in Donovan’s arms, the next I was kissing him as if I’d crawl into his mouth. My nails just seemed to automatically dig into his back again. The feel of his flesh parting under my nails made me cry out in pleasure, and him in pain. I tried to tone down what I wanted to do to him. I tried not to bite at his mouth but only kiss, but the effort had me making small frustrated noises against his lips.

He pressed us back to the bed, his weight suddenly pinning me down. My legs were still wrapped around his waist so his body was already pushing against my opening. I fought to concentrate on the sex instead of flesh and blood. But the sex was tangled up with the feel of my nails in his back, my mouth at his lips. I wanted that hard press of flesh to shove its way inside me, but almost more I wanted to bite his lips and draw blood. I wanted blood more than sex. I was feeding for Jean-Claude, but the ardeur wasn’t his first hunger.

I licked Donovan’s lower lip, drew it into my mouth, so full, so rich, so…I bit down on his lip, hard and sharp. Blood, sweet, metallic, warm blood filled my mouth, and the world vanished in a dance of light flashes and pleasure. It wasn’t sex, or orgasm, but it was as if that sip of blood ate the world in a red wash of pleasure. I’d had the world go red from anger, but never from sheer joy. It was as if every piece of my body filled with warmth and happiness all at once. It was orgasmic and not, but whatever it was, it was amazing.

I was left gasping and almost limp underneath Donovan. It was as if I’d lost time, because he had my wrists pinned, his body trying for the right angle to enter me. I blinked up at him as if I didn’t remember how I got there. His chin was covered in bright, crimson blood; his lower lip was shredded. Had I done that?

Then he found his angle and was pushing his way into my body. I gazed down the length of our bodies to watch him plunge himself into me. The sight of it made me cry out and raise my hips to meet his thrust. His eyes fluttered shut, and he gasped, “You take all my control away.”

“Fuck me, Donovan,” I whispered.

He looked down at me, with blood spilling down his face, but his eyes filled with that look that a man gets. That look that says, Mine, sex, more, less than that. His eyes were bluer than I’d ever seen them as he began to shove himself in and out of my body. He found his rhythm, quick, fast, over and over. I watched all that pale, hard length plunge in and out of me. I felt the warmth begin to build. I whispered, “Soon.”

“Your eyes,” he whispered, “your eyes like blue flame.”

I might have asked what he meant by that, but one last thrust and the orgasm hit me. I screamed and struggled underneath him. He fought to hold my hands down, fought to pin my lower body, fought to keep me where he had me, as his body thrust inside me in one last powerful movement that brought me screaming again, or maybe I hadn’t stopped screaming from the first time. The ardeur fed, fed on his body plunged inside mine, fed on the strength of his hands on my wrists, fed on the heat of him, and then I felt the swans. The three women I knew in St. Louis were in a small bedroom. They stared up at me as if I were something they could see, something that had come to get them. Then other faces, more startled eyes; some cried out, some slumped on their couches, fell from chairs, others writhed on their beds. I fed, we fed, the ardeur fed. Dozens of faces, of bodies, and I felt Jean-Claude wake, felt it like a jolt through my belly and groin.

He took control of the energy and I might have tried to stop, but it was too late to stop. We fed on the swans, we fed on them all. So much power, so much life. We ate them down while they stumbled in mid-step, while they slid down walls, and none of them fought us. They just gave it up. An army of prey, an army of food; a glorious rush of power.

Richard woke; I felt his eyes flash open, felt him begin to choke and fight the tube in his throat. Jean-Claude drew me back from him, enough so I did not choke with him. I saw the white coats pile around Richard as he began to struggle.

Then it was night and moonlight and wings, strong wings beating against so much air. The ardeur hit those wings like an arrow through his heart. One pulse beat it was feathers and wings, the next pulse it was a man falling to earth. The ardeur took his power, drank down that pale body, that dark hair, the mix of pleasure and terror as he plummeted. Richard’s power burst over me, through me, in a rush of heat and electricity. He reached out to the falling man, and simply thought—Change. He called the man’s beast, called that energy and covered the flesh in feathers, turned the arms to wings in time for him to turn and skim over the treetops. I felt leaves brush our feet as wings beat frantically to gain height. But frantic didn’t quite cover all that smooth, muscled power. When all we could feel was wind and space, we left him, and I had a moment of staring into Richard’s face, a moment to see his chest covered in healing scars. Then I was back in the narrow bed with Donovan on top of me, his body poised above me, spine bowed, hands gripping my wrists as if I were the last solid thing in the world. His eyes were closed; blood dripped from his mouth onto my skin like red flowers exploding on my body.

I breathed his name. “Donovan.”

He opened his eyes and they were solid black and no longer human. He threw his head back and screamed. The sound was high and piteous. The sound froze my heart in my throat. I had time to think, I’ve hurt him, and then that pale, perfect body began to thrust into me all over again, as if we hadn’t just made love. But before he’d been gentle, careful. There was nothing gentle this time. He plunged into me as hard and fast as he could. He brought me screaming, writhing, underneath him. His hands bruised my wrists, held me in place as his rhythm became frantic, his breathing ragged, and feathers flowed around his body like a nimbus of white light. I had a second to think, Angel, and then all I could see was feathers, brushing me, covering me like a blanket. He cried out again and his body thrust into mine. He brought me one last time, covered in feathers, blinded by them, breathing them in. His hands vanished and I could move my hands, but all I could touch were feathers and bones too delicate to be human. Huge wings beat the air above me, and I could finally see a long graceful neck, the head, the beak. I was trapped at the center of a storm of wingbeats and feathers, as he fought for lift. I covered my face with my arms, because a swan can break the arm of a grown man with one blow. Then he was off, almost hovering, but the ceiling was too low. He crashed to the floor.

I was left buffeted, breathless, heart hammering in my chest. A single feather longer than my hand lay across my stomach. I managed to prop myself up, the feather fluttering down between my legs to land beside the condom that lay discarded on the bed. It had been the only clothes he’d been wearing.

Jean-Claude’s voice eased through me. “Je t’aime, ma petite, je t’aime.”

“I love you, too,” I whispered.

Then dawn came, and I felt him die. Felt that wonderful person I loved go away. I heard the sound of a body hitting the ground. Requiem was a heap of black cloak. One of the guards had managed to catch London and was lowering him to the ground a little more gently. The vampires were dead for the day, all of them. We had hours of daylight to find the Harlequin and kill them. I’m not sure that’s what Jean-Claude and the other vampires would have wanted, but the vampires were down for the count until nightfall. It was daylight, and the humans were in charge. Thanks to Jean-Claude I was the top human in our city. Thanks to Richard’s self-loathing, the guards would listen to me instead of him. All right, except for the wolves. The wolves were his, but that was okay, I needed professionals, not gifted amateurs. I needed Edward and his backup. At that moment I would have welcomed any backup he thought could handle the job.

28

I WAS WRONG. I didn’t want to welcome Edward’s backup. One of them I wanted to send back to his mommy. The other I wanted to put a bullet in his brain, or heart. He was human, so either would do the job.

At least I was dressed for the fight. I never fight as well naked. I would so not have been comfy naked in front of Edward, let alone in front of his “backup.” “What the fuck were you thinking?” I shouted at him. Yeah, it was one of those kinds of fights.

Edward’s face was blank, empty, peaceful. It was one of the faces he killed with when he wasn’t enjoying the kill. “Olaf is good backup for this, Anita. He’s got the skills we need: a covert spook, any weapon you care to name, hand-to-hand, and better with explosives than I am.”

“He’s also a fucking serial killer, whose victims of choice are petite brunette women.” I slapped my upper chest. “Sound like anyone you know?”

He let out a breath; if it had been anyone else I would have said he sighed. “He’s a good match for this job, Anita, I swear that he is, but he wasn’t my choice, not exactly.”

I stopped pacing and came to stand in front of him. I’d kicked everyone out except Micah when he handed me the overnight bag full of clothes and weapons. I loved a man who knew how to pack for me. When I’d stepped out into the hallway and seen Olaf and Peter, I’d gone back in the room, kicked Micah out, too, and invited Edward in.

“What does that mean, he wasn’t your choice, exactly? You just said his skills match this job.”

“They do, but do you really think I’d have brought him within a hundred miles of you, Anita? Olaf likes you, likes you in a way I’ve never seen him like a woman. He has whores and he has victims, but whatever he feels for you is different.”

“Are you saying he loves me?”

“Olaf doesn’t love anybody, but he feels something for you.”

“He wants me to play serial killer with him, Edward.”

Edward nodded. “The last time he saw you, you and he killed a vampire together. You decapitated it, and he cut out its heart.”

“How do you know what we did? You were in the hospital trying not to die.”

“I heard about it later from the local cops. They were creeped by the way you butchered the vampire. Said you were both real good at cutting up the body.”

“I’m a legal vampire executioner, Edward. It’s what I do.”

He nodded again. “And Olaf has been a special-ops assassin for most of his adult life.”

“I don’t hold his day job against him, Edward; it’s his damn hobby that I don’t like.”

“Hobby? You call the fact that he’s a serial killer his hobby?”

I shrugged. “I think that’s how he sees it.”

He smiled. “I think you may be right.”

“Don’t you smile at me. Don’t you fucking smile at me. You hinted that you didn’t want to bring him on this job, so why did you?”

His face sobered. “He wanted to come to St. Louis to see you”—he put air quotes around the see—“on his own. I told him if he came near you I’d kill him. He believed me, but he said that if I ever got called to back you up again, I had to include him. If I didn’t, he’d come on his own, and take his chances with me later.”

“Later? Later, after what?”

Edward gave me a look out of those blue eyes that were some of the coldest I ever looked into. “So he’s here to what, kill me?”

“He doesn’t kill women, Anita. He butchers them.”

I shuddered, because I’d seen Olaf at a serial-killer crime scene. Not his own work. He’d been helping Edward and me track down a different killer. But the victim had been just a pile of meat. It had been one of the worst things I’d ever seen done to a human being. Olaf had looked up from that pile of carnage, and the look in his face had been sexual. As if what lay on that table was the biggest turn-on he’d ever had. He’d looked at me, and he’d been thinking sex, yeah, but he’d been thinking sex not just without my clothes, but as if he wondered what I’d look like without my skin. Most humans didn’t scare me anymore, but Olaf scared me.

Edward said, “Anita, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’d rather see a ghost than him.”

He smiled again. “Rather see a ghost; I keep forgetting that you’re not just a pretty face.”

I frowned at him. “You’re smiling. This fight isn’t even close to over.”

“I had to invite Olaf to play, Anita. This way I have his word that he’ll behave himself.”

“Define behave himself.”

“No serial killing on your turf, period.”

“So I’m off the menu, too?”

“He wants to help you slaughter your victim of choice, vampires. He’ll even help you kill men, he said.”

I shivered, rubbing my arms, squeezing tight so the gun in its shoulder holster dug into my breast a little. I liked the discomfort. I wasn’t helpless. It was just that Olaf was six feet plus of trained muscle. I was stronger and faster than a normal human thanks to Jean-Claude’s vampire marks, but I still knew enough about physical potential to know that Olaf was a very dangerous man. He was crazy and trained to kill; that seemed an unfair advantage to me.

“You think he would have come on his own by now, if you hadn’t given him your word?” I asked.

“Yes.” He wasn’t smiling when he said that last. He was as serious as I’d ever seen him. “I would never have invited him to that last case in New Mexico if I’d thought I would be needing your help. Please, believe that the last thing I wanted was for him to meet you. I knew it would be a disaster. I just didn’t expect you to…charm him. I didn’t know there was a woman on the planet that could have made him feel anything close to…”—he searched for a word—“he wants to help you hunt and slaughter these vampires.”

“I don’t want him here, Edward.”

“I know, but this was the best compromise I could make with him, Anita. Actually I hoped he’d be out of the country, so far away that the fireworks would be over before he could get back to the United States. He took a job with a government agency to help train up some of their new antiterrorist infiltration groups. He took a job that he’s qualified for—he speaks more Middle Eastern languages than I do—but it wasn’t a job that let him exercise his urges.”

“You mean he’s not been allowed to kill anyone.”

He nodded.

“Why would he take a job that didn’t let him slaughter people?”

“Because he knew if he went out of the country, he’d never make it back in time to be in St. Louis when you needed me.”

I stared at Edward. “Are you saying that Olaf took a job that he didn’t want so he’d be closer to me?”

“That is exactly what I’m saying. This last year and some change is probably the longest he’s ever gone without killing someone. If you’d asked me, I’d have said he couldn’t go this long without killing someone.”

“How do you know he didn’t?”

“He’s got a deal with our government. He doesn’t play serial killer on American soil. They look the other way, as long as he abides by that.”

I hugged myself tight again. “I didn’t ask Olaf to be a good boy, Edward.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“Why does the fact that he’s behaved himself on the off chance that he can come play with me scare me?”

“Because you’re smart.”

“Explain to me why it makes my skin run cold that he’s gone to this much effort for me?”

“He is crazy, Anita. Which means that you never know what will trigger him with a woman. He likes you as much as I’ve ever seen him like a woman. But he has high standards for women.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that when he saw you almost two years ago you weren’t sleeping around. Now you are. I’m a little worried that that will change his opinion of you.”

“He kills whores,” I said, my voice flat.

“I did not call you a whore.”

“You said I sleep around.”

“You have half a dozen regular lovers, and you just had sex with a new one. Give me another way to say it.”

I thought about it, then shook my head and almost smiled. “A full dance card. Oh, hell, Edward. Fine, I’m sleeping with a lot of men.” Which brought me to another thought. “God, Peter was in the hallway while Donovan and I were in here…” I felt myself blush and couldn’t stop it.

“I figured you for a screamer.”

I gave him a very unfriendly look.

“Sorry, but Peter was embarrassed. What else do you want me to say?”

“Say why you brought him. Say why the hell would you involve him in this dangerous mess?”

“Short version, because we’ve only got a few hours to find these bastards.”

“I agree we’ve got a ticking clock, but you have to explain Peter being here. I can’t just let him go hunting vampires with us, Edward. He’s sixteen years old, for God’s sake.”

“It was the phone call when you talked to him. He knew you were in trouble. Short version, he wanted to return the favor. You rescued him, he wanted to help rescue you.”

“I don’t need rescuing. I need people to help me kill other people. I don’t want Peter to get better at killing people. I watched him kill the woman who raped him. I watched him blow her face to red sauce.” I shook my head and started pacing the room again. “How could you do this to him, Edward?”

“If I had left him home he just would have followed me. He knew where I was going. This way I can keep an eye on him.”

“No, you can’t. We can’t do this job and babysit at the same time. They almost killed all three of us: Richard, Jean-Claude, and me. We’re kind of hard to kill, Edward. These guys are good, dangerous good. Do you really want Peter’s first real job to be against something this scary?”

“No,” Edward said, “but he was coming. I had the choice of bringing him with me, or letting him find his own way.”

“He’s sixteen, Edward. You’re his father. You say no, and you make it stick.”

“I’m not married to his mother yet, Anita. I’m not his official step-anything.”

“He sees you as his dad.”

“Not when he doesn’t want to.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I don’t have the authority that a real dad would have over him sometimes. It means that I’ll always wonder if he’d been mine from the beginning if he’d be different, or if we’d have ended up here anyway.”

“He’s out there in the hallway, armed. He’s carrying more than one gun, and at least one knife. He’s carrying them like he’s done it before. What the hell have you been teaching him, Edward?”

“What any father teaches his son.”

“Which is?”

“What he knows.”

I just stared at him, knowing my face held a soft, growing horror. “Edward, you can’t make him into a little you.”

“He was scared all the time, Anita, after the attack. His therapist thought that martial arts training, training him to take care of himself, would help. It did. He stopped having the nightmares after a while.”

“Training him to take care of himself is different from what’s standing out in that hallway. There’s a loss of innocence in his eyes. A…oh, hell, I don’t know what is missing, or what’s there that shouldn’t be, but I know it when I see it.”

“It’s the look that you have in your eyes, Anita. It’s the look that I have in mine.”

“He is not like us,” I said.

“He’s killed twice.”

“He killed the wereanimal that killed his father and would have slaughtered them all. He killed the woman who raped him.”

“It’s pretty to think that it matters why you take a life. I guess it does, but what the taking of a life does to you inside doesn’t care why you did it. You either can kill and sleep nights, or you can’t. Peter isn’t bothered by the killing, Anita. He’s bothered by what the bitch did to him. He’s bothered by the fact that he couldn’t protect his sister.”

“No one sexually abused Becca,” I said.

“No, thank God, but her hand is still stiff sometimes. She has to do hand-strengthening exercises. The hand works, but it’s not a hundred percent.”

“And the man who tortured her is dead,” I said.

Edward gave me those cold blue eyes. “You killed him for me.”

“You were a little busy,” I said.

“Yeah, dying.”

“You didn’t die,” I said.

“I came as close as I’ve ever come. But I knew you’d save the kids. I knew that you would see it right.”

“Edward, don’t do this to me.”

“Don’t do what?” he asked.

“Don’t make me part of taking Peter’s childhood away from him.”

“He’s not a child, Anita.”

“He’s not a grown-up either,” I said.

“And how do you grow up if no one shows you how?”

“Edward, we’re going up against some of the most dangerous vampires that you and I have ever faced. Peter can’t be that good yet. He can’t be up to that skill level, no matter how much you’ve taught him. If you want to get him killed, fine, he’s your kid, but I will not be a part of it. I will not help you get him killed in some macho bullshit initiation thing. I won’t do it. Do you understand me? I won’t allow it. Maybe you can’t send him home, but I can.”

“How?” he asked.

“What do you mean, how? I tell him to go the fuck home before he gets himself killed.”

“He won’t go.”

“I can demonstrate that he’s out of his depth, Edward.”

“Don’t humiliate him, Anita, please.”

It was the please that got me. “You’d rather he die than get humiliated?”

Edward swallowed hard enough that I heard it. He turned away so I couldn’t see his face. Not a good sign. “When I was sixteen, I’d rather have died than have a woman I loved humiliate me. He’s sixteen and male, don’t do that to him.”

“Wait, what did you say?”

“I said, he’s sixteen and male, don’t humiliate him.”

I went to him, walked around so that he had to meet my eyes. “Not that part.”

Edward looked at me, and there was real anguish in his eyes. “Jesus, Edward, what is it?”

“His therapist says that an event like what happened to him just as his sexuality was awakening can be a defining event.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that his view of sex and violence is all mixed up together.”

“Okay, what does that mean, exactly?”

“It means he’s had two girlfriends in the last year. The first one was perfect. She was quiet, respectful, pretty. They were sweet together.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Her parents called one night and asked what kind of monster our son was, that he’d hurt their daughter.”

“Hurt her how?”

“The usual. She was a virgin and they didn’t do enough foreplay.”

“It happens,” I said.

“But the girl claimed that when she told him it hurt, he didn’t stop.”

“Sounds like buyer’s remorse to me, Edward.”

“I thought so, too, until the second girl. She was rough trade, Anita. As bad as the first girl had been good. She slept around, and everyone knew it. She broke up with Peter, said he was a freak. This girl was a freak, Anita. She was all leather and spikes and piercings, and it wasn’t just for show. She said he hurt her.”

“What did Peter say?”

“He said he didn’t do anything she didn’t ask him to do.”

“What does that mean?”

“I wish I knew.”

“He won’t tell you?” I asked.

“No,” Edward said.

“Why not?”

“I think it’s rough sex. I think he’s embarrassed to talk about it, or what they did was bad enough that he thinks I will think he’s a freak, too. He doesn’t want me to think that.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Sometimes silence is the best you can do. Then I thought of something worth saying. “Liking rough sex doesn’t make you a freak.”

He looked at me.

“It doesn’t,” I said, and I felt myself begin to blush.

“It’s not my thing, Anita. It just doesn’t move me.”

“Everyone has things that do it for them, Edward.”

“Rough does it for you?”

“Sometimes.”

“When a kid is abused, they can react a lot of different ways; two of the choices are that they identify with the abuser and become abusers, or they embrace the role of victim. He didn’t embrace the role of victim, Anita.”

“What are you saying, Edward?”

“I don’t know yet. But his therapist says that he’s also identified with his savior, you. He has another option besides just victim or abuser; he has you.”

“What does that mean, he has me?”

“You saved him, Anita. You took off the ropes, the blindfold. He’d just had the first sex of his life, and he looks up and sees you.”

“He was raped,” I said.

“It’s still sex. Everyone likes to pretend that it’s not, but it is. It may be about dominance, and pain, but it’s still sex. I’d take it away, make it so it never happened, but I can’t. Donna can’t. His therapist can’t. Peter can’t.”

My eyes were burning. Damn it, I would not cry. But I remembered a fourteen-year-old boy who I’d had to watch be abused on camera. They’d done it so I’d do what they wanted. Done it to prove that if I failed them, I wouldn’t be the one who suffered. I had failed Peter. I had saved him, but not in time. I had got him out, but not before.

“I can’t save him, Anita.”

“We already saved him, as much as we can, Edward.”

“No, you saved him.”

I realized in that one statement that Edward blamed himself, too. We’d both failed him, then. “You were saving Becca at the time.”

“Yes, but what that bitch did to Peter is still happening. It’s still inside him, in his eyes. I can’t fix it.” His hands clenched into fists. “I can’t fix it.”

I touched his arm. He flinched but didn’t pull away. “You don’t fix shit like this, Edward, not outside television sitcoms. In real life you don’t fix this. You can make it better, you can heal, but it doesn’t just go away. Real life doesn’t fix that easy.”

“I’m his father, or all the father he has. If I don’t fix it, who can?”

“No one,” I said. I shook my head. “Sometimes you just accept your losses and move on. Peter’s scarred, but he’s not broken beyond repair. I’ve talked to him on the phone, I’ve looked in his eyes. I see the person he’s becoming, and it’s a strong person, a good person.”

“Good.” He laughed and it was a harsh sound. “I can only teach him what I am, and I’m not good.”

“Honorable then,” I said.

He thought about that, then nodded. “Honorable. I’ll take that, I guess.”

“Strong and honorable is not a bad legacy, Edward.”

He looked at me. “Legacy, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I shouldn’t have brought Peter.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“His skills aren’t a good match for this job,” he said.

“No,” I said, “they aren’t.”

“You can’t send him home, Anita.”

“You’d really rather see him dead than humiliated?”

“If you humiliate him, it will destroy him, Anita. It will destroy that part of him that wants to save people and not hurt them. If he gives up that part of himself, I’m afraid that all that will be left is a predator in training.”

“Why do I feel like you’re leaving out stuff?”

“Because this is the short version, remember?”

I nodded, then shook my head. “Jesus, Edward, if this is the short version, I’m not sure my nerves can take the long one.”

“We’ll keep Peter in the background, as much as we can. I’ve got more backup on the way, but I’m not sure they’ll get here in time.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re running out of time.”

“Let’s do this.”

“With Peter and Olaf?” He made it a question.

“He’s your kid, and Olaf is good in a fight. If Olaf gets out of hand, we kill him.”

Edward nodded. “My thought, exactly.”

I wanted to let it go, God knew I did, but I couldn’t. I was a girl and I couldn’t let it go. “Did you say that Peter was in love with me?”

“I wondered if you’d heard that.”

“I understand why he has a crush on me, I guess. I saved him. You hero-worship someone who saves you.”

“It may be a crush, or hero worship, but remember, Anita, that it’s the strongest emotion he’s ever had for a woman. It may not be love, but if you’ve never felt anything stronger, how do you tell the difference?”

The answer was, you don’t. I just didn’t like that answer, not one little bit.

29

I HADN’T RECOGNIZED Peter at first, because he’d done that growth spurt thing that teenage boys do sometimes. He’d been a little taller than me when I last saw him. Now he was damn close to six feet. His hair had been chestnut brown last time I saw him; now it was darker, a brown that was almost black. It wasn’t a dye job, just a child’s hair darkening to the color it would be as an adult. His shoulders had broadened, and he looked older than sixteen if you looked only at muscle development, but the face, the face hadn’t caught up to the body. The face still looked young, unfinished, until you hit the eyes. The eyes were young one minute and cynical and old as hell the next. It would have been unnerving enough to see Peter under these circumstances, but Edward’s little talk hadn’t helped my nerves at all. It made me look for signs that Peter was what Edward feared, a junior predator. If I hadn’t had Edward’s warning in my head, would I have noticed that look, that gesture? Would I have scrutinized him, trying to see the damage? Maybe. But I cursed Edward for oversharing, cursed him loud and long in my head.

Peter wasn’t Peter Parnell, he was Peter Black. He even had ID to prove it. The ID said he was eighteen, too. The ID looked damned good. Edward and I were sooo going to talk about Peter’s educational experiences if we could just avoid getting him killed here and now. And that was the real danger to Peter being here. Edward and I needed to concentrate on the bad guys, but we’d both be worried about Peter, we just would. It was going to fuck with our concentration. Maybe I could persuade Peter to stay out of the action by telling him he might get us both killed. It might be the truth.

Olaf stood against the far wall in a ring of bodyguards. They hadn’t disarmed him, yet, but my reaction to him coming through the door had made them not like him at all. Or maybe it was the fact that he was taller than Claudia, which put him perilously close to seven feet tall. He wasn’t thin, but I’d seen him shirtless and knew that there was nothing but muscle under that pale skin, a lot of muscle. But it was lean muscle, muscle that could move fast. Even standing still, there was a potential in Olaf that just about raised the hairs on your neck. He was still perfectly bald, with a dark shadow of almost-beard on chin and jaws and upper lip. He was one of those men who needed to shave twice a day to stay perfectly shaved. His eyes were so deep set it was like staring into twin caves. Dark eyes, set deep in a pale face. His eyebrows were black above them. He was dressed in the same black I’d seen him in almost two years ago. Black T-shirt, black leather jacket, black jeans, over black boots. I wanted to ask him if he owned anything with color to it, but I didn’t want to tease him. One, he didn’t like to be teased; two, I wasn’t sure if he’d think I was flirting. I just didn’t understand Olaf enough to mess with him.

He was trying to be neutral in the circle of bodyguards, but there was something in him that was never truly neutral. Most serial killers make the neighbors say, He was such a quiet man, a nice boy, so surprised. Olaf had never been a nice boy. I’d seen him vanish into a nighttime field in plain sight, like magic. Not supernatural powers, but military training. Edward had called him a special-ops spook, and I’d seen it work. I knew that all that tall muscled violence could melt into the night. What I didn’t believe was that it could pretend to be harmless and do undercover work. Edward did that kind of work, and was fabulous at it. But Edward was sane, and Olaf wasn’t. Crazy people have trouble stopping the crazy long enough to blend in with the normals.

He put that cave-dweller gaze on me. I shivered, because I couldn’t help it. He actually smiled. He liked that I was afraid of him. He liked that a lot. A part of me screamed, Kill him now. The rest of me really didn’t disagree with that little voice.

“We need the muscle,” Edward said at my side.

“You’re reading my mind,” I said.

“I know you.”

I nodded. “Yeah, you know me.” I glared at him. “And yet this is who you bring to my party.”

“He had no choice,” Olaf said in that deep, rumbling voice that seemed to come from the very center of that big chest.

“I heard that,” I said.

Claudia said, “Anita, what is he?” She jerked a thumb at him.

“Backup,” I said.

She gave me a look.

“He’s given his word of honor that he’ll behave himself while he’s in our city.”

“Behave himself how?” Remus asked.

I looked at Edward. “You explain it. I need to get some paperwork from Jean-Claude’s room.”

“Paperwork,” he said.

I nodded. “I think I’ve got warrants of execution for the two vamps that fucked us earlier.”

“I thought no one knew they were in town,” he said.

“They’ve been setting up some of the vamps from the Church of Eternal Life.”

“Busy girls,” Edward said.

“They were women, these vampires?” Olaf asked. His voice was neutral, I’d give him that.

I hated to answer his question, because if the driver’s license photos looked as much like the vampires Mercia and Nivia as I remembered, then I knew why two of Malcolm’s people had been naughty. The Harlequin were spies and covert ops; a little play-acting was right up their alley. Was I certain that Mercia and Nivia had pretended to be Sally Hunter and Jennifer Hummel? No. Was I almost sure? Yes. Was I sure enough to use the warrants to kill them? Oh, yes.

“Yes, they were both female,” I said, and I didn’t look at him as I said it.

“Are we going to kill them?”

“Probably.”

“What do they look like?” he asked, and his voice was losing its neutral edge.

“Why does that matter to you?” Claudia asked.

I forced myself to look up and meet Olaf’s gaze. I fought to watch his face while I said, “They fit your vic profile, if that’s what you want to know. One of them maybe a little tall, but the other one is juuust right.”

The look on his face…such joy, such anticipation. It made me want to cry, or scream, or shoot him.

“Vic profile,” Claudia said. “What are you saying?”

“Olaf is special ops. He’s an assassin, and a soldier, and a spook, and he’s good at all of it.”

“Not just good,” he said, “I am the best.”

“I’ll let you and Edward discuss that someday, but he’s good, Claudia. He’s backed my play before, and he was…useful.” I licked my lips. “But no woman of any description is to be alone with him at any time.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I gave my word,” Olaf said.

“I’m going to treat you like a recovering alcoholic, Olaf. Let’s just keep temptation out of reach, okay?”

“We are going to slaughter these two women together, correct?” he asked.

I licked my suddenly dry lips again, then nodded. “I think so.”

“Then I will not be tempted elsewhere.”

Normally, I’d have just used silver shot and blown holes through the vampires until I saw daylight. Or maybe a good old-fashioned staking. But they were Harlequin. I would have to treat them as if they were master vamps, heavy hitters. Which meant shoot them with silver shot, then decapitate them, take the heart out, and burn them both. You burn the body in a separate fire. Then you scatter the ashes in running water, different bodies of running water if you want to be truly paranoid. Was I paranoid, or just cautious? These two vampires had almost killed Jean-Claude, Richard, and me from a distance, using powers I’d never seen before. Paranoid it wasn’t.

It was a messy, dirty job to decapitate and take a heart. There were vampire executioners who quit after having to do it a few times, just didn’t have the stomach for it. Did I have the stomach for it? Yes. Would I let Olaf help me? Who the hell else would volunteer? Edward would do it if I asked, but truthfully, Olaf was better at taking the body apart. I guess practice makes perfect, and Olaf had had a lot of practice.

Claudia asked again, “What do you mean he’s like an alcoholic?”

“You tell her, Edward. I’m going to go check my paperwork.”

“Not without guards, you aren’t,” he said.

“Fine,” I said. “Send guards with me.”

“Where is the paperwork?” he asked.

“In my briefcase in Jean-Claude’s place.”

“You can’t go to the Circus of the Damned without me, Anita.”

“Or me,” Olaf said.

“If I said ‘or me,’ would you get mad?” Peter said.

I frowned at him. “Yes.”

He grinned at me. He was entirely too pleased to be here with his guns and knives strapped to his body. He was even wearing a black T-shirt, but at least his jeans were blue, though his leather jacket was black. The boots were brown and looked like Edward’s, real cowboy boots, not boots you’d wear to go dancing like Olaf’s. Though the fact that I thought Olaf’s boots were club boots was probably a fact best kept to myself.

“I have to vote with them,” Claudia said.

“No one asked your opinion, woman,” Olaf said.

“Let’s get this clear, right now,” I said. “Claudia is one of our officers. You don’t like it, I know that, but I trust her with my life.”

“She nearly got you killed.”

“Didn’t I end up in the hospital a couple of times in New Mexico, when you were supposed to be watching my back?”

Anger flared across his face, thinning out his lips, making his eyes look even more cavernous.

“Don’t bitch at Claudia, if you can’t do better.” The moment I said it, I knew I shouldn’t have.

“I can do better than a woman.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Anita,” Claudia said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Let me prove it.”

I sighed. “As amusing as the thought of you and Olaf going at it is, please don’t. I know where the two bad vamps are, and I have current warrants of execution.”

“How do you know where they are?” Edward asked.

“I saw hotel stationery fall from a table in the vision. If they didn’t wake up and move their asses, we got ’em.” I looked at Olaf. “If you don’t slow me down by picking fights with my guards, then we get to kill two vampires today. They’re powerful enough that we’ll have to take their heads and hearts.”

“Like we did in New Mexico,” he said, and there was an eager purr to that deep voice.

I nodded, swallowing past a feeling that might have been nausea. “Yes.”

“To hunt with you again, Anita, I will let this one believe what she likes.”

I understood what a huge concession that was for Olaf. Claudia said, “I don’t believe it, big man, I know it.”

“Claudia,” I said, “please, oh, hell, just don’t be around him, okay? He can’t seem to help how he feels about women. Just don’t crowd him and we’ll get this done, okay?”

She didn’t like it, but she nodded.

“Great. Edward, you fill in the guards on why Olaf isn’t to be alone with the women. I want to see Richard alive, not just in a vision. When you’re done telling everyone what a big, bad man he is, come find me, and you can drive me to the Circus of the Damned for the warrants.”

“I don’t want you going out of my sight without guards, Anita.”

“Jesus, Edward, it’s daylight.”

“Yeah, and you know better than I do that master vamps have human servants, animals to protect them, and just plain human victims who will do anything they’re told.”

I nodded, a little too fast, a little too often. “Fine, fine, you’re right. I’m tired, and I’m…oh, hell, just pick some guards so I can go see Richard.”

I should have understood if he picked guards, who one of them would be. Just shadowing me to Richard’s hospital room was an easy job, a safe job, or should have been. I went for the far door with one bodyguard in front of me and one behind. The one bringing up the rear was Peter.

30

OUTSIDE RICHARD’S ROOM I had a fight with my guards. The other guard was Cisco, who was all of eighteen. I felt like a chaperone at a prom. But the fact that they were both still teenagers didn’t make them less stubborn. Hell, maybe it made them more stubborn.

“Standing orders,” Cisco said, “are that you are not to go anywhere without at least one guard with you at all times.” He ran his hand through his carefully blond-tipped hair and frowned. He wasn’t happy.

“I don’t need an audience to see my boyfriend.”

“Orders are orders,” he said.

I looked up at Peter. I still wasn’t used to having to look up at him. I’d visualized him over the phone as my size, with that brown hair cut in a standard short cut. But the brunette do was cut short but longer on top, not exactly a skater’s cut but close. It was more modern, more teenager, less little boy. I didn’t like it. “I need a little privacy, Peter, you understand that.”

He smiled and shook his head. “I’m not fourteen now, Anita.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m sympathetic, but not stupid. Edward gave the orders, and Claudia and Remus backed them up.”

They were both young enough that I thought I might be able to embarrass them into letting me talk to Richard alone. “Fine, which of you wants to see me get all emotional with Richard?”

They exchanged looks.

“How emotional?” Cisco asked.

“I don’t know, maybe I’ll cry, maybe we’ll have a fight. You never know with Richard and me.”

Cisco spoke to Peter like I wasn’t there. “They are pretty weird around each other.”

“Weird how?” Peter asked.

“I am standing right here,” I said.

Cisco looked at me with those big dark eyes. “You and Richard are like scary weird together as a couple; come on, it’s true.”

I had to smile. “Scary weird, huh?”

Cisco nodded.

I sighed. “Fine, I guess so, but I would like privacy, come on. He almost died, and so did I.”

“I’m sorry, Anita,” Cisco said. “I can’t do it. One of us has to be in the room with you.”

“Don’t I have any seniority here?”

“Claudia and Remus both made it really clear that if I fuck up again, I’m gone, like fired gone. I’m not going to fuck up again.”

“What’d you do?” Peter asked, then actually blushed. “Sorry, sorry, not my business. Later.”

Cisco nodded. “Later.”

Cisco sniffed the air and turned toward the far end of the hallway. Soledad came around the corner. She saw us, and her face looked suddenly stricken. She dropped to all fours and started to crawl toward us. Not in that almost sexual way the lycanthropes could, but broken, as if it hurt her to move.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Her voice came, as broken as her movements. “I shot Richard. I’m sorry.”

“You shot Richard,” I said. I looked at Cisco.

He shrugged and gave me a look as if to say, Yeah. “I think if she hadn’t shot him, he might have just torn Jean-Claude’s heart out.”

“I’m sorry,” Soledad said. “I didn’t know what else to do.” She had stopped a few feet from us, her hand held out in the air, her head down. I’d seen a similar gesture among the lions. It was a way of asking to come closer when you were pretty sure the dominant in question didn’t like you.

I’d been told that a guard shot Richard, and that it had saved Jean-Claude’s life, but no one had told me who had done it. I stared at the woman holding out that hand, asking for forgiveness. She’d done her job, sort of. What would I have done in her place? Frozen. I wouldn’t have been able to shoot Richard to save Jean-Claude. I’d have frozen and Jean-Claude would have died. Which would have probably killed both Richard and me. Shit.

“They took her weapons,” Cisco said, “until they review it all.”

“Like when a cop is involved in a shooting,” I said.

“A lot of us are ex-police now,” Cisco said, and he gave me a look, as if to say, Well, what are you going to do?

What was I going to do? I sighed, hung my head, and started forward. Why was it that in the middle of every crisis I always seemed to be babysitting someone’s emotions? Usually someone who was dangerous, armed, or should have been some kind of tough guy, or girl. The monsters were a lot softer than they seemed.

I went to her and gave her my left hand. Most people did it like they were shaking hands, but I kept my gun hand free; just habit. Soledad made a sound like a sob as she gripped my hand. I had a moment to feel how terribly strong she was as she crawled close enough to put her face against my hand. She rubbed her cheeks against my hand and lower arm, and murmured, “Thank you, thank you, Anita. I’m so sorry, so sorry.” Her tears were cool against my skin. Funny, tears were always colder than blood; shouldn’t they both feel the same? Her power flared across my skin like a giant’s breath, so hot, and so everywhere. Any strong emotion can undo a shapeshifter’s control.

She drew a shuddering sob and threw herself around my waist, her long arms clutching me. She was practically wailing. “I didn’t know what else to do with Richard….”

“It’s okay, Soledad, it’s okay.” I patted her hair and started to turn in her arms. I didn’t know her well enough to be this up close and personal, and the emotional content was a little much for near strangers. Hell, I wouldn’t have wanted this much emotional content from close friends. I had actually turned around, with her hands only lightly on me, when she moved. She grabbed me around the waist, lifted me in front of her face and chest, and I blocked the clawed hand that had gone for my throat with my arm. Claws dug into my side just below the ribs. The pain was sharp and immediate, and I suddenly had two goals. I strained to keep her hand from my throat and gripped her wrist at my waist to keep her from slicing open my belly.

Her voice growled from behind me, “I’m sorry you have to die, Anita.”

31

CISCO AND PETER both had their guns out. I’d have loved to go for a gun or a knife, but wrestling the weretiger took both my hands. She wasn’t trying that hard to close on my throat, and the hand at my belly was almost immobile except for the fact that the hooked claws she’d conjured from her skin had pierced my side.

She called to the boys, “Don’t yell for help or she’s dead. I don’t want her dead. Just let me leave with her and I won’t hurt her.”

“You’ve already hurt her, I can smell the blood,” Cisco said. His gun was very steady on us, but she’d taken all his kill shots. If they only wounded her, she would have time to kill me before they could kill her.

“A little prick, that’s all. She likes pricks, don’t you, Anita?”

My voice was a little strained from keeping her hand from my throat. The claws weren’t as big as they seemed, they only looked huge because the human flesh didn’t cover the bone of the tiger claw. But they were plenty big enough to tear out my throat. I might survive the gut wound, but the throat would be fatal. I managed to say through gritted teeth, “If you’re going to kill me, do it, but don’t make fun of me, too.”

She laughed, a throaty sound. Her power flared, hot, so hot, almost burning. Hot liquid burst over my back and hair. My first thought was blood, but I knew better. It was that clear liquid that shifters lost when they changed. When the change was smooth it was like heated water; when it wasn’t smooth it was gelatinous and chunky. This flowed like water. She never hesitated, or stumbled, as her body re-formed around me. Fur and muscle flowed under my hands. Her power ran over my body like biting insects, so much power, it hurt. Had she thought I’d panic and let go? She had the wrong girl for panic. I kept my grip on her as fur replaced bare skin. I didn’t let go even as my skin danced and jerked as if she’d laid a live wire against me. Jesus, the control she had, to be able to shift this smoothly. She was better than Micah, and that was saying something. It would have been impressive if I hadn’t been wondering how close her new fangs were to my spine. Part of me noticed that her fur was the wrong color. She was striped pale lemon gold and white. Weren’t tigers orange and black? If I lived, I’d ask someone.

“You’re one of the Harlequin’s animals to call,” Cisco said.

She growled, “Yes.”

“You’ll never make it out of here if you hurt Anita,” Cisco said.

“She knows where my mistress rests in the day; I can’t let her share that knowledge, can I, Cisco?”

He flinched at her using his name. Always harder to kill someone you know.

“Because if your master dies, you die.” Peter said it. He was pointing his gun at the floor, as if he knew he didn’t have a shot he could take. Remus had told me that Cisco had some of the highest scores on the gun range of any guard. I was about to bet my life on his skill.

Her hand strained toward my neck again, and I put a lot of effort into holding it off. Her arm was a steady push; mine was shaking. “You belong to Mercia,” I said.

“No,” she growled, and eased a few sliding steps backward. Cisco and Peter moved the same space forward. It was like an awkward dance.

“Nivia,” I said.

“How do you know the names?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Tell me who’s talked to you.”

“Jesus, Soledad, don’t make me do this,” Cisco said.

Soledad stopped whispering to me and called to Cisco, “You’re a good shot, Cisco, but are you that good? Are you sure you’re that good?”

It was plain on his face that in that moment he wasn’t sure. I guess I wouldn’t have been either. I’d have given a great deal for Edward in that moment. Or Remus, or Claudia.

Peter said, “What’s the rule?”

Cisco almost glanced at him, but remembered and kept his eyes on us, his gun steady, but he didn’t have a killing shot and he knew it. Soledad began to back down the hallway with me in her arms. Just a few steps, but slow and steady.

Cisco and Peter moved with us. Cisco had his gun pointed, but frankly he was as likely to hit me as the weretiger. No, more likely. Peter’s gun was still pointed at the floor. He didn’t seem to know what to do.

Peter said, “The rule is that if they have a weapon and want to take you someplace else, it’s so they can kill you slower.” His voice was almost a monotone, as if he were reciting.

I thought I understood what he meant. I hoped I did, because I was about to encourage him. “You’re right, Peter,” I said.

He looked up. His eyes met mine. Cisco said, “God.” I threw my head back, used all that long hair to cover her eyes for a second. Peter dropped to one knee and shot at her legs. The shots reverberated in the hallway. Soledad dropped abruptly to her knees, but claws curled deeper inside me, her other hand trying for my throat for real this time. I made a choice. I let go of the wrist at my stomach and used both hands to keep her from tearing out my throat. Two-handed to her one and I was losing. She clawed at my side and stomach. It felt like she’d hit me with a baseball bat, so much damage, like a blow. It stole my breath, or I’d have screamed.

Cisco and Peter were there, standing over us. There still wasn’t a clear shot. She tried to crawl backward on her wounded legs, while I held on to her hand, and held it a fraction away from my throat. Cisco was still trying to find a shot. Peter threw himself onto us, he just jumped us, and we were all on the ground with her underneath us. She stopped trying for my throat and reached for Peter. I was suddenly trying to wrestle her hand away from him instead of me. Her hand wasn’t on my stomach anymore. Peter’s body reacted as if something hurt. But I kept her off his throat. It was all I could do. I had a moment of being pressed between them, and then the gunshots exploded just behind my head. It was insanely loud that close to me. I kept my grip on her as the inside of my head rocked with the sound of gunfire beside it. Her body jerked, and still she tried for my throat again. The change of angle startled me, and she might have nicked me, but I didn’t feel it.

Peter kept firing; his gun must have been pressed into her head. We ended up on the ground in a breathless, deaf heap. He was up on one arm, his gun still shoved into her face. Peter’s T-shirt was in rags over his stomach. Cisco was above us; his lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear him. I rolled free of the pile. I had my gun out and pointed before my back hit the wall, before I could truly see what was happening.

Soledad’s head was a red mass. There was no face left. Brains were leaking all over the floor, her brains. Even for a weretiger, this was dead. Peter was still over the body, his gun pumping into that mass of tissue. I think he was dry-firing by now, but I couldn’t hear well enough to say. Cisco knelt beside him, his lips moving, but I couldn’t make out the words. He got Peter to stop firing into the body, then tried to ease Peter off her. Peter let him ease him back onto his knees, then Peter popped his empty magazine out, put it in his left jacket pocket, got a spare clip out of his right-hand pocket, and reloaded. His stock was pretty high with me right then; the reload made it go higher. Maybe we wouldn’t get him killed.

Cisco tried to get him to stand up and move away from the body. I think Cisco was worried about how Peter would react when the shock wore off. It made me think better of Cisco. Then a lot of things happened at once. I couldn’t hear it, but I must have seen movement out of the corner of my eye, because I turned to see Edward and company come barreling down the hallway, guns drawn. The door to Richard’s room was open, and he was leaning in it. His beautiful chest was a mass of scars on one side. He was pale as death, and looked as if the only thing keeping him upright was the doorway. The scars showed where the bullets had taken a chunk out of all that nice muscled flesh. Sometimes silver scars. He mouthed something, but I still couldn’t hear anything but the ringing silence in my own head. Gunshot too close to the ear. I’d be lucky if my hearing wasn’t permanently damaged.

I felt movement nearer to me, and turned, but I was slow. I think Peter wasn’t the only one in shock. Cisco was pulling Peter to his feet by the collar of his jacket. Cisco was shouting something. I couldn’t see what the problem was—there was nothing but Soledad’s body. Then I looked at the body and realized that she was still in tiger form. Her body hadn’t reverted to human form. Dead shapeshifters always revert to human form. I raised my gun and had it aimed, when the “body” sprang up and threw itself at Peter and Cisco.

32

CISCO FOULED PETER’S shot by throwing his body in the way of the claws. I got off two shots before the faceless body brought them to the floor. And I was suddenly having the same problem they’d just had, trying to find a place to fire into that fur that wouldn’t hit the two boys underneath it. They had saved my life and I still thought, Boys.

Claudia and Remus got there first, because you just can’t outrun a shapeshifter. Edward and Olaf were close behind, but they didn’t get there first. It was Claudia and Remus who joined me around the struggling pile. A gun fired up through the tiger’s chest. Claudia actually pushed me out of the way hard enough that I fell against the wall. Too many guns in too small a space; friendly fire was as dangerous to us as Soledad.

Whoever was shooting was trying to make a hole through her chest. Her body jerked and jumped with the power of it. She staggered to her feet. I swear that I could see the hallway through the hole in her lower chest. But even as I watched, the muscle began to flow like water, healing. Shit. It was Peter who had shot a hole through her. Cisco was trying to breathe through a throat that wasn’t there anymore.

Edward and Olaf were beside each other, firing into Soledad’s body like they were on a shooting range. So cool, so professional, so accurate. It was a little hard to miss her at this range.

Some of the guards had gone to their knees around Edward, Olaf, Remus, and Claudia, some standing, some kneeling so they wouldn’t get in each other’s way, a very organized slaughter. The tiger’s body jumped and danced with the bullets like some sort of spasming puppet. But she didn’t go down. I fired from the wall where Claudia had thrown me. I emptied my clip into Soledad and watched her body and fur flow over the wounds. It was fucking silver and she was treating it like it was ordinary bullets. I’d never seen a shapeshifter able to do that. Even fairies, once you opened a hole in them that big, didn’t heal like this. I emptied my clip and did almost exactly what Peter had done earlier, except that my extra clip was attached to my belt. She wasn’t acting like a wereanything. She was acting like a rotting vampire, that special kind of undead that were rare in the United States. Of course, her master wasn’t from around here.

My hearing was coming back in my left ear, because I could hear screaming, distantly, as if they weren’t all standing right next to me. My right ear was still a buzzing silence. I yelled, “Fire, we need to set her on fire!” I must have yelled it too loud because they all looked at me. I yelled, “Burn her!”

Olaf took off running back down the corridor. Seeing him run away actually distracted me enough that I jumped when the guns started firing again. I turned back to the action, and found the body up and moving again. The face had grown back, but the chest was a gaping wound. Her lungs had to be gone, but she moved; she jumped at me in one of those long arcs that made her body a golden smear of light. I fired at that blur until my gun clicked empty. I dropped the empty gun and went for a blade, and knew I’d never make it.

A second blur was in front of me, and we were crashing back into the wall, hard enough that I saw stars before I realized that the second blur was Claudia. She’d thrown her body in the way, and was slugging it out hand to claw. She must have been out of ammo, too. Those claws sliced up her chest, and she went into a defensive crouch, protecting herself as well as she could. The tiger screamed, or roared at us, and then turned and ran the other way. It was almost funny, because for a breath we all just stood there. Then almost as a mass we ran after her. My stomach didn’t so much hurt as twinge, as if the muscles weren’t working quite right. It made me stumble, then I found my feet, and I ran. If I could run, I couldn’t be that hurt, right? I could feel blood flowing down the front of me, soaking into my jeans. If Soledad got out, she might move the vamps, or warn someone, or set up an ambush. We had to stop her, had to. But we couldn’t run like the shapeshifters ran. Remus and the others passed Edward and me as if we were standing still.

They bayed her at the double glass doors. They bayed her within sight of the parking lot, in sight of freedom. Remus was cut up now, too. They formed a circle around her, double thick in front of the doors. She crouched in the center of that circle, snarling at them. She was all gold and white, and even after everything I could still see that she was beautiful. Graceful in that way that the cat lycanthropes seemed to be. Her tail twitched, tight and angry.

Edward popped a fresh magazine home. He pulled the slide back and put one in the chamber. The sound echoed around the circle. Not everyone had more clips; some, like me, were out, but enough of them did that it was eerie and businesslike.

Soledad snarled with her tiger fangs. “My death will not stop the Harlequin from killing you. My mistress’s death will not protect you from the wild hunt that is coming.”

“You didn’t give us a black mask,” I said.

Her orange-yellow eyes turned to me. She made a noise that was between a growl and a purr. The sound of it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “You will die.”

“The vampire council is all about rules, Soledad. It’s against your own laws to kill us when you’ve only given us white masks, something about fair play and all that.”

I wasn’t great at reading even people I knew in animal form, but I thought she looked afraid. “If you kill us, the rest of them will hunt you down, Anita. It is against vampire law to slay the Harlequin.”

“I’m not killing you as Jean-Claude’s vampire servant. I’m killing you and your mistress as a federal marshal and a legal vampire executioner.”

“I know your laws, Anita. You have no warrant for us.”

“I have two warrants for two vampires that look a damned sight like your Mercia and your mistress.”

Again there was that flinching through her alien eyes. I was just getting better at reading furry faces. Bully for me.

“The warrants list names of church members,” Soledad purred.

“But the warrant is worded sort of vaguely. It states that I can kill the vampire responsible for the death of the victim, and that I can, at my discretion, kill anyone who assisted in that death. It also allows me to kill anyone who tries to impede me in carrying out my court-appointed duty.” I looked into that strangely beautiful face. “Which means you.”

Olaf was beside Edward. He had a can of WD-40 in his hand and a torch made of rags bound to what looked like the end of a metal mop handle. There was a sharp oily smell from it all. He said in that deep voice, “I was going to go for the ordnance in the car, but the janitor’s closet was closer.”

I almost asked what he meant by ordnance, but was probably glad I didn’t know. Though maybe what they had in their car would have been quicker than what we were about to do to her. Olaf had Edward light the torch. Apparently he’d soaked it in something, because it burned clear and bright.

Claudia told the people on the far side of the room to clear a space. They parted like a curtain and left Soledad in a clear kill space. The guards formed two lines, one kneeling and one standing. They took their stances, and Edward joined them.

Claudia yelled, “Head or heart!”

Soledad leapt, not toward the double line of doors and freedom, or the firing squad, but the thinner line that led back down the hall. The guns all seemed to sound at once. That liquid leap of gold and silver crumbled to the floor. She could heal, but the initial injury was real. They fired into her until she twitched, but didn’t try to rise again.

Olaf turned so I could see the gun tucked in the back of his belt. “Cover me.”

I kept expecting my wound to catch up with me, but the adrenaline was carrying me. I’d pay for it later, but right now I felt fine. I wrapped my hand around the gun and pulled it free of the inner pants holster. I’d expected Olaf to go for something big, but it wasn’t. It was an H & K USP Compact. I’d looked at one before I settled on the Kahr. I clasped it in a two-handed grip and aimed it at the fallen weretiger. “Ready when you are,” I said.

Olaf glided into the circle with his torch and his squeezy can of accelerant. I didn’t glide, I just walked, but I was at his side when he got to her. I was at his side when he sprayed accelerant over her ruined face and chest. The world suddenly smelled thick and oily. She reacted to the liquid or the smell, reaching out at us. I shot her in the face. The gun jumped in my hands, so it was pointed at the ceiling before it came back down to point at her.

“What the fuck is in this?” I asked.

He shoved the torch into the wound I’d made, and she started to scream. The smell of burning hair was strong and bitter. It began to overwhelm the scent of the accelerant. He set her afire. He covered her in the thick oily liquid and burned her. She was too hurt to do much, but she could scream, and writhe. It looked like it hurt. It smelled like burning hair, and finally, when she stopped moving, it smelled like burning meat, and oil. She made a high-pitched keening noise for a very, very long time.

Edward had moved up beside me to aim his gun with the one Olaf had loaned me. The three of us stood there while Soledad died by pieces. When she stopped moving, stopped making noise, I said, “Get an axe.” I think I actually said it in a normal voice. I could hear out of one ear at least. The one that Peter had shot beside was still out for the count. It made sound echo oddly in my head.

“What?” Edward asked.

“She heals like one of the vampires that descends from the Lover of Death.”

“I do not know this name,” Olaf said.

“Rotting vampires, she heals like one of the rotting vamps. Even sunlight isn’t a sure thing. I need an axe, and a knife, a big, sharp one.”

“You will take her head,” Olaf asked.

“Yeah, you can do the heart, if you want.”

He looked down at the body. She was human now, lying on her back, legs spread. Most of her face was gone, and her lower chest; one breast was burned and blasted away, but the other one was still pale and perky. One side of her hair, the yellow of her tiger fur, was still there. There was no face, no eyes to stare up at us. I might have been grateful for that except that staring into the blackened, peeling ruin of her face wasn’t really an improvement.

I swallowed hard enough that it hurt. My throat burned as if breakfast might be trying to come back up. I tried a deep breath, but the smell of burnt flesh also wasn’t an improvement. I ended up breathing shallow and trying not to think too hard.

“I will find her heart for you,” Olaf said, and I was glad my hearing wasn’t quite working right. It made his voice sound flat and lose a lot of the inflection. If I’d heard all the longing in his voice that I saw on his face I might have shot him. I was betting his special ammo would have made a really big hole in a human body. I thought about it, I really did, but in the end I gave him back his gun. He extinguished his torch. Someone brought us an axe and a freshly sharpened knife. I was really missing my vampire kit, but it was at home, no, at the Circus.

Her spine was brittle from the fire, easiest decapitation I’d ever done. Olaf was having to dig in her chest to find the pieces of burnt and bloody heart. We’d made a mess of her. I kicked the head a little ways from the body. Yeah, I wanted to burn the head and heart and scatter the ashes over moving water, but she was dead. I kicked the head again, so that it skittered across the floor, too burned to bleed.

My knees wouldn’t hold me anymore. I collapsed where I was standing with the axe still in my hands.

Edward knelt beside me. He touched the front of my shirt. His hand came away crimson like he’d dipped it in red paint. He ripped my shirt open to my chest. The claw marks looked like angry, jagged mouths. There was something pink and bloody and shiny bulging out of one of the mouths like a swollen tongue.

“Shit,” I said.

“Does it hurt yet?” he asked.

“No,” and my voice sounded amazingly calm. Shock was a wonderful thing.

“We need to get you to a doctor before that changes,” he said, and his voice was calm, too. He wrapped his arms around me and stood, cradling me. He started back the way we’d come at a fast walk. “Does that hurt?” he asked.

“No,” I said again, my voice distant and too calm. Even I knew I was too calm, but I felt sort of distant and unreal. Let’s hear it for shock.

He started running down the hallway with me in his arms. “Does it hurt now?” he asked.

“No.”

He ran faster.

33

EDWARD HIT THE door to the main trauma room with his shoulder. We were inside, but there was no one to pay attention to me. There was a white wall of doctors and nurses, and some of them in civilian clothes, but they were all around one gurney. Their voices held that frantic calm that you never want to hear when you’re on your back looking up at doctors.

A spike of fear got through the shock—Peter. It had to be Peter. The adrenaline rush of it stabbed through my stomach like a fresh blow. Edward turned, and I could see more of the room. It wasn’t Peter. He was lying on a different gurney, not that far away from the one that had everyone’s interest. Who the fuck was it? We didn’t have any more humans on our side.

The only person with Peter was Nathaniel. He was holding the boy’s free hand. The other hand was hooked up to an IV. Nathaniel looked at me, and his face showed fear. Enough that Peter fought to turn and see what was coming through the door.

Nathaniel touched his chest, held him down. “It’s Anita and your…Edward.” I think he’d been about to say your dad.

I heard Peter’s voice as we got closer. “Your face, what’s wrong with them?”

Nathaniel said, “I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my face.” He tried to make a joke of it, but the noises from the other side of the room made humor sort of hard.

I couldn’t see past all the white coats. “Who is it?” I asked.

Nathaniel answered, “It’s Cisco.”

Cisco. He wasn’t hurt that badly. I’d seen shapeshifters heal throat wounds that bad. Were there more bad guys in here with us? “How did he get hurt?” I asked.

Peter actually tried to sit up, and Nathaniel kept him down with that hand on his chest, as if he’d been having to pin Peter to the gurney for a while. “Anita,” Peter said.

Edward put me on the nearest empty gurney, and the movement didn’t so much hurt as let me know that it was going to hurt. It was as if things shifted around that I shouldn’t have been able to feel. I had a moment of nausea and knew that that was just me thinking too hard, or hoped it was. Edward moved me so Peter could see me without moving. It meant that I could see Peter. His jacket and shirt were gone, but bulky bandages were taped across his stomach; more of them were on his left shoulder and upper arm. His weapons and jacket and the remains of his bloody shirt were on the floor under his gurney. It’d be my turn next.

“What happened to Cisco?” I asked.

Peter said, “You’re both hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Edward said, “it’s not my blood.”

Peter looked at me, his eyes too wide, face sickly pale. “He got his throat torn out.”

“I remember, but he should be able to heal that,” I said.

“Not all of us are that good at healing, Anita,” Nathaniel said.

I looked at him now. The fact that I hadn’t truly looked at him said clearly how much I was hurt. He was wearing one of his pairs of jogging shorts that left very little to the imagination. His hair was back in a tight braid. I met his eyes, and I still loved him, but for once my body didn’t react to the sight of him.

Edward came to stand by Peter, and Nathaniel came to me, an exchange of emotional prisoners. Nathaniel took my hand and gave me as chaste a kiss as we’d ever exchanged. His lavender eyes held the worry that he’d been hiding from Peter, or trying to hide from him. He leaned over my body, and I heard him draw in a big breath of air. “Nothing’s perforated,” he whispered.

Until he said it, I hadn’t thought about it. My intestines could have been perforated, or hell, my stomach. If I’d had to get clawed up, it wasn’t a bad place for it. It wasn’t a fatal hit, not right away, not if things weren’t spilling out of me. They were bulging out, not spilling. There was a difference.

“Is Peter…”

“Not perforated either, you were both lucky.”

I knew he was right, but…The voices had risen in pitch across the room. When the doctors start sounding that panicked, things are very bad. Cisco, shit.

It was Cherry who peeled away from the crowd around him and came to me. She had thrown a white coat over the usual black Goth outfit. Her heavy eyeliner had run down her face like black tears. She touched Peter’s shoulder as she went past, and said, “Let the drugs work, Peter. You can’t help him by fighting to stay awake.”

“She was trying for me,” he said. “She was reaching for me. He put himself in her way. He saved me.”

She patted his shoulder and checked the IV almost automatically, but she also adjusted the little knobby thing on it. The liquid began to drip a little faster. She patted him again and came to the other side of the gurney so that she could look at Nathaniel across me, or maybe so she could keep an eye on what was happening to Cisco. There were so many people around him that it looked like they were getting in each other’s way.

She said, “Nothing I can do over there.” She said it almost to herself, as if she were trying to convince herself.

She put on a fresh pair of gloves before she looked at my stomach. There was blood on the sleeve of the white coat she was wearing. She seemed to see it at about the same time I did. She just stripped off the coat, tossed it in the little hamper they had for washables. Threw the clean gloves away, got another pair of clean gloves, and came back to me. Her eyes stared at the wound, not at me. Her face had gone to concentrating on her job. If she just concentrated on her job then she wouldn’t fall apart. I knew the look, I had one like it.

I tried to do something else while she looked at the wounds. Somehow I didn’t want to see my insides on the outside again. But it was like a train wreck; you couldn’t quite look away. “What is that?” I asked.

“Intestine,” she said, in a voice that held no emotion.

I heard someone shout, “Clear!”

The crowd around Cisco cleared, and I saw Lillian using the crash cart on his chest. She was about to try to jump-start his heart. Fuck.

Micah was in the crowd. He turned and looked at me, his mouth and chin covered in blood. As if Nathaniel read my mind, he said, “He was trying to call flesh and help Cisco heal the wound.”

Micah could help a healing wound heal faster by licking it. He’d done it for me once. He wiped the blood off his face as he looked at me across the room. The look on his face was anguish. He’d tried.

Lillian hit Cisco’s chest three times, four, but that high-pitched alarm sound just kept going. Flatline.

I didn’t hear the door open, but Richard came through leaning so heavily on Jamil, one of his bodyguards, that he was being half-carried. Jamil put him by the gurney. Their bodies blocked me from seeing what was happening.

Cherry was swabbing my hand; she had a covered IV needle in her other hand. I looked away. Richard’s power ran over my skin like heat. Nathaniel shivered where he held my hand. I glanced at him. His body was covered in goose bumps.

“You feel it?” I asked.

“We all do,” Cherry said, and the needle bit home in my hand. I squeezed Nathaniel’s hand hard and kept staring at Richard’s broad back.

Micah came to stand at the head of my gurney. He’d wiped most of the blood off, but his eyes held defeat. If I’d had a spare hand I would have offered it. He laid his face against the top of my head. It was the best we could do.

Jamil stumbled away from Richard, leaving him to half-collapse across the gurney. Jamil’s body exploded; one second he was tall, dark, handsome, the next he was the black-furred werewolf that had saved my life once. Lillian fell to the floor, her body writhing, twisting. She was suddenly gray-furred. She lay on the floor with her newly ratty face turned up to the gurney. The other doctors and nurses kept their distance. Richard was trying to bring Cisco’s beast, trying to help him heal by forcing him to shift. But the alarm was still screaming, still letting us know that Cisco’s heart wasn’t beating.

Richard clutched at the gurney with one hand and Cisco with the other. His power spread through the room as if someone had forgotten to turn off some invisible hot bath, and it was filling up the room. Micah stood up, put his hand against my head. I felt his power spring to life, felt him throw it around the four of us like a shield, keeping Richard’s power out. Most of the time Micah could protect the other wereleopards, but my ties to Richard were too strong. It worked today. Today, Micah held me in the calm of his power along with Nathaniel and Cherry.

Richard screamed, a long, loud, anguished sound. He collapsed to his knees, one hand still clinging to Cisco’s arm. The arm flopped limp, dead. Richard’s back rippled as if some giant hand were pushing out from the inside. He threw his head back and screamed again, but before the echo had died, the scream turned into a howl. Fur poured over Richard’s body. It was as if his human body were ice, melting to reveal fur and muscle. His human form just melted into a wolf the size of a pony. I’d never seen him in full wolf form, only the half-and-half. The wolf threw its head back and howled, long and mournful. It turned a head as big as my entire chest to look at me. The eyes were all wolf, amber and alien, but the look in them was not a wolf’s look. It held too much understanding of the loss that lay on the gurney.

One of the other white coats started turning off the machines. The scream of the alarm went silent. Except for the ringing in my one ear the room was deathly quiet. Then everyone began to move. The doctors and nurses started pulling things out of Cisco’s body. He lay on his back, eyes closed. I remembered seeing spine in the throat wound; now the bone was covered. He’d been healing, but not fast enough.

Jamil climbed to his furry feet and put a half claw, half hand on the wolf’s back. He said in a voice gone to growl, “I’ll take us to feed.”

One of the doctors helped Lillian to her feet. She seemed more shaken than Jamil was, but then I’m not sure she’d ever had someone rip her beast from her human form. Jamil had been on the wrong end of Richard’s anger more than once. “Come with us, Lillian,” he said, and the wolfish muzzle had trouble with the double L sound.

She nodded and took the hand he offered. The dark-haired man who had turned off the alarm said, “We’ll take care of the other patients, Lillian.”

Her own voice sounded high-pitched and nasal. “Thank you, Chris.” The three of them walked out together, leaving the others to begin to clean up.

“Why did he die?” I asked.

“He bled out faster than his body could heal,” Cherry said.

“I’ve seen you guys heal from worse,” I said.

“You hang around with too many big dogs, Anita,” Cherry said. “We don’t all heal like Micah and Richard.” She had the IV on its little metal hat rack. She reached up for the knob that would start the drip.

“Wait, will that put me out?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then I need to make some phone calls first.”

“You’re not hurting too much yet, then?” She made it half question, half statement.

“No, not yet. It aches, but it doesn’t exactly hurt.”

“It will,” she said, “and when it does you’ll want the painkillers.”

I nodded, swallowed, nodded again. “I know, but we still have Soledad’s masters out there. We need them dead.”

“You aren’t slaying any vamps today,” she said.

“I know, but Ted Forrester still can.”

Edward looked at me at the mention of his alter ego. His hand was on Peter’s hair, as if he were a much younger boy and Edward had just come in to tuck him in for the night.

“I need you to take over my warrants,” I said.

He nodded. His eyes weren’t cold, they were rage-filled. I wasn’t used to seeing this much heat from Edward; he was a cold creature, but what blazed in his eyes now was hot enough to burn a hole through me. “How is Peter?” he asked Cherry.

“Now that he’s out, we’ll sew him up. He should be fine.”

Edward looked at me. “I’ll kill the vampires for you.”

“We will kill them for you.” Olaf’s voice from the door. He must have arrived in time to hear the last few comments. I hadn’t heard him come in; not good. Not good that I hadn’t heard Olaf, but not good that it could have been someone else, something else. I trusted Edward to see me safe, but I was usually more help to myself than this. Admittedly, I was having a bad day.

The dull ache in my stomach was beginning to have twinges of something sharp. It was like a promise of what the pain would be in a little while. I looked down my body; I couldn’t help it. Cherry blocked my view with her arm, turned my face to her. “Don’t look. You’ll sleep. The doctor will look at you. You’ll wake up better.” She smiled at me; it was a gentle smile, but it left her eyes haunted. When had Cherry gotten that look in her eyes?

Someone found a cell phone. I dialed Zerbrowski directly. The Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, RPIT, was who I should have called, and I should have probably started by talking to Lieutenant Rudolph Storr, but I just wasn’t feeling well enough to argue with Dolph about who, and what, was or wasn’t a monster. Zerbrowski answered with his usual, “Zerbrowski.”

“It’s Anita,” I said.

“Blake, what’s shaking?” There was a thread of laughter to his voice, the beginnings of his usual teasing. I didn’t have time today.

“I’m about to get sewed back up.”

“What happened?” The teasing note was gone.

I gave him the shortest version I could, and left out lots. But I gave him the important parts; two vamps, maybe with more servants, masquerading as two upstanding vampire citizens to get us to kill the two upstanding citizens. “They must have thought I was close, because they sent one of their animals to kill me.”

“How hurt are you?”

“I’m not hunting any vampires today.”

“What do you need from me?”

“I need you to get cops around the hotel. I need you to make sure these two don’t get outside.”

“Shouldn’t they be dead to the world, no pun intended?”

“They should, but after what I saw in the servant, I wouldn’t bet anyone’s life on it. Call in Mobile Reserve; if it goes wrong you’ll want the firepower.”

Dr. Chris came to stand over me. He was a little under six feet but seemed taller because he was so thin, one of those men who just couldn’t seem to put on muscle mass. I’d have called him willowy if he’d been a girl. He said, “Get off the phone, Anita. I need to look at your wounds.”

“I’m almost done,” I said.

“What?” Zerbrowski said.

“The doc’s here. He’s wanting me off the phone.”

“Tell me who’s going to be processing your warrants and do what the doctor says. You’ve got to be healed by the time we do the barbecue at my house. I finally got the wife talked into letting you bring both your live-in boyfriends. Don’t make me waste all that persuasion.”

I almost laughed but thought it might hurt, so I swallowed it. That sort of hurt, too. “I’ll do my best.”

“Off the phone, Anita,” Dr. Chris said again.

“Ted Forrester will have the warrants,” I said.

“We didn’t know he was in town.”

“Just got here.”

“Funny how it all goes pear-shaped when he blows into town.”

“I only call him in when it’s already gone to hell, Zerbrowski; you’re reversing cause and effect.”

“Says you.”

“He’s a federal marshal, just like me.”

A hand scooped the phone out of my hand. Dr. Chris was a lycanthrope, but still…I should have at least seen it coming. “This is Anita’s doctor; she needs to go now. I’m going to put the other marshal on. You two play nice. I’m going to make Ms. Blake go night-night.” He hesitated, then said, “She’ll be fine. Yes, guaranteed. Now let me tend my patient.” He handed the phone to Edward.

Edward put on his Ted Forrester good-ol’-boy voice. “Sergeant Zerbrowski, Ted Forrester here.”

Dr. Chris shooed Edward farther away so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He turned the knob on the IV and said, “You’re going to sleep now, Ms. Blake. Trust me, you’ll enjoy the examination more that way.”

“But…”

“Let it go, Ms. Blake. You’re hurt. You have to let someone else hunt the vampires today.”

I started to say something, probably to argue, but I never finished the thought. One minute I was staring up at Dr. Chris, the next—nothing. The world went poof.

34

I WOKE UP, which was nice. I was blinking up at a ceiling I’d seen before, but couldn’t quite place. I was not in the room that I remembered last. This room was painted an off-white, and there were pipes in the ceiling. Pipes…that should have meant something, but I was still a little fuzzy around the edges.

“‘She wakes; and I entreated her come forth, and bear this work of heaven with patience.’”

I knew who it was before he stepped beside the bed. “Requiem.” I smiled up at him, and reached out to him with my right hand; the other one was full of needles. Reaching for him made my stomach ache a little, but not that bad. It made me wonder how long I’d been out, or what drugs were coming through the IV tube. Requiem took my hand in his and bent over it to lay a kiss on the back. I was happy to see him. Hell, I was happy to see anyone. “I don’t know the quote,” I said.

“The words of a worthless friar,” he said.

“Sorry, still a little fuzzy,” I said.

He held my hand underneath his cloak, against his chest. His blue, blue eyes glittered in the overhead fluorescents. “Perhaps this will help: ‘A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished; For never was a story…’”

I finished with him. “‘…of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.’”

He laughed then, and it transformed his face from a thing of cold beauty to something livable, lovable, more touchable. “You should laugh more often, it becomes you,” I said.

The laughter leeched away, as if the two reddish tears that slid down the white perfection of his cheeks stole his joy away as they fell down his face. By the time the tears melted into the dark line of his beard, his face had its usual melancholy handsomeness.

I’d been happy to take his hand. Happy to touch someone I cared for, but there was something in the weight of that ocean-blue-and-green gaze that made me take my hand back. I had other lovers who would look at me that way, but the look in his eyes was one that Requiem had not earned, or that our relationship didn’t deserve. He was Requiem, he wasn’t a light comedic sort of person; no, he was definitely a lover of tragedies.

“Where’s Jean-Claude?”

“Did you expect him to wait by your bedside?”

“Maybe.”

“He and Asher are busy elsewhere, together. I was left to tend you while they had more important things to do.”

I stared at him. Was it on purpose? Was he trying to make me doubt them? I’d nearly died, and was still hooked up to tubes; fuck it, I’d ask. “Are you implying that they’re having sex together somewhere, and that that is more important to them than me?”

He looked down; I think he was trying to be coy. “They are off together, and they left me to tend you. I think the situation speaks for itself.”

“You really shouldn’t try to play coy, Requiem. You’re not good at it.”

He gave me the full weight of those blue, blue eyes, with that swimming shadow of green around the iris. Eyes you could sink into and swim away in, or be drowned in. I actually looked down, rather than meet his gaze. Normally he wasn’t a problem, but I was hurt, weak, and I didn’t like his mood.

“My evening star, you are thinking too hard. Let us rejoice that you live, that we all live.”

That gave me other questions to ask; maybe since they weren’t about Jean-Claude, he’d answer them. “Then Peter is all right?”

His face went blank, even that pressing need in his eyes fading away. “He is in a room nearby.”

“Is he all right?”

“He will heal.”

“I don’t like how you’re saying that, Requiem.”

I heard the door open as a male voice said, “God, you are a gloomy bastard.” Graham strode into the room.

I watched him for signs that the Harlequin were messing with his mind, signs of that panicked false addiction. He was his usual smiling self. Okay, his usual self when he wasn’t feeling grumpy about me not fucking him.

“Are you wearing a cross?” I asked.

He drew a chain out of his shirt, and on the end of it was a tiny Buddha. I stared at it. “You’re a Buddhist?”

“Yep.”

“You do violence, you can’t be a Buddhist,” I said.

“So I’m a bad Buddhist, but it was still the way I was raised, and I do believe in the chubby little guy.”

“Will it work if you’re not following the tenets of the faith it represents?” I asked.

“I could ask you the same question, Anita.”

Did he have a point, or not? “Fine, I just wouldn’t have pegged you for a Buddhist.”

“Neither would my parents, but when Claudia told us to get a holy item, I realized I didn’t believe in the Jewish carpenter, never raised in that faith.” He shook the little Buddha at me. “This I believe in.”

I gave a small nod. “Okay, whatever works.”

He grinned at me. “First, Peter will be fine, but he heals human-slow.”

“How hurt is he?”

“About as hurt as you were, but not healing as fast.”

Graham came to stand beside Requiem. He was still in the red shirt and dark pants, but somehow it didn’t bug me now. Graham would answer questions better than Requiem. He also seemed to be himself, while the vampire was being weird even for him.

I started to ask how fast I was healing, but I wanted to know about Peter before I asked questions about me. I felt amazingly well. “I’m going to ask this again, and I want a straight answer. How hurt is Peter?”

Graham sighed. “He got a lot of stitches—like the-doctor-lost-count stitches. He’s going to be fine, honest, but he’s going to have some manly scars.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Tell her the rest,” Requiem said.

I glared at Graham. “Yeah, tell me the rest.”

“I was getting to it.” He flashed an unfriendly look at the vampire. Requiem gave a small nod, almost a bow, and moved back from the bed.

“Then get to it, Graham,” I said.

“The doctors are offering him the chance for the new antilycanthropy therapy.”

“You mean the inoculation they offer?”

“No, something brand new.” He said “brand new” as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.

“How new?”

“St. Louis is one of only a handful of cities that are experimenting with it.”

“They can’t experiment on an underage kid.”

“Underage?” He made it a question. “I thought Peter was eighteen.”

Shit, I thought. Apparently Peter Black was holding up as a secret identity. “Yeah, I mean, shit, fine.”

“If he’s eighteen, then he can give permission for it.” Graham gave me a funny look as he said it, as if he wanted to ask why I didn’t believe Peter was eighteen, or maybe he didn’t either.

“Give permission for what exactly?” I asked.

“They’re offering him a vaccine.”

“Like I said, Graham, they’ve been offering a vaccine against lycanthropy for years.

“Not the one that they used to offer in college. Not since that bad batch turned a lot of nice upper-class college students into monsters about ten years back.” He said it without referencing Richard—who had been one of those college students. I wondered if Graham didn’t know. Not my place to share, so I let it go.

“The vaccine’s a dead organism now, not live and kicking,” I said.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

I had to smile. “No.”

“Most people won’t volunteer for it,” he said.

“Yeah, there’s a bill wandering around Washington, D.C., right now to force inoculation against lycanthropy on teenagers. They claim it’s safe now.”

“Yeah, they claim.” Graham’s face said how much he believed in the “claim.”

I shook my head, moved a little too much in the bed, and found that my stomach gave a twinge. However healed I was, it wasn’t perfect yet. I took in a deep breath, let it out, and forced myself not to move around so much. There, that was better. “But Peter has already been attacked. The inoculation is only effective before an attack.”

“They want to give him a live shot.”

“What?” I said, and it was almost a yell.

“Yeah,” Graham said.

“But that will give him whatever lycanthropy is in the shot.”

“Not if he’s already got tiger lycanthropy,” Graham said.

“What?”

“Apparently, they had some people who were attacked by more than one beast in a single night. The two different strains canceled each other out. They came up clean and completely human.”

“But it’s not dead certain that he’ll get tiger lycanthropy,” I said.

“No, most of the feline strains are harder to catch than canine.”

“You can’t even reliably test for cat-based lycanthropy for at least seventy-two hours. If they give him this shot and he’s not going to be a tiger, then he will be whatever the shot is,” I said.

“And therein lies the problem,” Graham said.

“Therein,” Requiem said, his voice softly mocking.

Graham flashed him another unfriendly look. “I try to improve my vocabulary and you make fun of me; what kind of encouragement is that?”

Requiem gave a full bow, graceful, with one hand sweeping outward. That hand always seemed to cry out for a hat with a plume, as if the gesture was only half finished without the right clothing. He stood. “I beg pardon, Graham, for you are quite right. I do wish to encourage you in your improvements. It was churlish of me, and I apologize.”

“Why is it that when you apologize, you never seem to mean it?” Graham asked.

“Back to the main problem, boys,” I said. “What’s happening with Peter?”

“Ted Forrester, federal marshal”—he said it the way you’d say “Superman, Man of Steel”—“is with him. He seems to be helping him choose.”

“But he may be fine, and the shot will guarantee the very thing they don’t want to happen.”

Graham shrugged. “Like I said, it’s a new thing.”

“It’s an experimental thing,” I said.

He nodded. “That, too.”

“What kind of lycanthropy is in the shot?” I asked.

“They don’t want to say, but it’s probably one of the cat-based lycanthropies, and it won’t be tiger.”

“Let’s hope not,” I said. “They make vaccines in big batches. Are they positive what kind of kitty they’ve got in the shot?”

Graham looked at me as if that hadn’t occurred to him. “You aren’t saying that they’d give him tiger twice? I mean, that wouldn’t work at all. That would guarantee that he’d be tiger.”

“Yeah. Has anyone asked them what flavor of kitty it is?” The look on Graham’s face said no one had asked in his hearing. I looked at Requiem.

“I have been in attendance upon your bedside. I have not seen the boy.”

“Graham, go ask, and make sure Ted knows I wanted to know.”

Graham actually didn’t argue. He just nodded and went for the door. Good. Because I knew where I was now. I was in the basement of what used to be a hospital, but the lower levels had been turned into a place where you kept suspected vampire corpses if you didn’t think you’d get to them before nightfall, and where you held lycanthrope victims, or injured shapeshifters themselves until they were well enough to leave. Or you could force them into one of the government prisons—oh, “safe houses.” The ACLU was about to be heard by the Supreme Court on just how many constitutional rights the “safe houses” violated. Being admitted was voluntary—if you were eighteen or over, anyway. They told shapeshifters that they’d let them out once they learned to control their beast, but somehow people went in and never came out. Most hospitals had an isolation ward for shapeshifters and vampires who got injured, but this was the place they sent you if they were truly worried. How the hell did we end up here?

“Requiem,” I said.

He came to the side of the bed, his hooded cloak back to being tight around him. Only a pale glimpse of face was visible. “Yes, my evening star?”

“Why does that sound more and more sarcastic when you say it?”

He blinked so that those vivid blue eyes were shielded for a moment. “I will endeavor to say it as I mean it, my evening star.” This time it was soft, and romantic. I didn’t like that either. But I didn’t say so out loud. I’d complain later when I figured out how to get any use out of it.

“I asked you once where Jean-Claude is; now I’ll ask again. Where is he and what’s he doing?”

“Can you not sense him?”

I thought about it and shook my head. “No, I can’t.” A spurt of fear ran through me like fine champagne. It must have shown on my face because Requiem touched my arm. “He is well, but he is shielding mightily to keep the Harlequin from reading him, or you, or the wolf king.”

“So there were more than just the two of them in town,” I said.

“Why would you assume only two?”

“It’s all I saw,” I said.

“Saw how?”

Again, I didn’t like the question and how he asked it. “Does it matter?”

“Perhaps not, but yes, Jean-Claude has detected more than two in your fair city.”

“I’m impressed that Jean-Claude can keep them out of us all,” I said.

Requiem’s hand tightened on my arm. “As are we all.” He took his hand back, and it vanished under the black cloak again.

“Tell me what I’ve missed of the vampire end of things. Wait, how long have I been out?”

“It is only the night of the day you were injured. You have been out, as you put it, for only a few hours.”

“A few hours, not days?” I asked.

“No.”

I touched my stomach, and it didn’t hurt the way it should have. I started to raise the hospital gown I was wearing. I hesitated, glancing at the man. He was my lover, but…there was always something about Requiem that made me less than perfectly comfortable around him. Micah, Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Asher, even Jason, I would have simply looked at the wound. Richard, maybe I wouldn’t have. But Requiem made me hesitate for different reasons.

“Look at your wound, Anita. I will not ravish you from the sight of your nakedness.” He sounded like I’d insulted him. Since he was an old vampire, that I could hear that much emotion in his voice meant one of two things: either he allowed me to hear the emotion, or he was so upset he couldn’t control himself.

I compromised. I raised the gown and kept the sheet over my lower extremities.

“I am not an animal, Anita; I can bear your nakedness without being affected.” The anger and disdain were so thick in his voice that I knew it was lack of control.

“I never doubt your control, Requiem, but there’s no way to be nude in front of you and have it be casual. I need to just look at my body and see what’s wrong and right with the wound. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, or a romantic deal out of it.”

“Would it not be a big deal if Jean-Claude were here in my stead?”

“Jean-Claude would concentrate on business and worry about the romance later.”

“Is he that cold?”

“He’s that practical,” I said. “I like that in a man.”

“I know you do not like me, my evening star.” Again the emotion was thick on the ground.

I did the only thing I could: I ignored him. Once I saw my stomach it wasn’t that hard to ignore him. I had pinkish scars where she’d clawed me open. It was weeks’ worth of healing. I ran my hands over the skin, and it felt smoother, almost as if the shininess of it could be a texture. “How many hours?” I asked.

“It is now nine o’clock in the evening.”

“Ten hours.” I said it soft, like I didn’t believe it.

“About that, yes.”

“All this healing in ten hours?”

“It would seem so,” he said. There was still a thread of anger to his voice, but it was less.

“How?”

“Should I quote to you, ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Or should I simply say I do not know?”

“The ‘I don’t know’ would be fine, but at least I know you’re quoting from Hamlet. Now tell me, what’s been happening while I slept?”

He glided to the bedside, a slight smile curving his lips. “Your friends slew a member of the Harlequin while she slept. Though the tall one, Olaf, or Otto, complained that she was dead when they arrived. He wanted her to be squirming when they cut her up.”

I shivered and put my gown back in place. I tried to ignore the whole creepy Olaf thing and concentrate on business. “There should have been two members dead.”

“You admit it,” he said. “You admit that you sent them to slay members of the Harlequin.”

“Admit it, hell, yes.”

“Jean-Claude is locked in arguments with the council, even now, on whether the Harlequin are within their rights to slay us all for what you have done.”

“If they don’t give a black mask first, but they kill, not in self-defense, then it’s a death sentence for them.”

“Who told you that?”

I debated on whether to admit it, but finally shrugged and said, “Belle Morte.”

“When has our beautiful death spoken to you?”

“She came to me in a vision.”

“When?”

“When the three of us were dying. She helped feed me enough energy to come back and keep us all alive.”

“Why would she help Jean-Claude?”

If it had been Jean-Claude, I’d have told the truth, all of it, but it wasn’t. Requiem was, well, being his usual weird self. I wasn’t certain that Belle would want her reasoning blabbed around. “Why does Belle do anything?”

“You are lying. She told you her reason.”

Great, he knew I was lying. “The shapeshifters say that I don’t smell like I’m lying anymore; my respiration rate doesn’t even change.”

“I am not smelling or listening to your body, Anita. I simply feel the lie. Why do you not tell me the truth?”

“I’ll tell Jean-Claude, and if he says it’s okay to tell everyone, then I will.”

“So you will keep secrets from me.”

“You know, Requiem, we have a lot of bad shit happening, and you seem more interested in your own hurt feelings than in the life-and-death stuff.”

He nodded. “I feel raw tonight, undone. I have felt that way since earlier in Jean-Claude’s office.”

“We were being messed with then,” I said.

“But there is no holy object that I can wear, my evening star, no refuge that I can take from what the Harlequin have done to me.”

“Are they messing with you now?”

“No, but they showed me certain truths about myself, and I cannot seem to unknow what I have learned.”

“You don’t sound like yourself, Requiem.”

“Do I not?” he said, and again there was too much emotion in his voice. I wanted Graham back here, or someone back here. Requiem thought they weren’t messing with his head, but I was betting the Harlequin were playing Scrabble with his thoughts right now.

He undid his cloak and flung it backward onto the floor. I’d seen him do a similar gesture on stage at Guilty Pleasures near the end of his strip act. He was fully clothed in elegant gray dress slacks and a shirt that was a clear cornflower blue that turned his eyes as blue as blue could be. I’d looked into a lot of blue eyes, but none quite the color of his. It was a startling blue, a color that had made Belle Morte try to collect him and add him to her collection of blue-eyed lovers. He flung his long straight black hair behind his shoulders.

“I would not have left your side for any business, my star. If you would but love me as I love you, nothing would be more important to me than you.”

I called, “Graham!” It wasn’t a yell but it was close to one. Was I afraid? A little. Maybe I could use necromancy to knock the Harlequin out of Requiem, but last time I tried I nearly got myself killed. I’d like to heal from one attack before I got hurt again—selfish, but there you go.

The door opened, but it wasn’t Graham. It wasn’t even Edward. It was Dolph, Lieutenant Rudolph Storr, head of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, and paranoid hater of all things monster. Shit.

35

REQUIEM DIDN’T EVEN turn around. He just said, “Leave us.” But he said it in that “voice,” that power-ridden voice that some vamps have. That voice that was supposed to bespell and bemuse.

I saw the flare of Dolph’s cross around his neck. It made a halo around Requiem’s body. I could see Dolph over Requiem’s head, because he had eight inches on the six-foot-tall vampire. I didn’t like the look on Dolph’s face.

“He’s my friend, Dolph, but the bad guys have him bespelled.” My voice held more fear now than it had when I’d called for Graham. The look on Dolph’s face made me afraid.

“One vampire can’t bespell another,” Dolph said. I saw his arms move, and knew before he moved around the vampire’s body that he’d drawn his gun. He moved so that if he had to shoot, he wouldn’t risk me. His cross stayed at a steady white light, not too bright—after all, the vampire who was being bad wasn’t actually in the room.

“These vampires can, I swear to you, Dolph. Requiem is being controlled by one of the bad guys.”

“Is that what is happening to me?” Requiem asked, and he looked confused.

“He’s a vampire, Anita; he is a bad guy.”

“They’re brainwashing you, Requiem,” I said, and reached out to him.

“Don’t touch him,” Dolph said, his gun up and pointed.

Requiem’s hand closed over mine; his skin was cool to the touch, as if he hadn’t fed. But he had fed; I’d felt his power. “If you shoot him now, like this, it’s murder, Dolph. He hasn’t done anything wrong.” I drew a breath of my own power, my necromancy, and tried to “look” at Requiem, gently. If I had a repeat of being thrown across the room by metaphysics, I was afraid Dolph would blame Requiem and shoot him.

“You’re the one who taught me that if my cross glows, they’re fucking with me.”

“They are fucking with you, and with Requiem. They’re messing with you both.”

“I’m still wearing a cross, Anita; my mind is my own. You taught me that, too. Or did you forget everything about monster hunting when you started fucking them?”

I was too scared to be insulted. “Listen to yourself, Dolph, please. They are messing with your thoughts.” I traced my power over Requiem, as delicate a brush of power as I’d ever attempted. I felt the power, and I knew the taste of it. It was Mercia. If we all survived, I’d ask Edward how he managed to miss her. But it was like chasing a ghost; her power withdrew before me. She just gave him up and left. Maybe she didn’t want to risk another metaphysical knockout.

Requiem swayed, grabbing the rail, and my hand, to keep from falling.

“Get away from her, now,” Dolph said.

“The bad vamp is gone, Dolph,” I said.

Requiem said, “Give me but a moment and I will do as you ask, officer. I am unwell.” He kept his face averted from the cross that was still glowing soft and steady. It wasn’t glowing because of Requiem.

Edward came slowly through the door. Olaf loomed behind him. “Hey, Lieutenant, what’s going on?”

“This vamp is trying to mind-fuck me.” Dolph’s voice was low and even, with a thread of anger to it like a fuse waiting to be lit. He was holding a two-handed shooting stance; the gun looked strangely small in his hands.

“Anita,” Edward called.

“Requiem is fine now. The bad vamps were messing with him, but it’s over.”

“Lieutenant Storr, we don’t have a warrant of execution on this vampire. Kill him now, and it’s murder.” Edward’s voice was his good-ol’-boy best, apologetic, somehow implying by tone that he thought it was a shame, too, that they couldn’t just kill all the vampires, but shucks, it just didn’t work that way.

Edward and Olaf eased into the room. Edward hadn’t gone for a weapon. There was already one too many guns in this room. I had an idea.

“Dolph, this vampire messed with me while I wore a cross. She makes your feelings stronger. You hate vampires, and she’s feeding that feeling. Requiem is jealous of Jean-Claude, and she was feeding that.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Dolph said.

“You’re about to shoot an unarmed civilian,” Edward said, in his good-ol’-boy voice. “Is that a good thing, Lieutenant, or a bad thing?”

Dolph frowned, and the tip of the gun wavered. “He’s not a civilian.”

“Well, now,” Edward said, “I agree with you, but legally he’s a citizen with rights. You kill him, and you’re up on charges. If you’re going to go down for killing one of them, why not make it one that’s actually breaking the law? Lose your badge saving some innocent human from a bloodsucker about to munch on ’em. That’d be satisfyin’.” Edward’s down-home accent was growing thicker as he talked. He was also easing deeper into the room. He waved Olaf to stay near the door, then crept closer to Dolph.

Dolph didn’t seem to notice. He just stood there, frowning, as if he were listening to things I couldn’t hear. His cross kept up a steady white light. He shook his head as if trying to chase off some buzzing thing. His gun pointed at the floor, and he looked up. The cross faded, but it had never had the light it should have for such an attack. It was almost as if whatever Mercia’s powers were, they somehow didn’t set off holy objects as much as they should have. Dolph looked first at Edward. “I’m okay now, Marshal Forrester.”

Edward, with Ted’s smiling face, said, “If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’d feel better if you came out of the room.”

Dolph nodded, then put the safety on his gun and handed it butt first to Edward. Edward let his face show surprise. I didn’t try to hide the shock I felt. No cop gives up his gun voluntarily, least of all Dolph. Edward took the gun. “You still not feelin’ okay, Lieutenant Storr?”

“I’m okay at the moment, but if this vampire can get past my cross once, it can do it again. I almost shot him.” He jerked a thumb in Requiem’s direction. “I want to talk to Marshal Blake alone.”

Edward gave him all the doubt on his face, and said, “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, Lieutenant.”

Dolph looked at me. “We need to talk.”

“Not alone,” Requiem said.

Dolph didn’t even look at him, but kept those dark, angry eyes on me. “Anita.”

“Dolph, this bad vamp wants me dead. Even unarmed you outmuscle me. I’d rather we had company for the talk.”

He pointed a finger at Requiem. “Not him.”

“Fine, but someone.”

He looked at Edward. “You seem to feel like I do about them.”

“They’re not my favorite thing,” Edward said, and the good ol’ boy was starting to fray around the edges.

“Fine, you stay.” He looked at Olaf and the people in the hallway beyond. “Just the marshals.”

Edward said something low to Olaf, who nodded. He started to close the door.

Dolph said, “No, the vampire leaves, too.”

“His name’s Requiem,” I said.

Requiem squeezed my hand and gave me one of his rare smiles. “I take no offense, my evening star; he hates what I am, many people do.” He raised my hand and gave it a kiss, then picked up his cloak from the floor and moved toward the door.

He stopped closer to the door and Edward, away from Dolph, but turned to the big man. “‘Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme.’”

“Are you threatening me?” Dolph asked, in a voice gone cold.

“Not you,” I said. “I don’t think he was threatening you.”

“Then what did he mean by that?”

“He’s quoting Keats. ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ I think,” I said.

Requiem looked back at me and nodded, making it almost a bow. He kept looking at me, and there was too much intensity in that gaze. I met it, but it took effort.

“I don’t care what he’s quoting, Anita. I want to know what he meant by it.”

“What it means,” I said, meeting Requiem’s blue, blue gaze, “at a guess, is that he’s half-wishing you’d pulled the trigger.”

Requiem bowed then, a full-out sweeping movement, using his cloak as part of the theatre of it. It was a lovely, graceful show of body, hair, and all of him. But it made my throat tight, and my stomach jump. My stomach didn’t like that, and I winced.

Requiem put his cloak on, drawing the hood around his face. He gave me the full force of that handsome face, those eyes, and said, “‘I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried, “La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!’”

Dolph looked at me then, then back at the vampire. Requiem glided out the door all black cloak and melancholy. Dolph looked back at me. “I don’t think he likes you very much.”

“I don’t think that’s the problem,” I said.

“He wants to pick out curtains,” Edward said from where he was slouched beside the door. He only slouched when he was pretending to be Ted Forrester.

“Something like that,” I said.

“You fucking him?” Dolph asked.

I gave him the look the question deserved. “That is none of your damn business.”

“That’s a yes,” he said, and his face was taking on that look, that disapproving look.

I glared at him, though frankly it’s hard to glare in a hospital bed hooked up to tubes. It always makes you feel so vulnerable. Hard to be tough when you’re feeling weak. “I said what I meant, Dolph.”

“You only get defensive when the answer’s yes,” he said. The disapproving look was sliding into his angry look.

“My answer’s always defensive when someone asks me if I’m fucking someone. Try asking if I’m dating him, or hell, even if he’s my lover. Try being polite about it. It’s still none of your business, but I might, might, answer the question if you weren’t ugly about it.”

He took in a lot of air, which with his chest was a whole lot, and let it out very slowly. Olaf was taller, but Dolph was bigger, beefier, built like an old-style wrestler before they all went to heavy bodybuilding. He actually closed his eyes and took another breath. He let that out and nodded. “You’re right. You are right.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said.

“Are you dating him?”

“I’m seeing him, yes.”

“What do you do on dates with a vampire?” It seemed to be a real question, or maybe he was just trying to make up for being pissy.

“Pretty much what you do on a date with any guy, except the hickeys are really spectacular.”

It took him a second, and then he stared at me. He tried to frown, then laughed and shook his head. “I hate that you date the monsters. I hate that you are fucking them. I think it compromises you, Anita. I think it makes you have to choose where your loyalties lie, and I don’t think us mere humans always win the coin toss.”

I nodded and found that it didn’t hurt my stomach to do it. Had I healed more in the little bit we’d been talking? “I’m sorry that’s how you feel.”

“You aren’t going to deny it?”

“I’m not going to react all angry and defensive. You’re being reasonable about your feelings, so I’ll be reasonable back. I don’t shortchange the humans, Dolph. I do a lot to make sure that the citizens of our fair city stay upright and mobile, the living and the dead, the furry and the not-so-furry.”

“I hear you’re still dating that junior high teacher, Richard Zeeman.”

“Yeah.” I said it carefully, trying not to act tense about it. To my knowledge the police didn’t know Richard was a werewolf. Was his secret identity about to be revealed? I rubbed my hand over my stomach to give my eyes somewhere else to look and hoped that any tension in my body would be attributed to the wounds. Hoped.

“I asked you once if you were dating any humans, and you said no.”

I fought not to look too relaxed, or too tense. This was Richard’s world I was playing with. “You probably asked during one of our many breakups. We’re pretty on and off.”

“Why?”

“Why all the questions about my love life? We have a dangerous vampire out there to catch.”

“To kill,” he said.

I nodded. “To kill, so why all the questions about who I’m dating?”

“Why don’t you want to answer questions about Mr. Zeeman?”

We were on dangerous ground. Dolph hated the monsters, all monsters. His son was engaged to a vampire, and she was trying to talk the son into joining her as undead. It had made Dolph’s attitude toward the preternatural citizens go from cynical and dark to downright dangerous. Did he know about Richard, or suspect?

“Truthfully, Richard was who I thought I’d spend my life with, and the fact that we seem to be headed for the big breakup still hurts, okay?”

He gave me cop eyes, as if he were tasting the truth and weighing the lie. “What changed?”

I thought about how to answer that. The first time we’d broken up had been after I saw Richard eat someone. It had been a bad guy, but still, a girl’s got to have standards. Or that’s what I thought at the time. If I had it to do over again, would I have made a different choice? Maybe.

Dolph was beside the bed now. “Anita, what changed?”

“Me,” I said softly, “I changed. We broke up, and I started dating Jean-Claude. I went back and forth between them for a while, and finally Richard just couldn’t take me not deciding. So he decided for us, for me. If I couldn’t choose, he’d take away one of my choices.”

“He didn’t want to share you.”

“No.”

“But he’s dating you again, now.”

“Some.” I so did not like where this conversation was going.

Edward must not have liked it either, because he interrupted. “Not that this isn’t fascinating, Lieutenant, but we still have a very powerful vamp out there. She’s killed, or helped kill, at least two women that we know of: one Bev Leveto, and Margaret Ross.” I think he used their names to make them more real to Dolph. Names have a way of doing that. “Shouldn’t we be concentrating on catching the bad vampire, instead of quizzing the marshal here about her dates?” He said it all with a smile and a face full of down-home charm. I would never be the actor that Edward was, but damn there were moments when I wished I could be.

“How did you manage not to catch both of the vampires in the hotel room?” I asked. Maybe if we concentrated on crime-stopping, Dolph would let the other topic go.

Edward did his “aw, shucks” look, like he was embarrassed. The reaction wasn’t his, but maybe the emotion was; it was incredibly rare for Edward to miss a target. He came to stand by the head of the bed. One, so I could see him around Dolph’s broad build, but two, I think, so Dolph wouldn’t be able to scrutinize my reactions so damn closely.

“When we got to the hotel room there was only one vampire in the room. She was dead when we got there, but we took her head and heart, just like we’re supposed to. I know that dead doesn’t always mean dead for these guys.”

“That must have been Nivia.”

“How did you know her name?” Dolph asked.

I opened my mouth, closed it, and said, “An informant.”

“Who, Anita?” he said.

I shook my head. “Don’t ask, and I won’t have to lie to you.”

“You have someone who knows more about these murderers, and you won’t bring them in so we can all question them. You, and just you, get to do the interrogation.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“You’re good at your job, Anita, but you’re not a better cop than I am, or Zerbrowski is.”

“I never said I was.”

“But you exclude us. You keep secrets from us.”

“Yeah, just like you keep them from me. I know you don’t call me in all the time anymore. You don’t trust me.”

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“I trust you, Dolph, but I don’t trust the hate in you.”

“I don’t hate you, Anita.”

“No, but you hate some of the people I love, and that makes it hard, Dolph.”

“I’ve never hurt any of your boyfriends.”

“No, but you hate them, hate them for just being what they are, who they are. You’re like an old-time racist, Dolph; your hate blinds you.”

He looked down, took another deep breath. “I’ve been to the company shrink. I’m trying to come to an understanding with…” He looked at Edward, who looked innocently back at him.

“Your family,” I finished for him so he wouldn’t have to go into details.

He nodded.

“I’m glad, Dolph, really. Lucille’s been…” I shrugged. What was I supposed to say, that his wife, Lucille, had been frantic, afraid for him and of him? His rages had trashed a room or two of their house, much like he’d done to an interrogation room with me in it, once. He’d manhandled me at a crime scene. Dolph was close to losing his badge, if he didn’t get a grip.

“She said you’ve been helpful about it. Her.”

I nodded. If Edward hadn’t been in the room, I’d have said your son’s fiancée. “I’m glad I could help.”

“I will never be okay with you dating the monsters.”

“That’s fine, as long as you don’t let it rain all over police business.”

“Fine, police business.” He glanced at Edward, then reached into his suit coat and got out his notebook. “What killed the vampire in the hotel room?”

“When her animal to call died, the master didn’t survive it. It happens like that sometimes: kill one and they all die.”

“The police have killed wereanimals that were guarding vampire lairs, and the master vampire didn’t die.”

“Most master vamps have an animal that they can control, but the phrase ‘an animal to call’ means it’s the furry equivalent of a human servant.”

“A human that’s helping a vampire because of mind tricks?” He made it a question.

“I thought that once, too, but a human servant is more than that. It’s a human with a preternatural connection, a mystical connection, with the vampire. Sometimes the vampire survives the death of its servant, but the servant usually doesn’t survive the death of the vampire. I’ve also seen the body survive, but the human servant driven crazy by the master’s death. But this weretiger had healing abilities that it shouldn’t have had. It was almost like it had the best of both worlds on healing. The lycanthropy healing, and the rotting vampire’s ability to laugh off bullets, even silver.”

“I thought you just woke up?” Dolph said.

“I did.”

“How did you know she rotted?”

“I didn’t, but her animal healed like a rotting vampire, so I assumed she was one of them. But even if she was, her animal to call should not have had that close a tie with the vampire’s powers. It’s unusual, very unusual, as if the tie between master and servant was closer even than normal.”

“She started to rot as soon as we took her head,” Edward said.

“Ol…Otto must have been disappointed,” I said.

“He was, but at least they don’t smell like they look. Why is that?” Edward asked. “Not complaining, mind you, but why don’t they smell like a rotting corpse?”

“I don’t know, I think maybe because they aren’t really rotting. It’s like they, the vampires, went to a certain stage of rotting, then stopped. The smell is from decomposition. If the vampire isn’t actually rotting, then no decomp, no smell.” I shrugged. “Truthfully, that’s just theory. I don’t know for sure. I don’t think I’ve seen more than a handful of them. It doesn’t seem to be a common type of vamp, at least not in this country.”

“They’re all rotting corpses, Anita,” Dolph said.

“No,” I said, and met his eyes just fine, “no, they aren’t. Most vampires, if you ever see them rotting like that, looking like that, they are well and truly dead. But the rotting ones can actually rot around you, then sort of heal themselves. They can go from looking like the walking dead to looking normal.”

“Normal,” Dolph said, and made a sound.

“Normal as they started,” I said. I turned to Edward. “Do we know where the other vamp went?”

Dolph answered, “We know that a white male, late twenties, early thirties, brown hair, cut short, jeans, jean jacket, carried a large duffel bag out to his car and drove away while two uniforms watched.”

“They watched,” I said.

“Civilians who saw the incident said the man told the officers”—Dolph flipped back through his notebook, then read—“‘You’re going to let me go to my car, aren’t you?’ The policemen replied, ‘Yes, we are.’”

“Shit, he pulled an Obi-Wan,” I said.

“What?” Edward and Dolph said together.

“You know, from Star Wars, ‘These are not the droids you’re looking for.’”

Edward grinned. “Yeah, while Otto and I were taking the other vampire apart, the man pulled an Obi-Wan.”

“He had to do it to several officers, or some version of it,” Dolph said. “By the time he drove off there were police all over that hotel. I thought daylight wasn’t good for vamps.”

“I think the vampire was in the duffel bag. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that as the weretiger shared her master’s healing ability, so the human servant of this other one shared her mind powers. I’ve never heard of anything like it, but it makes sense. If I think of another theory that makes more sense, I’ll let you know.”

“How did you know they would be at the hotel, Anita?” Dolph asked.

“I told you, an informant.”

“Was the informant a vampire?”

“No,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Was the informant human?”

“I’m not giving you the name, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“How many vampires are involved with these murders?”

“Two that I’m sure of.”

“How close is your tie to your master, Anita?”

“What?” I just stared at him.

He looked at me, and there was no anger in his eyes, just a demand. He repeated the question.

My pulse was in my throat, and I couldn’t help it. My voice was almost normal when I said, “Are we going to catch these bastards, or are you going to go back to obsessing on how up close and personal I am with the vampires? I’m sorry that I’ve disappointed you, Dolph. I’m sorry that you disapprove of my personal life, but we have dead on the ground. We have injured people. Can we please, please, concentrate on that instead of your obsession with my love life?”

He blinked, slow, over those cool cop eyes. “Fine, how did Peter Black get injured, and who exactly is he?”

I looked at Edward, because I had no idea what story he’d come up with. I doubted the truth, the whole truth, had been involved.

“Now, Lieutenant,” Edward said, “I told you all this.”

“I want to hear Anita’s version.”

“My version, like you know it’s a version and not the truth,” I said.

“I don’t think you’ve told me the whole truth about anything since you started dating that bloodsucking son of a bitch.”

“Politically, that bloodsucking son of a bitch is the Master of the City.”

“Is he your master, Anita?”

“What?”

“Are you the human servant of the Master of this City?”

I’d outed myself once in front of Detective Smith. I’d done it to save the life of a vampire Good Samaritan. Apparently Smith hadn’t ratted me out. I owed him a beer.

I needed a moment to think how to answer Dolph. Edward gave me that moment. “You know, Lieutenant, your persistent interest in Marshal Blake’s personal life is a little disturbing. Especially as it seems to be distracting you from the investigation and capture of a double murderer.”

Dolph ignored him and kept those cool cop eyes on me. If I’d been sure how the federal marshal program would have handled my being Jean-Claude’s human servant I might have just said yes, but I wasn’t sure, so I had to lie, or distract him. “You know, Dolph, I’ve tried to be professional here, but you’ve asked me if I’ve fucked someone, you’ve persistently asked personal and sexual questions. Did you miss the day they covered sexual harassment?”

“You are, you really belong to him, don’t you?”

“I don’t belong to anyone, Dolph. I’m so my own woman that I’m chasing some of them away. Requiem wants to own me; that’s the vampire who just left, if you didn’t catch his name. I don’t want to be owned, not by anybody. Jean-Claude understands that better than any human I ever dated. Maybe that’s what your son sees in his fiancée, Dolph. Maybe she understands him in ways you never will.” That last was mean, and meant to be, but we had to end this conversation.

“You leave my family out of this.” His voice was low and careful.

“I will if you will. Your obsession with vampires and my personal life started about the time your son got engaged to a vampire. It’s not my fault. I didn’t introduce them. I didn’t even know he’d done it, until you told me.”

“The Master of the City knew. He just didn’t tell you,” Dolph said.

“Is that what you’ve been thinking, that Jean-Claude somehow sicced a vampire on your son, so she’d seduce him?”

He gave me a look. “You’re not the only vampire hunter in this country now, Anita. You’re not even the only one with a badge. They tell me that the Master of the City has absolute authority. That no local vamp does anything without permission.”

“If only that were true, but your son’s fiancée belongs to the Church of Eternal Life. She’s Malcolm’s problem right now, not Jean-Claude’s. The Church of Eternal Life is its own little universe in vampireland. Frankly, the other vamps are a little puzzled on how to deal with the Church when its members do stupid stuff like dating a policeman’s son.”

“Why was it stupid?”

“Because most police still hate the vampires. It’s just better policy to leave the cops alone if you can. None of Jean-Claude’s vampires have gone near a police person of any kind for anything.”

“He’s gone near you,” Dolph said.

“I wasn’t officially a cop when we started dating.”

“No, you were a vampire executioner. He shouldn’t have come near you, and you should have known better than to go near him.”

“Who I date is not your business, Dolph.”

“It is if it affects how you do your job.”

“I do my job better because I’m up close and personal with the monsters.” I struggled to sit up a little, tired of him looming over me. My stomach was tight, but it didn’t hurt. “You count on me knowing more about the monsters. Hell, every cop that comes near me for help counts on me knowing more about the monsters than they do. How the hell do you think I found all that out? By keeping them at arm’s length and hating them the way you do? They don’t like talking to people who treat them like shit. They don’t volunteer information to people they know hate them. If you want someone’s help you have to reach out to them.”

“How many have you reached out to, Anita?” Such innocent words, but he made it sound ugly.

“Enough so I could help you every time you called.”

He closed his eyes then, balled his fist around his notebook until something in it ripped. “If I’d left you where I found you, raising the dead, Jean-Claude would never have met you. You went into his club on police business the first time. On my business.” He opened his eyes and there was such pain in them.

I reached out to touch his arm, but he moved back, out of reach. “We did our jobs, Dolph.”

“When you look in the mirror, is that enough, Anita? At the end of the day, is that enough, that we do our jobs?”

“Sometimes, sometimes not.”

“Are you a lycanthrope?”

“No,” I said.

“Your blood work says different.”

“My blood work is puzzling the hell out of the lab, and it’ll puzzle the hell out of any lab you send it to.”

“You know you’re carrying lycanthropy.”

“Yeah, I’m carrying four different kinds of lycanthropy.”

“You knew.”

“I found out when I ended up in the hospital in Philadelphia, after that zombie case with the FBI.”

“You didn’t mention it to anyone here.”

“You hated me for dating shapeshifters; if you found out I was carrying it”—I spread my hands—“I couldn’t depend on how you’d react.”

He nodded. “You’re right. You were right not to tell me, but you could have told Zerbrowski or someone.”

“It doesn’t affect my job, Dolph. I’ve got a disease that I’m mostly asymptomatic for. It’s no one’s business unless it impacts the job.” In my head I wondered what would happen if the almost-beasts that I carried inside me got out of control on a case. That would be bad. I almost had the ardeur under control, and now I had something else that might keep me from being able to do my police work.

“Anita, did you hear what I said?”

“I’m sorry, no, I didn’t.”

“I said, how do you know it doesn’t affect the job? How do you know that your ties to the monsters don’t color your choices?”

“I’m tired, Dolph. I’m tired, and I need to rest.” Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I was in a hospital, I could have just cried hurt. Damn, I was slow tonight.

He uncrumpled his notebook, tried to smooth it out as best he could. He tried to fit it back in his suit pocket, but he’d damaged it so bad it wouldn’t fit. He finally just took it in his hand. “I’ll want to talk to you when you’ve rested. There comes a point, Anita, when you have enough secrets from your friends that they begin to wonder where your loyalties lie.”

“Get out, Dolph, just go.”

“But he gets to stay,” and he pointed at Edward.

“He hasn’t insulted me. He’s been nothing but professional.”

“I guess I deserve that.” He seemed about to say something else. He held his hand out. Edward hesitated, then gave Dolph back his gun. Dolph just left, closing the door softly behind him.

Edward holstered his gun and we waited a few seconds, then looked at each other. “You are not going to be able to avoid answering him for very long, Anita.”

“I know.”

“It’s not just you that’s going to be in trouble.”

I nodded. “Richard.”

“He was hinting.”

“If he knew, he’d do more than hint.”

“Lieutenant Storr isn’t stupid.”

“I never thought he was.”

“His hatred makes him stupid in some ways, but it also makes him very determined. If that determination gets turned on you and your friends, well…”

“I know, Edward, I know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“There isn’t a law on the books that says I can’t date the monsters. Legally it would be like telling a federal agent he can’t date someone who’s not white; it would be a public relations nightmare.”

“But the human servant bit, that’s an area they haven’t covered in the federal regulations.”

“You’ve checked?” I asked.

“Before I took the badge, yeah, I read up. Nothing says you can’t be Jean-Claude’s human servant and a federal marshal.”

“Because the laws haven’t caught up to themselves.”

“It doesn’t matter, Anita; it still means even if Dolph finds out, you’re covered.”

“I’m covered legally, but there are other ways to be gotten rid of, if cops want you gone.”

“Like not calling you in on cases.”

“Dolph’s already doing that.”

“Frankly, I think they see you sleeping with the enemy as being just as bad as any metaphysical stuff, or worse.”

I thought about it. “They don’t really understand the metaphysics, but they understand fucking.”

“Your lieutenant seems almost as worried that you’re sleeping around as who you’re sleeping around with.”

“A lot of police are prudes at heart.”

“I think Lieutenant Storr would almost be as disappointed with you if you were just sleeping around with humans.”

“I think he sees himself as sort of a surrogate father figure.”

“How do you see him?”

“My boss, sort of. Once I thought he was my friend.”

“You’re sitting up—does it hurt?”

I thought about it, letting myself feel my body, sort of searching it for pain. I took a deep breath, all the way down to my stomach. “It’s tight, but not painful. It has that tight feeling that it gets if you don’t stretch the scar tissue out. You know?”

“I know.”

“You don’t have any scars as bad as mine, do you?”

“Only Donna knows.” He smiled.

“How is Peter, really?”

“Brave.”

“I meant, oh, hell, Edward, is he going to get the injection or not?”

“Still debating.”

“You have to tell Donna.”

“She’d take the injection.”

“Legally, it’s her decision.”

“One of the reasons we kept him Peter Black was so he could make the decision. I’ve been talking to your furry friends. Tiger lycanthropy is one of the harder-to-catch ones. It’s also one of the few that runs in families and can be inherited as well as caught.”

“That’s actually news to me,” I said.

“Apparently the tigers keep it a close family secret. I’ve been talking to the only other weretiger in town.”

“Christine,” I said.

He nodded. “Did you know she ran to a town with no tigers to escape being forced to marry into a clan of weretigers?”

“I didn’t know—wait, I remember Claudia saying that Soledad had come to St. Louis to probably escape an arranged marriage. Something about the tigers liking to keep it in the family.”

“That was her cover story.”

“How good was her cover?”

“It was good. I’ve seen her documents; they look real. They were excellent forgeries, and I know what I’m talking about.”

“I’ll just bet you do,” I said.

He gave me a look. The real Edward began to peek out, Ted Forrester melting from the eyes outward. It was always his eyes that reverted back to real first. Sort of the way most lycanthropes shifted, interestingly enough.

“Thanks for sending Graham when you did. The shot they had was tiger. It’s their standard because it’s so rare. They’re sending for a different batch, not tiger this time.”

“Will he take the shot?”

“If you were him, what would you do?”

I thought about it. “I’m not the one to ask, Edward. I’ve been cut up a lot, and I’ve taken my chances. So far, so good.”

“But the shot didn’t exist last time. Would you have taken it?”

“I won’t make this decision for you, or for Peter. He’s not my kid.”

“The other shapeshifters make weretigers sound like the last thing you’d want to be.”

“How so?”

“Like I said, they try to force you to marry into the clan to keep everyone related. They’d find Peter and they’d offer him girls, try to lure him in. If he wouldn’t be lured, they’ve been known to abduct.”

“Illegal,” I said.

“Most of them homeschool their kids.”

“Very isolationist,” I said.

“Peter doesn’t like the sound of being a weretiger. He’s not very big on other people telling him what to do.”

“He’s sixteen,” I said. “No sixteen-year-old likes to be bossed around.”

“I don’t think he’s going to grow out of it.”

“He takes orders from you, and from Claudia.”

“He takes them from people he respects, but you have to earn it. I wouldn’t let some clan of weretigers take him, Anita.”

“They can’t force you, or Peter. Christine has lived in St. Louis for years and never been bothered that I’m aware of.”

“Apparently, there’re only four clans of tigers in the United States. They all keep to themselves. Their culture is also divided about pure-bloods, inherited lycanthropy, and attacks. Being given tiger lycanthropy is seen as a reward for a job well done. They think it’s a sin to give it to someone you don’t value.”

“Sounds sort of vampirelike,” I said. “They feel the same way about human servants and animals to call. But I’ve seen my share of both that were forced, and didn’t go willingly.”

“Were you willing?” he asked, and it was all Edward in those eyes now.

I sighed. “If I say no, are you going to do something stupid?”

“No, you love him. I see it. I don’t understand it, but I see it.”

“I don’t get you and Donna either.”

“I know.”

“I wasn’t willing at first, but somehow it just happened. Where we are now wasn’t forced on me.”

“Rumor has it that you’re the power behind the throne, the one pulling his strings.”

“Don’t believe every rumor you hear.”

“If I believed them all, I’d be too afraid to be alone with you.”

I stared at him, trying to read that face, that unreadable face. “Do I want to know what people are saying about me behind my back?”

“No,” he said.

I nodded. “Fine, get a doctor, see if I can get up and mobile.”

“It’s been ten hours, Anita, you can’t be healed.”

“Let’s find out,” I said.

“If you get out of bed this quick, some of those rumors are going to get confirmed.”

“Are the police talking to you about me?”

“Not everyone knows that we’re friends.”

“Okay, what rumors?”

“That you’re a shapeshifter.”

“Some of my best friends are shapeshifters,” I said.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, get a doctor. I’m not going to stay in bed just to keep people from thinking what they already think. Truthfully, I’ve had actual shapeshifters think I’m one of them just from the way my energy feels.”

“Would it hurt you to stay in bed?”

“Why do you care if people think I’m a shapeshifter?”

“I care because if Peter finds out you’re already out of bed he’ll feel weak. He’ll want to be all macho, too.”

“If the doctor tells me I’m too sick to move, I’ll stay in bed. I’m not being macho.”

“No, but Peter has similar injuries to yours, and he knows how he feels.”

“His wounds aren’t healing faster than normal?” I asked.

“They don’t seem to be, why?”

“It’s not a certainty, but often if a victim is going to get lycanthropy, wounds heal more than human-fast.”

“Always?” he asked.

“No, but sometimes. Critical wounds that would cause death will heal faster. Smaller wounds sometimes heal faster, sometimes not.”

“What do I tell Peter about the injection?”

I shook my head. “I can’t make that call. I won’t make that call.” I looked at him, studied a face that didn’t have the cheerfulness of Ted, or the coldness of Edward. There was real anguish there, guilt maybe. Since I thought he’d been foolish to bring Peter into this mess, I couldn’t help him. Peter hadn’t been ready for this much action. The shame of it was that in a few years he might have been.

“You’re thinking I was wrong to bring him, that he wasn’t ready.”

“Hey, I told you that when I saw him. You don’t have to read my mind, Edward. I’ll usually tell you what I think.”

“Okay, what do you think?”

“Well, shit,” I said, and sighed. “Fine, fine. Of course you shouldn’t have brought him. I was impressed with him in the middle of the fight. He held his ground. He remembered his training. In a few years, if he wants to follow in his father’s footsteps, then fine. But he needs a few more years of practice and training. He needs a little seasoning before you throw him to the wolves again.”

Edward nodded. “I was weak, I’ve never been weak before, Anita. Donna, Becca, and Peter, they make me weak. They make me back down. They make me flinch.”

“They don’t make you do anything, Edward. Your reaction to them, your feelings for them, has changed you.”

“I’m not sure I like the change.”

I sighed again. “I know the feeling.”

“I let you down.”

“I didn’t mean that.” I lay back down on the bed. Sitting up didn’t hurt, but it didn’t exactly feel good either. “What I meant was that loving people changes you. It’s changed me, too. I’m softer in some ways, harder in others. I haven’t compromised myself as much as you have.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m not trying to live with someone who doesn’t know who and what I am. I’m not driving an eight-year-old to ballet class.”

“My schedule’s easier to move around than Donna’s.”

“I know. She runs her own metaphysical store. I remember, but that’s not the point, Edward. The point is that I’m not trying to live a normal life. I’m not even trying to pretend that what I do, and what I am, is normal.”

“If you had kids, you’d have to try.”

I nodded. “The pregnancy scare last month made me have to look at that. I don’t see myself ever getting pregnant on purpose. If it happens accidentally we’ll deal, but my life doesn’t work with babies.”

“You’re saying mine doesn’t either.” He sounded sad, and I hadn’t expected that.

“No, I mean, I don’t know. It doesn’t work for me because I’m the girl. I’m the one pregnant, and, God forbid, nursing. Sheer biology makes it harder for me to combine gunplay and kids.”

“I can’t marry Donna, can I?”

The voice in my head screamed, Nooo, you can’t. But out loud I said, “Again, I can’t answer that. Hell, Edward, I have enough trouble with my own life, I can’t run yours.”

He gave me a look; it was an Edward look, but there was something in the eyes, something that wasn’t cold, no, it was definitely warm, hot even. I watched the force of personality that could kill gather in his eyes. But what was it gathering for?

“Edward,” I said, softly, “don’t do anything right now that you’ll regret later.”

“We kill the vampire that caused this,” he said.

“Well, of course,” I said. “I meant don’t make any hasty decisions about Donna and the kids. I don’t know much, but I do know that if Peter does turn furry they’ll need you more than ever.”

“If he does turn furry, can I bring him up here to talk to your friends?”

“Yes, of course.”

He nodded. He looked at me, his eyes softening a little. “I know you think I should leave Donna and the kids. You’ve always thought it was a bad idea.”

“Maybe, but you love them, and they love you. Love’s hard to come by, Edward; you should never throw it away just because it’s a bad idea.”

He laughed. “That made no sense at all.”

“I’m trying here; what I meant to say was that you all love each other. If you can just make Peter stay home long enough to finish his training…I think in a few years, if he still wants to, he can join the family business, but he isn’t ready now. Put your foot down and explain it like that and make it stick.”

He nodded. “You think he can do it, what we do?”

“I think so, if this little adventure didn’t take all the fun out of it for him.”

He nodded again. “I’ll go find a doctor.” He walked out without a backward glance. I lay in the bed, listening to the sudden whispering silence of the room. I prayed that Peter wouldn’t be a lycanthrope. I prayed that the council wouldn’t let the Harlequin declare war on us. I prayed that we’d all survive. Well, I guess it was too late for Cisco. I hadn’t known him that well, but he’d died defending me. He’d died at eighteen doing his job, defending the people he’d signed up to defend. It was an honorable death, a good death, so why didn’t that make me feel better? Did he have family? Was he somebody’s little boy? Someone’s sweetheart? Who was crying right now for him? Or was there no one to mourn him? Were we, his coworkers and friends, all he had? Strangely, that thought made me more sad than any of the thoughts that had come before.

36

THERE WAS A soft knock at the door. Edward wouldn’t knock, and if a doctor knocks it’s followed with an opening door. Who knocks in a hospital? I asked, “Who is it?”

The answer came, “It’s Truth.”

A second voice called, “And Wicked.”

They were brothers, and vampires, and had only recently joined Jean-Claude’s group. The first time I’d met them, Truth had nearly died trying to help me catch a bad guy. They’d been warriors and mercenaries for centuries. Now they were ours. Jean-Claude’s and mine.

Wicked came through the door first, in his pale-brown designer suit, tailored to the wide sweep of shoulder and the strain of muscles in his arms and legs. He actually went to the gym and had added some bulk to the muscles they’d both started with. His shirt was buttoned up tight, with an elegant tie and a gold tie clip. His blond hair was cut long enough to cover his ears, but still had a few inches to go before it reached shoulder length. He was clean-shaven so that the deep dimple in his chin showed. He was handsome, utterly masculine, and utterly modern from his haircut to his shined shoes. Only the sword hilt peeking from behind one shoulder spoiled the modern effect.

Truth followed at his brother’s side as he usually did. He had the same half-growth of dark beard he’d had since I met him. It wasn’t a beard, just as if when he’d died he hadn’t shaved in a while, and he’d never gotten around to changing it. The almost-beard hid the clean, perfect masculine face, the dimple that they shared. You had to stare at them side-by-side for a while to realize how terribly much alike they looked. Truth’s hair was shoulder length, a dark, nondescript brown that was almost black. The hair wasn’t exactly stringy, but it was far from his brother’s shining halo of hair. He wore leather, but it wasn’t Goth leather. It was like fifteenth-century battle-hardened leather crossed with modern motorcycle leather. His boots were knee high, and they had a look about them that said they might be as old as he was, but they fit, they were comfortable, and they were just his boots. He liked them in the way that some men like that favorite chair that has molded to their bodies. So what if they were a little patched and worn; they were comfy.

Truth had a sword at his back, too. I knew they both were carrying guns—one hidden under the beautiful suit jacket, the other hidden under a leather jacket that had seen better days. The brothers were always well armed.

“Requiem said he didn’t trust himself around you, so Jean-Claude sent us,” Wicked said. He said it with a smile that filled his blue eyes with speculation.

“Why would Requiem say that?” Truth asked. His eyes were the mirrors of his brother’s, but the expression in them was totally different. Truth was so sincere it almost hurt. Wicked always seemed to be laughing at me, or at himself, or the world in general.

“The Harlequin messed with his mind.”

“So he didn’t trust himself to keep you safe,” Truth said.

“Something like that,” I said.

There was another knock on the door, but Graham opened it and peeked through. “We’ve got company out here.”

Wicked and Truth were suddenly on alert. It was hard to explain, but cops do it, too. One minute normal, ordinary, then suddenly they were on. They were ready.

“Who?” I asked.

“The lions’ Rex.”

I blinked at Graham. “You mean Joseph?”

Graham nodded.

“What’s that bastard doing here?” Wicked asked.

“I think that’s my line,” I said.

Wicked gave me a small half-bow. “Sorry about that.”

I said, “What does he want?”

Graham leaned the door closed and licked his lips. “I think he wants to beg your forgiveness, or something like that.”

“I don’t feel very forgiving,” I said. I smoothed down the sheets on my hospital bed. No, I didn’t feel very forgiving.

“I know,” Graham said, “but he’s out here alone. The lions left you and the vampires and our Ulfric to die. You don’t owe them anything.”

“Then why tell her he’s outside?” Wicked asked.

Graham licked his lips again. “Because if I didn’t tell Anita, and she found out later he’d come to see her, she’d be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?” I asked.

“Because of what Joseph thinks is about to happen to his lions.”

“His lions are no concern of mine anymore,” I said, and I believed that down to the hard, cold feeling in my heart.

Graham nodded. “Okay, but don’t say later that I didn’t tell you, because I did.” He moved away from the door so he could open it.

“Wait,” I said.

Graham turned and looked at me, hand on the door handle.

“What do you mean, what’s about to happen to the lions?”

“It’s not our concern, you said so,” Truth said.

I looked at the tall vampire, shook my head, and then looked back to Graham. “I feel like I’m missing something. Just in case I do care, a little, someone explain what I’m missing.”

“Asher invited the lions from Chicago back,” Graham said.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“When you and Jean-Claude were dying,” Truth said.

“And Richard,” Graham added. “Our Ulfric was dying, too.”

Truth gave a small bow from the neck. “I meant no offense, wolf.”

Graham said, grudgingly, “It’s okay.”

“The vampires would not have listened to your Ulfric,” Wicked said. There was something in the way he said it, the way he stood, that said he wanted a fight.

“Don’t pick a fight, Wicked,” I said.

He turned just enough to give me a little bit of his eyes. “That’s not picking.”

“I don’t feel well enough to mess with it. I need everyone to be a grown-up, okay?”

Wicked gave me a look that wasn’t entirely friendly, but he didn’t say anything else. I’d take sullen silence. The brothers were an asset, the muscle we’d needed for a while, but they bothered me, too. There was always this feeling that they weren’t quite the obedient little vampires they might have been. Maybe it was the fact that I knew they’d spent centuries with all vampires turned against them. They’d killed the head of their bloodline when he went crazy and sent his vampires out to slaughter humans. Their crime hadn’t been slaying him, because the vampire council had decided he needed killing. Their crime had been surviving his death. Superstition said that lesser vampires died when the head of their bloodline died. Jean-Claude said it was true of weaker vampires, but it was supposed to be true of all vampires. I think it was a way to discourage palace coups. But Wicked and Truth were proof that it wasn’t true, not if you were powerful enough. And of course, only the very powerful would attempt to overthrow their creator.

I had given the brothers shelter, a master to call their own. Truth would have died if I hadn’t shared Jean-Claude’s power with him. And where one brother went they both went, so Wicked was ours, too.

“Tell me about the lions,” I said.

“Asher was in charge of the city as Jean-Claude’s témoin, his second-in-command,” Truth said.

“So?”

“He is not the second most powerful vampire in St. Louis. We thought”—and by we he always meant his brother and himself—“that sentimentality had clouded Jean-Claude’s judgment. But there are other qualities in a leader than vampire powers. He was decisive, ruthless, and swift.”

“What was he decisive, ruthless, and swift about?” I asked.

“We needed extra muscle,” Graham said.

“You said that.”

Graham nodded.

“Just tell me. I won’t be mad.”

Wicked laughed, a loud bray of sound that was nothing like the perfect masculine chuckle he usually allowed himself. “Don’t promise until you know.”

“I’ll know if you tell me,” I said, and already there was a thread of anger in my tone. Damn it.

“Asher called Augustine in Chicago. He asked for soldiers,” Wicked said.

“He let Auggie send his werelions back into our territory,” I said.

Wicked and Truth nodded. Truth asked, “Do you understand what that means for St. Louis’s Rex and his pride?”

I lay in the bed and thought about it. I did know. “I sent Auggie’s lions back to Chicago in November because they would have taken over Joseph’s pride. He doesn’t have anyone strong enough to protect them from the brutes that Auggie has.”

“I’m not sure they’d like being called brutes,” Wicked said, “but it’s accurate.” He smiled, a most unpleasant smile that turned his handsome face to something else. Something more basic, less practiced, more real. Wicked and Truth had honor; you could bank on that honor, trust it. If they’d been one inch less honorable, they would have been totally untrustworthy, and too dangerous to keep.

“Have they moved on Joseph’s pride?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Graham said. “I think they’re waiting to talk to you first.”

“Me, not Jean-Claude,” I said.

“They talked to Jean-Claude. He’s removed his protection from the lions.”

“It’s all up to you, babe,” Wicked said.

“Micah is the head of the furry coalition,” I said.

“Micah kicked them out, unless you make him put them back in,” Graham said.

“When your Nimir-Raj found out what the St. Louis lions had done, he accused them of having broken the treaty with both the wolves and the leopards,” Truth said.

Wicked continued the story. “Since they broke the treaty, they are no longer allies of the coalition. So the coalition members don’t owe them anything.”

“So when Auggie’s lions attack, no one will come to their aid,” I said, my voice soft.

“Exactly,” Wicked said. He seemed pleased.

Graham said, “Joseph is outside, alone. He thinks you will be the weak link.”

I looked at Graham, because it was odd wording. “You think I should let Joseph and his people fry.”

“They betrayed us,” Graham said. I saw something in his face then, a hardness that I hadn’t noticed before. He could be a good bodyguard when he wasn’t trying to fuck something, but he wasn’t hard, or ruthless. Not until now.

I remembered what I’d said to Edward. I’d planned on taking revenge on the werelions. Edward was going to help me. But I’d met Joseph and his people, knew them. They were real, and they weren’t all a waste of time. Travis and Noel had helped feed me for months while I tried to find a more permanent lion. They were too weak to satisfy my lioness, but they were good kids.

“Do I send him away?” Graham asked, as if that was what he wanted to do.

I thought about it. It would be so easy to just refuse to see him. Then I could be ruthless and hard-hearted, and not have to look the man in the face who I was condemning to death. I might be able to keep Auggie’s lions from slaughtering all the pride, but one death would be an absolute must—Joseph’s.

“Send him in,” I said.

“You think that’s a good idea?” Wicked asked. He managed to keep his voice neutral.

“It’d be easier not to see him,” I said.

“Then why see him?” Wicked said.

“Because it would be easier.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It makes sense to me,” Truth said.

I looked up at the other vampire. We exchanged a long look. He understood why I had to turn Joseph away in person: because if I couldn’t look him in the eye and tell him the truth, then maybe it was the wrong thing to do. I had to see him, to know whether I could stand by and let nature take its course with the lions in our city. The lions weren’t my problem, damn it. They had betrayed us. They would have let us all die. Their moral superiority had been worth more to them than the lives of our vampires. I wouldn’t cause them harm, but I was done stepping in and saving them. Or that’s what I told myself when I told Graham to open the door.

37

I WATCHED JOSEPH walk toward the bed. He was tall with dark blond hair cut short. He was dressed for a business meeting in a suit complete with tie. I was betting his wife, Julia, had picked the outfit. He started undoing the tie before he got to Wicked and Truth. They stopped him a little short of the bed. Normally, I might have thought they were being overly cautious, but my body agreed with them. I was healing, but only through a miracle of metaphysics; eventually you run out of miracles.

“Anita, how are you doing?” He tried for a neutral tone but it came out nervous.

“Ted Forrester has gone to find a doc. I may get out of bed today.”

“That’s great,” and the relief chased over his face. His hands flexed and unflexed. “Julia said you’d be all right. She said that you’d find someone else to feed on. She said you would all be all right, and you are.” He was talking a little too fast, as if even he didn’t believe it.

“Who are you trying to convince, Joseph, me or you?” My voice was flat and my eyes empty. I’d had dinner with him at my house. I’d thought he was a good man. But in the end, he’d let us die.

“Anita.” He tried to step closer to the bed, but the vampires stopped him.

“You’re close enough,” Wicked said.

“I would never harm her.”

I raised the hospital gown, showed him the healing wounds that crossed my stomach and ribs. “The only thing that made me powerful enough to heal this was Donovan Reece’s letting me feed on every swanmane in this country. He gave me the power to live through this.”

Joseph’s face had paled. “I’m married, Anita. Julia and I take our vows very seriously.”

“If you were human that would be fine, Joseph, but you aren’t human. You’re a werelion. A werelion who owed allegiance to his allies. We needed you, and you failed us.”

He went to his knees. “Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg.”

I shook my head. “My lioness has never wanted you, Joseph. Had you ever wondered why? Why wouldn’t she want the strongest lion she could find? That’s what she’s programmed to do.” I felt the lioness stir down that long dark tunnel in my head, or in my gut. I thought calm thoughts at her, and she stilled. I was almost surprised that it worked. I said a little prayer of thanks, and went back to paying attention to the lion in front of me.

“I thought you left me alone out of respect for my wife.”

I looked at him. There was nothing wrong with him. He was good looking enough, if a little too masculine for my preferences, but he had never moved me. My lioness had never even tried for him.

“My lioness reacted to your lion the way she does to all the lions, but she was never drawn to you, the way she was drawn to some of the Chicago lions.”

“You react to the Chicago lions because you slept with them. And their master vampire.”

“Is that what everyone’s saying?” I asked.

He looked puzzled. “It’s the truth.”

“No, it’s half the truth. Augustine, yes, but I was very careful with his lions. I was careful because I didn’t want to fuck up your lions. I left his lions very alone, because I was worried about you and yours.”

“I knew you sent them back to Chicago, but I thought…I am grateful that you turned them down for us.”

In my head, I could admit that it hadn’t been entirely for Joseph and his people. The lion that most attracted my lioness had sooo been bad news.

“I did it because you were my ally, and I thought it was somehow my fault that the other werelions were going to come and take over your pride. I’ve learned since then that Augustine has had your pride on his to-do list for a while now. Because you and your lions are too weak to defend yourselves, and all the other lions know it.”

“I kept my people safe,” he said.

“No, I kept them safe. Jean-Claude kept them safe. Richard kept them safe. The wererats have died keeping your city safe. The leopards nearly lost their queen. The swans risked everything. Where were the lions while the rest of us bled and died?”

“If you had asked we would have fought for you.”

“Why would we want the lions to fight for us, Joseph? You’re too weak. You don’t train in combat, or weapons. You are werelions, so fucking what? We’re all wereanimals, but we offer more than just teeth and claws. What do the lions offer us, Joseph?” The anger stirred that place inside me, and I had to close my eyes and count, slowly, breathe, slowly. The stirring eased again. Two times in a row the beasts had quieted because I’d asked, or concentrated on being calm. Maybe I was finally getting the hang of this.

“We are lions,” he said, but his voice was soft.

“You are weak,” and my voice was soft, too. Soft because I couldn’t afford the anger.

Joseph reached his hands out toward me, between Truth and Wicked’s legs. “Do not let them kill us.”

“Am I your Rex? Am I your Regina?”

“No,” he said, and his hands began to lower.

“Then why do you turn to me for help?”

“Because I have nowhere else to turn.”

“Whose fault is that, Joseph? Whose fault is it that after this many years your pride is so weak that you have to turn to humans and vampires, and other animal groups for safety?”

His hands were on his thighs now. “Mine,” he said.

“No, not just yours. I’m betting your wife had something to do with it. Every time someone remotely stronger than you and your brother came along, she said no, didn’t she? She said that you didn’t need them, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” he said.

“If you’d let some strength into your pride, you would have learned how to be a better king.”

“Or they would have killed me and taken the pride, taken…”

“Your wife,” I said.

He nodded.

“I heard that some of the lion takeovers work like that. I can see where she wouldn’t want to take the chance.”

“Then you understand.”

I shook my head. “I can’t afford to understand, Joseph. I can’t afford to let you hide behind my skirts anymore. Micah kicked you out of our alliance.” I looked across the room to Graham by the door. “Graham, did the other animal groups vote with the leopards?”

“They said pretty much what you’ve said, that they have all lost people or had injuries and the lions just take resources and don’t give anything back.”

“I gave Anita the choice of all our unattached young men. I paraded them out for her like some kind of slave auction.”

I’d been fighting off feeling bad about this decision, until that moment. “Slave auction, is that how you saw it?”

“You’re picking men who will have to have sex with you. If you have no choice, then you’re just a slave.”

“I haven’t fucked any of your young lions.”

He looked at me like he didn’t believe that at all.

“Didn’t you ask them what they did for me?”

“We felt bad enough giving them to you. We didn’t need to hear any details.”

“You self-righteous prig. I didn’t sleep with them because most of them are virgins, or damn close to it. Corrupting the young just doesn’t appeal to me.”

There was a knock on the door. Who could it be this time? Graham opened the door, and standing in the doorway was the reason for Joseph’s fear, and the other reason for me sending the lions back to Chicago that first time. Haven, alias Cookie Monster, walked into the room.

38

HE WAS TALL, and a little slender for my tastes, but a leather trench coat gave him more bulk through the shoulders than I knew he had. His short, spiked hair was still shades of blue like Cookie Monster and spring skies. His eyes were still blue and laughing. He was still handsome. He was still dangerous.

Joseph got to his feet. Wicked and Truth put a hand on either of his arms. He didn’t fight them about it. They just looked toward the other man. They were actually blocking my view at that point. I was okay with that. The less I saw of him, the better.

“It’s against the rules for you to hold him for me.” Haven’s voice was pleasant, as if he were asking about the weather. He probably had a pleasant face to go with the pleasant voice. He could look pleasant and amused right up to the time he hurt you. He was a professional thug, and had been for all his adult life. He was a mob enforcer and a werelion. Like I said, dangerous.

“I beat you last time,” Joseph said. That was true.

“You got lucky,” Haven said, and the voice was sliding down to something less pleasant.

“But I didn’t even know you were here. I came to see Anita.”

Truth and Wicked stepped aside, taking Joseph with them. I was suddenly lying there staring up at the other man. I had a moment of staring up into that deceptively blue gaze, such an innocent color, and then his gaze slid down my body. It wasn’t sexual; I’d forgotten to lower my gown, so the wounds were still visible.

His face was very serious, and on the edge of that came a flash of anger through those sky-blue eyes. “Weretiger, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He reached out, as if he would touch the wounds. I drew the gown back over my skin. He looked me in the face again. There was a look in his eyes that I couldn’t decipher. It was a serious look, whatever it meant.

Something stirred inside me, something that flashed tawny and gold in the dark end of the tunnel. I suddenly smelled dry grass and heat so hot it had a smell to it. I smelled lion.

“I’m trying to be good here,” Haven said. “If you go all lioness on me, I can’t promise to be good.”

“I appreciate that,” I said out loud, but my hand ached to reach out to him. He was toning down his power level, and I was toning down mine, but the urge to touch him was still there. Micah had figured it out that my power wasn’t seeking a lion to be another animal to call like Nathaniel. The power was seeking what Micah was to me, a Rex to my Regina. Chimera had been the same way, I guess; he’d been the dominant in whatever group he took over. The mix of panwere and Belle Morte’s line of vamps seemed to have changed it from me trying to be dominant to everyone into trying to be a dominant couple with everyone.

“Take his hand.”

I blinked up at them.

Truth repeated, “Take his hand.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Haven reached out to me. I could have moved back, but I was just a little late in moving. Maybe it was a Freudian slip, or maybe it was an entire wardrobe.

His hand wrapped around mine with room to spare. His hands were as big as Richard’s, the fingers longer, closer to the way Jean-Claude’s hands looked, but the size was all Richard. The feel of his hand in mine made something tight in my chest loosen. I had enough men in my life, damn it. All I had to do was let go of his hand, but I didn’t let go.

Haven was staring down at our clasped hands as if he didn’t know what they were. He sounded distracted, like he was thinking about something very different from what his words said. “Your Nimir-Raj has kicked Joseph and his lions out of the coalition. I’ve checked with the wererats, the werehyenas, and your Ulfric. They’re all cool with me doing what needs doing.”

“It was good of you to check with everyone,” Truth said.

“The animal groups in your coalition with Jean-Claude are still united. I didn’t want to piss everyone off the first day back.” He was rubbing his thumb across my knuckles as he talked. “I just need to ask you how you feel about it, and I can get started.”

“Anita, please,” Joseph said. He was still being held between the two vampires.

“No one in the coalition trusts you anymore, Joseph. I don’t trust you either.”

“So you won’t care what I do?” Haven asked. He was looking at my face now. His face was more serious than I’d ever seen it.

“There are some lions in his group that are weak, but they’re still valuable. Give them a chance to join you.”

“Valuable how?”

“They have jobs. They bring income into the pride so that others don’t have to work.”

“Money won’t be a problem. Auggie bankrolled us until things got up and running.”

“And that’s another thing; I’ll try not to interfere in how you run the pride, but I can’t let you bring new mob connections to St. Louis.”

“You know that’s one of the main reasons Auggie wanted us down here.”

“I figured it was, but we’ve got enough crime without adding. I’ll let the lions do what lions do, but the mob is human and I’m a federal marshal. Don’t make me have to choose.”

“I’ll have to talk to Auggie.” He was just holding my hand, not meeting my eyes again.

“I’ll talk to him if you want, or Jean-Claude can.”

“Jean-Claude probably can come up with a compromise that Auggie will listen to,” Haven said.

“Remember the two lions you almost broke when you were here last time?”

“The college kids, yeah.”

“They’ve helped me keep my beast under control. In fact, Joseph has a lot of young people in college. Let them finish their degrees, help bring in legitimate money.”

His hand squeezed around mine, not hard, but firm. “Did you sleep with them?”

I started to ask why, but there was something about the way he was standing there, some quality of stillness that made me afraid to tease. I said the truth, “No.”

“None of them,” he said.

“No, but if you’re not into sharing then you are holding the hand of the wrong girl.”

“I know how many you got on your plate, but they aren’t lions.”

“And if I had slept with any of the other lions?”

He gave me a look; there was nothing comforting in that look, hell, there was nothing very human in that look. “I won’t share with another lion.”

“I’ll need more than one of each of my beasts. You can’t be with me twenty-four-seven.”

He frowned. “No, I can’t.”

“Also, I’ve got Micah as my Nimir-Raj, then Nathaniel came as my leopard to call. It may work that way with all my animals.”

“You only have the Ulfric.”

“Not true,” Graham said. “She sees a lot of Jason.”

“He’s Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang,” I said.

“That’s why he’s around a lot, but that’s not why you do him all the time.”

“Thanks for putting it that way, Graham.” Funny how Graham reminded me often why he wasn’t getting sex from me.

“He’s also Nathaniel’s best friend.” Wicked added that.

“Can we please change the subject?” I said.

“But Jason isn’t her animal to call,” Truth said.

“Then why does she have a leopard but not a wolf to call?” Graham asked.

“We don’t know,” Wicked said.

“Guys, enough already,” I said.

“She’s right,” Haven said. He looked at Joseph. “We can’t settle this right now, so go. Go tell your pride that you failed them. Tell them that we’ll give them tonight safe.”

“What happens tomorrow?” Joseph asked.

Haven gave that unpleasant smile again. “Why, then you and I find out if you can get lucky again, or if your luck’s run out.”

“You will make him your Rex, Jean-Claude’s Rex,” Joseph said. He looked at the werelion. “Are you prepared to do what the Nimir-Raj and the Ulfric do?”

“What’s that?”

“Sleep with her master. Sleep with Jean-Claude.”

Funny how some rumors never die, no matter how many times you try to kill them. Before I could say anything, Haven answered, “Do you believe every rumor you hear?”

“They are not rumors, if they are true.”

“You thought I was sleeping with your little lions, and I wasn’t.”

“You say you weren’t.”

“Get him out of here,” Haven said.

The vampires looked at me. I nodded.

They started escorting Joseph to the door.

“You condemn me to death, Anita,” he called back over his shoulder.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. You can’t save everybody, and we couldn’t afford to have any ally that wasn’t with us completely. It wasn’t just the sex. There’d been no lion in his pride good enough to be a bodyguard. Not a single one. You couldn’t be that weak and survive.

Wicked was saying something to Joseph, low and urgent. His grip on the man’s arm was tight enough to show at a distance. Whatever he said quieted the protests and sent him out the door.

“What did you say to him, Wicked?” I asked.

“I told him that the werelion had given him tonight to be safe, but if he kept saying mean things about our masters, I’d just do him tonight.”

“It’s my fight,” Haven said.

“I said that I’d do him, not that I’d kill him. After everything he’d just said, I figured rape would scare him enough to get him out of here.”

“You don’t like guys,” I said.

“You don’t know what I like. You’ve worked hard not to know. My pride’s hurt, but I’ll get over it. But Joseph would believe anything of Jean-Claude’s people, even male-on-male rape.”

“So there really is a rumor that no one gets to join Jean-Claude’s kiss without fucking him.”

“Or you,” Truth said.

“I’m really disappointed that one isn’t true, by the way,” Wicked said, with a grin.

“Me, too,” Graham said.

I gave them both the look they deserved.

“I do not wish to,” Truth said.

They looked at him. “Why not?” Graham asked.

“Because I am already much in thrall to Anita. If I bedded her, I would be little more than the slave Joseph accused us of being.”

“Trust me, guys, you’re overestimating my appeal,” I said.

“I don’t know about that,” Haven said. He spread my hand on his palm and touched my hand with the fingers of his other hand. “You have such small hands.”

“Delicate and dangerous,” Wicked said.

Haven started talking, almost as if to himself. “I’m not a complicated guy. I know that. I’m not stupid, but I’m not exactly a brain trust either. I know that, too. I like being a guy. I like being muscle. I like hurting people. I don’t mind killing people. I like my job. I like drinking with the guys, a little poker, and strip clubs, fucking. It was a good life.”

“You make it sound like it’s over,” I said.

“I went back to Chicago, to my life, but it didn’t work anymore. I still liked hurting people, but I started wondering if you’d hate me for doing some of the stuff Auggie had me doing. I kept thinking, What would she think? Wondering what you’d think started getting in the way of my job. Auggie noticed it.”

“I sent you back home, Haven. I didn’t make you think about me.” I tried to take my hand back, but he wrapped those long fingers around me, and I didn’t fight it.

“Yeah, you did, Anita, maybe not on purpose, but you did. First it fucked up my job, then it fucked up my fun. I started looking at my friends and what we did, and thought, She’d be disappointed. She’d think it was stupid.” He shook his head. “Damn it, I’ve never let any woman mess me up like this.”

“Haven, I…”

“Let me finish,” he said.

I wasn’t sure I wanted him to finish, but I let him.

“Women are just for fucking, or marrying so you can have kids if you want them. Women don’t count, not in my world, not in Auggie’s world. But you counted, to him, and to me. But especially to me. No matter what woman I was with, or how good the sex was, the moment it was over, it felt bad. It wasn’t enough. Damn you, damn you, I started thinking about relationships. Having a girl to talk to. Stupid shit that I gave up before I hit fifteen, and suddenly it was all back. I was this kid again, thinking there was more to life than being muscle for Auggie. There isn’t more to life, Anita. There isn’t anymore.” His voice had sunk to a low growl.

I didn’t know what to say. Sorry seemed lame, and It’s not my fault seemed worse. I didn’t mean to fuck up your life seemed the most accurate. I finally settled for, “I didn’t make you rethink your life, Haven.”

“Yeah, you did. Auggie says you did. He says you didn’t mean to do it, but you mind-fucked me just like Belle Morte does, or can. I’m your lion, Anita. I’m yours. Yours in a way I’ve never been anyone’s. You make me want to be a better person. How fucking lame is that?”

Truth’s quiet voice came. “A lady always makes a man want to be better than he is. Belle Morte did not make anyone want to be better. She made you obsess about her, follow her like a dog, but you did not think, Will she think less of me if I do this awful thing? She did things so much worse than anything we were willing to do; even Wicked found her immoral.”

“Auggie said it was the same mind-fucking shit that Belle Morte did.”

“Your attraction to Anita may have been vampire powers, but your reaction to her beyond that is not,” Wicked said, and there was a note of almost sadness to his voice.

“What does that mean?” Haven asked, his voice irritated.

“It means, my good fellow,” Wicked said, “you’re in love with the woman.”

“No,” Haven said.

“Only love of a good woman will make a man question every choice, every action. Only love makes a warrior hesitate for fear that his lady will find him cruel. Only love makes a man both the best he will ever be, and the weakest. Sometimes all in the same moment.”

I didn’t know what to say. It seemed like I should say something. Maybe I wasn’t in love with him. Or maybe it was just lust. Or…but one thing had to be clear between us.

“I appreciate all the honesty, Haven, really I do, but I need to be certain you understand a few things.”

He gave me a look that was both angry and uneasy. “What things?”

“You’ve done good. You checked with all the other group leaders. That was great. But I haven’t said I’d make you one of my boyfriends.”

He squeezed my hand, traced his fingers across my wrist. I had to fight not to shiver under even that small touch. I knew this reaction. It was too close to how Micah had affected me, too damn close. But when Micah came into my life the ardeur was brand new, and so was having my own beasts. I wasn’t new at controlling all of it now. Thank God.

“Your pulse speeds up just from that little touch. How can you say you don’t want me?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want you. But my life works, mostly. I like living with Micah and Nathaniel. I like bunking over with Jean-Claude and Asher. I don’t need another man in my life who won’t share. Frankly, I’m trying to thin down the number of men in my life. I really don’t want another one.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, don’t come down here thinking it’s a done deal between us. Don’t take it for granted that you’ll be able to fit into my life.”

He let go of my hand, then, and the look was so cold. “I talk to you like I’ve never talked to another woman, and this is what I get?”

“Yeah, because my life works. The coalition works. The power structure in this territory works. I won’t jeopardize it, not for lust, or even for love.”

“Ask her how she feels about you,” Truth said.

Haven shook his head.

“Tell him how you feel, Anita.”

I didn’t want to, but Truth was right. One, Haven had been honest with me. Two, a man’s ego is a fragile thing sometimes. The toughest men sometimes are the easiest hurt, and hardest to heal. I didn’t know what Haven and I would be doing with each other, but whatever we were going to do, it needed to be honest.

“I thought about you while you were in Chicago, but not to the extent you thought about me. I sent you away because I wanted to touch you. I wanted to be naked with you, and do all the things you do when the clothes come off.”

“You’re saying you wanted, like it’s past.”

“I still feel the attraction, trust me. But the initial attraction is the most overwhelming. It was like that with Micah, too. If I can get a little distance between me and the man, then, apparently, I get better control.”

“I wonder how your control would be if I weren’t shielding my lion from you? You’re hurt. You need to heal, but when you’re well, I want to see how your control holds up to my lion.”

“Don’t threaten me, Haven. I don’t react well to that.”

“It’s not a threat, Anita. I am being so good right now. You have no idea how good.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“But I’m not good. I’m bad. I think like a bad guy. You keep pushing me away, and all my good resolutions will go out the window.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that once I kill Joseph and take over his pride, I’ll be a permanent member of your coalition. I’ll be the local Rex. Once I take over Joseph’s pride, I can’t go back to Chicago.”

The human part of me, the commonsense part of me said, Send his ass back home. The coldly practical part said, Who else is going to run the lions here? There were no other candidates. The lioness in me wanted to know if he was as good as his brag. Not just about sex, but power. The lioness more than any other of my beasts wanted a mate that could protect her, keep up with her. None of my other beasts were as competitive as the lion. I got a distant swirl of tiger, like a dream of a dream. Tiger wanted to be left alone. Fine with me.

“I’m scared of you, Haven. Scared that you being my lion will fuck up my life. I know you’re bad, and you’ve been bad your entire adult life. That’s a lot of bad habits to break.”

“I’m not sure I know how to be good.”

“I know.”

“Do I stay? Decide now, Anita, because once the pride is mine, the choice is gone.”

I thought about it. I’d have been fine with him coming in as the new Rex, but coming in as a new boyfriend, well, that just had disaster written all over it. I opened my mouth to say go, but my lioness swiped a claw up inside me, like she was playing with my liver. It made me writhe on the bed and not in a good way.

I was suddenly getting asked by a lot of people, “Anita, are you all right?”

I nodded. I had more control over my beasts, I really did. But apparently, I didn’t have complete control. Would the lioness let me send Haven back to Chicago, or would she tear me apart?

I don’t know what I would have said to Haven, because I didn’t get a chance. The door opened, and it was Dolph again, but with more police at his back.

“Everybody in here carrying a weapon, but not carrying a badge, out.”

Since that was everybody but Graham, they went. Dolph was pissed that they’d managed to get past everyone in the first place. Apparently, heads were going to fly, at least figuratively.

Edward came back into the room while Dolph was giving each of the armed “guards” a police escort off hospital grounds. Dolph decided that Ted Forrester and his German friend in the hallway were enough muscle to keep me safe, so Graham didn’t need to be here either.

“Dolph, Graham isn’t even armed.”

“You’ve got Forrester and Otto Jeffries to guard your back, or is there something going on in our city so dangerous that you need all this firepower?” He gave me those searching cop eyes that always seemed to see everything.

I shook my head. I told Truth, Wicked, Haven, and Graham to go with the nice police officers. They went. Because Dolph was right with Edward and Olaf, I was safe enough, at least from our enemies. I’d seen Olaf use a gun. I knew he was a good man in a fight, but somehow I just never felt entirely safe from Olaf with Olaf nearby. Funny, that.

39

THE DOCTOR TOLD me I could go. That if I exercised and didn’t let the scar tissue harden up on me, I’d be fine. He also assumed I was a shapeshifter, a new kind of shapeshifter that could do different animals. He actually used the term panwere. It was the first time I’d heard anyone but a shapeshifter say it. The doctor had never actually seen one, until me. I told him he still hadn’t seen one, but nothing I said persuaded him different, so I gave up. If people won’t believe the truth, and you don’t want to lie, then you’re out of options. Chimera had been the real deal, a true panwere, and one of the scariest beings I’d ever met. I wondered what the doctor would have made of him?

I walked down the hall to Peter’s room with Edward leading the way. Olaf brought up the rear. I didn’t like him behind me, but he wasn’t doing anything wrong. For him, he was positively being a good boy. The fact that I could feel the weight of his gaze on my back almost like a hand pressing between my shoulder blades wasn’t something I could really bitch about. I mean, what was I supposed to say, Stop looking at me? It was a little too childish for me to say it out loud, no matter how true it felt.

It didn’t help that Olaf and I were dressed alike, sort of. Edward was in his white button-down shirt and jeans, and cowboy boots. Ted Forrester dressed to be comfortable; Olaf dressed either to intimidate or because he liked the Goth assassin look. I hadn’t picked my clothes, Nathaniel had. Black jeans tight enough that the inner pants holster dug in a little, but they tucked nicely into the lace-up boots. The black T-shirt was scoop-necked and the push-up bra that was under it made sure I had plenty of scoop to show. My cross sat on my breasts, rather than hanging in front of them. How did I know Nathaniel had packed the bag and not Micah? First, the panties and bra matched, and the panties were perfect for the lower waistline of the jeans; second, the shirt and bra showed a lot of cleavage; third, the boots. Maybe my Nikes were covered in blood, they probably were, and the boots were comfy and low heeled, but Nathaniel was twenty and male and often looked at clothes from the perspective of his job. Micah had a tendency to not match everything perfectly; he would have just put on an ambi-sexual T-shirt from the T-shirt drawer we shared. The outfit wouldn’t have looked so terribly like an outfit if Micah had done it. I’d have to talk to Nathaniel about picking out things with this much cleavage when I was working with the cops. I had my backup shoulder holster instead of the custom-made leather one, which probably meant hospital efficiency had destroyed it. That would be the second or third one that had gotten cut to pieces in an emergency room.

I felt heat, or air movement, or…something. I turned and must have done it fast enough to catch Olaf in midmotion, pulling his hand back. He had almost touched me.

I glared at him, and he stared at me. Those dark, deep-set eyes stared at my face, and then his gaze slid down the front of my body in that way that men can do. That look that slides over you so that you know they’re thinking about you naked, or worse. In Olaf’s case it was probably worse.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I said.

Edward was watching us both.

“Every man who sees you tonight will be looking at you like that.” He made a gesture in the vague direction of my chest. “How can they not?”

I felt the heat run up my face, and spoke through gritted teeth. “Nathaniel picked the clothes to bring to the hospital, not me.”

“Did he buy the shirt and the bra?” Olaf asked.

“No,” I said. “I did.”

He shrugged. “Then do not blame the boy.”

“Yeah, but they’re date clothes, and I don’t think there’s going to be time for a date tonight.”

“Will we be hunting the vampire that escaped us?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, if we can figure out where she and her human servant have gotten to, yeah.”

He smiled.

“What?” I said, because the smile didn’t match what we were talking about.

“If things work out as I hope, I may owe your boy a thank-you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

Edward touched my arm, and I jumped. “You don’t want to understand.” He led me down the hallway, his hand on my arm. Olaf stayed where he was, staring at us with that strange half-smile on his face.

“What?” I asked Edward.

He leaned in close, speaking low and quick, “While you were unconscious, Olaf came into the room. You were covered in blood and they’d cut off most of what you were wearing. He touched you, Anita. The doctors and guards chased him back, and I got him out of the room, but…”

I stumbled, because I was trying to stop, and he kept us moving. “Touched me where?” I asked.

“The stomach.”

“I don’t understand,” and then I did. “The wounds, he touched the wounds.”

“Yes,” Edward said, and stopped us outside a door.

I swallowed hard; both my pulse and a certain nausea were trying to climb up my throat. I looked down the hallway where Olaf was still standing. I knew my face showed fear; I couldn’t help it. He drew his lower lip under and bit it. I think it was an unconscious gesture. A gesture you make when you are moved to the point where you don’t think about how you look, or who’s looking. Then he moved down the hallway toward us like some black movie monster. The kind that looks human, and is human, but in their mind there’s nothing human left to talk to.

Edward opened the door and drew me inside. Apparently we weren’t waiting on Olaf. Fine with me.

I stumbled over the doorsill. His hand tightened, steadying me. The door closed on the sight of Olaf gliding up the hallway. He moved like all his muscles knew what they were doing, almost like one of the shapeshifters. He so needed killing.

I must have looked pale, because Micah came across the room and took me in his arms. He whispered against my cheek, “What’s wrong?” He hugged me tighter. “You’re shivering.”

I wrapped my arms around him and pressed as much of me against as much of him as I could. It was one of those hugs when it feels almost like you’re trying to meld yourself into the other person. Sometimes it’s sexual, but sometimes it’s because the world has gone too wrong and you need something to cling to. I clung to Micah like he was the last solid thing in the world. I buried my face against the curve of his neck and drew in the scent of his skin. He didn’t ask again what was wrong; he just held me close.

Other arms hugged me from behind; another body pressed tight against me. I didn’t need to open my eyes and see Nathaniel to know it was him. I didn’t even need the faint hint of vanilla. I knew the feel of his body against mine. I knew the feel of them holding me together.

Another body came in from the side of us. I did turn to see, and found it was Cherry. She put an arm around both men. I realized with a start that she wasn’t taller than Nathaniel now. “What’s wrong?” she asked, dark eyes worried.

What did I say? That I was afraid of Olaf? That the thought that he’d caressed my wounds creeped me? That I wondered if he’d touched that bulge of intestine the way a man touches a breast? That I wanted to know, and didn’t want to know?

The door opened behind us. Edward nodded at me and went to the opening door. He spoke softly, then walked out the door to talk to Olaf in private, or maybe to simply keep him away from me for a while. Whichever, I was grateful. Of course, that left me with Edward’s other backup.

I looked past Micah’s shoulder and Cherry’s arm to the bed in the room. Pain had brought more of the shadow of that boy I’d first met into Peter’s face. He looked pale and terribly young lying there hooked up to tubes and monitors. When I woke up, I hadn’t been hooked up to anything that monitored my vitals. How much worse off was he than me?

I whispered, “I don’t think I can explain what’s wrong.”

Cherry gave me narrow eyes.

“I’ll try to explain later, promise.”

She frowned at me, but stepped back as if she knew what I was going to do. Maybe she did. I’d probably made some small movement toward the bed, or turned my body as if prepping to move. Most people wouldn’t notice, but a lot of the shapeshifters would.

I hugged Micah again, a little less intensely, and he kissed me. It was a gentle, lingering kiss. If Peter hadn’t been watching I might have made it more, but he was, and Edward was taking care of big and scary in the hallway. That left me with not so big, but scary in a very different way. I leaned back to look over my shoulder at Nathaniel. He kissed my cheek, putting his hand against the other side of my face so he could press our faces together. I turned so he could get more of a kiss, but he gave me one of the most delicate, gentlemanly kisses he’d ever given me. I drew back, giving him puzzled eyes. His lavender gaze flicked across the room toward the bed. I got it, and didn’t. Something about Peter watching made Nathaniel behave himself, but I didn’t know why, or what. I mean it was a kiss, not making out. I pushed the thought away into the crowd of other confusing thoughts. There were so many of them, I felt like I needed a cage to hold them in, so that all the things I didn’t understand wouldn’t overwhelm me.

I got a better look at Nathaniel’s clothes and realized he’d dressed himself almost exactly as he’d dressed me, except his T-shirt was a boy’s, and he wasn’t wearing any weapons. We looked like we should be going clubbing. Hard to complain about how someone dresses you when they’re wearing the same outfit. The clothes were minor problems compared to what was waiting.

I took a deep breath and pushed out of the circle of comforting hands. I moved out of that circle of warmth to face the current confusing thought. This one was staring at me with brown eyes that looked like islands in the pale skin of his face. Peter wasn’t naturally pale, not like I was, or Edward was, but he was pale now. Blood loss and pain will do that to you.

I walked toward the bed. In that moment I would rather have faced Peter than Olaf. Was I being a coward, or was Edward the one being the coward? I was betting that he’d rather face a thousand Olafs than one almost-stepson right now. The look on Peter’s face changed as I walked toward the bed. He was still hurt, but his gaze seemed to be drawn to something other than my face. By the time I got to the bedside he wasn’t as pale; he’d found enough blood somewhere to blush.

40

“HEY, PETER,” I said.

He turned his head so he was looking up at the ceiling. Apparently he didn’t trust himself not to stare at my chest and wasn’t sure how I’d react. I wasn’t sure either. “I thought you were hurt,” he said.

“I was.”

He turned to look at me, frowning. “But you’re up. I feel awful.”

I nodded. “I’m a little surprised myself, truthfully.”

His gaze had drifted down again. Olaf was crazy and mean, but he was right about one thing. Men would stare, some on purpose to be rude, but not all. Some like Peter, well, it was as if my chest were a magnet and their gaze iron; it just attracted it. I was sooo going to have to talk to Nathaniel about what clothes to pack next time. Next time I got so hurt I ended up unconscious in the hospital. I simply assumed there’d be a next time. Unless I changed jobs, there would be. The thought startled me. Was I thinking about giving up the vampire hunting? Was I really, truly considering it? Maybe, maybe I was. I shook my head and pushed the thought into that cage with all the other thoughts. The cage was getting awfully damn full.

“Anita?” Peter made it a question.

“Sorry, thinking too hard.”

“What about?” He was managing eye contact. I felt like I should pet his head and give him a cookie, good boy. God, I was in a strange mood tonight.

“Truthfully, wondering if I want to keep hunting vampires.”

His eyes went wide. “What are you talking about? This is what you do.”

“No, I raise zombies; the vampire hunting is supposed to be a sideline. Sometimes the zombie thing gets me hurt, but the vampire and rogue lycanthrope hunting are more likely to put me in the hospital. Maybe I’m just tired of waking up with new scars.”

“Waking up is good, though,” he said, and his voice sounded fragile. He wasn’t staring at my face or my chest now. He was looking into the distance, with that look on the face that says you’re seeing something unpleasant, reliving it, just a little.

“You didn’t think you were going to wake up,” I said, and kept my voice gentle.

He looked at me, eyes wide, looking lost, frightened. “No, I thought this was it. I thought…” He stopped and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“You thought you were going to die,” I finished for him.

He nodded, then winced as if the movement hurt.

“I knew I wouldn’t die, or you. Stomach wounds hurt like hell and they can take a lot of healing, but they’re rarely fatal with modern antibiotics and prompt medical attention.”

He looked at me, uncomprehending. “Were you really thinking all that as they put you under?”

I thought about it. “Not exactly, but I’ve been hurt a lot, Peter. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve lost consciousness and woken up in a hospital, or somewhere worse.”

I thought his eyes were on my chest again, but he said, “The scar on your collarbone, what did that?”

Another interesting sideline of wearing this much of my chest in full view was that some of my scars were on display. I’d been more worried about my modesty than about the scars. “Vampire.”

“I thought it was a shapeshifter bite.”

“Nope, vampire.” I showed him my arms with all their scars. “Most of these are from vampires.” I touched one on my left arm: claw marks. “This one was a shapeshifted witch, which means her shapeshifting was a spell and not a disease.”

“I didn’t know there was a difference.”

“Well, the spell isn’t contagious, and it’s not tied to the full moon at all. In fact, strong emotions don’t cause you to shift, or any of that. You don’t shift until you put on the item, usually a fur belt or something.”

“Do you have any scars from shapeshifters?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see?”

Truthfully, the most permanent scars were claw marks on my ass. They were almost delicate marks. Gabriel, the wereleopard who had done it, had considered it foreplay before he tried to rape me on film. He’d been the first person I’d ever killed with the big knife in its spine sheath. I was going to have to figure out a different way to wear the knife until I could get the shoulder rig remade. But I had new scars now, ones I was willing to show Peter.

It took a little work to get the T-shirt out of the pants, but somehow I didn’t want to unbuckle or unzip anything. I got the shirt up and raised it over my belly, exposing the new wounds.

Peter made a surprised sound. “That can’t be real.” He whispered it. He reached out as if he’d try to touch, then drew his hand back, as if he wasn’t sure what I’d say.

I stepped closer to the bed. He took it as the invitation it was, and ran his fingertips across the new pink scars. “The scars may disappear altogether, or they may stay. I won’t know for a few days, or weeks,” I said.

He drew his fingers back, then put his whole hand across the biggest wound. The one where it looked as if she had tried to take a chunk of flesh. His hand was big enough to cover the mark and leave his fingers splayed out beyond the scars. “You can’t have healed this in less than, what…twelve hours. Are you one of them?”

“You mean a shapeshifter?” I asked.

“Yes.” He whispered it as if it were a secret. He slid his hand along my stomach, tracing the ragged marks of claws.

“No.”

He ran his hand over my skin until he came to the edge of the scars where they dribbled away just past my belly button. “They just changed my dressing. I look like shit. You’re healed.” He curved his hand around to the side of my waist that wasn’t scarred. His hand cupped my waist, and his hand was big enough to do it. That one gesture caught me off guard. The only man I was dating whose hand was big enough to do that was Richard. It seemed wrong that Peter’s hand was that big. It made me move back from him and let my shirt drop over my stomach. Which embarrassed him, which wasn’t my intent. I just suddenly realized I probably shouldn’t let him touch me that much. It hadn’t moved me or made me uncomfortable until that moment.

He took his hand back, and again wasted blood that he didn’t have in blushing. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and wouldn’t look at me as he said it.

“It’s okay, Peter. No harm, no foul.”

He gave me a quick upward glance of his brown eyes. “If you’re not a shapeshifter, how could you have healed like that?”

Truthfully, it was probably because I was Jean-Claude’s human servant, but since Dolph was wanting to know that, I just didn’t want to share it with people who didn’t know. “I’m carrying four different kinds of lycanthropy. So far I don’t turn furry, but I’m carrying.”

“The doctors told me you can’t get more than one kind of lycanthropy. That’s the point of the shot. The two different kinds of lycanthropy cancel each other out.” He stopped at the end of the speech and took a deeper-than-normal breath, as if talking too much hurt.

I patted his shoulder. “Don’t talk if it hurts, Peter.”

“Everything hurts.” He seemed to try to settle into the bed, then stopped as if that had hurt, too. He looked up at me, and the angry, defiant face was like an echo of almost two years ago. The kid I’d met was still in there, he’d just grown up. It made my heart hurt. Would I ever get to see Peter when he wasn’t getting hurt? I guess I could just go visit Edward sometime, but that was just weird. We did not just visit each other. We weren’t that kind of friends.

“I know it hurts, Peter. I didn’t always heal this fast.”

“Micah and Nathaniel have been talking to me about weretigers and being a lycanthrope.”

I nodded, because I didn’t know what else to say. “They’d know.”

“Do they all heal as fast as you do?”

“Some, no. Some faster.”

“Faster,” he said. “Really?”

I nodded.

His eyes filled with something I couldn’t decipher. “Cisco didn’t heal.”

Ah. “No, he didn’t.”

“If he hadn’t thrown himself between me and the…weretiger, I’d be dead now.”

“You couldn’t have taken the damage that Cisco took, that’s true.”

“You’re not going to argue about it. Tell me it wasn’t my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

“But he did it to save me.”

“He did it to keep both my guards alive longer. He did it to give us time for other guards to come and help us. He did his job.”

“But…”

“I was there, Peter. Cisco did his job. He didn’t sacrifice himself to save you.” I wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but I kept talking. “I don’t think he meant to sacrifice himself at all. Shapeshifters don’t usually die that easily.”

“Easily? He had his throat ripped out.”

“I’ve seen both vampires and wereanimals heal from wounds like that.”

He gave me a disbelieving face.

I crossed my heart and gave the Boy Scout salute.

That made him smile. “You were never a Boy Scout.”

“I wasn’t even a Girl Scout, but I’m still telling the truth.” I smiled, hoping to encourage him to keep doing it.

“Healing like that would be cool.”

I nodded. “It is cool, but it’s not all cool. There are some serious downsides to being a wereanimal.”

“Micah told me some of it. He and Nathaniel have answered a lot of questions.”

“They’re good at that.”

He glanced past me at the door. I glanced where he looked. Micah and Nathaniel had given us as much privacy as they could without leaving the room. They were talking softly together. Cherry had actually left the room. I hadn’t heard her go.

“The doctors want me to get the shot,” Peter said.

I looked at him. “They would.”

“What would you do?” he asked.

I shook my head. “If you’re old enough to have saved my life, then you’re old enough to decide this on your own.”

His face crumbled around the edges, not like he was going to cry, but as if the child was peeking out. Did all teenagers do that? One minute grown-up, the next so fragile like a dream of their younger selves? “I’m just asking your opinion.”

I shook my head. “I’d say call your mom, but Edward doesn’t want to. He says Donna will vote for the shot.”

“She would.” He sounded resentful, face sullen. He’d been pretty moody at fourteen; apparently that hadn’t changed completely. I wondered how Donna was coping with this new, more grown-up son.

“I’ll tell you what I told Edward; I won’t give an opinion on this one.”

“Micah says that I might not get the tiger lycanthropy even if I don’t get the shot.”

“He’s right.”

“He said fifty-five percent of the people who get the shot don’t get lycanthropy, but that forty-five percent get lycanthropy. They get what’s in the shot, Anita. If I get the shot and catch what’s in there, it means if I’d just left it alone I wouldn’t have gotten anything.”

“I didn’t know the stats broke down that nicely, but Micah would know.”

“He says it’s his job to know.”

I nodded. “He takes his job at the coalition as seriously as Edward and I take ours.”

“Nathaniel said he’s an exotic dancer, is that true?”

“It’s true,” I said.

He actually lowered his voice to say, “So he’s a stripper?”

“Yes,” I said and fought not to smile. With everything that was going wrong in his life, he was weirded out that my boyfriend was a stripper. Then I realized that he might not know that Nathaniel was my boyfriend. No, we’d kissed when I came through the door. But then, Cherry had joined the hug. Oh, hell, now was not the time to try to explain my love life to him.

“Micah told me some of the jobs that other lycanthropes have. Nurses, doctors, but only if they don’t find out. I might not be able to join the armed forces, any branch.”

“They consider lycanthropy a contagious disease, so probably not.” In my head I remembered a talk Micah and I had had about a rumor. A rumor about the armed forces looking into deliberate recruiting of shapeshifters. But it was a rumor. He couldn’t trace anyone who had actually been approached. It was always a friend of a friend’s cousin.

“Did you get the shot?”

“They didn’t offer. It’s too late for me, Peter. I’m carrying already.”

“But you’re not a shapeshifter?” He made it a question.

“I don’t turn furry once a month, or at all, so no.”

“But you’re carrying four different kinds at once. The whole shot thing is based on the idea that that’s impossible.”

I nodded and shrugged. “I’m a medical miracle, what can I say?”

“If I could heal like that and not turn furry, that would be amazing.”

“You still wouldn’t pass blood screenings for some jobs. You’d still hit the radar as a lycanthrope.”

He frowned. “I guess so.” Then he gave me that young face again, that echo of before, and it was a frightened face. “Why won’t you help me decide?”

I leaned closer. “This is what it means to be grown-up, Peter. This is the bitch of it. If you’re playing eighteen, then you have to decide. If you want to fess up to your real age, then everyone will treat you like a kid. They’ll make decisions for you.”

“I’m not a kid,” he said, and he frowned, going sullen on me.

“I know that.”

His frown slipped to puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

“You stood your ground today. You didn’t panic, or lose it. I’ve seen grown men lose it around lycanthropes when the situation wasn’t as desperate. Most people are afraid of them.”

“I was afraid,” he said softly. “I’ve been afraid since I was a kid.”

I had one of those moments of, shit and aha. “The attack on your father,” I said. How could I have forgotten that this wasn’t the first lycanthropy attack he’d survived?

He gave a small nod.

“You were what, eight?”

“Yes.” His voice was soft, his eyes staring into the distance again.

I didn’t know what to say. I cursed Edward for not being here. In that moment I might have traded a talk with Olaf for this talk with Peter. I could always shoot Olaf, but no weapon would help me deal with Peter’s pain.

“Anita,” he said.

I looked at him, met his eyes. His eyes reminded me of Nathaniel’s eyes when I first met him. Eyes that were older than they should have been. Eyes that had seen things that older men would never see.

“I’m here, Peter,” I said, because I couldn’t think what else to say. I met his gaze and fought my face not to show how much it hurt me to see his eyes like that. Maybe they’d been that way years ago, but it took dating Nathaniel to teach me what eyes like that meant in a face that hadn’t seen twenty yet.

“I thought if I trained with Edward that I wouldn’t be so scared, but I was. I was scared just like last time. It was like I was little and watching my dad die again.”

I wanted to touch his shoulder, take his hand, but wasn’t sure it was what he needed me to do, so I kept my hands still. “I lost my mom when I was eight to a car wreck.”

His eyes changed, lost a little of that awful look. “Were you there? Did you see?”

I shook my head. “No. She drove away and just never came back.”

“I saw my dad die. I used to dream about it.”

“Me, too.”

“But you weren’t there; what did you dream about?”

“Some well-meaning relative took me to see the car she died in. I used to dream about touching the bloodstains.” I realized I’d never told anyone that.

“What?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

I could have said so many things, many of them sarcastic, like I’m talking about my mother’s death, why wouldn’t something be wrong? I settled for the truth, which crosses the lips like jagged glass, as if you should bleed when you say it. “Just realizing I’ve never told anyone about that dream.”

“Not even Micah and Nathaniel?”

Apparently, he did know they were my boyfriends. “No, not even them.”

“Mom made me go to therapy afterward. I talked about it a lot.”

“Good for Donna,” I said.

“Why didn’t your dad send you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think it occurred to him.”

“I thought I could face my fears, and I wouldn’t be so afraid, but I was afraid.” He looked away from me again. “I was so scared.” He whispered the last.

“So was I,” I said.

He gave me a startled look. “You didn’t look it.”

“Neither did you.”

It took him a moment, but he finally smiled and looked down in that pleased way that young men do. They seem to grow out of it, but it was strangely charming. “You really think so?”

“Peter, you saved me today when you jumped on us in the hallway. She was going to kill me as soon as she was out of sight of you guys.”

“Edward told me that if a bad guy wants to remove you from the scene, and is already threatening or has a weapon, that most of the time they mean to kill you, but if you go with them, you die slower and more painfully.”

I nodded. “I thought that’s what you meant when you repeated the rule in the hallway.”

“You understood,” he said.

“I encouraged you, remember?”

He searched my face, as if trying to read something there. “You did, didn’t you?”

“Edward and I know a lot of the same rules.”

“He said you think like him.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Not always,” Peter said.

“Not always,” I said.

“I won’t get the shot,” he said, and his voice sounded firm.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Do you think I should get it?”

“I didn’t say that, I just want your reasoning.”

“If I don’t get it, and I turn into a weretiger, well, then I did it saving you. If I don’t get the shot, and I don’t turn into a weretiger, then it’s good. If I get the shot and I wasn’t going to be a weretiger, I’ll get whatever’s in the shot, and I’ll have turned into a shapeshifter because I was scared to be a shapeshifter. That sounds stupid.”

“But if you are going to be a weretiger, then the shot would stop it from happening.”

“You think I should take it,” he said.

I sighed. “Honest?”

“Honest would be good,” he said.

“I didn’t like the way you said that if you turn into a weretiger, it’s good because you did it saving me. I don’t want you to think about me in this equation. I want you be a selfish son of a bitch, Peter. I want you to think about yourself and yourself alone. What do you want to do? What feels right to you?”

“Honest?” he said.

“Yeah, honest,” I said.

“I think I’ve made up my mind, then I go back and change it. I think if I decided, and they had the shot here and ready, I’d just take it, but they won’t bring it until I say so.” He closed his eyes. “Part of me wants to call my mom and let her decide for me. Part of me wants someone to blame if it goes wrong, but a man doesn’t do that. A man makes his own decisions.”

“In this situation, yes. But don’t imprint that whole lone gunman mentality too deep on your psyche.”

“Why?” he asked.

I smiled. “I know from experience that it’s hard to be part of a couple when you’re so damned independent. I’ve had to learn how to share my decisions. Balance is what you’re looking for.”

“I don’t know how to balance anything anymore,” and his eyes were shiny.

“Peter, I…”

“Go, okay?” he said, in a voice that was too thick. “Just go, please.”

I almost reached out and touched his shoulder. I wanted to comfort him. Hell, I wanted to go back in time and put his ass back on a plane home as soon as he showed up in St. Louis. I wished I had humiliated him and sent him packing. Wasn’t a bruised ego better than this?

Hands came and touched me, drew me back from the bed. Micah and Nathaniel drew me away so Peter could cry without me watching. My throat was so tight it hurt to breathe. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

They got me outside in the hallway before the first tear slid hot and almost painful down my own face. “Damn it,” I said.

Micah tried to hug me, but I pushed him away. “I’ll cry if you hug me.”

“Anita, just let it out.”

I shook my head. “No, don’t you understand. We have to kill her first. I’ll cry when Mercia’s dead.”

“You blame her for Peter being hurt,” he said.

“No, I blame me, and Edward, but I can’t kill us, so I’ll kill who I can.”

“If you’re going to talk about killing people, Anita, you might not want to do it in front of a policeman.” Zerbrowski walked down the hallway with his usual smile. He looked as he always did, like he’d slept in his suit, though I knew he hadn’t. His dark curly hair had more gray in it, but it was still the careless curls. Katie, his wife, hadn’t made him cut it recently. He was cheerfully messy, and Katie was one of the neatest people I’d ever met. Opposites attract.

I had a horrible urge to hug him. He just looked so nicely normal coming down the hallway. Which made me turn to Micah and Nathaniel. If I was thinking about falling into Zerbrowski’s arms, I was badly in need of a hug. All three of them had seen me cry before, including Zerbrowski.

I threw an arm around Micah, then held the other one out to Nathaniel. I let them hold me, but I didn’t cry. My face felt hot, but no more tears came. I clung to them, let them hold me. I had this horrible urge to simply collapse, to just fall apart in their arms, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let myself do it.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Zerbrowski said.

I shook my head and drew back from the men. “No, we have to catch this bitch.”

“No one’s seen her, Anita. Her or the man who we assume is her human servant.”

“He has to be her human servant to share her mind powers, Zerbrowski.” I tried to move farther away, but Nathaniel’s arm slipped around my shoulders, drawing me back. I patted his arm and said, “I’m okay now.”

He whispered, “Liar, but maybe it’s me who needs to touch you.” He squeezed me tight, his other arm sliding around my waist. “You’ve got to stop almost dying, Anita; it’s hard on the heart.”

Somehow I didn’t think he meant hard as in a heart attack. There were so many more ways for a heart to break. I let him press me back against his body. I stroked my hands down his arms.

Zerbrowski shook his head, smiled. “You know, Katie feels the same way after I get hurt, but she’s too cool to do it in public.”

I looked at him, and it wasn’t an entirely friendly look.

He held up his hands. “It wasn’t a criticism, Anita, Nathaniel. It’s just, well, hell, I mean it’s interesting watching people be as open as you guys are. Is it a shapeshifter culture thing?”

I thought about it. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“If we don’t have to play human,” Micah said, “we’re very touchy-feely, and we tend to wear our emotions out.”

Zerbrowski grinned. “Damn, that must have been an adjustment for you, Anita.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re like most cops I know—you stuff your emotions. Does this mean if the boyfriends aren’t around at a crime scene some night, I can look forward to you hanging all over me?”

“You wish,” I said, and smiled at him. I patted Nathaniel’s arm and took a step forward. He let me draw a little farther away from him, but kept my hand. I understood the need to touch and be touched. It wasn’t just the normal lycanthropy stuff. I wanted to hug Peter as if he were a little boy, and tell him it would all be all right, but it was a lie. Even if he’d been a little boy, it would still have been a lie. I couldn’t promise him anything.

“That’s an awful serious face for a woman who just got a hug from her sweetie.”

“I’m thinking about Peter.”

“Yeah, you got cut up trying to save him.”

I fought to keep my face neutral. If we were going to change the story for the police, then Edward should have told me. That he didn’t tell me the “official” version, and I hadn’t asked, said just how distracted the two of us were. Not good.

“You saved his life, Anita. That’s the best you could do,” Zerbrowski said.

I nodded, and went for a hug from Micah, partially to hide my face, because I still couldn’t quite figure out how to look. My guilt was because Peter had gotten cut up saving me. He wouldn’t even get credit for it from the cops. That seemed like insult to injury.

Micah kissed the side of my face and whispered, “Edward didn’t tell you the official version?”

“No,” I whispered back.

Micah spoke with me still in his arms. “I think Anita also blames herself because she was already hunting the vampires. She thinks they might not have reacted so violently if they hadn’t known she was on their trail.”

I turned, still half in Micah’s arms. “When a person knows that they’re being tracked by someone who can kill them on sight, Zerbrowski, what options does that leave them?”

“Are you saying you disagree with the execution order?” he asked.

“No, not in this case, but there are nights when I wish I had an option that was less than lethal force. I’d love someone to do a study and see if the vampires get more violent in trying to stay alive than in the crimes they were originally condemned for.”

“Have you had that happen?” Zerbrowski asked.

“No, no, I guess I haven’t. Most of them would have kept killing if we hadn’t stopped them. But, still, the vamp we’re hunting framed a vampire from the Church of Eternal Life. She helped frame two of them. If I had just followed the trail they mapped out for us, I’d have killed two innocent people.”

“Isn’t this the second time you’ve had the bad vampires frame the good vampires and try to use you as a murder weapon?”

“Yes,” I said, “it is, and if it’s happening to me, then it may be happening to other vampire executioners. But they may not be looking beyond the obvious.”

“You mean because they aren’t up close and personal with the vampires, they just accept that a good vampire is a dead vampire.”

“Yeah.”

Zerbrowski frowned at me. “Dolph isn’t the only one who thinks you living with the…”—he made a vague gesture at Nathaniel and Micah—“compromises your ability to do your job. But I don’t think it does; I think it makes you look at the vampires and shapeshifters the way the law says we’re supposed to now. They’re supposed to be legal citizens, people, and you see them that way. It’s what makes it harder and harder for you to kill them, but it makes you a better cop. You look for the truth, catch the real bad guy, punish the guilty. The other executioners kill who they’re told to kill. It makes them good killers, but I’m not sure what good cops they are.”

It was a long speech for Zerbrowski. “You’ve put some thought into this.”

He actually looked embarrassed. “I guess I have. I spend a lot of time defending your honor with the other cops.”

“I can defend my own honor,” I said.

He grinned again. “No, you can’t. You can’t explain that you see the monsters as people without implying that the bigoted bastard that just said the stupid thing doesn’t see them as people. I can get away with it. I’m Zerbrowski, I can say a lot of shit and not make people mad. I go for the funny bone, you go for the jugular. It makes people pissy.”

“He really does know you well,” Micah said.

I drew away enough to look back at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

He grinned at me. I found Nathaniel fighting not to grin. They were all grinning at me. “What?”

My cell phone rang, and then I realized I didn’t have it on me. It rang again, and it was the ring tone that Nathaniel had picked for my phone when I said I didn’t care. It was “Wild Boys” by Duran Duran. I’d remember to care next time he asked. Micah fished the phone out of his pocket and handed it to me.

I didn’t have time to ask when he’d picked up my phone. I just answered it. “Hello.”

A male voice said, “I do not have much time.” The voice was familiar, but it was a strange monotone that made it sound like someone I should recognize and a stranger all at the same time. “The Harlequin are at my church.”

I started walking down the hallway away from everyone else. It was Zerbrowski I didn’t want to overhear, not until I knew that I wanted the police to know. “Malcolm, is this you?”

The voice continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “Columbine says she will blood-oath my congregation or she will battle me with vampire powers, for it is not illegal for a vampire to use vampire wiles on another vampire. She claims to have done nothing illegal in our country. She blames all crime on her dead partner. I cannot win against her, Anita, but I can give my congregation to Jean-Claude. Blood-oath them any way you like, but save them from the madness I sense in these two, Columbine and Giovanni. Give me permission to tell them they must duel Jean-Claude for these vampires, and not me.”

“Malcolm, is this you?”

The voice changed, holding fear. “What’s happening? Who is this?”

“Avery, Avery Seabrook?” I made it a question, though I was almost a hundred percent certain it was him. I could see his gentle brown eyes, the short hair, that young, unfinished face. He was in his twenties, but tasted too innocent for comfort.

“Anita, is that you?”

“It’s me. What happened? What’s happening right now?”

“Malcolm touched me and I don’t remember what happened next. I just sort of woke up on my cell phone in the back of the church.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “There are masked vampires here. I don’t know them. Malcolm seems afraid of them.”

“You’re blood-oathed to Jean-Claude, they can’t hold you.”

“What is going on, Anita?”

What was I supposed to say, You’re such a weak vamp that Malcolm mind-fucked you like you were a human? He sounded scared enough without me making him feel weaker. “Malcolm sent me a message.”

“What?” Then there was noise on the other end. I heard Avery’s voice, a little distant, as if he’d taken the phone from his mouth to talk to someone there.

“Avery?”

The voice that came on wasn’t Avery, or Malcolm. “Who is speaking, please?” It was male, and I didn’t know the voice.

“I don’t answer your questions, you answer mine.”

“Are you police?” he asked.

“Yes.” It was the truth.

“We are breaking none of your laws.”

“You’re trying to take over the Church of Eternal Life here in my town. I’d say that’s illegal.”

“We have offered no violence to anyone. This will be a contest of wills and magical power. It is not illegal to use vampire powers on other vampires in your country. We will not use our powers on the humans here. I give you my word.”

“How about the vampires? They’re legal citizens of this country, too.”

“We will offer them no weapon, no hand of violence. Your laws protect only humans from vampire powers. In fact, the law could be interpreted to exclude all supernatural citizens from the protection the law gives against vampire manipulation.”

“Lycanthropes are still considered human under the letter of the law.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so. Give me your name,” I said.

“I am known as Giovanni. I would like to know who I am speaking with.”

Frankly, I wasn’t sure that he’d treat me like a cop, or like Jean-Claude’s human servant. I wasn’t even sure which role would work best here. “I’m Federal Marshal Anita Blake.”

“Ah, the Master of the City’s human servant.”

“Yeah, that, too.”

“We have done nothing, my mistress and I, to anger you in either of your roles.”

That was a little too close for comfort to what I’d just been thinking. Had he read my mind, and me not know it? Shit.

“If Columbine is your mistress, then yeah, she did piss me off.”

“We read your laws, Marshal. Columbine used her powers on you, your master, and his wolf. She did not use her powers on humans.”

“She and her friend Nivia framed two legal citizen vampires for murder, and two humans died to do that.”

“Nivia did that on her own. My mistress was most upset when she found that Nivia had done these horrible things.” He didn’t even try to keep his voice from sounding fake.

He knew I couldn’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it hadn’t been just Nivia, who was conveniently dead. It was her weretiger that had tried to kill Peter, a human. Again, conveniently dead.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, softly.

“Excuse me, Marshal.”

“I have a warrant of execution and it works just fine for you and your mistress.”

“But if you use it knowing that we did not do these crimes, then you are a murderer. Perhaps you will never be tried as such, but you will know that you have abused your powers and simply killed to protect your master like a good human servant, but not a very good federal marshal.”

“You’ve done your homework,” I said.

Micah was beside me now. I held up a hand so he wouldn’t try to talk to me. I glanced back and found Nathaniel still talking to Zerbrowski. Whatever he was saying had the sergeant’s full attention.

“We know you are honorable, and your master is honorable. We will not harm Malcolm or his people. We will simply challenge him for them, and use only legal means to win the challenge.”

“Avery Seabrook is already blood-oathed to Jean-Claude. He’s off limits.”

“Very well, but the others are no one’s flock.”

“Malcolm gave them to Jean-Claude. We haven’t blood-oathed them yet, but they are ours.”

“Lies do not become you, Marshal Blake.”

“Can you taste a lie in my voice?”

“I have that ability.”

“Fine, then listen carefully, Giovanni. Malcolm gave his entire congregation to Jean-Claude and me. They belong to the Master of the City of St. Louis now. You can defeat Malcolm with your vampire wiles, but it won’t win you shit. By vampire law you have to defeat the master that owns them before you can oath them to you.”

He was quiet for a second. I heard him breathing, which isn’t a vampire thing. He was human, somehow; he was her human servant. He had more powers than most human servants, but then so did I.

“I hear truth in your words. But I heard truth in Malcolm’s speech to my mistress only moments ago. She forced him to tell truthfully if Jean-Claude had a claim to his congregation. He said Jean-Claude did not.”

“You underestimated Malcolm’s powers, Giovanni. He got a message to us, and you have a church full of legal American citizens with rights. You have a church full of vampires who belong to the Master of the City of St. Louis, and they have rights under vampire law, too. You’ve been very careful that my status as a police officer isn’t invoked here. I’ll hold you to vampire law just as tight as human law. You break either of them, and I will rain all over your parade.”

“But as the laws constrain us, they also constrain you, Anita Blake.”

“Yeah, yeah, you and the horse you rode in on.”

“I don’t understand. We have no horses.”

“Sorry, it’s slang. I mean that I understand what you said, and I’m not impressed.”

“Malcolm used your young vampire here to somehow give you this message, didn’t he?”

“I don’t have to give you information, not by either set of laws.”

“True,” he said, “but if my mistress blood-oaths enough of these vampires, then she will have enough power to defeat Jean-Claude.”

“You’re Harlequin. You can’t kill anyone without giving them a black mask first.”

“We are not attacking as Harlequin. My mistress has grown weary of being a tool for the council. She wishes to have her own lands in this new country of yours. Jean-Claude was harder to destroy with vampire powers than she anticipated.”

“You’re supposed to give a formal challenge before you start battling to take over.”

“Did Jean-Claude give a formal challenge to Nikolaos, the old Master of the City, before you slew her for him?”

I took a breath, then didn’t try to say anything. Truthfully, I hadn’t realized that killing Nikolaos would make him master. I’d just been trying to stay alive and keep her from killing other people. But it had opened the way for Jean-Claude to own the city. Saying it had been an accident would make us sound weak. So I shut my mouth and tried to think.

Micah was on his own cell phone. I heard him say, “Jean-Claude.” Had Micah heard enough to tell Jean-Claude what he needed to know?

“I’ll take that as a no,” Giovanni said.

“I thought the Harlequin couldn’t have a territory of their own. They’re supposed to be neutral.”

“We grow weary of this wandering life. We wish for a home.”

“You could petition Jean-Claude to join his kiss.”

“My mistress wishes to rule, not to serve.”

I started walking toward the exit. Whatever we were going to do, we needed to be at that church. We needed to stop whatever they had planned. Somehow I didn’t think they were done with their bid for power in St. Louis.

“The council has forbidden war between master vamps in America right now.”

“Only if the fight cannot be kept secret. My master is confident this will be settled tonight, quietly.”

“Overconfidence, Giovanni, it’ll get you killed.”

Nathaniel was alone at the end of the hallway. I didn’t know where Zerbrowski had run off to, but it was just as well. I wasn’t sure what my face looked like, but I knew I didn’t look happy. I didn’t want to lie to him, and so far this was a party for monsters, not cops.

“We will try our powers against each vampire here in turn. Those that cannot withstand us will be blood-oathed to Columbine.”

“You can’t blood-oath someone else’s vamps, it’s against the rules.”

“Think of it as the beginning of the duel between your master and mine.” The phone went dead.

“Shit,” I said.

Micah handed me his phone. “It’s Jean-Claude. I’ve told him it’s the Harlequin, and it’s the church.”

I took the phone and started talking. Jean-Claude listened and asked a few questions here and there. Maybe he felt my urgency over the phone, or maybe he’d spent too many centuries dealing with exactly this kind of shit.

“Will you bring human police?”

“I’ll bring Edward and Olaf, but I don’t know about the rest. I can’t prove they’ve broken any human laws.”

“I will leave it to your discretion whether a lie would be useful here.”

“You mean use the warrant even if I’m not certain she did it?”

“It is your honor that is at stake, not my own. I will call the wereanimals and my vampires. Be careful, ma petite.”

“You, too.” He hung up.

I stopped walking. My pulse was suddenly in my throat. Panic screamed through me. I was sure, certain, I would get everyone killed. If I took the cops, they’d die. If I didn’t invite the cops, my other friends would die. I couldn’t do this.

I looked at Micah. “This could turn into a hostage situation, and I’m not trained for that. They’ve got a few hundred people in there; what if I get them killed? What if I make the wrong choice?”

Micah searched my face with his gaze. “First, you need to shield better, because this kind of self-doubt isn’t like you. Second, she doesn’t want them dead. She wants to blood-oath them, and that means she wants them healthy.”

I nodded. “You’re right, you’re right.” The tremble of panic in my gut was still there. He was so right. I’d had vampires mess with my mind before in all sorts of ways, but Mercia’s power was almost the most awful. Because it made you have to feel your own emotions intensified until you almost couldn’t stand it. I think I’d have rather dealt with a good old-fashioned attempt to control me with her thoughts than this emotional rape.

“Why isn’t it affecting you?” I asked.

“I don’t think she’s targeted me yet.”

“She targeted Graham. How did she know to target him?”

“Soledad scouted for her, maybe,” he said.

I nodded. “Right, right.”

Nathaniel came up to us, alone. I asked, “Where did Zerbrowski go?”

“I got him talking about the party at his house. I asked what food his wife wanted us to bring. I think he’s more worried about you bringing us both to the party than he admits, because it distracted him from your super-secret phone call. What’s really happening?”

I told him. “I’m afraid no matter what cops I send in, she’ll mind-fuck them. It’s so subtle, she just emphasizes what you’re already feeling. It seems not to activate the holy items.”

“Because she’s not adding anything,” Nathaniel said.

“What?” I asked; we all looked at him.

“She’s not putting power into you, she’s giving more power to what’s already inside you. Maybe that’s why the holy objects don’t go off?”

I smiled at him. “When did you get so smart?”

He shrugged, but looked pleased.

“What if we call out Mobile Reserve and she fucks their minds? I can’t guarantee that she won’t turn them against each other, or more likely the congregation, and once I call them, they sort of take over. I’ll lose control of the situation.”

“I’m not sure you have control of the situation now,” Micah said.

“Thanks,” I said.

He touched my shoulder, gently. “Anita, what you’re really trying to decide is, is it the police you need to be backup, or is it Jean-Claude’s vampires and our shapeshifters?”

I nodded. “You’re right, you are exactly right. That is what I’m trying to decide.”

“Won’t Zerbrowski and the rest of the uniforms suspect something when you run out of here?” Nathaniel asked.

“I have nearly total discretion on how any warrant of execution is served. I don’t have to include any other police. But the Harlequin have fixed it so that the warrant really isn’t in effect here.”

“It’s a shame you can’t deputize civilians, like in the old movies,” Nathaniel said.

I had the grace to look embarrassed. “I was sort of disappointed I couldn’t do that, too. It would have been so damn convenient.”

“Whatever you are going to do, it has to be done now,” Micah said.

I felt paralyzed. I couldn’t decide. It wasn’t like me in an emergency. I stepped away from both of them so they weren’t touching me. I took a deep calming breath, and another. All I could think about was how I’d almost gotten Peter killed. He might be a lycanthrope, at sixteen. Would I get Malcolm killed? I didn’t want to risk anyone else. I couldn’t bear the thought of Zerbrowski dead and having to face his family. I couldn’t…

Hands grabbed me, and I was suddenly staring up into Nathaniel’s face. “I can feel it,” he said. “She’s shoving doubt into you.” His hands gripped my arms tight, his face was so intense. I was suddenly filled with certainty. A certainty built of unshakable faith. He believed in me. He believed in me utterly and completely. I tried to be frightened that anyone would believe so perfectly in me, but the fear could not last on the tide of his belief. He simply knew that I would do what was right. He knew that I would save Malcolm. He knew that I would punish the bad and save the good. He simply believed. It was one of the most comforting things I’d ever felt. There was a small part of me that screamed in the background, His faith isn’t in God, it’s in you. Again, I tried to be afraid, or struggle against it, but I couldn’t. I felt his certainty, and there was no room for doubt in it.

I stared up at him and smiled. “Thank you,” I said.

He gave me that smile, the one that he might have had if his life had been gentler. It was a smile that he’d only found in the last few months. I’d helped him find that smile. Me, and Micah.

Micah came to stand close to us but made no move to touch. “The power is coming off you in waves. It feels similar to what happens when you touch Damian, sometimes.”

I nodded and looked back at Nathaniel. I’d never wondered what I’d gained from Nathaniel being my animal to call. Damian, as my vampire servant, gave me his control, honed over centuries of being at the mercy of one of the most sadistic vampire masters I’d ever heard of, which was saying something pretty terrible. I’d never thought to ask what Jean-Claude gained from Richard. From me, a certain ruthlessness; we sort of doubled our natural practicality. When we’d all survived tonight, I’d ask what he gained from Richard. But in that moment, I simply kissed the man in my arms. Kissed him not for lust, though that was always there, but because no one else could have made me believe in myself.

41

I THOUGHT I’D have trouble ditching the police, but no one wanted to play with me. I got nervous glances from some of them, or ignored, or even downright hostile stares. No one questioned where I was going with Micah and Nathaniel. None of the officers were ones that I knew well, but it was still unnerving. Helpful, in that moment, but it didn’t bode well for future police work.

“They think you’re one of us,” Micah whispered.

“And it makes that much difference to them?” I said.

“Apparently, yes,” he said.

Nathaniel hugged me one-armed as we walked past the people who had come here because a cop had been hurt. They’d come because I was one of them. The looks on their faces said, clearly, that I wasn’t one of them anymore. Did it hurt my feelings? Yeah, it did. But I’d worry about my reputation later; right now there was a fight to finish.

I realized I was about to walk out without the only police backup I’d be taking: Edward and, oddly, Olaf. I didn’t want to be in a car with Olaf. The space was too small to share with him. As if I’d thought too hard about him, he walked through the doors of the exit. Edward was right behind him, but for a moment Olaf looked at me. For a moment I saw his eyes bare, no hiding. The look in his eyes, on his face, stopped my breath in my throat. There were so many things to be afraid of tonight, but in that instant I was afraid of Olaf, truly and completely afraid.

Micah started to step in front of me, doing that guy-protection thing. With almost anyone else, I’d have let him do it, but not for Olaf. I moved so that Micah was beside me, where he’d started. I stepped out in front of both my men, so that the only target for Olaf’s eyes was me. Me, he liked; he didn’t like my boyfriends. They were just in his way. Call it a hunch, but I was betting that people who were just in Olaf’s way didn’t last long.

His eyes changed from that look that would haunt me to something that was almost, almost, admiration. In some strange way I understood him better than most. Edward understood him, too. It should have worried both of us that we understood someone like Olaf.

Edward hurried to get ahead of the bigger man. He was talking as he walked. “I think you need to get out there and rescue your friend from the lieutenant.”

“What friend?”

“Graham,” he said, and Edward’s eyes melted around the edges, showing me the anger that was underneath. Anger about Peter, anger about Olaf, anger about what? I couldn’t ask, and when I got a chance later, he’d probably lie anyway.

Edward took my arm, something he had never done that I could remember. He took me by the elbow like I was a girl and needed to be led. I might have protested, except I caught sight of Olaf’s face. He watched Edward touch me, touch me like I was a girl, which he’d never seen before, because it wasn’t how Edward touched me, ever. I was a lot of things to Edward, but I was never a girl. Edward led me past the looming presence of Olaf. Micah and Nathaniel trailed us. Olaf watched us with a considering look on his face. I was through the doors and into the cold of the parking lot beyond before I realized that Edward had done what I wouldn’t let Micah do: he’d protected me, put himself between me and Olaf. It hadn’t been as obvious as Micah’s attempt, but I didn’t pull free of Edward even after I figured it out. Of all the men I knew, Edward could handle himself, even against giant-sized serial killers.

Graham was a big guy, knew it, liked it. But standing beside Dolph, he looked small. It made me wonder for a second how tiny I must look standing beside Dolph. Edward let go of my elbow as we got to the argument. It wasn’t quite a fight, yet, but it had the feel of something that might turn into one. We didn’t have time for this shit. Jean-Claude and his vampires were on their way to the church. We had to go.

“Since when does a federal marshal need a bodyguard?” Dolph asked, his voice deepening with anger. His big hands were already curled into fists.

The energy of Graham’s beast was trailing the air like tiny, searching hands. Pats and tickles of energy touched my skin. Nathaniel shivered beside me. Micah would control it better, but he’d feel it, too. The fact that it was only small touches of power meant Graham was really fighting to control himself. I wasn’t so sure the same could be said of Dolph.

Edward let me walk a little ahead of everyone so that I stood just out of reach, but close enough to be heard by Dolph and Graham.

“Hey, Dolph, I’ll take Graham off your hands.”

Dolph gave me a glance, but didn’t seem to want to look away from the man in front of him. I’d seen him try to pick a fight once with Jason. It hadn’t worked, because Jason didn’t get upset that easily. Graham did.

Detective Smith walked up beside me. He was rubbing his arms, as if he were cold. It was December, but it wasn’t that kind of cold. Smith was psychically gifted, no specific ability that I knew of, but he sensed lycanthropes and other otherworldly stuff. Standing out here with an arguing werewolf had probably not been comfy for him, but Smith was a good sport.

“Lieutenant, I think Marshal Blake is leaving. She’ll take her guard with her, and that way you won’t have to worry about what he’s doing here.” Smith made his voice light, trying to sound harmless. He was pretty good at harmless, not much taller than me, blond hair, young for his age. He was the newest detective on the squad. Where was Zerbrowski? He was the best at managing Dolph’s moods.

“I want to know why a federal marshal needs a bodyguard,” Dolph said through gritted teeth.

Graham looked at me. The look said, What do I say?

Unless I was willing to fess up to being Jean-Claude’s human servant or Richard’s lupa, I didn’t know what to say. I seldom lie well if I don’t see the lie coming a long way off.

Micah stepped into the charged silence. “It’s my fault, Lieutenant. I love her, and she almost died. I’m sorry if my hiring Graham to be by her side upset you, but I know you’re married. I’m sure you understand how frightened I was when I saw her lying in that bed.” Sometimes I forgot how smoothly Micah could lie. Of course, the only real lie in the mix was that he had hired Graham personally. The rest was probably true.

“You aren’t married to Anita.”

“Micah’s been living with me for seven months.”

“Talk to me when you’ve made a year,” he said.

“You were always onto me to find a steady boyfriend who had a pulse. I found one, so now what’s your problem?”

“When did humans stop being good enough for you, Anita?”

I shook my head and made a push-away gesture. “I’m not having this fight tonight, Dolph. Come on, Graham, let’s go.”

We went. Dolph didn’t have any reason to hold us, except his hatred of the monsters. But being hated isn’t against the law. Good to know.

42

EDWARD DROVE INTO the parking lot of the Church of Eternal Life, with Olaf riding beside him. I’d opted to sit in the middle seat with Micah and Nathaniel. Graham was in the back by himself. Edward hadn’t even questioned why I let Olaf ride shotgun. I think he didn’t want to watch Olaf stare at me either. It takes a lot to creep out Edward, but whatever Olaf had done while I was cut open had done it.

The parking lot was so full that we had to park illegally, close to the small green area with its benches and growing trees. In the December cold it was a bleak little space, or maybe my reaction was partly that the last time I’d stepped on the church’s grass I’d shot a vampire to death with a handgun. It takes longer with a handgun. They tend to squirm and cry. Not one of my best memories. I shivered in the short leather jacket that Nathaniel had brought for me. The jacket would have been warmer if I’d been willing to zip it up, but I wanted to be able to get to my weapons more than I wanted to be warm.

You could tell who was carrying weapons by whose coat was flapping open in the winter cold. Nathaniel was zipped tight, but he’d continued his matching theme with his short leather jacket, so we still looked like we were going to a Goth club prom. The disturbing part was that Olaf matched us: black on black, leather jacket, boots. Nathaniel had zipped up, Olaf hadn’t. Micah had belted his lined trench coat. Graham’s leather was fastened tight, too.

The church rose above us white and bare. The lack of decoration always made the church seem unfinished to me. No holy objects allowed when most of your congregation are vampires.

We walked up those wide, white steps to the double doors. Graham insisted on opening the doors for us. I didn’t have patience to argue, and I was pretty certain Edward didn’t argue because he knew cannon fodder when he saw it. He was hard-to-kill cannon fodder, but Graham wasn’t armed, and I wasn’t in love with him. From Edward’s point of view it changed how he would treat him. Truthfully, me, too. I wanted everyone to come out alive tonight, but if it came to choices, who you loved counted. If you’re not willing to admit that out loud inside your own head, then you should stay out of firefights and keep your family at home. Be honest, who would you save? Who would you sacrifice? We let Graham swing wide those double doors. He didn’t even try to take cover. He stood framed in the light, his body dark with that nimbus of brightness around it. He turned back to me with a smile, as if he’d done a good thing. I said a prayer that Graham didn’t get himself killed tonight. Yeah, we were supposed to be doing metaphysical battle, no weapons, but there were ways to kill with metaphysics. I’d seen it done. Hell, I’d done it a time or two. Illegal, that, if it’s a human that dies. I won’t tell if you won’t.

Nathaniel reached for my left hand. He was warm, warmer than he should have been, fever warm, but there was no sweat on his palm. It wasn’t nerves. It was power. It climbed up my arm, across my body in a wave of heat that made my skin dance in goose bumps. I made a small stumble on the steps. Micah grabbed my arm. He meant it to be helpful, but the power leapt from me to him. And it wasn’t a power meant for him. Damian was meant to be on the other side of me for this. He was meant to cool this fire, but Micah’s was never a magic that cooled me down. The power found the only thing it could recognize. It found his beast. I could actually see his leopard roaring up inside him like a black flame, roaring to life, spilling upward inside him. Micah could control it, but the velvet pouring of his beast brought mine. I was caught between two wereleopards. There was no other animal to distract my beasts.

I almost screamed it. “Not now!”

Olaf’s deep voice said, “What is that?”

I didn’t have time to look around and see if there was something else coming. Edward would take care of it. I believed that.

Micah managed to tear himself away from my arm. He went to his knees on the steps, as if he were having more trouble than normal controlling his own beast. It wasn’t close to full moon. It shouldn’t have been such an effort.

Graham was coming toward us. He was coming in a blur of speed, but my leopard was rising faster. It was tearing its way up through my body. I needed to cool this heat. I almost reached for Jean-Claude. He was vampire. He was the chill of the grave, but he never affected me that way. He was always passion to me. I needed to think. I reached for my other vampire. I reached out to Damian. I reached out with desperation. I screamed in my head, Save me, save us, kill this heat.

I felt him stagger when my call hit him. I knew someone grabbed his arm to keep him from falling. But my power hit him, and he gave me what I demanded. He gave me that coolness. That utter control that he had learned in years of servitude to the master that created him. He gave me the control that had helped him survive, and betray nothing by thought, word, deed, or glance. He gave me that control in a sweep of cold, steely willpower.

The visual in my head was of my leopard finding a metal wall in her path. She snarled at it and reacted like any self-respecting leopard would if a giant wall suddenly appeared in the forest path. She ran. The leopard ran back the way she had come, to hide in that empty, full, dark place where all the beasts seemed to wait inside me. It was like the blackness of space before the light found it, except it was inside me somewhere. I don’t explain the show, sometimes I just watch it.

A woman’s voice, half singing, beautiful and pure and strangely joyous, spoke from inside the open doors. “Let it begin at last, our contest, Jean-Claude. Your servant has struck the first blow.”

I yelled, “It was an accident.” But it was too late. I had done metaphysics. Either she didn’t realize how little control I had over some of my powers, or she was using it as an excuse to start the fight. Either way, shit.

Graham offered me his hand, and I took it. He dragged me and Nathaniel up off the steps. His hand in mine was just a hand, just warmth. Maybe he wasn’t armed, and maybe he didn’t understand how to take cover, but in that moment no one else with us could have dragged me to my feet without complicating things. I looked up and found Edward with his hand on Olaf’s stomach, or lower chest. Olaf would have helped me off the steps, and Edward had stopped it. He looked at me, and the look was enough. They weren’t psychic enough to tell the difference between beasts rising and the ardeur rising, not in its early stages. Edward didn’t want to have it spread to him, and he was going to make certain it didn’t spread to Olaf. I pushed the thought away, into that crowded cage that all the other thoughts had gone into for the last few days and hours. Think about it later. We were running up the steps. Graham had my right hand, but we weren’t supposed to be pulling guns tonight, right?

43

FACES TURNED TO us as we stumbled through the door. There was no vestibule, so the three of us were just suddenly in view of the crowd. Nathaniel and I were breathing as if we’d run a mile. Only Graham was calm at my side. Edward and Olaf fanned out to either side of us. Micah moved wide around us all. Was he still fighting off his beast? I trusted him to handle it. I had to trust him, because there were things happening that I didn’t trust anyone else to handle.

The area behind the pulpit had become a stage. There were three people on stage in masks. What could only be Columbine and Giovanni were to the left. She was elegant in a skintight version of the Harlequin’s motley, all red, blue, white, black, and gold with a short half skirt to pretend at modesty. A gold tricorn hat had multicolored balls to echo the colors of the rest. Her mask left a white chin and crimson mouth bare. The man beside her was much taller than she was, dressed in a white mask like the one they’d sent us in the first box. His face was an empty blankness trapped in the black hooded cloak that covered him to his ankles. A black tricorn hat completed the outfit. They stood in a contrast of bright and dark, color and not.

The third masked figure was on our side of the stage, standing beside Jean-Claude and his vampires. Damian and Malcolm were close at his side, behind Asher. But the last masked figure wasn’t a vampire. He looked more like he was about to do bondage than go to Carnival. The mask was leather and hid most of the face, covering even the back of the head, a hood instead of a mask. It was the broad shoulders framed by the leather vest, and the slightly paler version of his summer tan, that let me know it was Richard. He’d come to stand at Jean-Claude’s side after all. Jake and some of the other bodyguard werewolves stood behind him.

Asher stood on the other side of Jean-Claude, his hair catching the lights like spun gold. Remus and a handful of other werehyenas stood behind him. Most of Jean-Claude’s vampires were scattered around the stage. But Elinore and a few others weren’t there because Jean-Claude had made them stay away. If we died tonight and managed to take the Harlequin with us, he trusted Elinore to rebuild the city’s vampires. Truth and Wicked were there, along with Haven and his werelions. Rafael and his wererats were there, on the stage. There was an ocean of wereanimals around our side of the stage. The two Harlequin looked so outnumbered. Part of me was sad that it wasn’t going to be a stand-up fight. It looked like we might win that kind of fight. Of course, the Harlequin standing in the church had scouted us; they knew our resources. Maybe there was more than one reason they’d offered a metaphysical fight instead of a physical one.

My pulse had started to slow. We started up the aisle, Graham a little ahead of us all, Nathaniel and I still hand in hand. Micah was still giving us room. I’d have loved to touch him, but he was right. We didn’t need another visit from our leopards. Edward and Olaf brought up the rear. I thought we’d get to the stage. I thought I’d get to touch Jean-Claude, and Damian, but Columbine thought otherwise.

Her power poured over the congregation like invisible smoke. My breath caught in my throat. I felt her power touch some of the vampires. They were choking on her power. I was choking on her power. I dropped Nathaniel’s hand and grabbed for the back of a pew. Whatever was happening, I didn’t want it spreading to Nathaniel.

“Anita,” he said, “what’s wrong? I feel power, but…”

I shook my head. I couldn’t talk past the feel of her power. It was almost delicate, like choking on feathers; light, airy, and deadly. Vampires were standing in the pews or falling to the floor. I fought to stand and stared at the vampire in her colored clown outfit. If something that elegant could be called a clown. I realized I wasn’t choking. It wasn’t death the power offered, but it was the end of free will. Her will was so large, so powerful, that it would be slavery. I could feel it. She would control us as surely as I could control a zombie that I had raised. Her power was something close to mine. She could control vampires, so why was it hitting me this hard?

Her power was a dainty fingertip sticking into my mind, pushing against my will. “Be mine,” it whispered. “Be mine.”

Nathaniel touched me. His power shivered over my skin, chasing back that cold touch. I could think again, feel again, take a deep breath again.

My own power roared to life. My necromancy, and something else, something that was necromancy, and not. I thrust that power into the delicate, coaxing touch. There was nothing delicate about what I did. I smashed into her power with a hammer, straight through that deceptive softness. Hit it, and found the steel nail underneath the lie of gentleness. It was all lies. There was nothing gentle, nothing kind. Submit, the power breathed. Be mine, I’ll take care of you, I’ll take away all your problems, be mine. I screamed down those lying words. I drowned her voice in my head in sheer power, like dynamiting a hotel because you didn’t like your room. Her power collapsed, retreated, and I was suddenly standing in the aisle when I hadn’t realized I’d moved.

I was standing with Nathaniel’s hand in mine. I could taste pulses, blood flowing sluggish in a dozen veins. Vampires turned and looked at me, because they had no choice. I’d smashed her power and replaced it with my own. The dozen vamps hadn’t fed yet tonight, so slow the beat, so sluggish the pulse. We needed food.

Nathaniel’s hand convulsed around mine, bringing me back from that thought. Had he shared it? I could suddenly smell their skin, half a dozen different perfumes, someone’s sweet shampoo, the sharp scent of cigarettes, aftershave. I could smell their skin as if I’d put my face just above their arms, their necks. Jean-Claude had kept me from drowning in the sensations of them last time I’d come to the church. Why wasn’t he helping me now? I turned to the stage and found him looking, not at me, but at Columbine and Giovanni. Something was happening. Were they talking? I couldn’t hear them. It was as if all my senses were narrowed down to scent and touch and vision.

I felt her power draw inward, like you’d take a breath before blowing out a candle. Except this candle was a few hundred vampires. That power spilled outward, and it was like water moving around the rocks of the vampires that Nathaniel and I could sense. We could save them, but the rest…the rest were lost.

Damian cried out, in my head, a scream. Nathaniel and I turned and found Malcolm wrapped around Damian, Malcolm’s mouth shoved into Damian’s throat. Malcolm shoved his power into the less powerful vampire, but taking his blood meant he was blood-oathing to him. It made no sense. Then the power hit us. Hit me.

It was like a door blew open inside my head. Nathaniel cried out, and I echoed him. My power, our power, blew outward over the other vampires. Malcolm had created almost every vampire in here. He had trusted no one else. Now he blood-oathed himself not to Damian, but to me. He was using his power to send mine over the rest of his flock. He was giving them all to me to keep Columbine from taking them. But I think Malcolm didn’t understand what blood-oathing to me could mean. Maybe he thought that blooding himself to me and not Jean-Claude would make it a weaker bond, but I’d never blood-oathed someone without Jean-Claude’s guidance. I only knew one way to do anything, and that was all the way.

In one of those moments that lasts forever, and is the blink of an eye, I saw inside Malcolm’s mind. He had thought me the lesser evil. He had thought he could control me and retain some control of his people. It wasn’t words, but more pictures, like some dream shorthand, if dreams could slap you as they ran across your mind. I’d always wondered if Malcolm’s motives were as pure as they seemed. I’d assumed it was a bid for power; all vampires wanted power. But I saw him holding his people, cradling them while they wept. I saw him plunging fangs into their throats to give them that third bite. I felt him treat it as a holy thing, a ceremony as pure in his own heart as the marriage of a nun to God. It was his fault that the joining was so complete, his power thrusting into mine, and not understanding that my necromancy was like the biggest gravity well that any vampire would ever touch. It sucked him in, and I could not stop it.

But I was of Belle Morte’s line, and all our talents are double-edged blades. I felt his power dive as deep inside me as mine in him, and I couldn’t keep it out. And it wasn’t just my mind. Nathaniel’s and Damian’s memories flooded to the surface. Nathaniel as a little boy, a man holding his hand, food for a hungry stomach, then hands where…Malcolm broke the memory before he went further. He understood that I could not steer us through these waters. He couldn’t break what was happening, but his centuries of being a master helped us skim along the surface and not drown. Damian on the deck of a ship in the sunlight; the wind was so fresh, the sea smelled so good. The darkness of his creator’s dungeon. That dark stairway, the screams, the smells. Malcolm drew us away from it. My mother’s funeral, and I drew us away from that. It was like blinking; you see something you don’t want to see, and you blink, and look away. You look away, and there’s another picture.

Malcolm thought of his congregation, and just like that we had images to go with the scents and tactile explosion in our heads. I knew that the girl who smelled of soap and some sweet shampoo wanted to go to college, but was fighting to get enough nighttime classes to complete her degree. I knew that the family of vampires was trying for a house in a neighborhood that did not want them. I knew that the “child” was the master of the house. Malcolm gave us the problems and hopes. What we gave him back was the scent of their skin, the finger brush along a collar, a dozen different aftershaves, twenty different perfumes, from powdery sweetness to an herbal cleanness that was almost bitter. We gave him back sighs, as our power swept over them. We gave him back upturned faces as they shivered at the touch of power that was more sensuous than anything Malcolm had shown them. It didn’t have to be sexual, but it was a dance of the senses. To be touched by Belle’s line of vampires was to understand that someone’s breath against your arm, just your arm, could cover your body in shivers.

Malcolm drew back from Damian’s neck like a drowning man surfacing. We all came to the surface of that binding. Nathaniel and I ended in a heap on the carpeted aisle. Hands had to catch Damian or he would have fallen.

“You have not saved them, Malcolm. When I wrest them from you, you will come with them like a dog on a leash.” The voice was clear and bell-like, echoing to the ends of the big church. I didn’t think it was vampire powers. It was more like a voice that had been trained centuries before microphones existed.

Jean-Claude touched Malcolm to keep the other vampire from answering. He answered with a voice that sounded almost ordinary compared to Columbine’s. It was as bland and empty as his voice got, but somehow it filled the room. “We bargained that you would duel the first to use magic. Ma petite, my servant, did not know these rules.”

“We also promised not to use our servants to bolster our powers,” she said.

“So I was not allowed to contact her mind-to-mind.”

“You might have plotted behind my back.”

“But you did not attack ma petite, you struck at the congregation. That seems as if you have broken the bargain first.” His voice held a shiver at the end, and the entire congregation reacted to it, shuddering. They began to gaze at him, some reluctantly, but they heard him now, felt him now. In that moment I understood that Malcolm had been right in one thing. Blood-oathing to me was blood-oathing to Jean-Claude. Blood of my blood and all that.

“Your servant was using her leopards and her vampire. I could have reached out to my servant, Giovanni, but I kept to our bargain. But if she was allowed to gain power from others, then it seemed fair that I could do the same.”

“You can feed off the combined power of all the vampires.” Jean-Claude made it a statement.

“Yes,” she said, and sounded pleased with herself.

Edward and Olaf were standing on either side of us like good bodyguards. It was Micah who knelt and asked, “Are you safe to touch?”

I knew what he meant: Will whatever metaphysical crap is happening spread by touch? “I think I’m safe to touch.”

He grabbed my elbow and lifted, effortlessly. Graham offered Nathaniel a hand. We both swayed a little, but we were upright. Yea.

Columbine had meant to own the congregation and use them like a battery to make her own powers greater. Great enough to win a fight with Jean-Claude, maybe. But now they were mine, and through me, Jean-Claude’s.

“You are too late,” Malcolm said. “I have given them to my master.”

“Oh, such bonds, when fresh, are not so firm,” she said.

“Bold words, Columbine,” Jean-Claude said, and his voice slid over my skin. Nathaniel shivered beside me. I felt two hundred vampires, or more, react to that voice. One vampire cried out, “Malcolm, save us from this lecher and his whore.”

I turned and found the man who had spoken. He was staring at Malcolm, his hand out, beseeching. I started to be angry, but then sensed a thought, and I could feel his fear. Jean-Claude’s voice had made this heterosexual man’s body react. Just the voice, ordinary words; Jean-Claude wasn’t even trying, not yet. How would I feel if it were a female vamp? The thought made me think of Belle Morte. She’d done a lot more than use voice powers on me. The thought brought heat in a rush up my face. I burned at the thought of her body, her hands on me. Then I could taste her mouth, the sweetness of her lipstick. The silk of her skin clung to my fingertips, so that I rubbed them against the leather of my coat to get some other sensation, but it didn’t help. The feel of her skin clung to my fingers like a cobweb that I could not brush away.

Nathaniel started to touch me, but I jerked back. I was shaking my head. I held my hands out to all of them, and was backing down the aisle. I needed Jean-Claude, or Asher. I needed someone who understood her power better than I did. Maybe it was just a reaction to what she had done to me in dream, but I couldn’t count on that. If she was going to try to take me over, I needed to be near someone who could help me fight.

I don’t know if Columbine understood what was happening, or thought it was the ardeur, but she seemed to think it was an opening; a weakness. She attacked the congregation again, but what she’d done before had been a feint. She’d just been pretending to try. Her power cut through the vampires like a burning sword. Where it touched, they screamed, and the ties that bound them to me, to Jean-Claude, seared away. It was as if she literally could cut the metaphysical bonds like rope that was too fragile to hold.

One of the vampires she cut free stumbled into the aisle and fell on all fours at my feet, shrieking. I couldn’t feel what she was feeling, but apparently it hurt. A man reached out, gray eyes wide. He screamed, “Master, help me!” He didn’t reach toward Malcolm, or Jean-Claude. He was inches away, and he reached for me.

I took his hand. I didn’t even think about it. His hand was bigger than mine, so it was his hand that encircled mine, but the moment he touched me, he stopped screaming. He came out of the pew and wrapped himself around me. He held me as if I were the last safe thing in the world. I hugged him back, tight, and the feel of Belle Morte’s skin faded under the muscled realness of the man in my arms. The girl on the floor crawled to me, touched my leg. She stopped screaming.

She wrapped herself around our legs, the nameless vampire and me. I was of Belle Morte’s line. I knew how to stop the pain. I knew how to bring them back and make them mine.

I raised my face to the gray-eyed man. He bent toward me, folded his tall frame downward. I held his face in my hands and went up on tiptoe. His mouth found mine, and we kissed. His lips were dry, nervous, afraid, but I did something I’d never been able to do before: I was able to draw a little bit of the ardeur. I understood, as if the light had finally dawned, that the ardeur didn’t have to be an ocean. It could be a single drop of rain, to wet the lips. I gave that tiny bit of power to him, breathed it into his mouth. I found the broken piece inside him that Columbine had cut. She had cut it with pain and force, and offered them a warning. She had showed them torture, fire, to burn and destroy them, if they refused her. I offered a kiss. I offered gentleness. I offered love. If I hadn’t tasted Malcolm’s power only moments before, maybe I couldn’t have done it, but his intent was so pure, so unselfish, that it was like the ardeur had learned a new flavor. I offered that flavor to them. I offered them a choice. I gave them cool water and safety. She offered terror and punishment. She was threat. I was promise.

I won them back with a kiss, a touch. They poured from the pews, and I moved among them. Damian and Nathaniel helped me, moving into the crowd, touching, a kiss here and there. There was a gentleness to the ardeur that I had never felt before. Columbine’s power died under a wave of kindness. A wave of touch, and chaste kisses. A wave of offering help. We will save you. We will take away your pain. She should have remembered that people have given everything they own, everything they are, to be taken care of, and to have their pain gone. It’s the lure of cults: the promise of a good family; it’s what people think love is, but love isn’t absence of pain, it’s a hand to hold while you’re going through it.

Columbine screamed her frustration, and she broke the pact. She reached out to Giovanni. I felt her touch him. Not the hand that she took, but her power. The power that we had been pushing back suddenly took a leap. I felt it like a huge tidal wave rising above us. I turned and looked up as if there should be something to see, but there was nothing. Then that nothingness hit. It was like standing in the middle of a whirlwind of fire. Every breath was agony, death, but you had to breathe. Power seared down my throat, and I fought to scream, but there was no air. There was nothing but pain.

A voice came out of that pain and said, “I will make the pain stop. Be mine, and it will stop.” I screamed my defiance to that voice in my head, but it was the kind of pain that eventually would break you. Eventually, you’d simply say yes, anything, everything, just to make it stop.

Vaguely, I felt the carpet of the floor underneath me. I knew I was writhing on it, but the pain ate all other sensations. My vision ran in streamers, sliding images, as if my eyes could not see past the pain. Hands tried to hold me down, but my body wouldn’t be still. It hurt too much to be still.

The voice in my head said, “Let go, and it will feel so good. Just let go. Let go. They are strangers to you; let me have them, Anita. Let them go.”

I didn’t even know who “them” was. There was nothing but the pain, and some part of me that would not give in. It was as if everything underneath my skin had turned to fire and was trying to burn its way out.

Hands held me down, and there were enough hands that I had to feel them. They were firm and real, and it was like an anchor in the pain. I could feel the hands, feel that they were real. Which meant…Light, burning light, the sun dazzled my eyes, and I burned.

I screamed, and something covered my mouth. Lips, a kiss, and down that kiss was the sweet musk of leopard. My leopard rose to that scent. The sun was warm, and good, not a burning thing. I rose with Micah’s beast, two black furred creatures that writhed and danced, and rose up and up, toward the light. The pain fell away as I remembered fur and claw, and teeth, and meat. I wasn’t a vampire, not really. I was nothing that she could make burn. Her power only worked on the dead. I was reminded that I was very much alive.

I blinked up into Micah’s face from inches away. He was lying on top of me, his hands trapping my face between them. I couldn’t turn my head to see who was leaning weight on my arms and legs, but there were a lot of hands. I smelled wolf and hyena and human. I scented the air before I tried to see who was holding me down.

Micah stared down at me with his leopard eyes. “Anita?” He said my name like a question.

“I’m here,” I whispered.

Micah crawled off of me. I could see Edward on my right arm now. Olaf was on my right leg, and Remus was on my left leg. Graham was on my left arm. I turned back to the men who were still pinning me. “You can let me up now.”

“Not yet,” Edward said. I realized he was up on all fours, putting his full body weight on just the one arm. I wondered how hard he had had to work to hold me down.

“You acted as if you were about to shift,” Remus said, from where he had my left leg pinned.

“If there is another animal left, we cannot let go,” Olaf said. The big man, almost as big in human form as Graham’s animal form, seemed very serious about holding my leg down. I think the strength had impressed even Olaf. What the hell had I done?

I wanted to argue, but the looks on everyone’s face said that I had scared them, or at least impressed them all. Impressed in a bad way. Nothing I could say would make them let up, but I so did not want to be spread-eagled on the ground, held down, sort of helpless in the middle of a fight.

“Our servants have fought, Jean-Claude, and mine is still standing.”

“But ma petite won, Columbine. She withstood Giovanni’s power. All the pain you caused her, and she did not let you use her to own the other vampires. They are still mine. You cannot feed upon their powers, as you had planned.”

I could turn my head and see Jean-Claude on the stage, but Columbine was just a voice out of sight. I needed to be at his side. Call it a hunch, but bad things were coming. You could feel it in the air.

“Someone has talked out of turn,” she said.

“I felt your power, Columbine, felt it forming them into a great fire to feed your power. No one had to bear tales for me to understand what you meant to do. You can take other vampires and make of their powers one great weapon.”

“Yes,” she said.

“But ma petite stopped you from taking these little vampires and forming them into your army, your source of power. What will you do now that you cannot win power in this way?” His voice breathed through my head, “You beside me would be well, ma petite.”

I whispered, “Trying. Let me up, boys.”

Power breathed through the church. It sought to feed your doubts, no, to feed on them. I’d met vampires who could feed on lust, on fear, but never one who fed on doubt. Dear God, she fed on it, and she could cause it, just like the vamps who fed off lust and fear. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the certainty that we would lose. Everyone was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“God.” Remus almost moaned it. He had his head in his hands. Edward and Olaf seemed the least affected. Micah reached out to me. I let him draw me into the circle of his arms, let myself sink into the strength of him, but the doubts didn’t go away. I was suffocating in my doubts. People cried out, some begged for it to stop. I heard one man say, “Anything, anything, just stop it, stop it.” There was more than one way to win this fight.

Nathaniel crawled to us. He reached out, head hanging down. I touched his hand and a surge of power knocked back the doubts. He raised his face and gave me the full look of those beautiful eyes. His face brightened like the sun coming from behind a cloud. He said, “I believe in you.”

I drew him into the circle of Micah’s body. “You make me believe in myself.” As it had earlier, Nathaniel’s touch chased back the doubts. His unwavering certainty kept us both safe from her. Even sitting in the room with her, her doubts could not get past the certainty that Nathaniel gave me.

Damian crawled to us. I think partially the doubts assailed him, but also he was a vampire. The burning illusion of being consumed by the sun had hit him, too. I could feel his pain, and the double pain of the memory of watching his best friend die in the sunlight. His tie to me let him be in sunlight and not burn, but the terror of the light made him unable to enjoy it. Sunlight was death, period, end of story. He was remembering watching his friend’s skin peel away under the heat of a summer day.

Nathaniel grabbed his wrist, I took his hand, and we pulled him into the circle of our arms. The moment we touched him, he shuddered, but raised a tear-stained face. “Her power is terrible. You would do anything to make it stop.”

I nodded. The crowd was still crying for help, for it to stop. If they’d set up similar rules to the last challenger Jean-Claude had had, then it was winning over the crowd that would decide it. An actual member of the vampire council had come to town. He was the Earthmover, he could cause earthquakes with his power. To save the city and keep the destruction to a minimum, Jean-Claude had gotten him to agree that they would fight with less destructive powers, and one of the tests would be which one could sway the audience at the Circus of the Damned. If victory was in getting this crowd on our side, we were about to lose.

I tried to feel Jean-Claude through his own marks, but he kept me out. I got one hard glimpse of him drowning in doubt. But they weren’t his doubts, they were Richard’s. Poor Richard, he’d come to support Jean-Claude, but he was so full of self-doubt that he was hurting him, hurting them both. Jean-Claude shielded so I wouldn’t feel it. That left him and Richard trapped in Richard’s version of hell.

I got to my feet, still holding on to Nathaniel and Damian. Micah stood with us, but let his hands fall away. I told him, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, now go. Go to Jean-Claude.”

We started hurrying toward the stage. Jean-Claude needed to touch someone who had no doubts about him, or themselves. With Nathaniel’s hand in mine, I had enough certainty to share.

44

WE HIT THE stage at a run, and I fell into Jean-Claude’s arms. I fell into his arms with Nathaniel in my right hand, and Damian in my left. Jean-Claude staggered under the combined weight, or the momentum. Asher helped steady him, hands on his back to help him stay upright. Richard was on all fours, head down. He never looked up as we stumbled into Jean-Claude’s arms, and Asher held us all for a moment.

Jean-Claude wrapped his arms around me. I felt Asher’s strength at his back, at our backs, helping us, steadying us. I looked up into Jean-Claude’s face, into those midnight blue eyes. Nathaniel wrapped his arms around Jean-Claude, me, and Asher. I think Asher would have moved back, but there was no time. Damian kept my hand but knelt by Richard. He touched the fallen man’s shoulder. Nathaniel and I gave Jean-Claude certainty, a rock to build upon. Damian shared his coldness with Richard, his utter control. I felt both emotions in a rush of power that danced through my body, and into Jean-Claude’s, and Asher’s behind him.

Richard cried out, his head coming up, his hand grabbing Damian’s arm like a drowning man taking the last help offered.

I felt Damian’s coldness rush over Richard’s panic and turn to a wall of ice. He gave Richard defenses to hide behind. He pulled Richard to his feet, and they stood there, hands on each other’s arms, like a version of the guy-greeting that friends use sometimes when a handshake won’t do but they’re too manly to hug. Damian kept my hand in his, but he and Richard were outside the circle of everyone else’s arms.

They were relieved to be outside the circle of the other men. Richard’s fear flared. He wasn’t just afraid of Columbine and her servant. He was afraid of Jean-Claude and me, and Asher. It was one of those too-close glimpses that we sometimes got into each other’s minds. It was Damian who cut off the sensation, Damian who blocked the fear with his own iron self-control. He’d had centuries of learning to control fear when he was the plaything of a master vampire who could raise fear in another and feed on it, as Columbine fed on doubt.

“We must win the crowd, mes amis.”

“Like when the Earthmover came to town?” I asked.

He nodded, arms tightening around me. I knew why the hug. The Earthmover had won. Only his trying to make me his human servant, trying to make me kill Jean-Claude for him, had given me the chance to kill him instead. I pressed my face against the stiffness of Jean-Claude’s lacy shirt. I’d almost broken him of the old-fashioned lace, but tonight he’d dressed as I first found him, all frothy white lace and black velvet jacket; only the leather pants showed he knew what century he was in. I pressed my free hand against his side, underneath the jacket, held the line of his body and was afraid.

“I don’t know who the Earthmover was,” Nathaniel said, “but just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

“If more of us were submissive, things would go so much faster,” Asher said.

It made me smile, though the smile was lost against Jean-Claude’s shirt.

“You aren’t one of us,” Richard said, and his voice was hostile.

“We must unite, Richard, or we will lose this night,” Jean-Claude said.

“He is not your animal to call, or your servant. I don’t have to play nice with him.”

Asher started to move away, but Nathaniel tightened his arm, held him in place. “Don’t go.”

“Let me go, boy. The wolf is right, I am no one’s darling.” His voice held sadness, like the taste of rain on your tongue, lifetimes of sorrow in that one tone.

“Our certainty does not travel outside our triumvirates,” Jean-Claude said. “Even our wolf is drowning. How can we save all the others if we cannot even save ourselves?” His voice was an echo of Asher’s, full of sorrow, so that my throat closed with it, and I thought I’d choke on unshed tears.

“Fight, damn you!” Claudia came up to the edge of the stage. Tears stained her face. Her emotions were so raw, it looked like physical pain. “Fight for us! Don’t just roll over and give that bitch your throat.”

Malcolm came to stand on the other side of Richard. “Fight for us, Jean-Claude. Fight for us, Anita.” He looked directly at Richard. Richard suddenly looked wrong in the leather mask. He didn’t look cool in the leather outfit, he looked like he was doing exactly what he was doing. He was hiding. The rest of us stood there in plain view. Only the bad guys, and Richard, were hiding who and what they were from the world. Malcolm gripped his shoulder. “Fight for us, Ulfric. Do not let your fears and doubts destroy us all.”

“I thought you, of all people, would understand why I don’t want to be touching them when they raise the only power we have to fight these things.”

“I felt what Anita and her triumvirate raised earlier. It was friendship, love as pure as any I’ve known. I begin to believe the ardeur is a jewel with many facets, but it needs light to shine, Ulfric.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Richard asked, and his voice was angry and frustrated. He shoved Malcolm’s hand away and looked at Damian. “You’re keeping the worst of it out, aren’t you?”

Damian just looked at him.

“To reap the benefits, I have to take the bad with the good. I can’t do it. I can’t.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go where this is heading.”

“What do you think we’re going to do, Richard?” I asked.

“What you always do, fuck everything.”

“It was not sex she offered to my congregation, only friendship.”

“But it won’t stay that way, it never does,” Richard said. He looked at Malcolm and said, “You’re asking me to do something that you would never do yourself.”

Malcolm nodded. “You’re right”—he nodded again—“you are absolutely right. I have stood on my moral high ground and been so certain. So certain that I was right, that Jean-Claude was not only wrong, but evil. I have said such hateful things to Anita, called her whore and witch. I have called all Jean-Claude’s people that and worse to my congregation, but all my righteousness could not protect them.”

Richard nodded. “I know. Anita saved my mother and brother, saved their lives, but she did terrible things to get there in time. Things I still think are immoral, wrong, and I have to live every day with the knowledge that if I had been there I would have stopped Anita from torturing that man. I wouldn’t have let her dehumanize him, or herself. I would have stood on my moral high ground and my mother and my brother, Daniel, would both be dead.” Tears shimmered, edged by the leather. “I used to be so sure of so much. Raina didn’t shake my faith. She made me more certain. Only Anita, only Jean-Claude, only they have made me doubt everything.”

I drew a little away from Jean-Claude, still touching, because I was afraid to stop touching him. If the doubts were this bad touching, I couldn’t imagine what they’d be like if we weren’t touching. We’d just die. “My cross still works for me, Richard. It still burns with holy light. God hasn’t forsaken me.”

“But he should have,” Richard said. “He should have, don’t you see? If what I believe is right, if what you say you believe is right, then your cross should not burn. You have broken so many commandments. You’ve murdered, tortured, fucked, but your cross still works. I don’t understand that.”

“You’re saying I’m evil, so God should have turned his back on me?”

Even with most of his face hidden, I saw his face convulse with emotion, tears finally falling. He nodded. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

I just looked at him, and knew that it was partly vampire powers messing with his head, but that perhaps Columbine’s powers only brought out what was already inside you. Some part of Richard believed what he was saying.

“Ma petite…”

“No,” I said, “no, it’s okay.” My chest felt like a piece of it had been carved out, not bloody and warm, but cold and icy. As if the piece had been missing a long time, but I hadn’t wanted to see it, feel it, know it. “Maybe God isn’t the sex police, Richard. Sometimes I think Christians get all hung up on the sex thing because it’s easier to worry about sex than to ask yourself, Am I a good person? If as long as you don’t have sex with a lot of people you’re a good person, that’s easy. It’s easy to avoid that. It’s easy to think, I’m not fucking anyone, so I’m good. It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you’re not fucking around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God? Is he just the sex police for you and Malcolm? Or is it that sex is easy to worry about, easy to avoid, and the whole love-your-neighbor-as-you-love-yourself thing that’s hard? Some days it’s so hard, I feel like trying to take care of everyone in my life will break me apart. But I do my best. I do my best for everyone in my life every damn day. Can you say that, Richard? Do you do your best for everyone in your life every damn day?”

“Do you include yourself and Jean-Claude on that list?” he asked, his voice so quiet, so full of emotion that it was strangely empty.

“Do you not include us?” I asked. I could feel the tears pushing in my throat, at the back of my eyes like heat. I would not cry for him.

Those true brown eyes stared at me. I watched the pain in them, but finally, he said, “No, I don’t.”

I nodded, a little too fast, a little too rapidly. I fought to swallow past the tears. I thought I’d choke on them. I cleared my throat twice, so sharp it hurt. I wanted to accuse him, say, “Then what were you doing in my bed today? Why did you sleep with Micah, Nathaniel, and me? Why did you have sex with me today? If I’m not a person in your life, then…” I swallowed the words, because they didn’t matter. He’d have had some answer for everything I said, or he’d have felt bad about it. Either way, I didn’t want to hear it, or see it. I didn’t need to hear more explanations from him. I didn’t need to see him agonize over his moral quandaries anymore. I was done.

“I’m not angry, Richard. I don’t hate you. I’m just not going to do this anymore. You think I’m evil. You think Jean-Claude is evil. You think what we do to keep everyone safe is evil. Fine, fine.”

“I didn’t mean…”

I held up a hand. “Just stop, don’t. The hand on your arm that’s keeping the doubts from eating you alive was forged through sex, Richard. That calm was won through centuries of pain and sex and servitude. Jean-Claude, the evil bastard, saved Damian, ransomed him from hell. They didn’t even like each other, but Jean-Claude wouldn’t leave anyone with her, not if he could save him. Evil bastard.”

“Anita,” Damian said, and his face held—fear, something, as if he knew what was coming.

“You benefit from our evil, Richard. You count on us being willing to do your dirty work. Hell, I’m the Bolverk for your clan. Literally, I am your evildoer. I do what the Ulfric will not. So fine, fine, I will be your Bolverk, but we are not in the lupanar this night. We are not lupa and Ulfric this night. This night is vampire business. This night I am Jean-Claude’s human servant. I am Nathaniel and Damian’s master. That is the power you are hiding behind right this second. You think we’re evil, fine.” I looked at Damian; I gave him a look to let him know I meant what I was about to say. “Damian, let him go.”

“You wouldn’t,” Richard said.

“You can’t have it both ways, Richard. You’re right, the ardeur will have to rise. You don’t want to be touching any of us when that happens, do you?”

He just looked at me.

“If you mean what you say, if you truly believe it’s wrong, evil, then let go of Damian’s arm. Let go, and stand on your moral high ground. If Jean-Claude and I mean nothing to you, then stand by yourself, Richard, stand on your own two feet.”

He stared at me as if I’d said something terrible. He stood there clinging to Damian’s arm. “Don’t do this, not now.”

“I think now is perfect, Richard. I think now is great. We need to raise the ardeur, so let go.”

“Jean-Claude,” he said, and looked at the vampire.

“It is a strange night, my Ulfric. I should be arguing your case. I should fight to keep you with us, but I don’t seem to want to. I, like ma petite, grow tired of being judged by someone I care for. It cuts deeper tonight, and I know that is Columbine. She is laughing at us, even now. She has stopped attacking the congregation. She has put all her power upon us, because she found our weakness. The weakness that has always been there, from the first.”

“You mean me,” Richard said.

“I mean our triumvirate. It is flawed, and I do not know how to fix it. I feel what Anita has forged with her servants. The two of you are more powerful; my triumvirate should be the stronger of the two, but it is not.”

“Because of me,” Richard said.

“No, because of who we all are, mon ami. But whatever the cause, I grow tired of this fight.” He leaned back against Asher, rested his head against the other man’s face. “I have rejected those I do love to save your sensibilities, and Anita’s.”

“You’re all lovers,” Richard said. “Don’t tell me otherwise.”

“We will have to raise the ardeur, Richard,” Jean-Claude said. “Let go of Damian’s hand or you will be dragged into what is about to happen. If it is evil, and you would escape it, let go. Let go of us, Richard, let go of us all.”

“This is vampire trickery,” Malcolm said. “Do not let her force you into something you will regret later.”

“It is vampire trickery, but as Richard said things he truly believed, so I think Anita and I have come to an understanding. We are tired of this, Ulfric. We are tired of you making us the villains. If we are the villains, then let go. If we are not the villains, then hold on, but either way, you know what I must do now. If you do not wish to be part of it, then you must separate from us.”

“Let go, Richard,” I said.

He looked at Jean-Claude, then turned to me. “Is this what you want?”

“Is it what you want?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Then let me go, Richard, let me go.”

He let go.

45

RICHARD FELL TO his knees. His head bowed toward the floor, his hands rising to his head, as if he could shut out the doubt in his own mind. Alone, he could not fight Columbine’s power. He was alone, but we weren’t.

Damian’s hand in mine drew him into the circle of our power. He had some of the same issues with the other men that Richard had, but Damian was a more practical creature. With him pressed against me, so that Jean-Claude had to move his arm to let the other vampire in closer, I heard, or felt, Damian’s thoughts. It wasn’t a fate worse than death, no matter what happened with Jean-Claude and the rest of the men; nothing that we would do with him would be half so awful as what he’d endured at her hands. The other thought, before Jean-Claude grabbed the reins of all our minds, was that Jean-Claude and I were good masters, kinder than any he’d known; we were worth fighting for. Then Jean-Claude settled into the driver’s seat of our metaphysical bus, and calm, we were all suddenly so calm.

I stood with my back pressed against Jean-Claude. When he’d drawn Damian and me in, he’d turned us, like a dance movement, smooth and inevitable, so that we stood in the circle of his arm. Jean-Claude held us both. My hand had just slid around Damian’s waist and drawn him in against the side of my body as if we fitted together from shoulder to hip. His own arm traced my shoulders, his hand cupping my arm, and again we fitted together in a way I didn’t remember. Jean-Claude’s arm was around Damian’s shoulders, his other arm encircling Nathaniel, who was cuddled against his side, so that one arm traced the front of my body. I wasn’t sure where Nathaniel’s other arm was, but I knew that Asher was still at Jean-Claude’s back.

Columbine stood just on the other side of the pulpit in her motley clothing, all red, blue, white, and black, edged with gold. Her tricorn hat was gold, with only a cluster of multicolored balls to echo the colors in her clothes. Her human servant stood at her back, all in black. He looked like a shadow beside her brilliance.

“You are very good, Columbine,” Jean-Claude said. “I did not even feel you roll our minds. Your magic is very subtle.”

“Such a pretty compliment, thank you.” She gave him a low curtsey, holding the small half-skirt of her pants outfit to the side as if it were a much longer piece of cloth.

I should have been nervous, at the least, but I stood there in the circle of everyone’s arms, and was so relaxed. It was a little like you feel when they give you drugs before an operation, calm, almost a liquid warmth, as if you could float away on it. Part of me thought, It’s what they do to you just before something really painful happens. But the thought just drifted away on the warm calm.

“You attacked the audience as a diversion,” Jean-Claude said in that voice that could make your skin shiver, but it didn’t make me shiver. It was as if whatever he’d done to us, the people he was touching, protected us from that voice.

She laughed, but it had none of the touchable quality of Jean-Claude and Asher’s laughs. Even through the near anesthetic haze that he had created around us, the laughter felt flat, human even. Or maybe the reason it sounded flat was the anesthetic haze. I couldn’t tell whether I was still able to sense a little through what Jean-Claude had done, or if his power was protecting me from her.

The laughter died abruptly on that crimson mouth. She stared at us with eyes that were gray and as serious as death. “Oh, no, Jean-Claude, it wasn’t a diversion, but I admit that I may have underestimated you, and your servant. If I could have won the audience from her, then I would have had enough power to defeat you easily.”

“And now?” He made it a question, with a lilt of his voice.

“I think a more direct assault on you, personally, is needed.”

“If you are too direct, then you will simply be executed,” he said, his voice mild.

“My power can be subtle, but do not be deceived. I too can be direct. As direct as the power you hold in your arms with your raven-haired servant.”

She gestured with one slender hand, and the man behind her stepped forward. He took off one glove and laid his bare hand in hers. “You are not the only master whose touch awakens more power in their servant, Jean-Claude,” she said.

“I did not think I was,” he said. His voice was as mild as her own, but his power was not mild. His power riffled through us, as if we were cards in his hand. What should he play? I’d had Jean-Claude drive the metaphysical bus before, but I’d never felt it like this, never been so aware of how terribly aware he was of his power, of my power, of the power we all offered him. He was vampire, which meant he was a cold power, a thing of logic, because emotions do not trouble the dead. He shifted through our talents, like Edward would have looked through his gun safe. Which gun will do the job? Which will make this shot? I had a moment to feel a thrill of fear, a thread of real doubt. He squashed it, shut it tight away from me, from us, because it wasn’t just my mind that had felt it. I knew that Damian and Nathaniel had thought it, felt it, too. He feared that we had no weapon to protect from this. We had already nearly been destroyed by her power without her servant’s touch. He shut the doubts away, but they were there. It wasn’t the coldness of vampire I was feeling, it was the coldness of necessity. Doubt was her weapon. You do not arm your enemy.

Her power hit us, staggered us, as if emotion could be a great wind to blow your world apart. It was like having your mind and heart ripped open, wide, so you had to feel, know, how you truly felt. Most of us live because we don’t shine the light too brightly inside ourselves. Suddenly, Jean-Claude, Damian, Nathaniel, Asher, and I, were at ground zero of the brightest light in the world.

Columbine specialized in doubt and pain, but Giovanni, her man, he gave her a wider range. Loss, that choking sense of loss, when you think you’ll die with the person who was buried. Somehow she knew that we had all suffered losses, and she made us suffer them all over again. But it wasn’t just our personal losses; Jean-Claude had bound us together, so that instead of one loss, we got them all. I heard Julianna scream as the fire consumed her. I heard her scream Jean-Claude’s name as she died. Asher screamed in the here and now, and Jean-Claude joined him. We stood before a pyre of cold ash and knew that it was all that was left of the woman who had been our heart. Damian watched his brother burn to death again. His screams haunted us. Damian fell to his knees as if he’d been hit. We were small again, and Nicholas was dying. The baseball bat made a sickening sound as it hit his head, a wet, crunching sound. He fell on the floor, reached out to us. Blood was everywhere, and the man like some dark giant above us. Nicholas said, “Run, Natty, run!” Nathaniel screamed, “No!” in the here and now.

As a child, he had run. He raised his face up, but he was a child no longer, and said, “I won’t run.” I looked into his eyes, those lavender eyes; they were real, not this memory of pain and death. Tears stained his face, but he whispered, “I won’t run.”

I was eight again, and my father was about to say the words that would destroy my life. My mother was dead. But I hadn’t run then. Nathaniel had run because his older brother told him to run, but he wasn’t little anymore. It had been my father who had collapsed. He had wailed her loss, not me. I did not run. I did not run then, and I would not run now.

I found my voice, and said, “We won’t run.”

Nathaniel shook his head, still crying. “No, we won’t.”

Jean-Claude and Asher had slid to the ground with Damian, crushed under the weight of sorrow. No one else was close to us on the stage. The guards, even Richard, had fled from us. Fled from the weight of horror and loss. Fled so it did not spread to them. I guess I couldn’t blame Richard, but I would later, I knew I would. Worse yet, later he would blame himself.

I caught movement in the aisle close to us. Micah was the closest, the only one brave enough or stupid enough to get close to the emotional thermonuclear bomb that had just been set off. Then I caught movement just behind Micah. Edward was there. More surprising was that Olaf was beside him.

Nathaniel touched my arm. He smiled at me; with tears still wet on his face, he smiled. It made my heart hurt, but not in a bad way, in that way that sometimes happens when you love someone, and you just suddenly look up and realize just how much. Love, love to chase back the pain. It washed over my skin like a warm wind, love, life, that spark that makes us get back up. It poured down the metaphysical links between Nathaniel and me, and the other men. Love, love to raise their faces and make them look at us. Love to help them to their feet, love and our hands to steady them, to help dry their tears. We finally stood, perhaps a little shaky around the edges, but we all stood and turned to Columbine and her Giovanni.

“Love conquers all, is that it?” she said, her voice thick with disdain.

“No, not all,” I said. “Just you.”

“I am not conquered, not yet.” The lights seemed to dim, as if something breathed in the light, ate it. Twilight filled the church, a soft edge of darkness, spread out from the Harlequin on the stage.

“What is that?” Micah asked. He was beside the stage now.

Jean-Claude, Asher, and Damian said, “The Mother of All Darkness.”

Nathaniel and I said, “Marmee Noir.”

That which we call the Mother of All Vampires, by any other name would be fucking dangerous.

46

THE VAMPIRES IN the audience made a panicked run for the far doors. It was as if even Malcolm’s tame vamps understood what was coming. Their screams let me know that the doors wouldn’t open. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised; the Queen of All Darkness was coming to eat us. What was holding shut one door to everything she could do?

Micah leapt upon the stage like grace over muscles, proving that he didn’t have to be in leopard form to be inhumanly graceful. He touched my arm, and the emotion we’d raised to save ourselves leapt to him. He was no one’s servant, no one’s master, but the love spread to him in a warm rush.

Jean-Claude looked at us with tears still painting faint pinkish streaks on his face. “You love him.”

Even with all the good feelings, I frowned at him. “Yes, I do.”

Jean-Claude shook his head. “I mean, ma petite, that your love for him…” He waved a hand and let me see inside his head, so much quicker. Because I loved Micah, Jean-Claude could feed off the energy of that love. It was as if his powers through Belle Morte’s line had found a new way to think. She and her vampires were all about lust, love, but no one had ever been able to use love like fuel, the way the ardeur could use lust. It was like an intuitive leap in math, or science. You start with this bit of reality and suddenly you understand how to make a leap to a larger reality. Love, love was power in more than just a metaphorical way.

“Love won’t conquer her.” It was Richard from behind us. He’d come back to the stage.

I looked at him and wasn’t sure I wanted him to touch me in that moment. Would the love spread to him, or would it not? Had he finally hurt me enough that he’d killed my feelings for him? If he had, then he would be no help here. He’d hurt me, hurt this soft new magic.

“You’ll need a wolf, like last time,” he said.

He was right, but…He held out his hand.

The dimness breathed around us, as if the room had taken a breath. He reached for me, grabbed my hand. His hand was warm in mine. It was still Richard, every gorgeous inch of him, but the power did not travel from my skin to his. He stood there holding my hand, and his touch did not move me. I’d never had him touch me where it didn’t move me. The other men, even Damian was like a press of tenderness at my back, but Richard was cold to my heart.

“Anita…” He whispered it.

What could I say? “You said we were nothing to you. You said you didn’t want the ardeur.”

“This isn’t the ardeur,” he said.

I nodded. “Yes, it is, Richard. You never understood that for me the ardeur wasn’t just about sex. This is the ardeur.”

“I can smell the edge of it, it’s as if love had a scent.”

“It’s the ardeur, Richard, what it’s become.”

“If I’d stayed by your side, you’d be spilling love all over me?” He made it a question.

“I don’t know.”

“Ma petite, could we discuss this later?”

We looked at him, still hand-in-hand. “Sorry,” I said.

Richard scented the air, and for a moment I thought he really was trying to scent what love smelled like. “It doesn’t smell like her.”

I scented the air, too. “No, she smells like jasmine and rain, and night. There’s no scent to this.” The darkness wasn’t growing…darker. It should have been. It was twilight, and power breathed through the room, but it wasn’t quite enough power, not for her.

I turned back to Columbine and her servant. “Belle Morte said that the Harlequin are the servants of the Dark Mother. Did she mean that literally?”

“All of us bear a piece of the orignal darkness inside us, little girl. Feel the power of the night given human form and know true terror.”

I shook my head and said to Richard, “It’s not her.”

He moved up beside me, as close as the other men would allow. We were getting to be quite a crowd again. “If I hadn’t been in your dream with the real thing, this might be scary.”

I nodded. “But we’ve felt the real deal, and this ain’t it.”

“This isn’t the Mother?” Asher said. He’d gotten to his feet, scrubbing at tears on his face.

“No, it’s a shadow of her, barely that,” I said.

Nathaniel drew in a large breath. “I smelled her once in the car. She smelled like something cat, and jasmine, and so many things. This has no scent, it’s not real.”

The darkness began to press down like a shadowy hand, but it was only a shadow. The little vampires huddled and, beating at the doors, screamed louder. It had cleared the pews out so that there was no one but our guards in the aisles. The guards, and our vampires.

“The Dark Mother will consume you all, unless you lay down your arms and submit to us.”

The shadow of dark tried to crush us. Damian made a small sound. “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “It’s barely a shadow of her power. It can’t hurt us.”

Columbine gestured as if she were crushing something invisible in her hand. The shadowy darkness tried to squeeze down around us, but I thought, Love, warmth, life, and the shadows shredded. The lights began to grow brighter again.

Requiem spoke from a small distance away. “This is not the darkness that hunted my master in England. This is smoke and mirrors compared to what came for him in the end.”

“Smoke and mirrors,” I said, softly, “misdirection like a magician’s illusion. How do we know you’re the real Columbine, a real Harlequin? All vampires know the rules, the masks. Anyone could pretend,” I said.

“You uppity little bitch,” she said. “How dare you?”

“That would explain them breaking the rules,” Nathaniel said. “They tried to kill you guys without giving you a black mask first.”

“Are you truly asking us to prove we are of the Harlequin?’ Columbine asked.

“Yeah, I am.”

“Jean-Claude, does she do all your talking for you?”

“I am happy to have ma petite do my talking for me.” Which wasn’t always true, but tonight, I was doing okay.

“I wanted to own you, not destroy you, but if you insist,” she said. A piece of blackness unwound itself from near the ceiling. It had to have been there all along, but none of us had noticed it. It was like some large black snake, if snakes were formless and could float. Oh, hell, it wasn’t a snake, but I didn’t know what else to call it. It was a ribbon of blackness that moved, and where it touched the lights, the lights went out, as if the light was eaten by the coming dark.

“It smells like night air,” Micah said, in his growling voice.

“It does,” Nathaniel and Richard said at the same time. They didn’t even look at each other. The three wereanimals seemed intent on something I couldn’t hear, or see, or smell. Then I felt it, a cool line of wind, and I did smell it, night air, damp, but not rain. Damp, but not rain. I drew in a deep breath. “Where’s the jasmine?”

Half the lights on one side of the church had been engulfed by the sinuous stream of living darkness. The vampires and humans of the congregation had made a huddle of themselves on the other side of the church, as far from the dark as the closed doors would allow.

Requiem had pulled his cloak up around his face, but he was beside the stage now. “This is the darkness that killed my master.”

“How did it kill him?” Micah asked.

“The darkness covered him, hid him from sight, he gave a terrible cry, and when we could see again, he was dead.”

“How exactly, Requiem?” I asked.

“His throat had been torn out as if by some great beast.”

We had two lights between us and the consuming dark. “I smell wolf,” Micah said.

I shook my head. “The Mother of All Darkness doesn’t do wolf, she does cats, lots of cats, no doggies.”

Nathaniel and Richard sniffed the air, too. “Wolf,” Richard said. Nathaniel nodded.

Edward called to me. “Can bullets hurt that thing?”

I shook my head.

“Let me know when you find something I can shoot.”

“We can shoot,” Claudia called.

The darkness was almost to the stage, but it didn’t feel like her. It didn’t feel like Marmee Noir. I closed down the warm fuzzy love flavor of the ardeur and reached out with my own power, my necromancy. I reached out not toward the coming dark, but toward the spot near the ceiling where it originated. Marmee Noir wasn’t shy. If she’d been there, she’d have let us know. So what, or who, was it? Who held a piece of the dark inside them?

I searched the rafters near the high, vaulted ceiling. I almost heard a voice, almost a loud whisper, “Not here. Not here. I’m not here.” I actually started to look away, then realized what I was doing. Something was in the corner of the ceiling, someone was there.

The darkness curled along the edge of the stage and began to eat the bright lights that usually spotlit the pulpit. Columbine laughed, a high, joyous, cruel sound. “The darkness will eat you all.”

“You’re not causing the darkness, Columbine, you or Giovanni,” I said.

“We are Harlequin,” she said.

“Tell your little friend hanging near the ceiling to show himself or herself.”

Her body went very still. It was better than any human facial expression. There was someone there, and she hadn’t thought any of us would know. Great, now how did it help us?

The darkness was almost here. A darkness that smelled like damp night, and earth, and wolf, like something acrid on my tongue. It wasn’t wolf as I knew it. But I was out of time to analyze it.

I yelled, “Edward, shoot into that corner there.” I pointed at the corner where I knew the vampire was hiding.

Edward and Olaf drew their guns, aimed. The darkness swirled toward us, toward Jean-Claude. I drew my gun and moved in front of him. Remus was beside me. “You’re supposed to have bodyguards, remember?”

Haven came to my other side in a blur of movement. “Finally, something to shoot.”

“Not yet,” I said. “He’s not here yet.”

“Who isn’t here?” Remus asked.

Edward and Olaf’s guns fired, and darkness swallowed the world, black, moonless night. “Shit,” Haven breathed.

They both moved in closer to me. I put my free hand on Remus’s shoulder so I’d know where he was. I moved my leg to brush against Haven’s, but his free hand found my back. At least we wouldn’t shoot each other. We stood, pressed close in the utter dark, guns out, but nothing to see. How do you shoot if you can’t see what you’re shooting at?

Edward yelled, “Anita, can you hear me? We’ve got blood on the wall, but we can’t see what we hit.”

I yelled back, “I hear you.”

“We’re coming,” he said.

I don’t know what I would have yelled back, Come, Don’t come, because Remus said, “Wolf.”

Haven said, “Close.”

There was a wet, thick sound, almost soft, like a knife being pulled out of flesh. If I hadn’t been straining my ears like a son of a bitch, I might not have heard. But it would have been okay, because Remus and Haven turned like one person, and moved me with them, almost like you move a partner on the dance floor. We fired into that sound, that smell of bitter wolf. We fired until it hit us back.

“Claws,” Haven yelled.

Remus was suddenly standing in front of me, enfolding me with his body. I felt him jerk, hard. I yelled, “Haven!”

“Anita,” he yelled, and he was still on my right. I put my gun around Remus’s body and fired into the body on the other side of Remus. I fired until my gun clicked empty. But Haven was there now, his gun shooting into what was on the other side of Remus. Remus’s body jerked, and for a moment I thought Haven had shot Remus by accident, then I heard a sound, a ripping, meaty, wet, horrible sound. Bones cracked, and Remus screamed. Liquid ran hot across my skin. I screamed. Claws grabbed at my shirt. I drew a knife, because it was all I had left. A claw cut across my breast. I cut the claw back. Remus’s arms had tightened around me, pressing me into the claws. I couldn’t see what was happening, and what I was feeling made no sense. Where the hell was the claw coming from?

Haven wasn’t touching me anymore. I heard fighting. “Get away, Anita, get away from him,” Haven said.

“Get away from who?” I asked. I stabbed the claw that wasn’t Remus. I cut it up, but it cut me up, too. I screamed more in frustration than anything. Remus whispered, “I’m sorry.” His arms slid away from me and his knees buckled, but he didn’t fall. I grabbed him, trying to support him, and that was when I realized where the clawed hand was coming from. I had to be wrong. I screamed, “Remus!”

There was movement, sound, fighting. I heard a sound I didn’t recognize, grunts of effort. What the hell was happening? Remus suddenly fell forward. I tried to catch him, but it was too sudden and he outweighed me by a hundred pounds. I fell to the ground with him on top of me. He wasn’t moving. The darkness vanished. I could see again.

There was a severed arm sticking out of Remus’s back. I screamed. I couldn’t help it. More guards were there, picking him up, getting him off me. They couldn’t roll him onto his back, because the arm had pierced his chest. The hand looked human now, but my chest and Remus’s said it hadn’t been human when it went through. His eyes were closed, and he was so still, terribly still.

“Get that thing out of him,” Claudia said.

Fredo was suddenly at her side with a knife the size of a small sword. He raised it up, and I looked away before he brought it down. I saw Wicked and Truth, with bare swords pointed at the throat and chest of a fallen Harlequin that I had never seen before. He was dressed all in black, even his mask. He was missing an arm. Edward and Olaf and more of the guards had Columbine and Giovanni at gunpoint. Jean-Claude, Asher, Requiem, and most of our vampires were gathered around them. I think with the real master Harlequin down, they’d been able to take the other two. Good that something had worked out. Haven was kneeling between the two groups, bleeding, but he’d live. I turned back to Remus. I wasn’t so sure about him.

They had the arm out now, in two pieces, but there was a hole in his chest that I could see through like some sort of cartoon cannon shot. “Fuck,” I said softly, “his heart.”

Claudia looked at me, tears drifting silently down her face. “Bastard had silver bracers on his forearms. Silver, fucking razor wire as fucking jewelry.”

“This one is healing,” Wicked called. “How do we stop him from doing that?”

“Is Remus…” I couldn’t say it.

“Dead,” Claudia said, in a voice that was hard and cold and didn’t match the tears.

“Yeah,” I said.

She just nodded.

“He died saving me,” I said.

“He died doing his job,” she said.

I watched her tears and wondered if he had been more than just a friend to her. I hoped not. In that moment, I hoped not. I got to my feet and fell back down. Richard was beside me, holding me. “You’re hurt.”

“Remus is dead,” I said, and pushed him away.

“Anita, please.”

I shook my head. “Either help me walk over to Wicked and Truth, or go somewhere else.”

“Can I at least see how badly you’re hurt first?”

“No!”

“Do you want Remus to have died for nothing, is that what you want?”

Micah was on my other side. “Let us see, Anita, then we’ll take you to Wicked and Truth.”

Nathaniel was there, too. “Please, Anita.”

I nodded and let them wipe away some of the blood with a cloth that someone gave them. The scratches weren’t that deep, deep enough that if I’d been a little more human I might have needed stitches, and seeing that they were across the mound of one breast I should have been more worried about that whole cosmetic thing, but strangely, I wasn’t.

“Take me to them,” I said.

Richard took one arm and Nathaniel the other. They lifted me to my feet and helped me walk where I wanted to go. Micah followed us, carrying bandages. Maybe I’d even let him use them on me eventually. Remus was dead, and I wanted to know why. Or maybe, how? The thing that had come out of the darkness had been a vampire that smelled like a wolf and had claws like a powerful shapeshifter. Impossible. But Remus was dead, so it had to be possible.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Harlequin.”

“One of, or the?” I asked. My voice sounded strangely distant inside my own head, as if the distance was greater than it should have been.

“I am Pantalone, once Pantaleon. I was one of the first children of the dark.”

“You didn’t send us a black mask, Pantalone, but you tried to kill us. That’s against council law. Hell, that’s against the Mother of All Darkness’s law.”

“You know nothing of our mother, human. You are not vampire, or succubus. You are a necromancer, and our laws say you can be killed on sight.”

I smelled jasmine. Nathaniel said, “Flowers.”

Richard said, “What is that?”

I felt the rain on the edge of a wind that hadn’t existed for a million years. I tasted jasmine on my tongue, sweet and cloying. I wasn’t afraid this time. I welcomed it. Because I knew I wasn’t the one she was pissed at. Though pissed was too strong for the feeling I got as she breathed closer. Pissed was too human an emotion, and as she’d said herself, she’d lost the knack of being human.

“Marmee Noir,” Nathaniel answered Richard. I’d forgotten he’d asked a question.

“Anita,” Richard said, “fight it, fight her.”

“If you aren’t going to help me do this, then get away from me.”

“Do what, let the Mother of All Vampires possess you?”

I screamed at him, “Get away from me, Richard, now!” A cut opened on his arm like a red mouth. It wasn’t Marmee Noir; I’d done that a couple of times before under stress. I couldn’t do it dependably, but…“That’s not her, that’s me. Help me, or get away.” I fought to keep my voice even, because my emotions were dangerous, apparently.

“Don’t let her inside you.”

“Micah, take my arm.”

“Don’t let her do this,” Richard said to him.

“We are still in danger here, Richard,” Micah said. “Don’t you get that? We have to finish what we started.”

“You mean kill them?”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, kill them. Kill them all!” Another cut opened on Richard’s arm. He let me go, as if I were something hot that had burned him. Micah slid furred arms around me. He and Nathaniel led me forward, so I could do what needed to be done. No, truth, what I was going to do. Not need, want. I wanted him dead. He’d killed Remus, and Remus had died because the vampire on the ground had meant to kill me. Remus had given his life to save mine. I’d pay my debt, now, tonight, in the blood and pain of his killer. It sounded like such a good idea.

The smell of jasmine was everywhere. I could taste rain on my tongue. The wind was cool and fresh against my face, and the wind was coming from me.

47

“TAKE OFF HIS mask,” I said, but the voice held an echo of a different voice.

“If you see my face I will be forced to kill you all,” he said.

I laughed, and the laughter made the wind play around the room, patting with cool, damp hands at people’s hair, their skin. “You are going to die tonight, Pantalone. Your mask can come off now, or after your corpse lies stretched at my feet. I prefer now, but I guess it really doesn’t matter.” The wind eased back. I was drowning in the scent of rain and jasmine.

He struck at me with his own power. It was like some spirit wolf, a great dark beast that rose from him and came at me, huge jaws agape. Micah and Nathaniel pulled me backward, but though it looked like a shadow, it hit me and pulled us all to the floor. People were running from everywhere, but Marmee was already there. The shadow wolf spilled into me; she absorbed it like something melting into the snow. With the touch of his power came a memory.

A snowstorm, so cold, the wind howling, so that he thought he heard voices on the wind. He’d found a cave, buried in the snow. Shelter, he thought. Then he’d heard the growl, low and too close. Something else had taken shelter from the storm. Then a woman had stepped into the light of his fire. A woman with a spill of dark hair and eyes that glittered in the firelight. He had smelled death on her and tried to fight. I felt his body run hot and spill bone and muscle and flesh from human to wolf. But a wolf like none that still walked today. She had turned into a huge striped cat, the color of a lion, but striped like a tiger, bigger than both. She’d nearly killed him, but when pain and injury had turned him back to human, she’d fed on him. She fed on him for three days until the storm stopped, and when the fourth night rose, they went out together, to hunt.

I came back to the here and now and found that Wicked and Truth had pierced his heart and neck with their swords. He cursed them, and writhed, but he wasn’t dead. I knew, I just knew that swords would not kill him. He was old blood. Blood when vampire and shapeshifter could be one, back before the blood weakened. We could take his head and heart and burn the pieces separately, but didn’t I want answers? Yes, I did.

I sat back up with Micah and Nathaniel’s help. “Your actions could get the entire Harlequin disbanded; don’t you care?”

“Kill me, if you can, but I will not answer questions from you.”

The darkness inside me thought otherwise. “Fredo,” I called.

The slender knife-wielding man was just beside me. “Can you get enough help and enough knives to pin him to the floor?”

“We can pin him, but unless we’re leaning on the knives, they won’t hold him.”

“Then pin him with your bodies, I don’t care how. I need to touch him.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?”

“Tonight, yes,” he said.

I looked up into his dark eyes. I saw pain there. I answered that pain. “The darkness can make him talk, and then I’m going to kill him.”

Fredo nodded. “Good plan.” He went around getting volunteers to hold the vampire down. There were a lot of volunteers.

Jean-Claude came to me while they were wrestling him into place. “I feel her all around you, ma petite.”

“Yeah,” I said, but I wasn’t looking at him. I was watching them pin the big vampire.

“Look at me.” He touched my chin and turned me so that I would look at him. I didn’t fight him, but I didn’t seem to care whether I looked at him or not. “There is a light in your eyes that I do not know.”

I half-saw, out of the corner of my eye, a dark figure form. She formed of the dark, and she looked vaguely like she had in my dream, all-black cloak, a small female figure. But this was no dream.

Screams again from the vampires. The ones with Asher, standing guard over Columbine and Giovanni, held their ground, but no one was happy.

Pantalone himself screamed, like a girl. It made it harder for the guards to wrestle him into submission. Oh, well.

The figure spoke, and the smell of jasmine and rain was in her voice, or on the wind, or the wind was her voice. I wasn’t sure which. “Did you think my laws were superstitions, Jean-Claude? You were supposed to kill her when you knew what she was. Now it is too late.”

“Too late for what?” he said, and he wrapped his arm around me, drew me in against his body, and we both looked up as my nightmare damn near materialized in front of us.

“She’s a necromancer, Jean-Claude, she controls the dead, all the dead. Don’t you understand yet? Some of the Harlequin think I woke because I want to steal her body, ride her as the Traveller rides other vampires. I had that gift once, to travel from body to body, but that is not why I woke.”

“Why did you wake?” he whispered.

“She attracts the dead, Jean-Claude, all the dead. She called me from my sleep. Her power called to me like the first ray of sunlight after a thousand years of night. Her warmth and life called to my death. Even I cannot resist her. Do you understand now?”

“You are so not under my power,” I said.

She gave a low, dry chuckle. “Legend says that necromancers can control the dead, and that is true, but what legend does not say is that the dead give necromancers no peace. We pester the poor things, because they draw us like moths to the flame, except with vampires and necromancers it is a question who is flame and who is moth. Beware, Jean-Claude, that she does not burn you up. Beware, necromancer, that the vampires do not put you in your grave.”

“Your law,” Pantalone yelled, “your law says she must be put to death.”

The dark figure turned toward the struggling pile of people. “Do not dare speak to me of my laws, Pantalone. I made you. I gave you a piece of myself, that is what made you one of the Harlequin. I have been listening to vampires that dwell closer to my physical form. You have been assassinating vampires for council members. You are neutral. You take no sides. That is what makes the Harlequin!” Her voice rose as she spoke until the wind held not just rain but the promise of storm. “I will take back what I gave you. What you used to make these pale imitations of my Columbine and her Giovanni. These are not my Harlequin.”

“Columbine died. I had to make a replacement, and you were not here to guide me.”

“Then the mask should have been retired, and the name with it. That was my will, and our way, once.” She began to walk toward them. I could almost see her foot, dainty in a slipper edged with white pearls.

Jean-Claude called, “Do not look upon her face. For fear of sanity and life do not meet her eyes, any of you.”

“I am not the Traveller, to need to steal bodies to walk. I did need flesh once, but I am the darkness made flesh, Pantalone. I am she who made you, made you all! Killing the necromancer will not put me back to sleep again. It is too late for that.”

It was Jake who knelt beside me, and Jean-Claude. Jake whispered, “She’s using your energy to manifest, Anita. You have to shut her down before she’s solid here. You do not want her in America in flesh and bone.”

I looked at him, and I knew. “You’re one of them.”

Jake nodded.

“You saved ma petite, when you could have let her die in the bathroom at the Circus,” Jean-Claude said.

“The Mother was always going to wake again, nothing would prevent that. Some of us believe that Anita is our only hope of controlling her. Prove my master right by shutting down the power you’re feeding her.”

“I don’t know…”

“She’s feeding on your anger, your rage.”

“I don’t know how to stop that.”

“If she feeds on Pantalone, one of the oldest of us, she may have enough power to be permanent flesh.”

The black-cloaked figure was standing at his feet. The guards were looking at me. I said the only thing I could think of: “Get away from him.”

Some of the guards hesitated, but most of them glanced toward the dark figure and moved a discreet distance.

“Anita,” Jake said, “help us.”

I turned to Jean-Claude and said, “Help me think of something besides my anger.”

The black figure was spreading into what looked like a piece of the night sky, like some beautiful and frightening cloak of stars and darkness. Pantalone shrieked, as if whatever he saw in that piece of darkness was something terrible to behold.

“Hurry,” I said.

Jean-Claude raised the ardeur, in a breath, in the feel of his mouth on mine. He raised the ardeur and stripped away my sorrow in a rush of skin and hands. I hadn’t fed the ardeur in over twelve hours. I was suddenly starving.

Marmee Noir screamed, “No!” Her rage cut through me, and a sharp pain laced my back. I felt blood a second later. The ardeur was gone in a rush of fear and pain. I turned, and Jean-Claude caught my face, forced my eyes against his velvet jacket. “She is fading, ma petite.”

Her voice came in a rush of rain and wind. “I know who your master is, wolf. You have betrayed me, and I will not forget it.”

When I could no longer smell jasmine or feel rain against my skin like some invisible presence, I asked Jake, “How do I keep her from popping in to see me?”

“There’s a charm for that.”

I gave him a look.

“People used to think she was a demon, but whatever they thought she was, one human witch made a charm a very long time ago, and it works.”

“Is it a holy symbol?” I asked.

He smiled. “No, it’s magic, not faith.”

“Isn’t all magic faith?” I asked.

“No, sometimes it’s just magic.”

The concept was too hard for me. “You got one of those charms on you?”

“Always, but I’ll get one for you. We should be safe for the rest of tonight.”

“I hope those aren’t famous last words,” I said.

“What do we do with them, Anita?” Truth asked.

I looked at Jake. “He broke your laws more than mine.”

“Kill him under your laws, we won’t argue. We suspected one of us was being paid as an assassin, but we didn’t know who. Then Pantalone volunteered to come check out Malcolm’s church. It was just a visit, and a report back to the council. He usually only takes killing jobs, so we were suspicious. If Columbine had won Jean-Claude’s lands, it would have been Pantalone who ruled here. We are allowed to leave the service of the Mother now, because she sleeps. Once she wakes, all that are in her service will be trapped there.”

“So you came to spy,” I said.

“And to help keep you alive.”

“Thanks for that.” I glanced back toward Remus’s body. “I wish everybody were still alive.”

“I’m sorry about that, truly. He was a good man.”

I turned back to Wicked and Truth. “Did you guys wade into the dark and cut off his hand without being able to see anything?”

“Yes,” Wicked said.

“Of course,” Truth said.

“Then take his head.”

Pantalone, with a missing arm, stabbed, shot, moved in a black blur. Truth was his own dark blur, his sword so fast it looked like lightning. He took him through the heart again, except spitting him this time the way Pantalone had spitted Remus. Wicked’s blade glittered outward and the head went spinning. It wasn’t just impressive. It was lovely in a macabre sort of way.

“Someone put the head in a sack. We’ll burn it later, separate from the body.”

“We should take the heart, too,” Olaf said.

I nodded. “You’re right. We’ll do that after we take care of the other two.”

“You killed our master,” Columbine said.

“I would ask, does that frighten you, but I can taste your fear in your words. It tastes good. I’m going to ask you some questions. If you answer me truthfully, then you die quick, fairly painless. You fuck with me, lie to me, try not to answer the questions and I’ll make your death something to write home about. I’ll give you to Olaf. He’s the big guy.”

Olaf glanced back at me, gun still trained on them. “Do you mean it?”

“Right this minute, yes. She’s a petite dark-haired woman, she even fits your victim profile. If she doesn’t answer my questions, never say I didn’t give you a good present.”

“No,” Columbine said, “please.”

“You tried to kill me and the people I love. Your master killed my friend. Please isn’t going to have much effect on me right now, not from you.”

“Please,” Richard said, “don’t do this.”

I shook my head. “Go home, Richard.”

“Isn’t there any other man in your bed who agrees with me, that there are some things you don’t do, for any reason?”

Jean-Claude stood and went to Richard. He began to try to soothe him. It reminded me of when you gamed and you had to send the Paladin around the hill so you could loot the dead.

Nathaniel and Micah came to my sides. “You want to get closer to her?” Micah asked.

I nodded. “You don’t think I’m a bastard for offering her to Olaf?”

“They’ve nearly killed you three times, Anita. You’re my Nimir-Ra; I’ll carve out her heart and serve it to you on a platter.” The threat seemed more real with him in his kitty-cat form.

“I’m your submissive, I don’t argue,” Nathaniel said.

“Submissive when it suits you, lately.”

He smiled at me. “I won’t carve her up, but I might watch Olaf do it. She almost killed you, and Jean-Claude, and Richard.”

I nodded. “And Peter.”

“And Cisco,” Nathaniel said.

I nodded, and started to turn back to look at Remus. Micah kept me moving forward. “Let’s go ask your questions.”

We went to ask my questions. Olaf was whispering to her as we came up, what he’d do to her, what he wanted to do to her. “Please, don’t answer the questions. Vampires die so much slower than humans.”

Guess what, she answered every question first time out. She and Nivia had killed the humans and tried to frame the church members. It had been to get leverage to try to force Malcolm to simply give the Church to them. Then I’d gone and spoiled it by killing Nivia. I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t even certain why Nivia had died, or what I’d done to cause it. Maybe Jean-Claude could help me figure it out later. Columbine was going to be the beard, the stalking horse, for Pantalone. Once he ruled here, even the Mother of All Darkness couldn’t force him to abandon his territory. All of them, Pantalone, Nivia, Soledad, and Giovanni had all taken assassination jobs. The only question she hesitated on, even for a second, was, “Which council members did you work for?”

“They’ll kill me.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of them anymore, Columbine.”

“You’ll protect me?”

“In a way. You don’t have to be afraid of the council killing you later, because we’re going to kill you tonight, remember? All we’re negotiating on is whether you die easy, or hard. Your choice.”

She shook her head.

“Olaf.”

“Yes.”

“We have to cut her heart out anyway. Want to do it first?”

He stared at me as if wondering if I was kidding. I remembered Remus’s body in my arms. I knew now that I’d felt his body jerk as Pantalone had forced his arm through his chest, through his heart, dug his way through, and killed him. I could still hear his last whispered “I’m sorry.” Not “help me,” or “God, it hurts,” but “I’m sorry.”

“Do it,” I said.

They held her down, and they held Giovanni down, and Olaf ripped her costume open, bared her breasts to the room, and began very slowly to carve out her heart. He didn’t get very far before she gave up the names. Master of Beasts and the Lover of Death.

Olaf didn’t stop when she gave up the names. He’d gone to his happy place. It was like trying to argue with an autistic child; he just didn’t hear us.

Columbine screamed, “I answered your questions. In the name of the dark, kill me.”

I told Wicked to behead her. He did, one clean blow that scarred the wood underneath her. I could never get a head to come off in one blow. Olaf looked up as the blood poured out of the neck in a crimson fountain. “I wasn’t finished.”

“She gave the information up a while ago. I promised her a quick death if she told me what I needed to know.”

He gave me a look that wasn’t friendly at all.

“You can still cut out her heart,” I said.

“It’s not the same,” he said, and the look on his face was nothing I understood, or wanted to understand.

I started to apologize for not letting him cut out her heart while she was still alive, then I caught myself. Fuck, the shock was beginning to leave and I was wondering what the hell I’d been thinking. Legally, everything we were doing was A-okay. I had a warrant of execution, it covered a multitude of sins.

He did finish cutting out her heart. I had Wicked behead Giovanni. I was really going to see if he and his brother could teach me the beheading-a-person-with-one-blow technique. I could never manage, not even with a sword. Maybe it was a leverage thing?

I took Giovanni’s heart myself, with one of Fredo’s knives that was better for carving open a person’s sternum than anything I had on me. I was tired, and the shock was wearing off, which made me clumsy. I was nearly elbow deep inside Giovanni’s chest. I just couldn’t seem to get the heart out of the ligaments that held the pericardial sac in place. I’d pierced the sac, but it was as if I’d gotten something tangled. I was so tired, and numb, and not numb enough.

“May I help?” Olaf was kneeling beside the body. His hands were bloody, too, but only one of them looked like he was wearing a red glove.

“Yeah, it’s tangled. I think I’m just tired.”

He slid his hand inside the hole I’d made, so that his arm slid up alongside mine in the chest cavity. It wasn’t until his hand cupped mine, pressing both our hands into the still warm heart, that I looked at him. We were both leaning over the body, our faces inches apart, with our arms up the much longer torso of the male. He looked at me over the body, our hands around the heart, blood everywhere. He looked at me as if it were a candlelit dinner and I were wearing nice lingerie.

I thought very clearly in my head, I will not scream. I would be calm. Fuck, but I would be. Besides, he’d enjoy it if I screamed. My voice was only a little strained as I said, “I think it’s just past my fingertips. Can you reach the ligament there?”

He slid his hand over mine, farther up the heart. He caressed my hand while he reached for the piece of the heart I couldn’t reach. I started to slide my hand out as I felt him grab the piece of muscle or ligament. He laid the other heart on the dead vampire’s groin and grabbed my arm before I could pull it out of the chest cavity. He held my hand inside so we’d be touching the heart together. If I struggled, he’d like it. I could yell for help, but he almost had it loose, and it would be over. I hesitated. He pulled the heart free of whatever had been holding it in place, and it spilled into both our hands. He kept his free hand on my arm, controlling how slow we eased out of the chest cavity. He made it last, and he stared at my face while we did it. I normally don’t have much problem fishing around inside dead bodies anymore, but the sensation of our hands holding the heart, our arms pressed together as we slid out of the thick, bloody muscle, was too strangely intimate. For the last few inches of arm he looked down at the wound and not at my face. He watched our arms emerge from the bloody hole just under the sternum. He kept his hand on my arm and forced our hands upward, so that for a moment we held the heart together, and he looked at me over that bleeding muscle.

I knew I went pale. I couldn’t help it. I knew he would enjoy my fear, and I couldn’t stop it. Then he leaned in toward me. He leaned in over the bloody heart, the body, our bloody arms. He leaned in for a kiss.

I whispered, “Don’t.”

“You don’t want me to kiss you,” he whispered back.

“I don’t want you to touch me,” I said.

He smiled then. “Perfect.”

He kissed me.

I had Fredo’s blade going for a different chest when Olaf pulled back, out of reach. He laughed, a rich, deep laugh. A happy sound that didn’t match anything we were doing. He’d left me with the heart in one hand and the knife in the other. If my hands hadn’t been full I might have gone for my gun. Surely I could claim temporary insanity.

He wiped his bloody hands on his clothes, not just on his shirt, but wiped his bloody hands down his body, showing off all that muscled chest, stomach, and finally groin. He massaged his groin with his bloody hands, and looked at me while he did it.

That was it. I set the knife and heart on the floor and tried to run for the bathroom and never made it. I threw up in front of the door to the recreation hall. I threw up until there was nothing left. I threw up until my head was pounding and I was spitting up bile. Micah laid a cool and human hand against my forehead while I was sick. Nathaniel held my hair back, because my hands were still covered in blood.

Olaf left town. I’ve got a new recurring nightmare to add to the list. It’s Olaf and me cutting up the body, except in the dream it’s bloodier, and Giovanni is screaming, and I kiss Olaf back. Maybe the temporary insanity was not to shoot him.

Peter didn’t take the injection, and he didn’t catch lycanthropy. He’s back home recovering, human-slow, but he’s sixteen and in good shape. He’ll heal, but he’s going to have some seriously macho scars. I have no idea what Edward told Donna. I’m not sure I want to know.

Doc Lillian sewed up the marks on my breast. She said, “Unless you don’t care if it scars?” I guess I did care. I asked her why the breast would scar when the stomach and side healed clean. They were more serious wounds. What the doc and the other doctors think happened is that the feeding on the swans gave enough energy not only to save everyone, but also to heal the injuries completely, and even faster than a normal lycanthrope could have done it. I’m not sure what a “normal” lycanthrope is, but Lillian has warned me to be more careful. “You can’t find an entire animal group to feed off every night.” She has a point.

Jean-Claude sent Sampson home to Cape Cod before the fight. He didn’t want to get his friend’s son killed. Sampson left without having sex with me. His mother’s plans spoiled by the Harlequin’s arrival.

There’s a tiger inside me now, thanks to Marmee Noir and Soledad. We’re trying to find some tigers willing to come to St. Louis. Though, strangely, something about what happened seems to have given me more control over the beasts. Or, at least, they haven’t tried to tear me apart recently. In fact, letting out one beast seems to content the rest. No one seems to know why it’s working this way now. I’m not sure I care why, as long as it stays this calm.

Haven stayed in town with his new lions. Joseph, his wife, and his brother all vanished. Most of the pride was offered a chance to join Haven’s new pride. Some accepted. Haven and his fellow enforcers seem to be trying to live by my rules. I’ve managed to keep Haven out of my bed for now. The lioness seems strangely okay with that. Again, part of me wishes I knew why the beasts inside me are suddenly so reasonable, but most of me doesn’t want to poke at the miracle too much. I’m just glad something is getting easier to deal with, instead of harder.

Richard had left the church before I threw up. He never saw me have my moment of conscience, or panic. Whatever. We aren’t dating anymore, again. This one may stick, and the thought doesn’t upset me, which is why it may stick.

Jake left town. Strangely, some people remember he was a Harlequin, and some don’t. He and his master are worried that Marmee Noir will come back and try and use me again. He gave me a pendant made of a metal so soft I can bend the edges. It’s carved with symbols I don’t know. I’ll have my metaphysical therapist, Marianne, look at it when I see her next weekend. Jake has made me promise to wear it always. After seeing Marmee Noir’s slippers with little pearls, so real in the church, I’ll wear the amulet, always. Small price to pay to avoid the Marmee Darling.

I found a priest to hear Malcolm’s confession. I think it took like three days, with food breaks, to hear it all, but he had been saving up for centuries.

Remus and Cisco are still dead. Nothing changed that. I could bring them back as zombies, but that wouldn’t be bringing them back at all. Remus’s last words keep coming back: “I’m sorry.” Sorry about what? Sorry he thought he’d failed to protect me? Sorry that he was dying? Sorry in general? I was the one who was sorry. I’d gotten him killed.

Peter calls me sometimes and we share our survivor’s guilt. This isn’t the first time people died and I lived, but it’s the freshest. Peter still wants to grow up and be like his soon-to-be stepdad. If Cisco’s death, and almost dying, couldn’t cure him of wanting to play mercenary, then I’m not going to be able to talk him out of it.

Talking about things I’m not going to be able to talk people out of…I need to try to meet Nathaniel’s needs, all his needs. I discussed with Jean-Claude that Byron had offered to teach me how to dominate Nathaniel. Jean-Claude agreed that I needed a teacher if I was serious about topping our pussycat. But Jean-Claude suggested a different teacher, one who was most certainly a top and not a bottom. Asher would be more than happy to teach me about BDSM, if I truly wanted to learn. Honestly, I’m not sure I do, but for Nathaniel’s sake, I’ve got to at least try. Don’t I? If I try and can’t do it, then I’ve at least tried. If I don’t try and we break up, then it’s all my fault. I don’t want to feel like any of my breakups are my fault anymore. There had to be a point with Richard, early on, where I didn’t compromise. Maybe if Richard had agreed to sleep with me when I first asked, there would have been no room for anyone else. Maybe, if…I don’t want to look back at Nathaniel and say Maybe, or If only. I’ll compromise; I’ll bend, though it’s not one of my best things. Sometimes it feels like when I bend, that I’ll break. Will letting Asher teach me how to make Nathaniel happy break me? I hope not.