"What the hell is a night hag or a mora? And what do you mean, you met Colin? I thought you rescued Nathaniel."
"No, they gave him back to us," Asher said. "If we did not see him, the message would not be complete."
Cherry interrupted us. "His pulse is thready, his skin is clammy. He's going into shock. The cuts on his chest are shallow. Even two vampire bites in one night shouldn't put him into shock. We heal better than this."
"There is a third bite," Asher said. Through it all, his voice had been utterly calm, as if nothing touched him.
Cherry looked down the length of Nathaniel's body, then touched his thigh. She moved his legs apart. "Of course, the femoral artery. Why is the skin discolored on both bites?" She touched the skin of his inner thigh. "The skin feels almost cold."
Nathaniel writhed on the bed. He let go of my hand, reaching for me as if he wanted a hug. He grabbed one arm, and a handful of my blouse. His eyes were wild. "It hurts."
"What hurts?" I asked.
"The bites are contaminated," Asher said.
"What do you mean, contaminated?"
"Think of it as a poison."
"He's a wereanimal, they're immune to poisons," I said.
"Not this one," Asher said.
"What kind of poison is it?" Cherry said.
There was a knock on the door. Jason said, "It's us."
Damian looked at me. His eyes had calmed down to a soft glow, his skin almost back to the milky perfection that passed for normal.
I nodded.
He opened the door. Jason came in with a first aid kit bigger than most overnight bags. Maybe Cherry had been a Girl Scout in another life. Jamil followed behind Jason like a dark, solemn shadow.
"The kind of poison that nothing in that little bag will stop," Asher said.
I stared up at him, suddenly realizing what he'd just said. "You mean he's going to ... " I couldn't even say it.
"Die," Asher said in that same utterly calm, almost mildly amused voice that he'd been using since they first walked into the cabin.
I stood, Nathaniel's hands clinging to me. I looked at Cherry and she moved in to help me draw free of him. I wanted to say things to Asher that I didn't want Nathaniel to hear. Zane crawled onto the bed on the other side. Nathaniel grabbed his hand and held on. Another spasm threw Nathaniel writhing on the bed. Zane and Cherry held him down, let him use that crushing strength on their hands. The two wereleopards stared at me while Nathaniel thrashed, eyes rolling back into his head. Zane and Cherry watched me. I was their Nimir-ra, their leopard queen. I was supposed to protect them, not drag them into shit like this.
I turned away from their accusing, expectant eyes and moved with Asher to the door. "What do you mean he's going to die?"
"You've seen the kind of vampires that rot and re-form themselves?"
"Yeah. So?"
"One of them bit Nathaniel."
"I've been bitten by one of them. Jason's been bitten by one of them. Nothing like this happened to us." I glanced back and found Jason holding Nathaniel's hand while Cherry started cleaning the chest wounds. Somehow I didn't think bandaging the cuts was going to help.
Jamil and Damian joined us. We stood in a little circle, talking, while Nathaniel screamed. Asher said, "It is one of the rarest of talents. I thought that only Morte d'Amour, Lover of Death, the council member could do this. Colin chose his messages carefully. The slashes are harm from a distance with just a flexing of power."
"Jean-Claude can't cause harm from a distance," I said.
"No, and no one else can spread corruption from their bite. No one else in this country."
"You keep saying corruption," Jamil said. "What does that mean exactly?"
Cherry came to us with white gauze pads in her hands. Her pale freckles stood out like ink on her suddenly pale skin. There was yellow and green puss on the gauze. "This came out of the chest wounds," she said quietly. "What the hell is it?"
We all looked at Asher, even Damian. But I was the one who said it out loud, "He's rotting. He's decaying while he's still alive."
Asher nodded. "The corruption is in his blood. It will spread and then he will rot."
I looked back to the bed. Jason was speaking low and softly to Nathaniel, stroking his head like you'd comfort a sick child. Zane was looking at me.
"There has to be something we can do," I said.
Asher's face was as closed and careful as I'd ever seen it. One of Jean-Claude's memories of Asher went through me so forcefully that my fingertips tingled with it. It wasn't a memory of any one event. I recognized the set of Asher's shoulders. I knew his body language with a familiarity built up of years of observation. More years than I'd been alive.
"What are you hiding, Asher?" I asked.
He looked at me, pale, pale eyes blank, empty, lined with those amazing golden eyelashes like shining lace. He smiled. The smile was everything it should have been: joyous, sensual, welcoming. That smile went through my heart like a knife. I remembered that face whole and perfect. I remembered when that smile had made me catch my breath.
I shook my head. The physical movement helped. I shook off the memories. They faded, but it didn't change what I'd seen, what I knew. "You know how to save him, don't you?"
"How badly do you want to save him, Anita?" His voice wasn't neutral now, it was almost angry.
"I brought him down here, Asher, I put him in danger. I'm supposed to protect him."
"I thought he was supposed to be your bodyguard," Asher said.
"He's walking food, Asher. You know that. Nathaniel can't even guard himself."
Asher let out his breath in a long sigh. "Nathaniel is a pomme de sang."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"It means apple of blood. It is a sobriquet among the Council for willing food."
Damian finished the thought. "The vampire that feeds from a pomme de sang is duty bound to protect them, like a shepherd keeping the wolf from his sheep." Damian looked at Asher while he said it, and it was not a friendly look. They were fighting about something, but there was no time.
I touched Asher's arm. It felt stiff, wooden, not even alive. He was drawing away from me, away from the room, away from what was happening. He was going to let Nathaniel die without even trying. Unacceptable.
I made myself grip that wooden, unalive arm. I hated it when Jean-Claude felt like this. It was a reminder of what he was, and what he wasn't. "Don't let him die, not like this. Please, mon chardonneret."
He jumped like I'd hit him when I used the old nickname that Jean-Claude had used so many years ago. It meant literally, my goldfinch, which sounded silly in English. But the look on Asher's face wasn't silly. It was almost shocked.
"No one has called me that in over two hundred years." His arm softened under my hand, feeling warm, alive again.
"I don't beg often, but for this I will."
"He means so much to you?" Asher asked.
"He's everyone's victim, Asher. Someone has to give a damn about him. Please mon -- " He put his fingers over my lips.
"Don't say it, Anita, don't ever say it again unless you mean it. I will save him, Anita, for you."
I felt like I was missing something. I could remember Jean-Claude's pet name for Asher but I couldn't remember why Asher was afraid to try to heal Nathaniel. As I watched him walk to the bed, golden hair trailing like a glittering veil across his shoulders, that missing memory seemed very important.
Asher held his hand out to Damian. "Come, my brother, or does the famed courage of the Vikings fail you now?"
"I was slaughtering your ancestors before you were a gleam in your great-granddaddy's eye."
"Shit, this is dangerous, isn't it?" I asked.
Asher knelt beside the bed. He looked back at me, the golden hair sliding over the scarred side of his face, hiding it. He knelt, all golden perfection, and smiled, but it was bitter. "We can take the corruption into ourselves, but if we are not powerful enough, it will enter us
, and we will die, but your precious wereleopard will be saved either way."
Damian crawled onto the far side of the bed, moving Zane away from his spot by Nathaniel's head. Nathaniel had stopped screaming. He lay very still, skin pale, shiny with sweat. His breath came in shallow pants. The wounds on his chest were oozing pus. There was a smell in the room now, faint but growing. The bite on his neck still seemed solid, but the skin of his neck was a deep blackish green like a bruise that was killing deep.
"Asher," I said.
He looked at me, one hand running along Nathaniel's bare thigh.
"Damian's not a master."
"I cannot save your leopard by myself, Anita. Who would you save? Which will you sacrifice?"
I looked at Damian. His green eyes were human again. He looked very mortal, curled beside Nathaniel.
"Don't make me choose."
"But it is a choice, Anita. It is a choice."
I shook my head.
"Do you want me to save him?" Damian asked.
I met his gaze, and didn't know what to say.
"His pulse is very weak," Cherry said. "If you're going to do something, you better do it soon."
"Do you want me to save him?" Damian asked again.
Nathaniel's fast, gasping breath was the only sound in the sudden silence. They all looked at me. Waited for me to decide. And I couldn't decide. I felt my head nod, almost as if I wasn't doing it. I nodded.
The vampires began to feed.
13
A feeding takes longer in real life than it does in the movies. Either it's too quick or they do a fade like a 1950s sex scene. We all stood around the room and watched. The room was quiet enough that you could hear the vampires making small, wet noises as they fed.
Cherry knelt by the head of the bed. She checked Nathaniel's wrist pulse periodically. The rest of us had moved farther away. I ended up on the far side of the room, leaning my butt on the desk. I was working very hard at not looking at the bed. Everyone moved around the room, restless, embarrassed, I thought.
Jason came to stand beside me, leaning on the desk. "If I didn't know his life was at stake, I'd be jealous."
I looked at him, trying to tell if he was teasing. There was a look in his eyes, a heat, that said he was not. It made me look over at what was happening.
Damian had drawn Nathaniel's body into his arms, his lap, so that he cradled the smaller man almost the full length of his body. Parts of Damian's body were lost to sight behind Nathaniel's naked body. His arm cradled the smaller man's chest against the green silk shirt. The pus had soaked into the cloth in blackening streaks. Nathaniel's face was pressed by one pale hand into the vampire's shoulder. Damian had come from behind for the neck strike. You could see the top of his bloodred hair, his mouth locked over the wound. Even from where I stood, I could see Damian's jaws swallowing.
Asher was still kneeling on the floor, one of Nathaniel's pale legs flung outward so his foot hung in empty air. Asher's face was buried in the man's inner thigh, so close to the groin that Nathaniel's slack genitalia touched the side of his face. Asher moved his head slightly and a spill of golden hair flung over Nathaniel's groin. It didn't hide it so much as have him peeking out through it.
A blush flowed over my face so hard and fast I was almost dizzy. In turning away, I caught a glimpse of myself in the room's only mirror. My face was burning. My eyes looked wide and surprised. It was junior high all over again, stumbling on couples under the bleachers, hearing their laughter chase me into the night.
I stared at myself in the mirror and got a grip. I was not fourteen anymore. I was not a child. I was not a virgin. I could do this with a modicum of grace. Couldn't I?
Jamil had moved to the farthest corner of the room. He was sitting there, arms tucked around his knees, face set in harsh lines, angry. He wasn't enjoying the show, either.
Zane had moved back to lean against the wall, arms crossed. He was looking at the floor as if there was something very interesting on it.
Jason was still sitting against the desk, watching the show. I looked at him without turning around. "You do realize that you're the only one who seems to be enjoying the view."
He shrugged, grinning. "It's a nice view."
I raised my eyebrows. "Don't tell me you're gay."
"Don't tell me you care," he replied.
My eyebrows went up a little farther. "My heart is breaking. I'll have to burn all my lingerie." I kept watching his face. He was smiling but not like it was a joke.
"Are you saying all that teasing is just an act?" I asked.
"Oh, no, I like women. But, Anita, almost none of the vampires in Jean-Claude's inner circle are women. I've been acting as a pomme de sang for two years. That's a lot of fangs sinking into your body."
"Is it really that close to sex?" I asked.
The humor left his face and he just looked at me. "You've really never been rolled completely by a vamp, have you? I mean I knew you had partial immunity even before the marks, but I thought someone somewhere would have gotten to you."
"Nope," I said.
"Sometimes I'm not sure, but it may be better than sex, and almost everyone who's been doing me has been a guy."
"So you're bisexual?"
"If what they're doing now counts as sex, yeah. If it doesn't then ... " he laughed, and the sound was so abrupt in the silence that I saw Zane and Jamil jump. "If this doesn't count as sex, let's just say that 'where no man has gone before' no longer applies."
Damned if I didn't want to ask who it had been. Maybe I would have asked, but Cherry spoke and the moment was gone. "His pulse is stronger. Losing this much blood, he should be getting weaker, but he's not."
Asher drew back from the wound. "We are not so much drinking blood as drawing out the corruption." He stood one hand under Nathaniel's thigh. He moved the leg back onto the bed, straightening his limbs as if he were a sleeping child. A moment before, it had been utterly sexual; now there was something in the way Asher acted that was tender, careful.
Damian pulled away from the wound. There was a spot on his lip, not red, but black. I wondered if it had tasted bad. He wiped the spot away with the back of his hand. If it had been pure blood he'd have licked it off. So it hadn't been pleasant.
He crawled out from under Nathaniel, laying him carefully on his back. He drew covers over Nathaniel as he moved off the bed.
Cherry had her first aid kit open. She recleaned the chest wounds with antibacterial antiseptic. The first few sterile cloths came away smeared with pus. We'd all moved next to the bed without realizing it. The smell was stronger here, unpleasant, but fading. When the skin and wounds were completely cleaned, the flesh was whole, and bright red blood welled into the slashes.
Cherry flashed the room a smile so warm and bright that you had to smile back. "He's going to be all right." She sounded surprised, and I wondered how close it had been.
Someone drew a hissing breath. I turned to the sound. Damian was backing up. He was staring at his hands. That pale, milky skin was turning dark, a blackness flowing under the skin. The flesh of his hands began to peel back while we watched.
14
"Shit," I said.
Damian held his hands out to me like a child that had burned its hand. I didn't know which was worse, the terror in his face or the almost resigned look in his eyes.
I shook my head. "No," I said, but my voice was soft. "No," I said it again, louder, stronger.
"You cannot stop it," Asher said.
Damian stared at the darkening flesh of his hands, soft horror on his face. "Help me," he said, and he looked to me.
I stared down at him and didn't have the faintest idea how to save him. "What can we do?" I said.
"I know you are accustomed to riding in on your white steed and saving the day, Anita, but some battles cannot be won," Asher said.
Damian had gone to his knees staring at his hands. He ripped his shirt off in pieces, leaving remnants of the sleeves on his arms. The rott
ing flesh was halfway to his elbows. A fingernail split and fell to the floor with a burst of something dark and noisome. The smell was back, sweet and sickly.
"I healed Damian once of a facial cut," I said.
Damian made a sound between a laugh and something more bitter. "I didn't nick myself shaving, Anita." He shifted his gaze from the peeling flesh of his hands to me. "Even you can't heal this."
I dropped to my knees in front of him, reaching out to touch his hands. Damian jerked away. "Don't touch me!"
I put my hands over his hands. The skin felt almost hot to the touch, as if the corruption were cooking him from the inside out. The skin was soft as if, if I pressed too hard the skin would give way like a rotted spot in an apple.
My throat was tight. "Damian, I'm ... sorry." Dear God, it was an inadequate word. A thousand years of "life" and he'd given it up for me. He would never have taken such a risk if I had not asked. It was my fault.
The look in his eyes was grateful, and pain-filled. He pulled his hands gently out from under mine. Careful not to press too hard against my hands. I think we were both afraid my fingers would sink through his skin and into the flesh inside.
His face twisted in pain, and a small sound escaped his lips. I remembered Nathaniel's cries of how it had hurt.
The ends of his fingers burst like overripe fruit, spilling something black and greenish onto the floor. It spattered my arm. The smell was growing in sickening waves.
I didn't swipe at the drops on my arm but I wanted to. I wanted to slap at them like a spider, shrieking. My voice held some of the strain I was trying to keep off my face. "I've got to at least try to heal you."
"How?" Asher asked. "How do, even you, begin to heal this?"
Damian made a low whimpering sound. His body shuddered, face ducking, neck twisting, and finally he screamed. Wordless, hopeless.
"How?" Asher asked again.
"I don't know," and I was screaming, too.
"Only his original master, the one who saved him from the grave, would have any chance of healing him."
Blue Moon ab-8 Page 14