“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 th
e 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.
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