“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.”
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