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 were 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 ringer 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 t
hink 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 tonig
ht. 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.
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