“Edward, if they’ve been watching me in St. Louis, I may not be safe here, either.”
“Maybe, or maybe he’s luring you out, Anita. Maybe he would have come back to St. Louis for you, but with all the people Jean-Claude has around him he couldn’t get to you.”
I walked around the corner, thinking about that. “Shit, I hope you’re wrong about that.”
“You knew it was a trap, Anita.”
“Yeah, but knowing Vittorio is throwing down the gauntlet in Vegas is one thing. Believing that he’s picked somewhere far away so I’ll be away from Jean-Claude and his guards is . . . frightening.”
“Good, I want you scared on this one, because you should be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means Vittorio has been watching you, or having someone else do it. He sent the head on a day you’d be there. He sent it early in the morning before your vampire lover will be awake, so no one can tell you to take guards, or not to go. In St. Louis, if Jean-Claude is still down for the day, you’re in charge.”
“We’ve been working really hard at making me more human servant and Jean-Claude more master.”
“Yeah, so hard that you’ve moved into the Circus with him. The other marshals don’t think much of you shacking up with the master of your city.”
“Prejudiced bastards.” I was at the big cell-like door that led into the underground proper.
“I also heard that Jean-Claude and your boyfriends have come out of the closet. I take it that the idea that Jean-Claude is fucking you and your boyfriends was to explain why he was letting you fuck other men.”
“We told the vampire community that, not the marshals. How do they know all this?”
“You aren’t the only one who’s a little close with their local vampires, Anita.”
“I’ve met your local vampires, and I know that you are not talking to Obsidian Butterfly. She’s so scary that the worldwide vampire community has made Albuquerque, New Mexico, off limits.”
“I live in Santa Fe.”
“Yeah, and it’s still too close to Obsidian Butterfly and her group. It’s why you have to travel out of state to hunt vampires; your local master is too scary to share.”
“She thinks she’s an Aztec goddess, Anita. Gods don’t share.”
“She’s a vampire, Edward, but she may actually be what the Aztecs worshipped under her name.”
“She’s still a vampire, Anita.”
“I don’t like the tone in your voice, Edward. Promise me if you ever get a warrant of execution against her or any of her vampires that you’ll let me come help.”
“You’d have flown to Vegas without me.”
“Maybe, or maybe getting a human head in a box was weird even for me. Maybe I am afraid of Vittorio, and I don’t like running into a trap like some rabbit. Maybe I just hadn’t had time to think to call you.”
“That’s a lot of maybes, Anita.”
“I may lose the phone signal if I go any farther underground, Edward, but I have to pack, so . . .”
“It’s a shorter flight for me to Vegas, so I’ll see you on the ground.”
“Edward,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Do you really think Vittorio planned me to have to fly to Vegas before Jean-Claude could be awake to argue with me, or make me take guards?”
“I don’t know, but if he did plan it this way, then he’s afraid of your guards. He’s afraid of you with Jean-Claude. He’s afraid of you with all your shapeshifter friends. But he’s not as afraid of you on your own.”
“I won’t be on my own,” I said.
“No, you won’t be,” he said.
“I don’t mean just you, Edward. Vittorio killed police officers. I don’t think he understands how serious that can be.”
“We’ll explain it to him,” Edward said, voice gone empty of accent, empty of almost anything. It was the voice that he used when he was at his most deadly.
“Yes,” I said, “we will.”
Edward hung up.
I hung up and went through the door into Jean-Claude’s living room.
4
TWO OF MY lovers were dead in the bed that we all shared. They’d be alive again later in the day, or earlier in the night, but for now, Jean-Claude and Asher truly were dead. I’d touched enough dead bodies to know that sleep does not mimic death. There is a looseness, an emptiness, to the dead that not even coma can imitate.
I stared down at them. They lay in a tangle of white silk sheets. Jean-Claude all black curls and that beautiful face; a line less or more, and he’d have been too beautiful, too feminine, but you never looked into his face and thought girl. No, he was all male no matter how pretty he looked. It helped that he was naked on top of the sheets. Nude, there was no mistaking him for anything but oh so male.
Asher’s golden waves spilled across his face, hiding one of the most perfect profiles that had ever existed. I had some memories from the vampire who had made him: Belle Morte, Beautiful Death. She was over two thousand years old, and she still thought that his left profile was the most perfect she’d ever seen in a man. His right profile was marred, in her eyes, by the acidlike scars of the holy water that the Church had used to try to burn the devil out of him. The scars didn’t take up that much of his face, just from midcheek to chin on one side. His mouth was still as kissable, his face still had that heartrending beauty, but to Belle, the scars had covered everything.
His neck was untouched, but from chest to groin to part of the thigh, the right side of his body was covered in the holy water scars. It looked as if the flesh had melted and partially reformed, like wax. The skin was textured differently from the unscarred half of him, but it wasn’t ruined. He could still feel my touch, still be licked and caressed, and bitten. It was just different. It was Asher, and I loved him.
It wasn’t the same way I loved Jean-Claude, but I’d learned that love could mean many things, and no matter how similar it looked from the outside, inside it could feel very different. Good still, but different.
I was packed, though I was going to get some of the bodyguards to help carry the equipment bags of weapons up the stairs for me. I needed to get to the airport and the jet that was fueled and waiting for me. I wanted to be on the ground in Vegas while it was still daylight. If Vittorio had intended to get me out of St. Louis before Jean-Claude could wake and maybe insist on guards going with me, then fine, I’d get to Vegas while Vittorio was still dead to the world, too. It was the great leveler, that vampires were helpless during the day. I would take every advantage of it that I could. Of course, Vittorio knew that about me, if he’d been spying on me. The thought that he probably had daylight eyes and ears waiting for me in Vegas wasn’t comforting.
I stared down at the two vampires and wished that I could have said good-bye.
The bathroom door opened and Jason came out, wearing a robe that he hadn’t bothered to tie shut, but he’d been completely nude between the two vampires when I’d first entered the room. Besides, it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen it all before. He was Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang, his apple of blood, sort of part kept woman and part morning snack. Most people didn’t actually fuck their pommes de sang, and Jean-Claude didn’t either, but Jason’s reputation had fallen to the need to make our shared master look more powerful in the eyes of the larger vampire community. He was also going to have the fun job of telling Jean-Claude where I was and what I was doing when the vampire woke.
Jason was my height, maybe an inch more, short for a man and I guess short for a woman. His blond hair was to his shoulders now. He’d started letting it grow back out, though truthfully he was one of the few men I thought actually looked better with the short executive haircut. But I was just his good friend and lover, not his girlfriend, so his hair length was his own business.
He smiled at me, his spring-blue eyes shining with some joke that only he knew. Then the look changed, from joking to serious to . . . I was just suddenly aware
that he was naked, and the robe was covering precious little, and . . .
“Stop it, Jason,” I said, softly. I don’t know why you always whisper around sleeping vampires, as if they were truly asleep, but you do; unless you stop yourself, you treat the ones you know like they can hear you and you don’t want to disturb them.
“Stop what?” he asked, in a voice that was a little lower than it needed to be. I couldn’t have told you what he was doing differently with his walk, but he suddenly made me aware that his day job was as a stripper.
“What’s with the serious flirting, Jason? You know I don’t have time for it.”
He came to the end of the bed, and I had to either back up or stand my ground while he flirted. Backing up seemed cowardly, and once I could have withstood Jason’s attentions, but since I’d accidentally made him my werewolf to call, he seemed to have more pull on my libido. He didn’t usually take advantage of it, so why was he upping the heat now?
I stood my ground, but was almost painfully aware of how close he was to me. “You know Jean-Claude is going to go apeshit when he wakes up,” he said.
“Jean-Claude never goes apeshit.”
“Vittorio has set a trap for you, Anita. You’re walking into it.” He was behind me now, so close that the edges of his robe brushed against the back of my body.
“Jason, please, I have to go,” and this time I didn’t whisper so as not to wake the vampires. I whispered because it was the best I could do. One of the real downsides to moving into the Circus and living with all the men who were tied to me metaphysically was that all of them seemed to be gaining power—power over me. Jean-Claude I could understand; he was the Master of the City. Asher even, because he was a master vampire. But Jason was a werewolf, a blood donor, and my wolf to call. I should have been master here, and I wasn’t.
He moved around me, so close, so very close, so that not having our bodies touch took more effort than just closing that small distance. I kept one hand on the bedpost like it was my anchor to reality. He stood in front of me, his eyes a little below mine because I was still in the heels.
“Then go,” he whispered.
I swallowed hard but didn’t move away. I had a moment to wonder if I could move away, and the thought was enough. I closed my eyes and stepped back. I could do this. It was Jason, not Jean-Claude; I could do this.
Jason caught my arms. “Don’t go.”
“I have to go.” But having to keep my eyes closed took a lot of the punch out of the statement.
He pulled my hands in toward his body, so that I touched the muscled smoothness of his stomach. He put one hand to his groin, and he was already happier to be near me than last I’d looked. He filled my hand, and he was thick and perfect again. Two months ago, some very bad men had captured the both of us. They’d tortured him with cigarettes, fire, the only thing a lycanthrope can’t heal. They’d marked up a very nice body and damn near killed him.
My hands slid over him, under the robe, so I held him close, feeling how very naked he was, in my arms. I held him, and he held me back. I held him and remembered holding him while he bled. Holding him while I thought he was dying.
His voice was normal, not seductive, when he said, “Anita, I’m sorry.”
I drew back enough to see his face. “Sorry you tried to use your new powers over me to get me to stay home?”
He grinned. “Yeah, but I do like you admiring the newly healed me.”
“I’m just glad that Doc Lillian figured out that if they cut away the burned bits you’d heal on your own.”
“I’m just glad they found anesthesia that worked on our faster metabolism. I would not have wanted that much of me cut away without being put under.”
“Agreed.”
“You know, they’re talking about trying to cut away some of Asher’s scars and see if he heals on his own.”
“He’s a vampire, not a shapeshifter, Jason. Vampire flesh doesn’t heal quite the same.”
“You can heal fresh wounds on all sorts of dead flesh, including vampires.”
“That’s fresh wounds, Jason, and never a burn.”
“Maybe if the doctor cuts away the scars, it’ll count as a fresh wound, then you could heal him.”
“And what if it doesn’t work? What if Doc Lillian cuts away part of Asher and I can’t heal it, and it doesn’t heal on its own? He just goes around with a big hole in his side, or wherever?”
“You know, we have to try.”
I shook my head. “All I know for sure is I’ve got a plane to catch, and I need to call some guards down to help me carry up the weapons.”
“You know, the guards are scared of you now.”
“Yeah, they think I’m a succubus and I’ll eat their souls.”
“You feed off sex, Anita, and if you don’t feed often enough, you die. That’s pretty much the definition of succubus, isn’t it?”
I frowned at him. “Thanks, Jason, that makes me feel so much better.”
He grinned and shrugged. “Who are you going to feed on in Vegas?”
“There’s Crispin,” I said.
“You can’t feed on one little weretiger for long.”
“I can feed on anger now, remember?” I’d discovered that ability only recently. Jean-Claude couldn’t do it, and neither could anyone in his bloodline, which meant if I were only gaining powers through him, I shouldn’t have been able to do it either, but I could.
“You know, you haven’t got that down to a science yet,” he said.
“No, but it works.”
“And whose anger are you going to feed on in Vegas?”
“I’ll be hanging around with cops and suspects; please, we’re an angry bunch.”
“If you feed off them without their permission, it’s illegal. I think it’s even a felony.”
“If I fed blood, yes, but the law hasn’t caught up to the vamps who can feed through other things. If I fed on sex involuntarily, then it would be covered under the date-rape psychic and magic ability law, but if I feed on anger, it’s a gray area.”
“What if they find out? The cops already think you’re one of us.”
I thought about it, then shrugged. “Honestly, the way most warrants are worded, I’m sort of encouraged to use any metaphysical abilities in pursuit of the bad guys.”
“I don’t think feeding off them is what the warrant means,” he said.
“No”—I smiled—“but it’s the way it’s written. The law is all about how it’s written and how you can interpret it.”
“What happened to the girl I met a few years back who believed in truth, justice, and the American way?”
“She grew up,” I said.
His face softened. “Why do I feel like I should apologize on behalf of all the men in your life for that?”
“Don’t flatter yourselves; the police helped toughen me up, too.”
“You’ve only fed on anger a few times, and it’s not usually as good a feeding as the ardeur.”
“Jean-Claude can divide my ardeur up among all of you while I’m gone. He’s done it before when I’ve worked with the police.”
“Yeah, but that’s only a temporary measure, and it works better if you’ve had a really good feeding before he tries it.”
“You offering?” I asked.
He gave me a wide grin. “And if I say yes, what then?”
“This is a trick to delay me until Jean-Claude wakes up, because you think with him awake I won’t be able to just fly away.”
“I think you have a hard enough time saying no to just little old me; if our master wakes and says, ‘Don’t go,’ could you defy him?”
I was suddenly afraid. Because Jason was right; whatever was happening with me and the men, Jean-Claude was the hardest to resist. It was almost as if it hadn’t been my necromancy that kept me safe from him controlling me but my lack of proximity. It was almost as if simply being too close to him too much of the time was wearing my resistance and my independence away.
> “Thanks, Jason,” I said.
He frowned. “For what?”
“Now I am going, because I don’t know if I could go if he woke up and told me to stay. That’s not cool. I’m a U.S. Marshal and a vampire executioner. I have to be able to do my job, or what am I?”
“You’re Anita Blake, Jean-Claude’s human servant, and the first true necromancer in a thousand years.”
“Yeah, his pet necromancer.” I went for the door to tell the guards to send more guards to help tote and fetch.
Jason called after me, “You’re one of my best friends, and I’m afraid for you in Vegas.”
I nodded, but didn’t turn around just in case seeing one of my best friends nude made me change my mind. “I’m afraid, too, Jason—of Vegas, and Vittorio, but I’m beginning to be afraid to stay here.” I wrapped my hand around the door handle and said, “When he’s awake, when he looks at me, I’m having more and more trouble saying no. I’m losing myself, Jason.”
“I’m your animal to call, Anita; touch me and you gain strength to resist other vampires.”
“Problem is, Jason, that you’re one of the people I’m losing myself to. It’s not just Jean-Claude, it’s all of you. I can fight one or two of you, but I can’t fight six of you. I’m outnumbered.”
I opened the door and told the black-shirted guards that I needed bellmen. I didn’t go back into the bedroom. I didn’t want to talk to Jason anymore, and I didn’t want to gaze down at the bed with the two beautiful vampires in it. If I hadn’t been convinced that Vittorio wanted to kill me and mail my head somewhere, I’d have looked forward to the trip to Vegas. I needed some distance between me and the men in my life.
5
THE PLANE LANDED in Vegas without me having hysterics. Brownie point for me. The really sad thing was that I flew better now if I had someone next to me, so while I was happy for some privacy, I also missed a boyfriend’s hand to hold. I couldn’t want to run away from them all and miss them, could I? I mean, that made no sense even to me.
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