Narcissus walked out into the middle of the floor and a soft light fell upon him, growing ever so gradually brighter. “Well, my friends, we have had a treat tonight, have we not?”
More applause, screams, and animal noises filled the dimness. Narcissus held up his hands until the crowd fell quiet. “I think we have had our climax for the night.” A smattering of laughter at that. “We will save our show until tomorrow, for to do less would be to dishonor what we have been offered here tonight.”
The woman, who was still standing to the back of the dance floor in her robe, said, “I can’t compete with that.”
Narcissus blew her a kiss. “It is not a competition, sweet Miranda, it is that we all have our gifts. Some are merely more rare than others.” He turned and stared at us as he said the last. His eyes were pale and oddly colored, and it took me a second or two to realize that Narcissus’s eyes had bled to his beast. Hyena eyes, I guess, though truthfully, I didn’t know what hyena eyes looked like. I just knew they weren’t human eyes.
He knelt beside us, smoothing his dress down in an automatic and strangely odd gesture that I’d never seen a man make before. Of course, he was also the first man I’d ever seen in a dress. There was probably a cause and effect.
Narcissus lowered his voice. “I would love to speak with you in private about this.”
“Of course,” Jean-Claude said, “but first we have other business.”
Narcissus leaned in close, lowering his voice until it was necessary to lean forward to hear him. “As I have two of my guards waiting with her leopards so no harm will come, there is time to talk. Or should I say, your leopards, for surely now, what belongs to one, belongs to all.” He had leaned so far over that his cheek nearly touched Jean-Claude on one side and my face on the other.
“No,” I said, “the leopards are mine.”
“Really,” Narcissus said. He turned his face that fraction of an inch and brushed his lips against mine. It might have been an accident, but I doubted it. “You don’t share everything, then?”
I moved my face just far enough away so we weren’t touching. “No.”
“So good to know,” he whispered. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Jean-Claude’s lips. I was startled, frozen for a second wondering exactly what to do.
Jean-Claude knew exactly what to do. He put one finger in the man’s chest and pushed, not with muscle, but with power. The power of the marks, the power that we had all just moments before solidified. Jean-Claude drew on it as if he’d done it a thousand times before, effortlessly, gracefully, commandingly.
Narcissus was pushed back from him by a rush of invisible power that I could feel tugging on my body. And I knew that most of the people in the room could feel it, as well. Narcissus stayed crouched on the floor, staring at Jean-Claude, staring at all of us. The look on his face was angry, but there was more hunger in it than rage, a hunger denied.
“We need to talk in private,” Narcissus insisted.
Jean-Claude nodded. “That would be best, I think.”
There was a weight of things left unsaid in that short exchange. I felt Richard’s puzzlement mirror my own, before I turned my head to glance back at him. The movement put our faces close enough so that we could almost have kissed. I could tell just by the expression in his eyes that he didn’t know what was going on. And he seemed to know that I could tell, because he didn’t bother to shrug or make any outward acknowledgment. It wasn’t telepathy, though to an outsider it might look that way. It was more extreme empathy, as if I could read every nuance on his face, the smallest change, and know what it meant.
I was still pressed in the circle of Richard’s and Jean-Claude’s arms, a strange amount of bare skin touching all of us—my back, Richard’s chest and stomach, Jean-Claude’s arm. There was something incredibly right about the touching, the closeness. I felt Jean-Claude’s attention turn, before I moved my head to meet his eyes.
The look in those drowning eyes held worlds of things unsaid, unasked, all so tremblingly close. Because for once he didn’t see in my eyes the barriers that kept all those words trapped. It had to be the marriage of the marks affecting me, but that night I think he could have asked me anything, anything, and I wasn’t sure I’d say no.
What he finally said was, “Shall we retire to privacy to discuss business with Narcissus?” His voice had its usual smoothness. Only his eyes held uncertainty and a need so large he almost had no words for it. We’d all waited so long for my surrender. I knew that the phrasing wasn’t mine. It sounded more like something Jean-Claude would think, but with Richard also pressed against my body I wasn’t really sure who was thinking it. I only knew it hadn’t been me.
Even before the marks had merged I’d had moments like this. Moments when their thoughts invaded mine, overrode mine. The images had been the worst—nightmare flashes of feeding on the warm bodies of animals, of drinking blood from people I didn’t know. It had been this mingling, this loss of self, that had terrified me, sent me running for anything that would keep me whole—keep me myself. Tonight, that just didn’t seem important. Definitely an aftereffect of the metaphysical union of marks. But knowing what it was didn’t make it go away. It was a dangerous night.
Jean-Claude said, “Ma petite, are you well? I am feeling much better, energized in fact. Are you still ill?”
I shook my head. “No, I feel fine.” Fine didn’t really cover it. Energized was a good word for it, but there were others. How long could it take to rescue the wereleopards from yet another disaster? The night wasn’t young, dawn would come, and I wanted to be alone with them before that. I realized with a jolt that ran all the way down my body, that tonight was it. If we could get some privacy and not be interrupted, all things would suddenly be possible.
Richard and Jean-Claude both stood up, in a boneless movement of grace for the vampire and pure energy for the werewolf. I gazed at them as they stood above me, and I was suddenly eager to have the other business done with. I wasn’t as worried about the leopards as I should have been, and that did bother me. Whatever this effect was, it was distracting me from more important things. Saving the leopards was why I’d come. It was the first time I’d really thought of them in a while.
I shook my head trying to clear it of sex and magic and the weight of possibilities in Richard’s eyes. Jean-Claude’s eyes were more cautious, but I’d taught him caution where I was concerned.
I held my hands up to both of them. I never asked for help to stand unless I was bleeding or something was broken. The two of them exchanged glances, then they held their hands out to me, again in perfect unison, like choreographed dancers who knew what the other would do.
They could feel my desire, but that had always been there; it told them nothing. I took their hands and let them lift me up. They were both still looking unsure, almost suspicious, as if they were waiting for me to recoil from them and run screaming from the intimacy of it all. I had to smile. “If we can get everyone all tucked in safe and sound before dawn, all things will be possible.”
They exchanged another look between them. Jean-Claude made a small movement, as if encouraging Richard. It was a tiny, almost-push with his head, as if to say, Go ahead, ask. Normally, seeing them plot behind my back pissed me off, but not that night.
“Do you mean . . .” Richard let the thought trail off.
I nodded, and Richard’s hand tightened on mine. Jean-Claude’s hand was strangely quiet in mine. “You do realize, ma petite, that this new . . .” he hesitated, “willingness, may be a by-product of joining the marks tonight. I don’t wish you to accuse us later of trickery.”
“I know what it is, and I don’t care.” I should have, but I didn’t. It was like being drunk, or drugged, and even thinking that made no difference.
I was looking at Jean-Claude, and I saw him let out the breath he’d been holding. I felt Richard do the same. It was as if a great weight had been taken from both of them. And I knew that I was that burden. I’d
try not to be a burden from now on. “Let’s get this over with and go get the leopards,” I said.
Jean-Claude raised my hand to his mouth, brushing the knuckles across his lips. “And be gone from this place.”
I nodded. “And be gone from this place,” I said.
6
I’D BEEN COMPLAINING to Jean-Claude for years that his decorating scheme was too monochromatic, but one look at Narcissus’s bedroom and I knew I owed Jean-Claude an apology. The room was done in black, and I mean black. The walls, the hardwood floor, the drawn drapes against one wall, the bed. The only color in the room was the silver chains and the silver-colored implements hanging from the wall. The color of the steel seemed to accentuate the blackness rather than relieve it. Chains dangled from the ceiling above the huge bed. It was bigger than king-sized. The only term that came to mind was orgy-sized. The bed was four-postered, with the largest, heaviest, darkest wood I’d ever seen. More chains dangled from the four posts, set in heavy permanent rings. If I’d been on a date, I’d have turned and run for it. But this wasn’t a date, and in we all trooped.
My understanding about most people who were into D and S was that their bedrooms were separate from their “dungeons.” Nearby perhaps, but not the same room. You needed somewhere to go to actually sleep. Maybe Narcissus just never rested from the fun and games.
There was a door in the opposite wall, and the drapes were drawn over the middle of one wall. Maybe his real bed was behind door number two or the drapes. I hoped so.
The only chair in the room had straps attached to it, so Narcissus offered us the bed to sit on. I don’t know if I would have sat down or not, but first Jean-Claude, then Richard did. Jean-Claude settled against the black bedspread as he did everything, with grace, settling his body against the pillows as if he felt utterly comfortable. But it was Richard who surprised me. I expected to see in him some of the discomfort I felt about the room, but he didn’t seem in the least uncomfortable. In fact, I realized for the first time that the heavy leather cuffs at his wrists and the collar at his throat had metal hooks in them, so they could be attached to chains or a leash. He’d probably worn them so he could blend into the club scene, as I’d worn the boots. But . . . but I could feel that he was calm about the room and everything in it. I wasn’t.
I looked at Jean-Claude and Richard and knew I’d decided to sleep with both of them tonight, however we arranged it. But seeing them on the bed in the middle of all this, watching them at home in it, made me wonder about my decision. It made me think that maybe, after all this time, I still didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
Asher was wandering the room looking at the things on the wall. I couldn’t read him like I could read the others, but he, too, seemed unruffled, and I didn’t think it was an act. Narcissus had swept into the room with Ajax at his back. He’d agreed to leave everyone else in the hallway, or downstairs, in exchange for us leaving our extra wolves outside the room. I guess for true privacy you did need less than a double digit worth of people in a room.
Richard held his hand out to me. “It’s okay, Anita. Nothing in this room can hurt you without your permission, and you’re not going to give that.” That wasn’t exactly the comforting comment I’d wanted, but I guess it was the truth. I used to believe that truth was good, but I’d begun to realize that it is neither good, nor bad. It’s just the truth. Life had been simpler when I believed in black-and-white absolutes.
I took his hand and let him draw me to the bed, between Jean-Claude and himself. Well, Narcissus had already made a play for Jean-Claude, so I guess we needed to make the hands-off point. But it still bothered me that Richard put me between them, not simply beside him. The warm, fuzzy feeling I’d had from the marriage of the marks seemed to be receding at an alarming rate. Magic does that sometimes.
I felt stiff and uncomfortable on the black bed between my two men. “What is wrong, ma petite? You are suddenly very tense.”
I looked at Jean-Claude, raising my eyebrows. “Am I the only one here that doesn’t like this room?”
“Jean-Claude liked this room very much, once,” Narcissus said.
I turned and looked at the werehyena as he paced the room in his stocking feet. “What do you mean?” I asked.
Jean-Claude answered, “Once, I submitted to unwanted advances because I was told to do so. But those days are past.”
I stared at him, and he wouldn’t meet my gaze. His eyes were all for Narcissus, as the other man paced around the bed.
“I don’t remember you being unwilling,” Narcissus said. He leaned against the far post of the bed.
“I learned long ago to make a virtue of necessity,” Jean-Claude said. “Besides, Nikolaos, the old Master of the City, sent me to you. You remember how she was, Narcissus. Refusal of an order was not allowed.”
I’d had the horror of meeting Nikolaos personally. She had been very, very scary.
“So I was an unpleasant duty.” He sounded angry.
Jean-Claude shook his head. “Your body is pleasant, Narcissus. What you like doing with your lovers, if they can take the damage, is not . . .” Jean-Claude looked down as if searching for the right word, then raised his midnight blue eyes to Narcissus, and I saw the effect that his gaze had on the shapeshifter. Narcissus looked like he’d been hit between the eyes with a hammer—a handsome, charming hammer.
“Is not what?” Narcissus asked, his voice hoarse.
“Is not to my taste,” Jean-Claude said. “Besides, I must not have pleased you very much, for you did not do what my late master wished you to do.”
I was the reason that Nikolaos was the late Master of the City. She’d been trying to kill me, and I’d gotten lucky. She was dead, I wasn’t. And now Jean-Claude got to be Master of the City. I hadn’t planned that. How much of it Jean-Claude had planned was still up for debate. It is not just prejudice on my part that makes me trust him less than Richard.
Narcissus put one knee on the bed, one hand still around the bedpost. “You pleased me very much.” The look on his face was too intimate. They should have been alone for this conversation. But, then again, watching the way Narcissus looked at Jean-Claude, maybe that wouldn’t have been such a great idea. From Jean-Claude all I sensed was a desire to soothe any injured feelings. But I was betting if I could peek inside Narcissus’s head I’d find a different kind of desire.
“Nikolaos thought I failed her and punished me for it.”
“I could not ally myself with her—not even for you as my permanent toy.”
Jean-Claude raised an eyebrow at that. “I do not remember that being part of the deal.”
“When I first told her no, she sweetened the offer.” Narcissus crawled onto the bed. He stayed crouched on all fours, as if he were expecting someone to come up behind him.
“In what way did she sweeten the offer?”
Narcissus started to crawl across the bed, slowly, his knees catching on the hem of his dress as he moved. “She offered you to me for always, to do with as I wished.”
A thrill of terror ran through me from my toes to the top of my head. It took me a second to realize it wasn’t my fear. Richard and I both turned to Jean-Claude. His face showed nothing. It was his usual polite, attractive, almost bored mask. But we could both feel the cold, screaming terror in his mind at the thought of how close he’d come to being Narcissus’s permanent . . . guest.
It filled him with a fear that was larger than the shapeshifter. Images flashed through my mind, memories. Chained on my stomach on rough wood, the sound of a whip going back, the shock of it biting into my skin, and the knowledge that it was only the first blow. The wave of utter despair that followed that memory left me blinking back tears. I had a confused image of being tied to a wall, with a hand rotted to green pus caressing my body. Then the images stopped abruptly, like someone had thrown a switch. But the body the hand had been traveling down had been male. They were Jean-Claude’s memories, not mine. He’d been projecting his memories o
n me and when he realized it, he’d blocked it.
I looked at him and couldn’t keep the horror out of my eyes. My hair hid my face from Narcissus, and I was glad because I couldn’t be blasé about what I’d just seen. Jean-Claude didn’t look at me but kept his eyes on Narcissus. I was trying not to cry, and Jean-Claude’s face betrayed nothing.
Jean-Claude hadn’t been remembering Narcissus’s abuse, but others, many, countless others. It wasn’t the pain I carried away from the memories, but the despair. The thought that I . . . no, he. He had not owned his own body. He had never been a prostitute, or rather, he had never traded sex for money. But for power, the whim of whoever was his current master, and strangely for safety, he had traded sex for centuries. I’d known that, but I’d pictured him as the seducer. What I’d just seen had nothing to do with seduction.
A small sound came from Richard, and I turned to him. His eyes were shiny with unshed tears, and he had the same look of numb horror that I felt on my own face. We looked at each other for a long frozen moment, then a tear trickled down his face a second before a hot line of tears eased down my own.
He reached for my hand and I took it. And we both turned to Jean-Claude. He was still watching, even talking, though I hadn’t heard any of it, with Narcissus. The other man had crawled all the way across that huge bed to be within touching distance of us all. But it wasn’t us all that he wanted to touch.
“Sweet, sweet, Jean-Claude, I thought I had forgotten you, but seeing you tonight on the floor with the two of them made me remember.” He reached out towards Jean-Claude, and Richard grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t touch him. Don’t ever touch him again.”
Narcissus looked from Jean-Claude to Richard and finally back to Richard. “Such possessiveness, it must be true love.” I had a ringside seat and watched the muscles in Richard’s hands and forearm tense as he squeezed that dainty wrist.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 201