“If love makes us proof against it, then . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
“Then does it mean that none of us love each other?” Jean-Claude said. “No, ma petite. This was not ardeur for feeding, but the feeding taking the place of the slaughter that the Lover of Death wanted us to perform. It was all the energy we had raised and more turning from the beast’s hunger, or the vampire’s thirst, to sex. It was a food that the Lover of Death could not stomach, so he was pushed away.”
“I heard him and I got your memories of him,” Richard said, and shuddered.
“I just got how dangerous he was and how he feeds on death the way Belle feeds on lust. Did you get something I didn’t?” I asked.
Richard looked at Jean-Claude. He wasn’t angry now. “Every time I think I’ve been abused, then I get another memory from your past and I realize that it could have been worse.”
Jean-Claude looked away, which meant he wasn’t sure he had control of his face. He almost always had control of his expression. He’d once told me that after a few hundred years of your facial expressions being used against you by bigger, badder vampires, you learned to hide your emotions so deep that sometimes it was hard to show them at all.
“What am I missing?” I asked.
Richard just looked at the other man. It made me look at Jean-Claude. I had a moment to think about it, then said, “The Lover of Death doesn’t feed on sex.”
“You met Yvette, his minion,” Jean-Claude said.
“She was a sadist and enjoyed rotting on people especially during sex.”
He nodded. “She wanted to do that to Jason because it frightened him so.”
“But you wouldn’t let her; we wouldn’t let her. You protected him from her,” I said.
He finally looked at me, and his face was empty, not charming, but just empty. “When I went back to Belle to save Asher’s life, she ceased to protect me from anything for a time.”
I just stared at him, and knew that my face showed the thought. “She gave you to . . .”
“He doesn’t truly like sex, but he still is functional, and he does enjoy fear.”
I went to him, going on tiptoe, and putting my arms around his shoulders, drawing his head down to me. In that moment I wasn’t bothered by whatever was dried on the side of his hair. Nothing we’d done was as terrible as what he’d been through. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
Then there were other arms around us, tentative at first, and then Richard hugged us both. “I’m not happy about what just happened, and it reminds me why I stay the hell away from you, but nothing we’ve ever done, including today, is as terrible as the glimpses I get of your past.” Richard raised his head up, and it made me glance at his face. “Aren’t most of your worst stories things the council did to you?”
“Most,” he said softly.
“And now they’re going to try to take us over,” he said.
“It would seem so.”
“No,” Richard said, “whatever it takes, no.”
Jean-Claude looked back at the other man. Their faces were close, and I remembered the kiss, not as some visceral memory, but just as a memory. “You do not know what might be required to fight them, Richard.”
“You may be a manipulative bastard sometimes, but you’re our manipulative bastard.”
Jean-Claude actually smiled at that. “Such flattery will go to a man’s head, mon lupe.”
Richard smiled, but his eyes stayed serious. “Morte d’Amour is evil, Jean-Claude. I felt him in my head, I felt what he wanted us to do to Noel, and once we’d killed Noel it wouldn’t have stopped with him. He’d have made us kill each other and fed on every death.”
“That was his plan,” Jean-Claude said.
“Sex is not worse than that,” Richard said.
“What can we do to keep them away from us?” I asked.
“We can keep them away, I think, but I am worried for our poor country. There are weaker Masters of the City, ma petite. I am wondering how they fared this night.”
“You mean when he couldn’t roll us, he hunted for other prey?” I asked.
“The Mother wants us, but he has children of his own line in charge of cities here, not many, but a few, and more in Europe.”
Richard said, “You want to try to protect the entire United States from the Vampire Council?”
“If we can, oui.”
Richard and I exchanged a look, and then we looked back at Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude with all his fancy fetish yummy clothes, standing there nude and covered in more body fluids than a CSI episode. It should have seemed like whistling in the dark that he, that we, could figure out a way to keep the most powerful vampires in Europe out of the entire United States metaphysically, but we’d already chased out three of them, plus the remnant of the Darkness.
We looked again into each other’s brown eyes and then back to the blue of Jean-Claude’s. “I’m in,” I said.
“What do we do?” Richard asked.
“I believe we have freed Belle of the Mother’s influence for now, so all that is left them is death, terror, and violence. We will lose if we try to meet them on with their own strengths.”
“Are you saying we make love, not war?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I’d rather just kill them, but the Darkness will just jump to a different body, won’t she?”
“I fear so.”
“Can we really keep her out of the United States?” Richard asked.
“If the other Masters of the City are willing, there is a chance.”
“Why wouldn’t they want to keep this out of here?” I asked.
“They will want that, ma petite, but they will not like my plan.”
“Why not?” Richard asked.
“It would require that they give up much of their autonomy and run America more as Europe is run.”
“Why, what will that help?” Richard asked.
“It isn’t just political autonomy that they give up, is it?” I asked.
“Non, they would have to give us some of their power.”
“You’re talking about setting up a council here in America with you as its head,” Richard said.
He nodded.
“Didn’t some of the council try to kill us when they just thought we were trying to do that?” I asked.
“They’re going to kill us anyway, ma petite, don’t you understand that yet?” He looked at us, and his eyes held something I didn’t see much: fear. “If we cannot be conquered, then they must destroy us.”
“For fear that we’ll do exactly what you’re planning to do,” Richard said.
Jean-Claude nodded again.
“It’ll be a race to see if they can conquer us or kill us before we have enough power,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“The other Masters of the City aren’t going to want to give up their power to you,” I said. “If they haven’t felt the council’s power they won’t believe you. They’ll think it’s just an excuse to take their power.
“Exactement,” he said.
“Some of them will fight rather than give you their power,” Richard said.
“Some.”
“Are we about to start a vampire civil war here?” I asked.
“Non, ma petite, between us and our allies they will not be able to mount such a strong defense, nor will they band together. Most will live, or die, in their own territories.”
“Are you planning to force them to give up power, even if they refuse?”
“To keep Morte d’Amour and the Mother of All Darkness from raping this country, oh yes.”
“This will make you the bad guy,” Richard said.
“I am aware of that.”
“Are you planning on us metaphysically raping the reluctant masters?”
“If necessary.”
“Isn’t that exactly what we’re fighting to keep the council from doing?” Richard asked.
“Yes, but we are
not doing it for evil purposes.”
“So they just have to trust that we mean well,” Richard said.
“No,” Jean-Claude said, “they just have to do what I tell them to do.”
“If you do evil for a good reason, it doesn’t become good,” I said.
“Do you want Marmee Noir to possess other masters in this country?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Then one man’s evil becomes another’s necessity, ma petite. We must be as ruthless as ever you have been, and as persuasive as ever I have been.”
“What am I supposed to be?” Richard asked.
“Be honest with yourself and with us; help us not become the monsters that the other American masters will fear we have already become.”
Richard held out his hand, and after a moment of hesitation Jean-Claude took it. I laid my hand on top of theirs, and all I could think was, Is this how revolutions begin? Not with a proclamation or a riot, but with a few people in a room somewhere with their hands clasped and a purpose. We were trying to save our country. I was betting the other Masters of the City wouldn’t believe we were saving anything but ourselves, and patriot wouldn’t be what they called us. No, motherfucking bastards, more like.
19
THE GUEST BATHROOMS were all very white and modern and stark, but I stood in the white tiled shower and didn’t care. The water was hot and felt both good and bad. Good because the hot water helped beat out the stiffness from lying on the cold stones for hours, bad in that the water found every ache and bruise. The bite marks were the only visible wounds, but from the feel of things I’d be bruised eventually. Or maybe I wouldn’t be. Maybe the rapid healing would keep most of the bruising down just like the vampire bites did. Bruises are just blood capillaries bursting under the skin, so did I bruise as badly as I had before all the vampire marks? I stood under the rain of hot water and couldn’t remember.
For some reason that bothered me, not being able to remember whether I’d bruised more before. Stupid, but true. I felt power glide over my skin. The water was suddenly too hot. I turned it down so that it ran cold. The heat wasn’t in the water, it was from the power. I knew the taste of it—Haven. My lioness gazed up at me, and I had a moment to watch her raise her muzzle from a pool where she was drinking. It was as if putting my human body in water made me visualize my lioness in water, too. The weird double vision made me put my hand out. I touched the cool, smooth tile, and it helped steady me. I was here in a shower. I was human. I wasn’t a lion drinking at some pool in the middle of some hot, baked grassland. Shit. It was almost as if the lion’s world was more real than it had been, and that wasn’t Haven’s doing, that was the lions and the healing we’d done with them. Something about it had made my lioness more “real.”
She growled low in her chest. We didn’t like him as much as we had before. But liking him and wanting him weren’t the same thing. His power trailed like a warm hand over my bare skin, and all the cold showers in the world weren’t going to make his power anything but amazing. Almost any other man in my life would have knocked, but I heard the doorknob turn. He’d just tried to walk in on me, but I’d locked the door. Old habits die hard.
He called from the other side, “Anita, it’s Haven, unlock the door.”
One of the reasons I was in the shower by myself was that once Nathaniel, Damian, and Micah woke up I didn’t know who to shower with, so in some weird attempt at being fair I’d gone off by myself. Now that seemed like less of a good idea. I hadn’t thought Haven would have woken this soon. After feeling his power last night I should have. Fuck.
“Anita, open the door.”
“I just need to rinse my hair out and I’ll be done. Give me a minute and you can have the shower.”
“We can share the shower,” he said.
I knew that was a bad idea. I finished my hair in record time and turned off the water. The silence seemed louder than it should have. I grabbed one of the soft, white towels and wrapped it around my hair. I started drying my body with another towel. I really wanted to get dressed, and I was really kicking myself that I’d given up so easily on finding my weapons in the living room, but it was a mess. So many of us had been armed that there were holsters and weapons scattered among the passed-out bodies like mercenary prizes in a fleshy Cracker Jack box.
The door rattled as if he’d leaned against it. “I guess you don’t want to share the shower,” he said.
“Not really,” I said. I was dry enough. I reached for the clothes I’d left folded on the side of the sink, and cursed myself for getting clothes but not any backup weapons. Was I afraid of Haven? Not exactly, but I was smaller and not as strong. There was a difference between being afraid and being cautious. Or that’s what I told myself as I scooted my still damp skin into underwear and jeans.
Auggie’s warning was in my head. I needed to make Haven my lion. I needed to make him mine the way that Micah was mine, but would that make him behave? Was it my “magic” that made Micah so cooperative, or was it just Micah? I couldn’t imagine Haven being as reasonable as my Nimir-Raj. Micah made everything better, easier. Haven did just the opposite. His being tied to me tighter metaphysically wouldn’t change that. I could bind him to me like I had Nicky, and then he’d be mine in a way that wouldn’t let him misbehave. But I believed what I’d done to Nicky was evil.
Haven saw himself as my king, but I already had a king in my life. He might have outweighed Micah by a hundred pounds, and in a fist fight he’d have won, but sometimes winning the girl isn’t about fighting.
I thought about what he’d done to Noel and Travis. I thought about what he’d tried to do to Nathaniel and Micah that one morning after he’d slept over at my house, on one of the last nights we’d all stayed there. I thought about the fact that when I cut him last night I had tried for a kill. I’d made the decision that he was too dangerous to try to wound. It seemed like I shouldn’t be sleeping with him if I really believed that. But sex was the only way I could control him. It was my only ace in this metaphysical power game. Fuck, or rather, not.
“If I wanted inside I could just break the door down,” he said.
I slipped on my bra, turning it backward to fasten the hooks, twisting it back to slip my arms through the straps. “Yeah, me, too. They’re interior doors. They’re not meant to withstand that much force.”
He slapped the door hard enough that it rattled. “You won’t even give me that, will you?”
I had the black T-shirt on now. Just boots to tie on and I’d be dressed. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
He slapped the door one more time and then I felt him move away. For a second I wondered if he was backing up to kick it down, but nothing happened. It was quiet—as the old movie line goes, too quiet.
I might have thought he had gone, but I could feel him on the other side of the door. I could feel him like a thrumming energy in the air. He wasn’t gone. We were going to talk. I couldn’t think of anything pleasant to talk to him about. Fuck.
20
HIS ENERGY HAD calmed some by the time I came out of the bathroom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed closest to the door. He’d finger-combed his blue-spiked hair, but without more gel, it had just taken the spikes out and showed me that his hair actually had a natural part to one side. It was really too long on top to part well, but it was there. His shoulders were rounded as if he were hunching in on himself. But it was only as he sat up straighter that I saw he had found his gun in its holster, because it was there on the bed beside him. Not good. But honestly he didn’t need the gun to hurt me.
“You’re never going to forgive me for what I did to your two pet lions, are you?” he said.
“You mean almost beating them to death?”
“Yeah, that.” He sounded tired.
“You told me once that you think, What would Anita think of me if I did this or that? That you worried that if when you did bad things I’d think less of you. How the hell did you think I’d re
act to what you did to Noel and Travis?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Did you think I’d be happy?”
“I was pissed. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I just wanted to hurt you, Anita. I wanted you to hurt the way I’ve been hurting, so I hurt someone you cared about.”
“Oh, that makes it all better then,” I said, and the first heat of anger was there. I took a deep breath and let it out slow. I had a right to be angry, but I wasn’t sure what it would do to my lioness to get angry with him. I didn’t have any other animals in the room to help distract my lion. I sure as hell did not want to turn into a werelion for real now.
“You make me crazy, Anita.”
“I don’t make you anything, Haven. You choose to lash out at people. You decide that you want to hurt me so you hurt Noel. Lashing out at people is what muscle does, not a leader. Kings don’t let anger control them.”
“You felt the power between us last night, Anita. You know I’m the most powerful lion in this city.”
“It’s not always about who’s the most powerful, Haven.”
“Then what is it about?” he asked.
“Control,” I said.
“What, like your bleeding-heart Ulfric?”
“Richard stepped up tonight.”
“And just like that you forgive him everything? All the shit he’s done just wiped out because he finally tried.”
“I give points for trying,” I said.
“You forgive him because you love him,” Haven said. He looked at the floor as he said it.
“I don’t know if I love Richard, but I did love him once.”
“You’ve never loved me, have you?”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I waited too long to answer, because he said, “I guess not answering is an answer.”
“Do I say I’m sorry?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t have let me kill the old Rex, Anita. You never should have let me move here.”
I looked at him, all that male pride hunched in on itself, and said the only thing I had left: the truth. “You’re right. I should have said no.”
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