53

I WAS IN Jean-Claude's office at Danse Macabre. It was black-and-white elegant, with framed kimonos and fans on the walls as the only color. I sat behind his elegant black desk, with a drawer open. I had an extra gun in that drawer. I'd loaded it with silver shot while we waited. Asher sat beside me, in a chair pulled up so he could be close enough to touch me. He was the reason the drawer was open and the gun was loaded, but not sitting in plain sight on the desk, or in my hand already. He thought it might make the discussion get off on a hostile foot. Damian stood on my other side, hand on my shoulder. His touching me, sharing his calmness, was probably why Asher had won his argument about the gun. The other reason he'd won the fight about the gun was leaning up against the door: Claudia, Truth, and Lisandro, looking very bodyguardy against the wall. Where was Jean-Claude? He was out being the media darling. Elinore, as manager here, was also playing to the media. For public events like this, she made a much better hostess. Besides, I was handling other business. The kind the human media didn't get to know about.

Merlin was sitting in a chair facing us. Adonis and the dark-haired woman from the chorus were sitting on the couch against the wall. Her name was Elisabetta, and her vaguely Eastern European accent was thick enough to walk on. Merlin's and Adonis's accents seemed to flow with their moods, but were mostly absent.

Merlin was answering my questions in that elegant from-anywhere-and-everywhere voice: "I wanted the show to be magical for the entire audience, not just the humans."

"So you tried to roll everyone's mind, including the master vampires and lycanthropes, because you didn't want them to miss the show?" I didn't fight to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I'd have lost the fight, so why try?

"Yes," he said, simply, as if, of course.

Damian's hand squeezed a little tighter on my bare shoulder, his fingers caressing the edge of the collarbone scars.

"I find that a little hard to believe," I said. There, that was calm. I hadn't called him a lying bastard.

"Why else would I have done it?" he asked. His face was very calm. I knew his eyes were dark, pure brown, but other than color I couldn't describe them much, because I wasn't making eye contact. This vampire had damn near rolled us all with no gaze. I wasn't chancing it. He was tall, dark, and handsome. He was not European. No, something darker, farther east, as in Middle East. There was something very Egyptian about him, or maybe Babylonian, because he was old. Old enough that he made my bones ache with his age. Not power, just age. I was a necromancer, and I could taste the power and age of most vampires. It was a natural ability that had gotten better as my power had grown. Now that ability made my bones thrum with the weight of ages that sat smiling in front of me.

"Using power that way on a Master of the City is a direct challenge to his or her authority. You know that."

"Not if you don't get caught at it," Adonis said from the couch.

I glanced at him, avoiding his eyes. That made him laugh. He liked that he could roll me with his gaze. All right, that we both thought he could.

Asher spoke then. "Are you implying that Merlin rolled the minds of all the masters in all the cities that you performed in, and they did not know it?" His voice was empty, pleasant, even happy. It was a lie. He wanted Adonis to chat himself into a corner.

Merlin raised a darkly pale hand. That one gesture stopped Adonis with his mouth parted. "No," Merlin said, "no. We have answered the question of Jean-Claude's servant. When she speaks it is with his voice. But why are you here, Asher? Why do you sit so close and join these talks?"

"I am Jean-Claude's t¨¦moin."

"How have you earned this place of trust and power, Asher? It is not through strength. There are at least four vampires here, perhaps more, who are more powerful than you. And you were never known for your skill in battle. So why do you sit at his right hand, and now at hers?"

"I can tell you why he's here tonight, sitting beside me," I said.

Merlin gave me a quizzical look. It was so hard not to look him in the eye when he moved. I'd lost the knack of not making eye contact with vampires. "Do enlighten me, Miss Blake."

I reached in the drawer and wrapped my hand around the gun. I felt better holding it. The moment the gun flashed to the room, the tension level rose. I felt rather than saw Adonis and Elisabetta begin to move forward on the couch.

Claudia said, "Don't."

Merlin said, "Do not react. That is what she wants."

It was probably their master's voice, not Claudia's warning, that kept them on the couch. Or hell, maybe she'd been speaking to me.

I put the gun on the desk with my hand sort of caressing it. Not exactly holding it, but touching it. "I wanted to have the gun naked on the desk when you came through the door. Asher talked me out of it."

"So he is here to see you do not do anything foolish."

"He is here because I trust him, and I don't trust you."

"You are not a fool. I would not expect you to trust me."

"And what would you do with your little gun?" Adonis asked.

"Shooting you and Merlin here seems like a possibility."

"On what grounds?" Merlin asked. "What laws have we broken? We are allowed mass hypnosis for theatrical purposes."

I hated to admit it, but he was right. I shrugged. "If I think on it, I'm sure I can come up with something."

"Would you, as you Americans say, frame us?"

I sighed, and let my hand fall away from the gun. "No, I guess I wouldn't."

"Then I say again, why are we here? What have we done to anger Jean-Claude?"

"You know exactly what you did," I said, "and why we're pissed at you."

"No, truly, Miss Blake, I do not."

"It's Ms. Blake, or Marshal Blake, to you."

He made a small gesture. "Ms. Blake, then."

"What would you have done if you had succeeded in rolling the minds of six Masters of the City?" Asher asked. His hair hid half his face, a golden distraction.

"I will not answer your question for you are not master here, nor powerful enough to be t¨¦moin."

"Fine, what he said."

Merlin looked at me. "What is that, Ms. Blake?"

"Don't make me repeat the question, Merlin, just answer it."

"I don't understand what you hope to gain by this little discussion, Ms. Blake. Truly, I do not."

"You tried to mind-fuck six Masters of the City, plus a half-dozen or more rulers of the local lycanthropes. Hell, we've got animals to call of several masters, plus human servants. You tried to bite off a great, big, bloody chunk, and you weren't master enough to swallow it."

"Merlin could have taken you all." This from Elisabetta.

I shook my head without looking at her. "No, he couldn't, or he'd have done it."

"What do you want from us, Ms. Blake?" Merlin asked.

"I want to know why you did it. Don't give me shit about wanting all your audience to enjoy the show. If you have truly been mind-fucking all the masters at all the performances, then you wanted to know if you could take them all here tonight. I want to know, why?"

"Why what, Ms. Blake?"

"Why try to roll everyone? Why run the risk of insulting all of them? Why throw this big a gauntlet down? You're a master vampire. You're so damn old you make my bones ache just sitting there. Vamps like you don't make mistakes, Merlin. Vamps like you always have a reason for everything they do."

"Perhaps I do not believe that a human who has barely seen three decades of mortal life would be able to understand my motives."

"Try me. Better yet, try Jean-Claude. You said it yourself; when you speak to me, you speak to him."

He went very still then. I knew the quality of that stillness. I'd surprised him in some way. Stillness could be as telling on a vampire as a gesture on a human.

"Touch¨¦, Ms. Blake." He made another small gesture with his hands. "You will not believe that I did it only to make our production more enjoyable to all."

"No," I said.

He did that hands-out gesture again. I was beginning to wonder if it was his version of a shrug. "Perhaps, after succeeding in city after city, I had simply grown arrogant. Perhaps I truly believed I could do you all."

"I believe you're arrogant. I might even believe that you rolled the rest of the masters individually. I'm not sure on that one, yet. I've felt your mind; I won't say you couldn't do it, just that you might not have tried."

"Then why did I try tonight?" he asked.

I smiled. It didn't feel like a happy smile, more like that curl of lips when I'm pissed. "That's what I'm trying to find out, and what you keep avoiding answering."

"Am I avoiding the question?" he asked.

I nodded, and this time my smile was almost happy. "Yeah, you are."

"Perhaps I have answered it, and you simply do not like the answer."

"Perhaps you're trying not to outright lie in case Damian, or Asher, or one of the others smells or feels the lie. But you are definitely not answering the question completely."

"Do you truly believe that if I wished to lie in front of the people you have in this room, that I could not do it successfully?"

I thought about that for a second. I fought the urge to look at Asher. Damian played his hand along my shoulder. "I think you could, but not without using more mind power than you want to use around me."

"And why do I not wish to use mind powers around you, Ms. Blake?" His voice held disdain, almost amusement. I wasn't insulted; his voice was like everything about him, practiced, calculated.

"Because you're afraid that Mommie Dearest will hear it, and pay a second visit tonight."

He tried for arrogant disdain, and made it, but I could taste the change in him. The faintest, thinnest taste of fear. "And who is Mommie Dearest?"

I stared very hard at that graceful line of jaw. I'd have loved eye contact, but didn't want to risk it. "Do you really want me to say her name?"

"You can say anything you like," he said.

I nodded, and found my own heart beating faster, my newly scarred hand clenched into a fist. "Fine"--and my voice was a little breathy--"you're afraid the Mother of All Darkness will show up again."

Did the lights grow a shade less bright, or was it my imagination?

"She is lost to us, Ms. Blake. You know nothing of her."

"She lies in a room that is underground, but high up. There are windows around the front of that room that look out upon a cave, or underground building. There's always firelight down below, as if whoever watches is afraid of the dark."

"I am aware that Valentina has been inside the room you describe, and lived to tell the tale. Do not seek to impress me with secondhand stories."

I was beginning to think that Merlin didn't know that I'd been in his head with her. Did he not know that I'd seen his memory of her coming out of the darkness? "Let's try another secondhand tale, then. I saw her in the shape of a great cat, maybe a type of extinct lion, bigger than anything that we have today. I watched her stalk you in a night where the world smelled of rain and jasmine, or something like jasmine. I mean, I don't know how long jasmine has existed as a plant; maybe my mind just calls it 'jasmine' because it's the closest smell I know."

I thought he'd gone still before, but I had been wrong, because now he went so still that I had to concentrate on his chest to make sure he didn't just disappear. So still, more still than any snake, still in the way that live things don't get. Still, as if he were willing himself not to be there anymore.

His voice was as empty as his body when he said, "You shared her memory tonight."

"Yeah," I said.

"Then you know her secret."

"She's got a lot of them, but if you mean that she's a shapeshifter and a vampire, simultaneously, then yeah, I know that secret."

He drew a breath. A lot of them did that when they came back from that still-stillness. They drew a breath as if to remind themselves they aren't dead yet.

"But Ms. Blake, everyone knows that you cannot be both."

"The strain of vampirism that we have today is destroyed by the lycanthropy virus, but maybe once it wasn't, or maybe it's a different kind of vampirism. Whatever. I know what I've seen."

"Musette brought some of the Dark Lady's cats to visit us," Asher said, "they were both, and neither."

"Yes, Belle Morte says the sleeping cats of our mother have woken to her call," Merlin said. "What do you think of that, Ms. Blake? Do you think Belle Morte has grown so powerful that the servants of the mother have woken to her call?"

"No," I said.

"Why no?" he asked. His voice was still empty, his body not moving much. He wasn't trying to play human now.

"Because Belle Morte doesn't have that kind of power."

"You have never seen her in the flesh," Adonis said, "or you would not be so quick to judge." He didn't sound happy as he said it, which was interesting. It was the first time I felt that he'd lost control of his voice.

I glanced at him. "She's powerful, but it's not the same kind of power as Mommie Dearest. It's just not."

"If Belle Morte did not wake the servants of our good mother, then who did?" Merlin asked.

I had a moment of insight. I don't get them often. I debated on whether to act on it, or ask Asher's opinion first. Then I thought, to hell with it. I was tired. I'd fed, but the healing had taken more than the feeding had given back. I was too tired for games.

"Do you want her to wake up, Merlin? Or do you fear her waking up?"

He sank back into that stillness again. "I do not know how to answer that question."

"Yeah, you do."

"Then I will not answer it."

"Are you a flunky of the vampire council, is that it?"

"Merlin has been outside the circle of inner power for centuries," Asher said.

I nodded. "Yeah, you guys filled me in on the limo ride here. He grew so powerful that he was given a choice of giving up his territory, or being killed. He gave it all up, and vanished into the mists of time. Jean-Claude thought there might be a place for him here on American soil." In my head, I thought, and the next time that Jean-Claude offers refuge to someone this fucking powerful, he better run it by me first. I'd made that clear in the limo. He hadn't even argued with me.

"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 fa栤e 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 mother. 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."

"Cured it?" Merlin said. "With a blood transfusion, truly?"

"Well, yeah, but the vampirism is what keeps the dead body up and running, so you take the vampirism out of the blood, and the body dies."

"Ah, then not a cure that most would seek."

I shook my head. "No."

Damian leaned over and whispered against my cheek, "All interesting, but may I ask that you speed this up?"

"The mother cannot break through your protection on her own, except in dream. But she can follow the attack of another vampire inside your defenses. You are correct on that. Fear of her was one of the reasons for the laws governing combat between masters. But she has been asleep for so long that we have forgotten caution."

"Why does she need to follow someone else's attack?"

"Because she is still a creature of nightmare and the lands of Morpheus."

"She's still asleep, you mean?"

"Yes, that is what I mean." He smiled.

Damian's hand dug into my shoulder. I said, "I don't mean to be rude here, but I need to feed. So, if you'll excuse us."

"Can't we watch?" Elisabetta asked.

"No," I said.

"Come, Elisabetta," Merlin said. He went out the door with her behind him. Adonis turned in the doorway, and stared at us all.

"You don't get to watch either," I said. "This meeting is over."

He started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He finally shook his head, and left without another word. I'd learned more than he meant to tell, but less than there was to know. Somehow I knew I'd see him again. Just a feeling.

Claudia went to the door. "I'll make sure no one interrupts." She closed the door behind her.

I stood, and gently moved their hands off my shoulders. I took their hands in mine. "Nathaniel, take Damian to the workers' lounge or somewhere. Or find a table outside, I guess."

"Why can't we watch?"

I gave him a look, but he gave innocent, knowledgeable eyes. "It's been less than two hours, are you saying you'd go again?"

He smiled.

"I can't feed on you again this soon, Nathaniel, it's too dangerous. I don't know what the mother did to me, exactly, but I feel shaky. I don't know if I can guarantee that the ardeur won't spread through the room. Outside the door you'll be safe; inside, I don't know." I looked at Damian, who was clinging to Nathaniel's shoulders as if he'd fall down without the support. "If I fed on Damian right now, I think that would be bad."

"Who will you feed from then?" Asher asked from where he stood near the wall.

"If it's okay with you, you."

"A man likes to be asked."

I squeezed the others' hands, and said, "Nathaniel, Damian, go, please, and stay where someone can keep an eye on you, okay?"

"I promise," Nathaniel said, and they started for the door.

I turned to Asher. "Are you mad at me?"

"No one likes to be taken for granted, Anita."

"I don't take you for granted."

"You do, and so does Jean-Claude."

I didn't know what to say to that so I said that part out loud. "I don't know what to say to that."

He shook his head. "We do not have time to tend my emotional wounds. Forgive me."

The door closed behind us, Nathaniel and Damian were outside trying to find a place to wait while I fed enough to keep us all alive.

I reached for Asher's hand. He took it, but he wouldn't look at me. What little of his face he gave was that perfect profile, with the scars hidden behind the glory of his hair. I'd asked for sex and he was hiding from me. Not good.

"What is wrong?" I asked.

"Do you realize that this will be the first time we have ever had sex alone together?"

I started to argue with him but stopped myself. I could remember his body so intimately. So many nights and afternoons of his body against mine. Had there always been someone else with us? Had we never had a moment that was just us, just ours?

I touched his face, tried to get him to look at me, but he wouldn't do it. "It's not just Jean-Claude that you haven't gotten enough personal attention from, is it?"

He smiled then, but not like he was happy. "I spent centuries being desired by all that I touched, or wanted. Then I spent centuries being despised, ridiculed. Sex was a mercy or done as a torment to the ones Belle wished to punish."

I tried to hug him, and he kept me away, just holding my hand while he talked. I said the only thing I could think to say. "I'm sorry."

He finally looked at me with the perfect side of his face. He let me see the drowning beauty that had made people give up their fortunes, their honor, their virtue, for but one more night staring into this face. "You have healed some of my hurts. Being with you and Jean-Claude. I thought it would be enough."

I slid my hand underneath his hair, so I could touch the scarred side of his face. I cupped that which he hid, while I stared up into the face he let me see. "But you don't get enough attention from either of us."

"It sounds childish when you say it out loud, but it does not feel childish inside here." He touched his chest. "It feels like I am starving to death in the midst of a feast. But it is a feast that I share with too many. Neither of you watches only me. There is always someone else more beautiful, more desirable."

"There is no one more beautiful than you, Asher."

He jerked back, and exposed the scars on his face. "How can you say that to me?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I want to be the center of someone's life again, Anita. Jean-Claude's center is you. Yours is beginning to be Nathaniel and Micah." He grabbed my arms and closed his eyes tight. "I am no one's darling, and I cannot bear it." He laughed, but when he opened his eyes there was a shine of unshed tears. "How stupid and childish. How selfish."

"It's not about being with men, or women, is it?" I said, "It's because none of the men I'm picking will ever put you at the center of their world."

"I want to be loved, Anita, as I once was."

"Julianna," I said, softly.

He nodded. "Once it was Jean-Claude, but he could never truly love another man the way he loves a woman. Belle's tastes and demands sent many of us to the arms of other men, but Jean-Claude could never be content with just men in his bed. He is a lover of women above all else."

"And you?" I asked, because he seemed to want me to ask.

"I think if it were the right man, I could be in love, and content, but I think the same of a woman. It is love I seek, Anita, not the package around it. I have always been needier of attention than Jean-Claude. I sought a woman for my human servant when I realized that Jean-Claude would never be content with just men, with just me."

I didn't know what to say to the pain in his voice. An emotional burden he'd carried for two or three hundred years, and I was supposed to fix it, or at least make it better, how? How was I going to do that?

I felt Damian reach out for me. It made me stagger against Asher. He had to catch me. "I'm draining Damian."

"Then I must stop being an enfant terrible, and let you feed."

"I do want you, Asher. I do love you. But right now, I don't have time to..."

"To heal my wounds," he finished for me.

"To make love to you the way I want to."

He gave me a look, like he didn't believe me.

"We have to feed and get back to the party, but you are not just emergency food to me. You are not just someone I share with Jean-Claude. You are special to me, Asher, you, just you. I don't have time to make you believe me tonight, but I'll try to do better later."

He drew me in against his body, held me close, whispered into my hair, "Later you will have to feed upon someone else, for I will have had my turn."

I drew back enough to see his face, and said, "Remember one thing, that I didn't make love to you that first time because I had to feed the ardeur. I made love to you because I wanted to, because Jean-Claude and I wanted to."

"You did it to protect me from Belle Morte's agents."

"Yeah, we did it so that Belle couldn't call you home, so you'd belong to us by her rules, but you're still the only new man in my life that I had sex with because I wanted to take care of you, not because you were food."

"Take care of me?"

I nodded. "It's what you do when you love someone."

He smiled then, and it was that rare smile. The smile that made him look terribly young, and not at all like himself, as if that smile was all that was left of what he might have been centuries ago. "You can't possibly love all the men in your life, Anita."

"No," I agreed, "but I love you. I love Jean-Claude."

"And Micah, and Nathaniel," he said.

I nodded.

"And London, and Requiem," he said.

I shook my head. "No, not them."

"Why not love them? They are beautiful and perfect."

I grinned. "Not perfect; handsome, but not perfect. Requiem's too damn moody by half. London, I'm a little embarrassed about him."

"Why embarrassed?"

"Not sure, maybe because I'm not sure I even like him, and I had sex with him." I felt Damian slumping at the table where he sat. Nathaniel caught his arm, kept him in the chair. Asher had to catch me or I might have fallen.

"You need to feed," he said.

I nodded.

"Then we have talked enough. Tonight I will take care of you, because that is what you do when you love someone."

Heat rose up in my face, and I wasn't sure why.

He laughed, not a magical vampire laugh, but a very masculine laugh. That laugh that lets you know you've pleased them in some very guy sort of way.

"What?" I asked, and wouldn't look at him, because I knew that would make the blush worse.

"You blushed because I said I loved you."

I nodded, and tried to sound churlish, as I said, "So?"

"So, I know you love me."

That made me look up at him. "Just because I blushed?"

He nodded.

"I blush a lot."

He drew me into the circle of his arms. "Yes, but this one was for me." He laid a kiss upon my forehead. "I would like to feed while you feed."

"Haven't you fed yet?"

"No, the blood hunger did not rise."

"Isn't that unusual?"

"Very."

"Then feed." I thought about it. "Though I'm sort of running out of spots for fresh fang marks."

He touched the side of my neck where Requiem's bite lay. He traced his hand over the mound of my breast, dipping a little lower than the corset top until he caressed London's bite. He dipped his fingers lower, so that he touched my nipple. Just that brought my breath in a gasp.

He laughed again, that pleased sound. His hand slid up my thigh, forced me to move my legs apart so he could find Jean-Claude's bite in my very inner thigh.

My voice came breathy, "How did you know it was there?"

"I smelled it," he whispered. "Are you ready for me?"

I nodded, because I didn't trust my voice.

"Then look at me, Anita, look into my eyes."

I looked up slowly, and found his eyes full of light like blue ice, glittering in winter moonlight, all shadows and shimmers. His eyes dazzled me.

He was carrying me, and I hadn't remembered him picking me up. "Where are we going?" I whispered.

"The couch," he said.

"We have to be quick."

He laid me down upon the couch, my knees bent, and him kneeling between them. "We can be quick now, because I know that there will be long later."

"All because I blushed for you," I said.

"Yes." He laid me down on the couch. There wasn't room for him to lie beside me, so he stood, and began to take off his clothes.

"If we take off the corset it will take forever to get it back on."

"The corset can stay." He threw his shirt and jacket on the arm of the couch. He stood there for a moment nude from the waist up. I stared up at him, stupidly, that golly, wow look on my face. I couldn't help it. He was so beautiful, and I knew that the rest of him was just as beautiful. I could look at him with knowledgeable anticipation. It made me shiver just staring up at him like that.

"The look on your face, Anita, mon Dieu, the look on your face."

I had to swallow twice to say, "What do you want me to take off?"

"Panties."

"Just panties," I said.

He nodded, and started unfastening his pants.

My pulse sped up. I had to sit up to take the panties off. It also helped me look away from him while I did it. Was it just that we had never been alone before? Was that this incredible anticipation? Or was it more than that? I wanted him. I wanted him to touch me. My body ached with the need, not just to be touched, but for Asher to touch me.

His hands slid over my bare shoulders, where I sat facing away from him. The smoothing of his hands down my skin made me hold my breath.

He leaned down and whispered, "What do you want?"

"Your hands on my body."

"What else do you want?"

"You inside me."

"What else?"

My pulse was hammering in my throat so hard I could barely speak around it. "Bite me while you fuck me, make me come both ways while you're inside me."

"Inside you both ways?" he whispered.

"Yes."

He grabbed a handful of my hair, and pulled until it hurt, just a little, just enough. "Say please."

"Please."

"I have to take blood to enter you. To bring you a second time with my bite, I will have to take blood again."

I tried to reason that out, and failed, but finally said the only thing I could think to say. "Please."