I looked at Asher. "I called Damian from his coffin once. It was accidental, but he answered to my call. I kept his ... soul, whatever, from fleeing his body once. We are bound together, a little."
"How did you call him from his grave?" Asher asked.
"Necromancy," I said, "I am a necromancer, Asher."
"I know nothing of necromancy," he said.
The smell swelled stronger. I breathed through my mouth, but that just put the odor on the back of my tongue. I was almost afraid to look at Damian. I turned slowly like a character in a horror movie, where you just know the monster is right behind you, and you delay looking because you know it will blast your sanity forever. But some things are worse than any nightmare. The rot had moved past his elbows. Naked bone showed through the back of his hand. The smell had driven all but the three of us back. I stayed kneeling in the rotting fluid of Damian's body. Asher stayed close, but only I was still within touching distance.
"If I were his master, what would I do?"
"You would drink his blood, take the corruption into yourself as we did for Nathaniel."
"I didn't think vamps fed on each other."
"Not for food," Asher said, "but there are many reasons to share blood. Food is only one of them."
I stared at Damian, watching the blackness spread under his skin like ink. I could actually see it swimming underneath his flesh. "I can't drink the corruption away," I said.
"But I could," Damian's voice came breathy with pain.
"No!" Asher said. He took a threatening step towards us. I could feel his power flaring out from him like a whip.
Damian flinched, but looked up at the other vampire. He held his hands out to Asher, pleading.
"What is going on?" I asked, looking from one to the other of them.
Asher shook his head, face angry, but otherwise unreadable. I watched his features smooth and grow blank. He was hiding something.
"No," I said, getting to my feet. "No, you tell me what Damian meant." Neither spoke.
"Tell me!" I screamed it into Asher's calm face.
He just stared at me, face as closed and impassive as a doll's.
"Dammit, one of you tell me what Damian meant. How could he drink away his own corruption?"
"If ... " Damian started.
"No," Asher said, pointing a finger at him.
"You are not my master," Damian said. "I must answer."
"Shut up, Asher," I said. "Shut the fuck up and let him talk."
"Would you have her risk all for you?" Asher asked.
"It does not have to be her. Only someone with more than human blood," Damian said.
"Tell me," I said, "now."
Damian spoke in a rushed whisper, voice edged with pain. "If I drank blood from one powerful ... enough. I might be able ... " He shuddered, struggling, then continued in a voice that was weaker than just a moment before. "Might be able to take in enough power to ... cure myself."
"But if the one he takes blood from is not strong enough mystically to take the corruption into himself, then they will die as Damian is dying now," Asher said.
"I'm sorry," Jason said, "but count me out."
"Me, too," Zane said.
Jamil was across the room hugging his arms. He just shook his head.
Cherry knelt by the bed. She said nothing, eyes huge, face terrified.
I finally turned back to Asher "It has to be me. I can't ask anyone else to take the risk."
Asher grabbed the back of my hair in a movement so fast I hadn't seen it coming. He twisted my face back to look at Damian. "Is this how you want to die, Anita? Is it? Is it!"
I spoke through gritted teeth. "Let go of me, Asher. Now!"
He released me slowly. "Don't do this, Anita. Please, don't. The risk is too great."
"He's right," Damian's voice came in a bare whisper, so low I was surprised I could hear it at all. "You could cure me but kill ... yourself."
The rot had spread up his arms and was gliding like some malignant force underneath his collarbones. His chest was like glowing ivory, and I could feel his heart thudding in his chest. I could feel it like a second heartbeat in my own head. A vampire's heart didn't always beat, but it was beating now.
I was so scared I could taste something flat and metallic in my mouth. My fingertips tingled with the desire to run. I couldn't stay in this room and watch Damian melt down into a stinking puddle, but part of my brain was screaming at me to run. Run somewhere far away where I wouldn't have to watch and I certainly wouldn't have to let those rotting hands touch me.
I shook my head. I stared at Damian, not at the rotting flesh, but at his face, his eyes. I stared into those shining green eyes like bits of emerald fire. It was ironic that as parts of him corrupted and slothed away, that what was left had become its most beautiful. His skin was polished ivory with a depth of light like some white jewel. His hair seemed to glow like spun rubies, and those eyes, those emerald eyes ... I stared at him, made myself see him.
I swept my hair to one side, exposing my neck. "Do it." I dropped my hand, and the hair moved back to hide my neck.
"Anita," he said.
"Do it, Damian, do it. Now, please, before I lose my nerve."
He crawled to me. He swept the hair aside with a hand gone blackened flesh and bone. He left a trail of something heavy and thick on my shoulder. I could feel that thickness sliding down my shirt like a snail. I concentrated on the soft glow of his skin, the imperfect slope of his nose where someone centuries ago had broken that perfect profile.
But it wasn't enough. I turned my head to one side so he wouldn't have to touch me more than necessary. I saw his head tense for the strike and I closed my eyes. It was sharp like needles and it didn't get better. Damian wasn't strong enough to roll me with his eyes. There would be no magic to take away the pain.
His mouth locked against the wound and he began to feed. I thought I'd have to try and force my power into him or lower my shields and let him inside my power, let him drink it away. But moments after his teeth pierced my skin, something flared between us. Power, bond, magic. It raised every hair on my body.
Damian cuddled against the front of me, pressing our chests to one another, and the power burst over us in a rush that filled the room with sighing. Distantly I realized that there was a wind and it was coming from us. A wind forged of the cool touch of vampire and the chill control of necromancy. A wind forged of us.
Damian was like a feeding thing at my throat. The power took the pain, turned it into something else. I felt his mouth at my throat, felt him swallowing my blood, my life, my power. I gathered it all into us and thrust it back into Damian. I fed it into him with my blood.
I visualized his skin whole and perfect. I felt the power spill down his body. I felt us push out the other. I could feel it flowing out of us, not onto the floor but into the floor, past the floor, into the ground below. We were exorcising it, ridding ourselves of it. It was no more.
The two of us knelt bathed in power. A wind trailed Damian's hair across my face, and I knew the wind was us. It was Damian who drew back, trailing power between us like the broken shreds of some dream.
He knelt in front of me, lifting his hands to my face. They were healed, under the remnants of that black ooze, his hands were healed. His arms healed. He cradled my face in his hands and kissed me. The power was still there. It flowed over us, through his mouth, in a line of energy that burned.
I drew back from Damian's kiss. I managed to sit up.
"Anita."
I looked at Damian.
"Thank you," he said.
I nodded. "You're welcome."
"Now," Asher said, "I think it is time for showers all around." He stood, pants covered in black goop. It was on his hands, too, and I couldn't remember when he'd touched Damian or the floor.
I could feel the stuff clinging to my bare back where Damian had touched me. My pants were soaked with it from the knees down. The clothes would have to be burned or at l
east thrown away. This was one of the reasons I kept a pair of coveralls in my Jeep to put on over my clothes at crime scenes and some zombie raisings. Of course, I hadn't expected to get this messy before I'd even left the damn cabin.
"Showers sound great," I said. "You first."
"May I suggest that you go first. A hot shower is a wonderful luxury, but for Damian and me it is a luxury, not a necessity."
"Good point," I said. My hair had kept the stuff from soaking to my scalp, but I could feel it when I touched my hair.
It. I kept saying, "it." I was shying away from the fact that "it" was Damian's body rotted and leaked out upon the floor. Sometimes when it's too horrible you have to distance yourself from it. Language is a good way to do that. Victims become an "it" very quickly, because sometimes it's too horrible even to say, "he," or "she." When you're scraping pieces of someone's loved one off your hands, it has to be an "it." Has to be, or you run screaming. So, I was covered in black, greenish it.
I washed my hands thoroughly enough so I could dig through my suitcase without contaminating the clothes. I'd picked out jeans and a polo shirt. Asher appeared behind me. I looked up at him.
"What?" I asked. It sounded rude even to me. "I mean, what now?"
Asher rewarded me with a smile. "We will have to meet Colin tonight."
I nodded. "Oh, yeah. He is definitely on my dance card for tonight."
He smiled and shook his head. "We cannot kill him, Anita."
I stared at him. "You mean we can't, as in it's too hard a job or we can't, as in we shouldn't do it?"
"Perhaps both, but certainly the latter."
I stood. "He sent Nathaniel to us to die." I looked into the suitcase, not seeing it, just not wanting to look up. There was a rim of blackness at the base of my fingernails that the scrubbing at the sink hadn't lifted. There had been a moment when the power broke between us, and I knew it would work, but until that second ... I had tried very hard not to think about it. It was only after I'd gone into the bathroom to clean my hands off that I started to shake. I'd stayed in the bathroom until my hands were steady. The fear was under control, all that was left was anger.
"I do not think anyone was meant to die, Anita. I think it was a test."
"A test of what?" I asked.
"How much power we truly have. In a way it was a compliment. He would never have contaminated Nathaniel if he thought we had no hope of saving him."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because, to kill a pomme de sang of another master vampire is a mortal insult. Wars have begun over less."
"But he knows we can't make war on him without the Council hunting us down."
"Which is why we cannot kill him." Asher held up his hand, which stopped me with my mouth open. I closed it. "The last master you killed was threatening your life directly. You killed her to protect yourself. Self-defense is allowed. But Colin has not offered us personal violence."
"That is cutting it pretty damn close, Asher."
He gave a graceful nod. "Oui."
"So if we kill him the Council comes back to town and cleans our clock."
Slight frown lines showed between his eyes. I don't think he understood the slang. "They will kill us," he said.
I'd met some of the Council, and I knew he was right. Jean-Claude had enemies on the Council and now so did I. No, I did not want to give the nightmares of all vampirekind an excuse to come back to St. Louis and wipe us out.
"What can we do? Because, mark me on this, Asher, they will pay for what they did to Nathaniel."
"I agree. If we do nothing to avenge the insult, it will be viewed as a sign of weakness and Colin may come against us and kill us."
"Why is everything so damned complicated with you guys?" I asked. "Why couldn't Colin just believe we'd come down here to rescue Richard?"
"Because we didn't leave town." Nathaniel's voice came thin but steady from the bed. He blinked lilac eyes at me. Cherry had bandaged his chest and the neck wound was covered with a large piece of taped gauze. I assumed the thigh wound was similarly covered, but the bedspread covered him from the waist down.
"When Richard got out of jail, Colin expected us to leave town. When we didn't, he thought we meant to take over his territory."
I went to stand by the bed. "Zane said you went off with one of Verne's werewolves. How did the vamps get hold of you?"
"Mira," he said.
"Excuse me?" I said.
"The werewolf's name is Mira." He looked away from me as if he didn't want to look me in the face while he talked. "She took me home. We had sex. Then she left the room. When she came back the vampires were with her." He looked up at me. I found myself staring down into his eyes and the need in them was so raw it made me flinch.
"There were too many of them for you to fight, Nathaniel," I said. "It's okay."
"Fight?" He laughed, and it was so bitter it hurt just to hear it. "There was no fight. I was already chained down."
I frowned. "Why?"
He let out a long sigh. "Anita, Anita, God." He put one arm across his eyes.
Zane came to the rescue, sort of. "You know that Nathaniel is a submissive?"
I nodded. "I know he likes to be tied up and ... " The light dawned. "Oh, okay. I get it. Mira invited you home for some S and M sex."
"D and S, dominance and submission," Zane said, "but yeah."
I took a deep breath, mistake. The room still stank of bodily fluids, the unpleasant kind. "So she wrapped you up like a present and gave you to them?"
"Yes," he said, softly. "The sex had been good. She was a good top."
"Top?" I asked.
"Dominant," Zane said.
Ah.
Nathaniel curled onto his side, drawing the bedspread around him. "The master, Colin, paid her to bring one of us to them. Anyone of us. It didn't matter who. It could have been Jason, or Zane, or Cherry. One of their animals, he said." He huddled down into the blankets, eyes fluttering shut, then open, then shut.
I looked at Cherry. "Is he alright?"
"I gave him something to help him sleep. It won't last long. Our metabolisms are too fast, but he'll get maybe half an hour, an hour if we're lucky."
"If you're not going to take a shower, I'd like to," Damian said.
"No, I'm getting in."
"But you can't wear what you've picked out," Asher said.
I frowned at him. "What are you talking about?"
"Jean-Claude sent a trunk of clothes just for this occasion," he said.
"Oh, no," I said, "no more leather and lace shit."
"I agree with you, Anita," Asher said. "If we were simply going to kill them it wouldn't matter what we wore, but we are putting on a show as much as anything. Appearance will matter."
"Well, shit," I said. "Fine, I'll dress up, we won't kill anyone, but you better come up with something that we can do to them. They can't abuse our people like this and just walk away."
"They will expect retribution, Anita. They are waiting for it."
I looked at Nathaniel cuddled so deep in the blankets that only the top of his head showed. "This retribution better be good, Asher."
"I will do my best."
I shook my head. "You do that." I went into the shower without any clothes to put on because the trunk was in the other cabin. I figured with both coffins in my room I didn't need the trunk. I'd really hoped we wouldn't be opening the damn thing. I hated dressing up in normal dressy clothes. Jean-Claude's idea of dressing up was always worse.
15
It took three rounds of shampoo to get my hair clean. The stuff on my body didn't seem to want to come off unless I scrubbed. There is that point in the middle of the back that you just can't do yourself. It is one of the few areas that married people have an edge on us single folk. I finally had to turn the shower on as high as it would go and just let it pound the middle of my back. The stuff finally sloughed off and floated down the drain.
The stuff clung like nothing I'd ever had to c
lean off before. That included real rotting corpses and zombies. None of it had ever been as tough to get rid of as Damian's ... fluids.
Cherry was the one who knocked on the door and brought in a pile of clothes. I didn't like any of them. Too much leather for my taste. It took two trips back and forth, wrapped in nothing but a towel, to find clothes that I was willing to wear. There was one red leather bodysuit that seemed to be nothing but straps. It might be interesting for private use just between Jean-Claude and myself, but wearing it in public was definitely out.
I ended up in a short-sleeved, black velvet, midriff top with such a low neckline that it took a special bra under it just so the bra didn't show. Jean-Claude had kindly packed the bra. It was one of those uplifting ones, and if there was one thing my chest didn't need, it was more lift; but it was also the only bra I had access to that plunged low enough that it didn't show with the shirt. There was a velvet dress that would have needed the bra for its neckline, too. Jean-Claude had been a busy little vampire.
Everything fit perfectly, if you were willing to wear it. I picked a leather skirt as the lesser of evils. There was a pair of thigh-high black boots that zipped in the back. The tops of the boots were wide and stiff and open at the back. The fronts of the boots came up to the absolute limit of my legs, brushing my groin at odd moments if I walked wrong. The boots had to have been custom-made for me. I didn't remember Jean-Claude ever measuring me for shoes. He'd held pretty much every inch of me in his hands at one point or another. Apparently, that had been enough.
But the leather skirt had belt loops for my shoulder holster, and the velvet midriff had enough sleeves that the shoulder straps didn't dig into any bare flesh. The side straps felt a little strange against my bare sides when I moved, but it was doable. Of course, there was no way to wear an inner-pants holster in the skirt.
I had added the spine sheath down my back and both wrist sheaths. The spine sheath showed underneath the midriff, but hey, they expected us to be armed. Frankly, I wanted a second gun with me. One of the good things about flying on Jean-Claude's private jet as opposed to an airline was that I had several guns to choose from.
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