Danse Macabre ab-14

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  He had the strength to keep me from biting his lip off, but that was all, ■unless he was willing to crush my jaw. I kept trying to bite him, and he kept me from doing it. If there'd been enough person left in me I'd have gone for my gun, or the knife, but I'd given up thoughts of knives and guns when I embraced my beast. All I could think of was teeth and claws. I raked my nails down his hands, bloodied him in ribbons to try to get free.

  He was going to have to cripple me or let me go. But he had one other option, and he used it. He threw another burst of power into me. He raised

  the ardeur again, drowned my beast in desire, and things that are only partly about mating. If he'd been like some of Belle's line and only affected me physically, the beast wouldn't have left, but his flavor of Belle Morte's power was more ... human. It was not just lust, but love. He had the ability to make you love him. Evil did not begin to cover what he did to me. Because in that moment, I loved him. Loved him completely and utterly. Part of me that was still sane prayed, Don't let this be permanent.

  I went up on my knees, stretching toward that full mouth that a moment before I'd been trying to bite off. I gave him the kiss he'd wanted. The fresh blood didn't make it horrible, he was a vampire and... Roses, roses on the air like some cloying perfume. I was drowning in the scent of it, so that as I kissed him, the blood tasted of roses.

  Auggie jerked back from me. "Roses, oh, God, you taste of roses." He pulled back enough to see my face, and the fear showed on his face. "Your eyes, Anita, your eyes."

  I'd seen Belle Morte's eyes in my face before. Her pale brown eyes like dark honey filled with fire. I stared up at Auggie with her eyes, and she saw him, too. While her dark light filled my eyes she saw what I saw.

  She whispered through my mind, "Did you truly believe that Jean-Claude being a sourdre de sang would keep you safe from me, Anita?"

  Yeah, actually, I had. She knew, and thought it was funny as hell. "What do you want?" I asked. Fear like fine champagne was tingling through my body. The ardeur, the beast, all of it, was washed away under that rush of fear.

  She gazed up at Auggie, kneeling above us, and I knew what she wanted. I felt regret in her. Regret that Auggie had gone from her bed and her body. "But you exiled him," I said.

  "Stay out of my thoughts, Anita." She was sitting on the edge of her huge four-poster bed. A bed I'd seen once before in Jean-Claude's memories. She was curled there, a white gown centuries out of date covering the lushness of her body, so that she looked petite, like a dainty pouting child as she leaned against the carved wood. Her hair was a wealth of dark waves longer than my own. For the first time I realized that we looked at least superficially alike. Petite brunettes with ice-pale skin, and brown eyes.

  "I was the greatest beauty in all of Europe; how dare you compare your­self to me?" Her power lashed through me, like the sharp blow of a whip.

  "Forgive me," I said, because I'd meant no disrespect. I hadn't meant I was as beautiful as she, only that we shared some traits.

  The thought mollified her, but it also freed her to concentrate on why she'd entered me in the first place. Not good. "Augustine," she said, her voice spilling in a lower alto purr than my normal voice. It wasn't her voice

  exactly, because she had to use my throat, but it wasn't my voice either. It was close enough to hers to widen Auggie's eyes, and make him go paler than death itself. I don't know if I'd ever seen a vampire go pale before.

  "How is this possible?" he whispered.

  "You called me," she said with my lips. "Your power and your blood called me."

  He swallowed, rolling his lips when he did it, so that the blood seeped faster from the cut. The bite was healing as we watched, but it was still bleeding. "I did not mean ..."

  "You caused her to love you, Augustine, as you tried to force me to do. But no one forces Belle Morte, no one."

  "Forgive me, I did not know what my powers could do." He whispered it, hands still on my arms, but gentle now. His hold was so loose that I could have broken away easily, but it was too late for that to matter. We had big­ger problems than the ardeur.

  "But I can enjoy you again, here and now, and it will not be I who falls in love, but her. It will cause her pain, and Jean-Claude pain. It will even cause you pain." She laughed, sitting on her bed hundreds and hundreds of miles away. "For as Requiem can raise the body's lust in his victim, he also raises it in himself. So, once you force a woman to love you, you love her back. It is the nature of our bloodline that our powers are two-edged."

  Again, I felt regret in her. I knew in that moment that once Auggie had used his power to its full extent, the effect wasn't temporary.

  "No, Anita," she said inside my head, talking to me from the firelit edge of her bed. "It is quite permanent, I assure you."

  "Then you love ..."

  She lashed out again, with that sharp power. It stopped what I'd been about to say, and let her speak. "All love Belle Morte. All adore me. It is my nature to be loved."

  But I'd been too close to her mind too often not to understand her better than that. "Lust," I said out loud, "all lust after Belle Morte."

  "Lust, love, what difference the word, it means the same." But we were too deeply wedded together. She knew my thought on that, that lust and love aren't the same thing at all, and that thought was so loud that I felt her stumble in her mind. Felt her doubt; for half a moment, I felt doubt there. And it wasn't I who put that seed of doubt in her mind. It was already there, had been there since Jean-Claude and Asher left her side voluntarily cen­turies ago.

  "They returned to me, Anita, don't forget that. They could not live with-

  out Belle Morte!" She was on her knees on the bed now, face beautiful in her anger. But I knew better than most what lay behind anger: fear.

  "Enough of this!" she shouted, and that shout echoed through my mind, my body, and hit Auggie like a blow. He staggered, fighting to stay on his knees, to hold me. But her power was there, her version of the ardeur, the original. All that had come from Belle Morte were but pieces of her own power. We were reflections of her. The real thing roared over me, tore a scream from my mouth, and Auggie echoed me.

  Her power tried to spill out from us, tried to fill the room and touch everything near us. Auggie threw up a wall around it. He used his will, his power as a Master of the City to hold it back. But it wouldn't last for long. I tried to call necromancy. I'd used it to chase her out before, but I couldn't shut down the ardeur. Until that was cleared, I was useless.

  He found his words before I did. "Everyone out, out, all of you. We can't hold it like this for long. When we lose control it will fill this room."

  "It spreads by touch," Micah said.

  Auggie shook his head. "This isn't Jean-Claude's ardeur, this is Belle's. Proximity is enough." He shuddered, shoulders hunching as if some great weight were beginning to crush him. "Samuel, get your family out. You don't know what this could make you do."

  A voice from behind us, with more French accent than I usually heard in it, said, "Augustine, what have you done to ma petite} The power, she presses ..." I looked at him, and the words stopped. "Belle Morte." He said it, flat, as if he'd just swallowed all the emotion he had.

  He was dressed in his signature colors, black and white. A black velvet jacket barely touched the top of his waist. The white lace of his shirt spilled out between that blackness, held at the neck by the cameo that had been one of my first presents to him. The pants were leather and looked poured on. The knee-high black boots were some of the plainest he owned. Of course with his body gliding toward us there was nothing plain about him. We both knew the potential of his body too intimately to ever believe such simple camouflage. Because it was a we. And because it was a we, she knew why Jean-Claude had his black curls pulled back in a ponytail. She knew why the clothes were elegant but some of his least expensive. Why he wore almost no jewelry. He had planned to appear as the visiting masters had last seen him. He was going to hide what he truly was, let
them wonder about his power. It was a gamble that I had disagreed with. I thought it was like bait­ing them. Look how powerless I am, try me. Jean-Claude said that he had never gotten in trouble when dealing with other masters by hiding some of his abilities. It was a strategy that had saved his life in the past.

  She used me to say, "I see you Jean-Claude. All these simple games do not hide you from Belle Morte. But you were right to come humble before me, as I like my men."

  I stared at him with Belle Morte's eyes, while she laughed, and laughed, and laughed on her big, empty bed. I thought, empty. Since when did Belle sleep alone? That thought made her stumble in her mind again. A moment of hesitation, but Jean-Claude took it. He used it to put himself at my back. lb fold all the velvet and leather of his body around me, so that he and Aug­gie faced each other across me.

  Belle roared back through me, but in some ways, her moment had passed. Jean-Claude was sourdre de sang and I was his human servant. Touching, she could not turn me against him. But she left us with a parting gift, an evil whisper in my mind. "You are sourdre de sang. You can chase me out, but you cannot cure what Augustine has begun. When I leave her mind, the ardeur will still be there. It will spread to the three of you, and you will do things together that you have not done in centuries."

  She was in my head, so I couldn't hide that this was the first I'd heard of Auggie and Jean-Claude being more than friends. She laughed in her firelit bedroom all those miles away. She spoke through me, that alto purr trying to come out of my mouth. "Oh, Jean-Claude, you did not tell her that you and Augustine were lovers."

  Jean-Claude was very still against my body, as if he were holding his breath. I realized he was waiting for me to react to what she'd said. He was waiting for me to be angry and make the disaster that was about to happen even worse. But I surprised us all.

  I wasn't shocked. I don't know why, but I wasn't. I'd known he hadn't come to me a virgin. I even knew that he'd had other male lovers besides Asher. Of course, knowing something in the abstract wasn't the same as hav­ing the fact kneeling in front of you, holding you in his arms. I looked up at Auggie and expected to be upset, but maybe Auggie's powers had done something to me, or maybe I was picking up Jean-Claude's emotion, or even Belle's. Whatever the reason, I gazed up at the man in front of me and saw the line of his face from temple to jaw like the stroke of some fine painting. The charcoal-gray eyes had lost their fire; fear and willpower had shut down some of his vampiric powers. But even empty of anything but him, the eyes were utterly compelling. It wasn't just the lace of black lashes and the drown­ing color that for the first time convinced me that gray could be as beautiful as blue, but the look in those eyes. He stared down at me like a drowning man. Something of pain and loss so raw that it tightened my throat. My re­action was sympathy; Belle's was not. She was glad, so terribly glad that after

  all these centuries the sight of her eyes could still fill him with such pain. She wanted him to hurt. Wanted him to suffer. Wanted him to feel cast out, driven from paradise by the hand of a vengeful god, or, I guess in this case, goddess.

  Augustine's power meant that I watched his pain as one freshly fallen in love, in that first blinding, overwhelming rush where you'll do or say almost anything to make each other happy. I wanted to make it all better, to kiss it and make it all go away.

  "No," Belle said, "no, they lied to you. You should feel betrayed. Heart­broken."

  "Sorry to disappoint you," I said, but she knew I didn't mean it.

  "So calm, Anita. See through my eyes and your lovely calm will not survive."

  I knew I still knelt, held between Jean-Claude and Augustine, but I was trapped in Belle's memories, so that we sat on a throne in a huge dark, torch-lit room. Augustine was tied to a metal framework, the naked line of his body exposed to all. He had come begging Belle to take him back. She had re­fused, but offered one more taste of the ardeur. These weren't thoughts; I was in her head so deeply that I shared her memories. She meant to humil­iate him. He had made her love him, and that she could not forgive.

  Jean-Claude and Asher appeared before the throne. They were dressed in long cloaks that hid all but their faces. Asher's face had the flawless beauty that had once been his. So this memory was from a time before he and Jean-Claude left Belle to save Julianna, the woman they both loved, from Belle's jealousy. Jean-Claude and Asher were still her perfect pair. Her matched beauties that did all we asked.

  I knew they were naked under the cloaks. I knew what she meant them to do.

  Augustine's voice, next to my ear, startled me, but did not break Belle's memory. It was like a voice from on high. "You are her master, Jean-Claude. Do not let Belle show this to Anita."

  It was as if his voice helped call me back, because the person talking was not the person tied there. The Jean-Claude he spoke to was not the servant who stood before this throne. This had happened long, long ago. It wasn't real anymore.

  "It happened, Anita, just as I will show it to you."

  "Ma petite" Jean-Claude said, "can you hear me?"

  I blinked up at them, saw their faces looming over me, but Belle's power roared through my head. "No, Anita, you will see the reality of it." I was

  back in that torch-lit room. I could feel their hands on me, but all I could see was what Belle showed me.

  "Touch her bare skin," Auggie said.

  Asher and Jean-Claude began to glide around the bound man. It was al­most a dance, the swaying of cloaks, the grace of their movements.

  Hands glided over my bare arms. The moment his bare skin touched me, the memory began to grow dark. It was as if the lights were dimming, hid­ing what was happening.

  "No!" Belle shouted, and she pulled me back into that dark hall, all those centuries ago.

  The cloaks were gone, and their bodies were pale and perfect. I heard Au­ gustine protest. "You promised me the ardeur."

  "I keep all my promises, Augustine."

  Jean-Claude glowed like some dark star, laying only his hand on the naked back of the other man. Augustine said, "Ah, now I understand." He lifted his face at an awkward angle to look back along his body at Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude knelt in front of him, so he didn't have to strain. He cupped Augustine's chin in his hand, and spoke, so low that Belle could have not heard it. "I have given you but a taste. If you find my touch repulsive, then I can stop." He put his face next to Augustine's mouth, as if he were kissing the other man's neck. He gave Augustine a chance to breathe his an­swer, "You have such fine control over the ardeur, so soon."

  "Out."

  "If this is but a taste, and all she will allow me, then I want it."

  Jean-Claude pulled back enough to see the other man's face. He cupped Augustine's face in his hands. I realized that I was seeing Jean-Claude's face through Augustine's eyes. I watched Augustine see the uncertainty in the other man's eyes. "Would you risk her anger to save me?"

  "I do not enjoy force."

  Asher knelt beside Jean-Claude, and there was a look I'd never seen on his face. Arrogance, fierceness, something predatory, and something else. Something dangerous, and unpleasant.

  Asher's voice fell into the memory. "Jean-Claude, do not let Anita see me like this." Until that moment I hadn't known Asher was somewhere in the room, waiting for us to win, or lose, this battle. And he was seeing what Belle was forcing me to see. How was she doing this?

  "You are all blood of my blood, Anita. I can do many things to that which is mine."

  Hands on me, cloth tearing, my body jerking with the force of it. The

  coolness of air on my back. Jean-Claude's chest and stomach pressed against my back, the lace of his white shirt only a frame for our flesh. But the mo­ment that much of his skin touched mine, the memory turned black and Belle was back on the edge of her big bed in the flickering light of candles. Her anger filled her eyes with dark honey flame. She had never known that Jean-Claude gave Auggie a choice, all these long years ago.

  Jean-Claude's bare arms wrapped
around my nearly naked upper body. He wrapped his arms around me, cradled me as close to his body as the gun and knife at my back would allow.

  Augustine's hands were still in mine, as if he couldn't, or wouldn't, let me go. But it was Jean-Claude's body that chased her back. That shut down the memory.

  "Your body can stop me, but I leave you two parting gifts, Jean-Claude and Augustine. The first is the ardeur that will claim the three of you, and if I push hard enough will spread through the room to all that are left. I feel Asher and..." She closed her eyes, licked her lips. "Mmm, Requiem is there, as well. They will try to hold it back when it happens. Perhaps they will succeed, perhaps not." Then she looked directly at us, and it was as if she could see us, truly see us. Such concentration in those eyes. "My second is a question to you and a gift for Anita. Have you realized one of her tal­ents, Jean-Claude, that she can borrow the abilities that are used against her? My ability to make living memories, I give to her now, just this once. I want her to have it to use, and I will not fight her magic's ability to take it. I will let her take this power to her mind, and I leave her with this question: Do you really believe that Augustine and Jean-Claude only had sex this one time, or were there more?"

  Cloth tore, and more of Jean-Claude pressed against me. "I close this door to you, Belle, for she is mine, not yours."

  "I'm going, I'm going, enjoy my gifts." But I was still tied close enough to her mind to know that she had no choice. She pretended she did, but Jean-Claude had chased her out. The last thing I felt from her was regret. Regret for the men she left me with, that I had them and she did not.

  I came up gasping as if I'd been underwater. I was down to nothing but bra and panties, the skirt suit ripped away. My gun with its holster had van­ished with the skirt. Jean-Claude's clothes were mostly gone, as well.