Danse Macabre ab-14

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I opened my mouth to say no, but it would have been a lie. The vampires could sense lies, but wereanimals could smell them. I told the truth. "Yes, I loved it."

  He shook his head. "Not loved, not past tense. You love it. You love it so much, you're afraid to let me touch you now."

  "Please, Micah, don't do this."

  "Do what? Make you happy? Make us both happier than we've ever been for longer than we've ever been happy in our entire lives? We're both almost thirty, Anita; it doesn't get better than what we have. We've all tried other people, other ways of living. This works for us. Don't throw it away because it started with the ardeur." He took a step toward me. "We always knew that you and I began with the ardeur, Anita."

  "Maybe, but not all of it. Not..." I turned away from him. I couldn't keep being this stubborn and look at the anguish on his face. But looking away put me looking at Nathaniel. It wasn't an improvement. First, he was nude, and any of the men I loved only had to take their clothes off to win most argu­ments with me. I might never admit that out loud, but it was the truth. Nathaniel nude was a treat, but what made it even harder was the look on his face. So hurt, so terribly hurt.

  "Anita," he said, "would you really throw us away? Could you just walk away? Just like that?"

  My throat was tight, but not with panic anymore. The panic had company now. Can you choke to death on unshed tears?

  He stared at me; those lilac eyes sparkled through the fall of all that hair. I stared at his eyes, so bright, like firelit amethyst, as he tried not to cry. Then the first tear glittered down his cheek, and I was undone.

  I went to him. I hugged him, and he collapsed so suddenly in my arms that it pulled us both to the floor. He clung to me, weeping, and I was left drown­ing in the vanilla warmth of his hair. Micah stood there, looking down at us.

  Was it a lie? It didn't feel like a lie. The man in my arms felt real, and his tears were real. The thought that I could turn away from him because of something so... petty, had broken his heart, just a little. Micah had said it; we knew that the ardeur had been the beginning of us. Hadn't I always known it was the beginning of Nathaniel and me, too? If I hadn't needed to feed the ardeur, I would never have allowed him to move in with me. I would never have slept with him, clothed and strangely chaste, feeding by a kiss, a touch, but never with release for him. I would never have done all that with­out the ardeur to feed. I would never have fallen in love with him, if the ardeur hadn't kept him in my way.

  I hugged Nathaniel, and held one hand out to Micah. He smiled, and came to me, to us. He dropped to his knees, and put his arms around us both. Nathaniel cried harder. I held them both as hard as I could. Micah kissed me, and I kissed him back. The taste of his mouth was the taste of sex

  to me. Just the kiss, and my body reacted to it. Nathaniel's hands spilled over my breasts. Had I taught them that the only way to make up a fight was sex, or had the ardeur preordained that sex was our currency of healing? It was a chicken/egg sort of question. I let it go in the sensation of hands and mouths on my face and neck, and body.

  We licked the tears off Nathaniel's face, and somewhere in all that close­ness, I let go of my doubts. I could worry about it later. Right at that mo­ment, nothing seemed more important than touching the two of them.

  We both came up for air, to the smell of lion. Micah growled. It was Noel on hands and knees. He had his forehead pressed to the stone floor, one hand held out toward us. Travis collapsed to his knees behind him, cradling his broken arm. He leaned against the wall, heavily, and for the first time it occurred to me that maybe the broken arm wasn't the worst of his injuries. Wereanimals were tough bastards. I hadn't even asked if there were other things broken. I hadn't even asked exactly what the doc had said. They had just been another embarrassing problem. Another pint of blood to lay on the altar of the ardeur, and my beast.

  I looked at Micah. "I agree with the lions. I don't want Haven."

  I turned to Nathaniel. He smiled. "I agree with Micah. Though Jean-Claude, or someone, needs to help you not to bond with them completely."

  "Agreed," I said.

  I looked behind us, for Jean-Claude. "How do we do this?"

  "I can help you not use the ardeur as deeply, but I do not know if I can control the lion within you."

  "I can," and it was Auggie. He'd added a long black cloak. His shoulders were so wide that it made him look square, his head too small for all that body. The bottom of the cloak puddled on the floor, because any vampire here that the cloak could belong to was a foot taller. The cloak looked bor­rowed, and it was, but Octavius and Pierce were at his back, and they didn't look borrowed at all. They looked perfectly at home.

  The two bodyguards at their backs looked right at home, too. Standing orders were that Pierce and Haven got four guards. I wondered if Haven, now unconscious, had two of his own? Probably.

  "I want this to work, Auggie, if it can," I said. "I need your word that you won't spoil it."

  "Tell me exactly what you want me to swear to, Anita," he said. His face was empty, pale with concentration. His eyes looked huge and even darker, like the sky before it goes black.

  I thought about what he'd asked, then looked again to Jean-Claude. "Help me to word it, okay."

  "I will second Augustine on this, ma petite. Tell me what you wish him to swear to."

  "I want to really try to bond with Noel. I don't want him to interfere with that, but I don't want to bond to Noel the way I did with Micah and Nathaniel. I want to see if it's just lions I'm hunting, or if Auggie's lions are especially tasty."

  "If my lions are more tasty, it may not be because they are my lions, but because your power seeks something more dominant than what's kneeling on the floor. I think in your Rex's zeal not to give power to a rival, he has sent you food that your inner lioness will never accept."

  "My inner lioness," I said, though it's hard to be disdainful when you're on your knees with men still hanging on to you. But I managed it.

  "Inner beast, then," he said, voice empty. His face showed nothing. He was finally acting more like all the other really old vamps that I'd ever met. Will the real Augustine please stand up?

  "Are the lions more likely to want a dominant?" I asked.

  "I thought you had read up on lions," he said.

  I thought about it, then nodded. "If a new male takes over the pride, sec­ond thing he does is kill the cubs. It means he doesn't help the lion he drove off breed successfully, and it puts the females into estrus faster, so he gets to mate."

  Auggie nodded. "It makes the females of most wereprides very tough to impress."

  I shook my head. "You're not saying that werelion prides are run like real lion prides? That the new leader kills the children? That's ridiculous."

  He shrugged those big shoulders under the long cloak. "It has happened."

  I turned back to Noel and Travis. "You guys know about this happening for real?"

  They both said, "No."

  "They're too young to know what we did before we became legal." This from Pierce.

  "Are you saying that some men do kill the babies of the old Rex?"

  "I've seen it," Pierce said in a very clipped voice.

  I almost asked, Which end of the fight were you on? but I didn't. There was a look in his eyes, almost a flinching. Either he'd been a victim, or he'd done things that haunted him. I had enough nightmares of my own; I'd let Pierce keep his to himself.

  "I guess that would make you want the strongest lion around," I said, but my voice was a little thin. The pregnancy scare was too recent. How would it feel to go through nine months, then labor, and have some stranger kill

  your baby, after first killing your husband? I said it out loud. "If someone did that to me, he wouldn't survive very long."

  "Prides with really strong females don't get taken over much," Pierce said, "because you gotta sleep sometimes." He almost smiled when he said it.

  I nodded. "That's how I'd be thinking."


  "Your local pride has very weak females," Auggie said, his voice still that empty master's voice, so it could have been almost anyone talking. "Your Rex's wife is weak, and since the females of the lions are just like the males, it's forced him to reject a lot of strong women."

  "Are you saving that if someone killed Joseph, there wouldn't be enough fight in his pride to do much about it?"

  "His brother would be a problem," Pierce said, "but other than that, yeah."

  "You would definitely have to kill both of the brothers," Auggie said, "but after that the pride would be helpless." He looked past me at the lions.

  Noel was staring at him with a sort of soft horror. It was Travis who said, "Sounds like you've thought this through."

  "It's why you brought dominants," I said. "You came planning for Pierce or Haven to take over the local pride."

  Auggie gave me flat eyes.

  "You evil bastard."

  "It's not me that's left his pride open, ripe for the picking, Anita. He did that himself."

  "He loves his wife, that's not a crime," I said.

  Auggie shrugged.

  "Anita." Noel's small voice brought me back to look at him. He inched closer to me, his hand out, his face showing his fear. "Please, Anita, please, try me."

  I wanted to say, I won't let them hurt you and your people, but I couldn't. Not and be truthful. We had an alliance with the lions, true, but if Joseph had truly let his pride get this fucked up, and it was truly the lion's way to take over the pride like this, then no other animal could interfere. We could help each other, but we couldn't interfere directly in the dominance hierarchy of the other groups. Not unless we wanted to start glomming us all into some kind of super-group. Wereanimals didn't do well in mixed-species groups. Too many cultural differences.

  The only way I could send Haven home was to find another lion that my lioness liked. Shit. Noel stared at me, hand outstretched. The fear in his face made him look even younger and more inexperienced. No animal group could operate without dominants. You needed muscle and strength, and

  strength of will. If Joseph had truly done what Auggie said, then his pride was in the gravest of dangers. If it wasn't Haven or Pierce now, it would be someone else later. Of course, if one of them were my semipermanent pomme de sang, then other lions might hesitate to attack them.

  Hell, master vamps from around the country who hadn't had the ballet troupe go anywhere near them were offering up pomme de sang candidates. We'd be seeing potential feeds for months even after this batch went home. We'd already had inquiries from animal groups that weren't aligned with any vampire. You know you're big fish, when all the sharks want to come play.

  I did the only thing I could think of. I took Noel's hand and drew him to­ward me. I wasn't sure what we'd do when he got to me, but we'd think of something.

  43

  NOEL SMELLED OF fear. He smelled like food, but not food for the ardeur. He smelled like meat tliat just hadn't stopped squirming yet. I pushed him onto the floor, raised his shirt to his shoulders. I stared down at his bare chest and stomach. He was breathing so fast, so hard, that his stomach rose and fell with it. I lowered my mouth over that pale, soft flesh. I stopped with my face just above his skin, so close that my breath came back warm against me. With that warm breath, came his scent, stronger, richer. It made me close my eyes. But I was too far into beast mind for sight to help or hurt that much. It was all about die smell of him, the sound of his breathing, and his heartbeat. I laid my ear against his chest so I could hear that frantic beating, so clear, so wonderfully afraid. I put my hand on his stomach so I could ride the movement of it, as he breathed.

  "Slow your breathing, Noel," Micah said, "or you're going to hyperven­tilate."

  "I can't help it," Noel said, voice breathless, "she's not thinking about sex."

  "If you act like food, then you're food," Travis said from behind us.

  I lay there on the floor, my head over his heart, my hand on the quick rise and fall of his stomach. So soft, so... tender.

  The thought slid my face down his body, until I rested at his sternum, the upper edge of his stomach. So close now that I could not so much see the fast rise and fall of his body as feel it under my cheek. I rolled my face over, and kissed his stomach.

  He jerked, as if I'd bit him, and made a wonderful whimpering sound.

  I buried my mouth in the soft, easy flesh of his belly. I took as much of his flesh into my mouth as I could hold, and not draw blood. I bit him, hard and deep, and it took all my willpower to rise up from diat flesh, and leave it whole.

  I pushed back from him, crab-walked until the wall stopped me. The sen­sation of all that warm, tender flesh filled my mouth. I could still feel it, a sensory memory that would haunt.

  "Talk to me, Anita." Micah's calm voice.

  I shook my head. "Food," I whispered, "just food."

  "Noel is just food," Micah said.

  I nodded, eyes still closed.

  "Get up, Noel." Travis's voice, unhappy, angry.

  "I'm sorry," Noel said.

  I finally opened my eyes, to watch him drag his shirt back over his body. He wouldn't meet anyone's eyes, as if he'd failed.

  "It's okay, Noel. Auggie and Pierce are right, Joseph shops for bottoms."

  "He's not a bottom," Nathaniel said. "If he had been he'd have enjoyed the biting, and the danger. It might even have been enough to push you from food to sex." Nathaniel shrugged. "He's too straightlaced."

  Once I would have argued.

  "I would ask one favor," Travis said.

  We looked at him.

  "Can you come to me, instead of making me crawl to you?"

  I remembered what I'd forgotten to ask, and asked it. "Is the broken arm the worst injury?"

  "At least two cracked ribs, maybe a small break. Dr. Lillian said she'd need X-rays to be certain. No concussion, too hardheaded for it, I guess." He tried to smile and almost made it.

  I crawled toward him. Micah moved so I could do it. Nathaniel crawled beside me. I glanced at him. "I don't think Travis will want company on this."

  "I'm the only submissive you've collected. Everybody else is a dominant."

  That stopped me, made me think about it. I actually sat back on my knees. "Damian isn't a master."

  "No, but he's submissive because he doesn't have the power to be domi­nant. I'm submissive because I like it."

  I frowned at him. "If you have a point, make it."

  "Ask if the pride has anyone who swings more like I do."

  I thought about all the men. Was Nathaniel right? Was everyone else a dominant personality, except for him? Richard, yep; Asher, yes; Jean-Claude, way yes; Micah, yes; Jason, no.

  "Jason," I said.

  "You rang?" and it was Jason coming into the hallway. His short blond hair was cut neat and tidy like a junior executive. The body would have qual­ified, if the executive worked out in the gym enough. He was about my height, short for a man, and boyishly handsome most of the time. But he glanced at Noel getting shakily to his feet, Travis with his obvious wounds,

  Nathaniel and I so close together and him so very nude. Jason took it all in, and his face changed. I could never put my finger on it, but he looked sud­denly older, more grown-up, and his eyes, the color of spring skies, filled up with a knowledge, a weight of intelligence. He hid it most of the time, but there was a very nice mind in that smiling, very nice body.

  The look vanished, replaced by his usual smart-ass, flirting look, but I knew him too well, now, to be fooled.

  "Jason subs if he wants to, but he's a top at heart," Nathaniel said, smil­ing up at his friend. We were never going to marry, Nathaniel and I, but if we did, I knew who he'd pick for best man.

  "Tell me what position you want me in," Jason said, "and I'm your man." He wiggled his eyebrows and gave me that grin. That grin that said he was thinking cheerful nefarious thoughts. Most people made sex dark, but not Jason. He was a cheerful lecher.

  I had to sm
ile. He just had that effect on me. Hell, he had that effect on most people. "Sorry, I'm shopping for lions today, not wolves."

  "Actually, ma petite, I think we are trying to establish how you react around all your beasts, but lions for now."

  "Looks like I got here just in time," Jason said.

  "You're not the only wolf in the hallway," Graham said, sounding sullen.

  Jason gave him a look that wasn't entirely friendly. You didn't see that from Jason much. "I suppose not." His tone was dark, almost angry. I won­dered what had been happening between the two of them to get that level of animosity from Jason. He was one of the most easygoing people I knew.

  "As far as I'm concerned," I said, "Jason is the only wolf in the hallway."

  "Why is he the only wolf that you fuck besides Richard?" Graham asked.

  Ah, now I knew why Graham was pissed. Had he tried to bully the smaller man? Probably. Graham had this backward idea that size and strength were more important than anything else.

  "I don't know, but comments like that are what help keep you off the list," I said.

  "Step back," Claudia said to him.

  He scowled at her, muscled arms folding over his chest.

  She took a small movement toward him. "Are you challenging me?" Her voice was flat and empty as she said it; it made the threat all the more ominous.

  Graham shook his head, and backed up until he was against the wall. He sulked, but he did what she asked. I hoped he got a girlfriend soon, because his little tantrums were really beginning to bug me.

  As if the thought had conjured her out of the dimness, Meng Die ap-

  peared farther down the corridor. It was the first time I'd seen her since she'd sliced Requiem up. I did not want her here while I tested my beasts.

  She was one of the few women who ever made me think, delicate. She was tinier than I was, so fragile looking. Maybe that was why she almost always wore black leather, very dominatrix. The clothes suited her though, catlike, skintight, scary, and sexy all at the same time. Yeah, scary, sexy, that summed Meng Die up perfectly.