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 te'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.
"Touche, 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 tJhan 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 die 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 lycan-thropy 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 facade 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 die 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 tliat 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 breatlied 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 yirl, 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 inder my skirt, until he traced the edge of die hose, and found skin. It wasn't ibout sex, it was about helping keep me clearheaded. It was die first time a nan 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 :o 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 fall 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."
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