"May I present Anita Blake, my human servant, the very first I have ever called to me. There is no other, there is only she." Jean-Claude used his hand in mine to sweep me outward away from the coffee table, and incidentally, Musette. It was almost a dance move, as if I was supposed to curtsy, or something. Damian followed the movement, making it look like a very graceful game of crack the whip. The vampires bowed, and, caught between them, I had little choice but to do what they did. Maybe there was more than one reason that Jean-Claude had put me in the middle.
Musette swayed towards us, her hips making a dance of the billowing white skirt. "You know the one I mean, Asher's servant, what was her name?" There was a look in those blue eyes that said she knew damn well what the name was.
"Julianna," Jean-Claude said, voice as neutral as he could make it. But neither Asher nor he could say Julianna's name without some emotion.
"Ah, yes, Julianna, a pretty name for someone so common." She'd come to stand in front of us. The tall dark man stood behind her, menacing by his very size. He had to be damn close to seven feet tall. "Why is it that Asher and you choose such common women? I suppose there is something comforting about good, sturdy, peasant stock."
I laughed before I could think. Jean-Claude squeezed my hand. Damian went very still under my other hand.
Musette didn't like being laughed at, that was plain on her face. "You laugh, girl, why?"
Jean-Claude squeezed my hand tight enough that it was just this side of pain. "Sorry," I said, "but calling me a peasant isn't much of an insult."
"Why is it not?" she asked, and she looked genuinely puzzled.
"Because, you're right, as far back as anyone can trace my family tree I have nothing but soldiers and farmers. I am good peasant stock and proud of it."
"Why would you be proud of that?"
"Because everything we've gotten, we've made with our two hands, the sweat of our brows, that kind of thing. We've had to work for everything we have. No one has ever given us anything."
"I do not understand," she said.
"I don't know if I can explain it to you," I said. I was thinking it was like Asher trying to explain to me what you owed a liege lord. I had nothing in my life that prepared me to understand that sort of obligation. I didn't say that out loud though, because I didn't want to bring up the idea that I owed Belle Morte anything. Because I didn't feel I did.
"I am not stupid, Anita, I would understand if you would explain yourself clearly."
Asher moved from behind, to the other side of us, still as far as he could stay from Musette, but it was brave of him to draw attention to himself. "I attempted to explain to Anita earlier what one owes a liege lord, and she could not understand it. She is young and American, they have never had the... benefit of being ruled here."
She turned her head to one side, disturbingly like a bird just before it takes a bite out of a worm. "And what has her lack of understanding of civilized ways to do with anything?"
A human being would have licked their lips, Asher went still, quiet. (Hold still enough, and the fox won't know you're there.) "You, lovely Musette, have never lived where you were not subject to a lord, or lady, or where you did not rule others. You have never lived without knowing the duties one owes one's liege."
"Oui?" she made that one word cold, so cold, as if to say, go on, dig yourself a deeper hole to be buried in.
"You have never dreamt of the possibility that being a peasant, owing no one, would be a freeing experience."
She waved a carefully manicured hand, as if clearing the very thought from the air. "Absurd. 'Freeing experience,' what does that mean?"
"I believe," Jean-Claude said, "that the fact that you do not understand what that means is Asher's exact point."
She frowned at them both. "I do not understand, thus it cannot be that important." She dismissed it all with a wave of dainty hands. Then she turned her attention back to me, and it was frightening. I wasn't sure what it was about the mere gaze of those eyes, but it chilled the marrow in my bones.
"Have you seen our present to Jean-Claude and Asher?"
I must have looked as confused as I felt, because she turned and tried to motion behind her, but all I could see was her very large human servant. "Angelito, move so she may see." Angelito? Somehow the name, "little angel" didn't fit him. He moved, and she finished the motion towards the fireplace.
It was only the fireplace with it's painting above it, then something about the painting caught my eye. It was supposed to be a painting of Jean-Claude, Asher, and Julianna in clothing a la the Three Musketeers, but it wasn't. If there hadn't been new and strange vampires in the room, I'm sure I would have noticed it sooner. Oh, yes, I would have noticed it sooner.
It was a picture of Cupid and Psyche, that traditional scene where Cupid asleep is finally revealed to the candle-wielding Psyche. Valentine's Day has robbed Cupid of what he was in the beginning. He was not a chubby sexless baby with wings. He was a god, a god of love.
I knew who had posed for Cupid, because no one else had ever had that golden hair, that long, flawless body. I had memories of what Asher had looked like before, but I'd never seen it, not me, myself. I walked towards the painting like a flower pulled towards the sun. It was irresistible.
Asher lay on his side in the painting, one hand curled against his stomach, the other hand flung outward, limp with sleep. His skin glowed golden in the candlelight, only a few shades lighter than the foam of hair that framed his face and shoulders.
He was nude, but that word didn't do him justice. The candlelight made his skin glow warm from the broadening of his shoulders to the curve of his feet. His nipples were like dark halos against the swell of his chest, his stomach was flat to the grace of his belly button as if an angel had touched that flawless skin and left a delicate imprint, a line of hair dark gold, almost auburn, traced the edge of his stomach, and ran in a line down, down to curl around him, where he lay swollen, partially erect, caught forever between sleep and passion. The curve of his hip was the most perfect few inches of skin that I'd ever seen. That curve drew the eye down to the line of his thigh, the long sweep of his legs.
I remembered with Jean-Claude's memories what the curve of that hip had felt like under my fingertips. I remembered arguing about whose hip was the softest, the most perfect. Belle Morte had said that the lines of both their bodies were the closest to perfection she'd ever seen on a man. Jean-Claude had always believed that Asher was the more beautiful, and Asher had believed the same of Jean-Claude.
The artist had painted white wings on the sleeping figure, so detailed they looked as if they'd be soft if you could touch them. The wings were huge and reminded me of renaissance pictures of angels. They seemed out of place on that golden body.
Psyche was peering around the edge of one wing, so that it shielded her upper body, yet revealed a shoulder, the edge of her body, down to that first curve of hip, but most of her was lost behind Cupid's body. I frowned up at the picture. I knew that shoulder, the curve of the ribs under that white skin. Though traced with golden candlelight, I knew the line of that body. I'd expected Psyche to be Belle Morte, I'd been wrong.
I looked past the long black curls that didn't so much hide the figure as decorate it, and the face peering around the candle's edge was Jean-Claude's. It took me a second to be sure, because he seemed more delicately beautiful than normal, until I realized that he was wearing makeup-that centuries-old version of it, anyway. Things had been done to soften the line of his face, make his lips more pouting. But the eyes, the eyes were unchanged, with their black lace of lashes and that drowning deep color.
The painting was too large for me to stand next to the fireplace and see it all, but there was something about the eyes of the Cupid figure. I had to move close to see that they were open a mere slit, enough to show the cold blue fire that I'd seen when the hunger was upon Asher.
Jean-Claude touched my face, and it made me jump. Damian had moved back, giving us spac
e. Jean-Claude traced the tears on my cheeks. The look in his eyes said clearly that I was crying tears for both of us. He couldn't afford to appear weak in front of Musette. And I couldn't help it.
We both turned to Asher, but he was standing as far away as the room would allow. He had turned away, so that all you could see of his face was that golden fall of hair. His shoulders were slightly hunched, as if he'd been struck.
Musette came to stand on the other side of Jean-Claude. "Our mistress thought, since you are together again as of old, that you would enjoy this little reminder of days gone by."
The look I gave her around Jean-Claude's shoulder was not a friendly one. I saw the girl who was her pomme de sang on the other side of the couch. I hadn't even been aware she'd moved away from the fireplace. If the bad guys had wanted to take me out, they could have done it, because I had seen nothing for a few minutes but the painting.
"The painting is our guest gift to our host, but we have a more personal gift just for Asher."
Angelito moved up beside her like a dark mountain, a much smaller painting in his hands. There were remnants of the paper and twine that had covered it like a discarded skin on the floor. It was half the size of the other, but obviously in the same style, realistic, but in glowing colors, hyperrealistic, very Titian.
The only light in the painting was firelight, the glow of the forge. Asher's body was colored gold and crimson with the reflected firelight. He was nude again, the edge of the anvil hid his groin, but the right side of his body was bare to the light. Even his hair was tied back in a loose ponytail so that the right side of his face couldn't be hidden. His arms were still strong as they pretended to forge the blade that lay on the anvil, but the right side of his face, the right side of chest, his stomach, his thigh, were a melted ruin.
These were not the old white scars that I was used to seeing, these were raw, red, discolored, angry lines, like some monster had slashed and gouged at his body. I was suddenly overwhelmed with a memory that was not mine.
Asher lying on the floor of the torture room, freed of the silver chains, the men who had tormented him slaughtered around him, in an explosion of blood. He reached out to us, his face... his face...
I swooned, and Jean-Claude and I fell in a heap on the floor, because I was experiencing directly what he was remembering.
Damian and Jason moved up beside us, but Asher stayed well back. I didn't blame him in the least.
8
"Asher, come and see your gift," Musette called.
Damian was already on the ground beside me, his hands on my shoulders, fingers digging in. I think he was afraid of what I would do. He should have been.
Asher's voice came strained, but clear, "I have seen that particular gift before. I know it well."
"Do you wish us to return to Belle Morte and tell her you did not appreciate her gift?"
"You may tell Belle Morte, that I have gotten exactly what she wished me to get out of her gifts."
"And what is that?"
"I am reminded of what I was, and of what I am."
I got to my feet, Damian still with a death grip on my shoulders. Jean-Claude rose gracefully like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. I would never be that graceful, but tonight it didn't matter.
Musette turned back to Jean-Claude. "We have given our gift to you Jean-Claude, and to Asher. We await our guest gifts."
His voice was empty, so bland it was like listening to silence. "I have told you, Musette, our guest gifts are weeks away from completion."
"I'm sure you can find something to stand in their stead." She stared at me.
I found my voice, and it wasn't bland. "How dare you come here three months early, knowing we won't be prepared and make demands on us?" Damian was clinging to my back a little frantically, but I was polite, for me. After what she and Belle Morte had just done, I was downright kind. "Your rudeness will not be used as an excuse to force us to do anything we don't want to do."
Damian's arms slid over my shoulders so he was cradling me against his body. I didn't fight it, because without his presence I think I would probably have struck her, or shot her. Which sounded like such a good idea.
Jean-Claude tried to smooth things over, but Musette waved him aside. "Let your servant talk, if she has something to say."
I opened my mouth to call her a heartless bitch, but it wasn't what came out. "Did you believe that gifts worthy of such beauty could be hurried? Would you really take some poor substitute in the place of the magnificence we had commissioned?"
I stopped talking. All of our men were staring at me, except Damian, who was hugging me for all he was worth.
"Ventriloquism," Jason said, from the other side of Jean-Claude, "it's the only answer."
Jean-Claude nodded. "A miracle indeed." Then he turned to Musette. "All, save one, pales before your beauty, Musette. How could I offer anything less than something beautiful to grace your loveliness?"
Her gaze turned back to me. "Is she not a beauty to equal mine?"
I laughed. Damian's arms tightened enough that I had to pat his arm so I could keep breathing comfortably. "Don't worry, I've got this one covered." I don't think anyone believed me, but I did, honest. "Musette, I know I'm pretty, I can admit that, but compared to the otherworldly triplets here, I am not the most beautiful person on our side."
"Triplets," Jason said, "why do I think I'm not included in that threesome?"
"Sorry, Jason, but you're like me, we clean up nice, but with these three standing here we are out of our league."
"You include Asher in the three beauties?" Musette said.
I nodded. "If you are cataloging beautiful people and Asher is in the room, then he always makes the list."
"Once, oui, but not now, not for centuries," she said.
"I disagree," I said.
"You lie."
I looked at her. "You're a Master Vampire, can't you tell when someone's lying, or telling the truth? Can't you feel it in my words, smell it on my skin?" I watched her face, those beautiful but frightening eyes. She couldn't tell if I was lying, or not. I'd only met one other Master Vamp that couldn't tell truth from lie, and that was because she was lying so badly to herself that truth would have gotten in her way. Musette was blind to truth, which meant we could lie through our teeth to her. That had possibilities.
She frowned at me and waved it all away with those tiny well-manicured hands. "Enough of this." She was intelligent enough to realize she was losing part of this argument, but she wasn't bright enough to know why. So she was moving on to something she thought she could win.
"Even Asher with his ruined beauty is more lovely than you are, Anita."
It was my turn to frown at her. "I think I already said that."
She frowned again. It was like she had been sent with certain lines to say, and I wasn't making the replies she'd expected. I was throwing her performance off, and Musette didn't seem to enjoy improvisation.
"It doesn't bother you that you are not more beautiful than the men?"
"I had to make peace with being the homely one of the group a long time ago."
She frowned so hard it looked painful. "You are a very hard woman to insult."
I shrugged as much as I could with Damian's arms still wrapped around me. "Truth is truth, Musette. I've broken the cardinal girl rule."
"And that would be?"
"Never date anyone prettier than you are."
That made her laugh, a surprised burst of sound. "Non, non, the rule is never to admit it." The smile faded. "You truly have no... difficulty with me saying I am more lovely than you."
I shook my head. "Nope."
She looked completely lost for a moment, until her own human servant touched her shoulder. She shuddered, took a deep shaking breath, as if remembering who and what she was, and why she was there. The last sign of laughter faded from her eyes.
"You have admitted that your beauty cannot rival mine, thus taking blood from you would not be a gift wor
thy of replacing the bauble that Jean-Claude is having made for me. You are correct, also, about your wolf. He is charming, but not as charming as the three of them.
I suddenly had a bad feeling about where this was headed.
"Damian is somehow yours. I do not understand it, but I can feel it. He is yours the way Angelito is mine, and you are Jean-Claude's. As Master of the City, Jean-Claude cannot be drink for the taking, but Asher belongs to no one. Give him to me for my guest gift."
"He is my second in command, my témoin," Jean-Claude said, still in that empty, means-nothing voice, "I would not lightly share him."
"I have met some of your other vampires this night. Meng Die has an animal to call. She is more powerful than Asher, why is she not your second?"
"She is another's second and will be going back to him in a few months."
"Why is she here then?"
"I called her."
"Why?"
The real reason was that while I was off doing my soul-searching Jean-Claude had needed more backup. But I didn't think he'd share that. He didn't. "A master calls home his flock periodically, especially if he thinks they will soon become masters of their own territory. A last visit before he loses the power to call them."
"Belle was most perturbed that you rose to Master of the City without that one last visit, Jean-Claude. She woke speaking your name, saying that you had struck out on your own. None of us thought you would ever rise so high."
He gave a low, sweeping bow, and she was standing so close that his hair almost brushed her skirt. "It is not often that anyone so surprises Belle Morte. I am most honored."
Musette frowned. "You should be. She was most... unhappy."
He stood slowly. "Why would my rise to power make her unhappy?"
"Because to be Master of the City is to be beyond the ties of obligation."
Ties of obligation seemed to mean more to the vampires than it did to me, because I felt them go all quiet. Damian was so still around my body that it was like he wasn't there at all. Only the weight of his arms let me know he was still clinging to me. The beat and pulse of his body was gone, tucked away somewhere deep inside.
Cerulean Sins ab-11 Page 7
