13

A feeding takes longer in real life than it does in the movies. Either it's too quick or they do a fade like a 1950s sex scene. We all stood around the room and watched. The room was quiet enough that you could hear the vampires making small, wet noises as they fed.

Cherry knelt by the head of the bed. She checked Nathaniel's wrist pulse periodically. The rest of us had moved farther away. I ended up on the far side of the room, leaning my butt on the desk. I was working very hard at not looking at the bed. Everyone moved around the room, restless, embarrassed, I thought.

Jason came to stand beside me, leaning on the desk. "If I didn't know his life was at stake, I'd be jealous."

I looked at him, trying to tell if he was teasing. There was a look in his eyes, a heat, that said he was not. It made me look over at what was happening.

Damian had drawn Nathaniel's body into his arms, his lap, so that he cradled the smaller man almost the full length of his body. Parts of Damian's body were lost to sight behind Nathaniel's naked body. His arm cradled the smaller man's chest against the green silk shirt. The pus had soaked into the cloth in blackening streaks. Nathaniel's face was pressed by one pale hand into the vampire's shoulder. Damian had come from behind for the neck strike. You could see the top of his bloodred hair, his mouth locked over the wound. Even from where I stood, I could see Damian's jaws swallowing.

Asher was still kneeling on the floor, one of Nathaniel's pale legs flung outward so his foot hung in empty air. Asher's face was buried in the man's inner thigh, so close to the groin that Nathaniel's slack genitalia touched the side of his face. Asher moved his head slightly and a spill of golden hair flung over Nathaniel's groin. It didn't hide it so much as have him peeking out through it.

A blush flowed over my face so hard and fast I was almost dizzy. In turning away, I caught a glimpse of myself in the room's only mirror. My face was burning. My eyes looked wide and surprised. It was junior high all over again, stumbling on couples under the bleachers, hearing their laughter chase me into the night.

I stared at myself in the mirror and got a grip. I was not fourteen anymore. I was not a child. I was not a virgin. I could do this with a modicum of grace. Couldn't I?

Jamil had moved to the farthest corner of the room. He was sitting there, arms tucked around his knees, face set in harsh lines, angry. He wasn't enjoying the show, either.

Zane had moved back to lean against the wall, arms crossed. He was looking at the floor as if there was something very interesting on it.

Jason was still sitting against the desk, watching the show. I looked at him without turning around. "You do realize that you're the only one who seems to be enjoying the view."

He shrugged, grinning. "It's a nice view."

I raised my eyebrows. "Don't tell me you're gay."

"Don't tell me you care," he replied.

My eyebrows went up a little farther. "My heart is breaking. I'll have to burn all my lingerie." I kept watching his face. He was smiling but not like it was a joke.

"Are you saying all that teasing is just an act?" I asked.

"Oh, no, I like women. But, Anita, almost none of the vampires in Jean-Claude's inner circle are women. I've been acting as a pomme de sangfor two years. That's a lot of fangs sinking into your body."

"Is it really that close to sex?" I asked.

The humor left his face and he just looked at me. "You've really never been rolled completely by a vamp, have you? I mean I knew you had partial immunity even before the marks, but I thought someone somewhere would have gotten to you."

"Nope," I said.

"Sometimes I'm not sure, but it may be better than sex, and almost everyone who's been doing me has been a guy."

"So you're bisexual?"

"If what they're doing now counts as sex, yeah. If it doesn't then ... " he laughed, and the sound was so abrupt in the silence that I saw Zane and Jamil jump. "If this doesn't count as sex, let's just say that 'where no man has gone before' no longer applies."

Damned if I didn't want to ask who it had been. Maybe I would have asked, but Cherry spoke and the moment was gone. "His pulse is stronger. Losing this much blood, he should be getting weaker, but he's not."

Asher drew back from the wound. "We are not so much drinking blood as drawing out the corruption." He stood one hand under Nathaniel's thigh. He moved the leg back onto the bed, straightening his limbs as if he were a sleeping child. A moment before, it had been utterly sexual; now there was something in the way Asher acted that was tender, careful.

Damian pulled away from the wound. There was a spot on his lip, not red, but black. I wondered if it had tasted bad. He wiped the spot away with the back of his hand. If it had been pure blood he'd have licked it off. So it hadn't been pleasant.

He crawled out from under Nathaniel, laying him carefully on his back. He drew covers over Nathaniel as he moved off the bed.

Cherry had her first aid kit open. She recleaned the chest wounds with antibacterial antiseptic. The first few sterile cloths came away smeared with pus. We'd all moved next to the bed without realizing it. The smell was stronger here, unpleasant, but fading. When the skin and wounds were completely cleaned, the flesh was whole, and bright red blood welled into the slashes.

Cherry flashed the room a smile so warm and bright that you had to smile back. "He's going to be all right." She sounded surprised, and I wondered how close it had been.

Someone drew a hissing breath. I turned to the sound. Damian was backing up. He was staring at his hands. That pale, milky skin was turning dark, a blackness flowing under the skin. The flesh of his hands began to peel back while we watched.

14

"Shit," I said.

Damian held his hands out to me like a child that had burned its hand. I didn't know which was worse, the terror in his face or the almost resigned look in his eyes.

I shook my head. "No," I said, but my voice was soft. "No," I said it again, louder, stronger.

"You cannot stop it," Asher said.

Damian stared at the darkening flesh of his hands, soft horror on his face. "Help me," he said, and he looked to me.

I stared down at him and didn't have the faintest idea how to save him. "What can we do?" I said.

"I know you are accustomed to riding in on your white steed and saving the day, Anita, but some battles cannot be won," Asher said.

Damian had gone to his knees staring at his hands. He ripped his shirt off in pieces, leaving remnants of the sleeves on his arms. The rotting flesh was halfway to his elbows. A fingernail split and fell to the floor with a burst of something dark and noisome. The smell was back, sweet and sickly.

"I healed Damian once of a facial cut," I said.

Damian made a sound between a laugh and something more bitter. "I didn't nick myself shaving, Anita." He shifted his gaze from the peeling flesh of his hands to me. "Even you can't heal this."

I dropped to my knees in front of him, reaching out to touch his hands. Damian jerked away. "Don't touch me!"

I put my hands over his hands. The skin felt almost hot to the touch, as if the corruption were cooking him from the inside out. The skin was soft as if, if I pressed too hard the skin would give way like a rotted spot in an apple.

My throat was tight. "Damian, I'm ... sorry." Dear God, it was an inadequate word. A thousand years of "life" and he'd given it up for me. He would never have taken such a risk if I had not asked. It was my fault.

The look in his eyes was grateful, and pain-filled. He pulled his hands gently out from under mine. Careful not to press too hard against my hands. I think we were both afraid my fingers would sink through his skin and into the flesh inside.

His face twisted in pain, and a small sound escaped his lips. I remembered Nathaniel's cries of how it had hurt.

The ends of his fingers burst like overripe fruit, spilling something black and greenish onto the floor. It spattered my arm. The smell was growing in sickening waves.

I didn't swipe at the drops on my arm but I wanted to. I wanted to slap at them like a spider, shrieking. My voice held some of the strain I was trying to keep off my face. "I've got to at least try to heal you."

"How?" Asher asked. "How do, even you, begin to heal this?"

Damian made a low whimpering sound. His body shuddered, face ducking, neck twisting, and finally he screamed. Wordless, hopeless.

"How?" Asher asked again.

"I don't know," and I was screaming, too.

"Only his original master, the one who saved him from the grave, would have any chance of healing him."

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 least 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 sangof 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.

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