"You have no idea, Nicky, not yet."

"Show me," he said, and he rolled back closer to me.

"Strip," I said.

"What?"

"When the ardeur raises, the clothes will come off. We can either take them off now, or we can rip them off each other and have nothing to wear afterward."

He frowned at me, looking skeptical, but he went to his knees again and lifted his shirt off in one motion. He looked better out of the shirt than in it.

I glanced away while I started getting out of my clothes. I did not want us to rip up another custom-made holster. I also wanted clothes after we finished. It was not the way I wanted to be naked in front of a man for the first time, but Jacob wouldn't wait all night. I needed to finish this before he came back and checked on us. I needed to finish this before he figured out that I was going to do more than feed off of his lion. Because I had decided that I was going to roll Nicky like any good vampire, except because I wasn't really a vampire, but something else, something more and less. I couldn't use my gaze to make him do what I needed, but I could use the ardeur to tie him to me. I could put him in the place that Haven had been trying to get to all these months. I could make him my lion to call.

It was supposed to be an honor, something done with deliberation and care, like a marriage, but I didn't have time for the niceties. It was going to be the metaphysical equivalent of a shotgun wedding. I wanted to ask Micah's and Nathaniel's opinion of it. I wanted Jean-Claude to talk to me first. I wanted my men, but in order to have them alive at the end of the night, I needed help now. That help was nude in the moonlight, and seeing him nude almost made me forget there was a plan. He was beautiful, all that muscle and eagerness painted in stark light and shadow, my moon and stars and darkness. I realized something I hadn't before, the process had already begun. It was about to the point where Haven had stayed. I wanted him, and touching him felt unbelievably good, but I'd kept the Rex out of that last bit of me. It was almost as if by holding the spot open so long I'd left a vacancy sign, and the first new dominant lions I met had both tried to fill it. Shit.

I held my hand out to him. He didn't need any more encouragement. He just came to me, wrapped his hand around mine, and let me lead. For tonight that was nearly perfect.

I opened the ardeur and realized that there was a thread of it attached to him already. I even felt another thread out in the night hanging on to Jacob. He was fighting it so hard. There was a small part of me that wanted to force him to come to us, but he didn't share. He would never be able to fit into our lives. He would always have to be king, and I had enough kings in my life. I needed men who were okay with being the power behind the throne, not the ass on it.

Nicky's mouth found my breasts, lifting me in his arms so he could suck them while still on his knees. He sucked and bit until I cried out. Then he let me slide down his body, and I felt him so hard, so eager, that even him brushing against me made me cry out again. He stood up, and it forced that soft, girl sound from me; half startlement and half the feel of his hardness pressed against my body. He sat down with the wall against his back, put his hands on my thighs, and tried to angle me onto him, but in the end I was too impatient for it and wrapped my hand around him. I squeezed just enough for him to make a sound for me, then I guided him between my legs, and he began to push his way inside. The ardeur made me wet and ready but only real foreplay made me open.

"So wet, so tight, God!" he said, and his hands let go of my legs and went to my waist, my hips, helping guide me where he wanted me. The sensation of him sliding inside me an inch at a time was the pleasure it always was; there was something about that first entry, that first hard push deep inside me that just did it for me. When he was as deep into me as he could go, so that I felt our bodies wedded as close as they could be, I shuddered around him, my fingers finding the rough of the wood wall that was at his back.

The shudder had thrown my head back. I had to recover enough to look at him. I put my hands on either side of his face at the same time that I began to move in his lap, with him inside me. His hips moved with me, his legs pushing into the ground to give him more movement, and we began to dance together up against the wall in the summer dark.

"Your eyes, they're glowing. Brown and black, like brown glass with light behind them."

There were other colors he could have said that would have scared me, too, because I'd been possessed by a vampire or two in my day, but he'd described my eyes with power in them. It had only happened a time or two, but it was my power and tonight I needed it. Tonight it didn't frighten me. He stared, mesmerized, into the dark diamonds of my eyes as his body went in and out of mine, and my hips rose and fell with his movements. His rhythm became more frantic, and I ground my hips into him, helped him fuck me as hard and deep as he could. It felt so good, so good, so good.

I breathed his name over and over, as that warm pleasure built deep in my body. "Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky." One last thrust and he spilled me over the edge, bowed my spine, and made me scream my orgasm to the sky. But my pleasure didn't let me feed; it was only as his body released inside mine that the ardeur fed. And then that was when I truly fucked him. I fucked him in every sense of the word. I fucked him until he brought me screaming again and his body shoved itself one last deep thrust, and the ardeur did what it did best, brought him again, made him mine as he cried out my name.

I felt his power, his beast, his essence, his everything offered up in that moment, and the darkest of thoughts came to me. That I could take all he had and leave him dead underneath me in one massive feeding. I fought the urge, because killing him wouldn't help me save the others. Then a thought, not so dark, came-that he could be ours. Ours not just for this moment but for as long as we wanted to keep him. The ardeur had accidentally bound men to me before, but I'd never done it on purpose, until now.

I'd meant to make him my lion to call, but in that moment the ardeur of the vampire in me understood there was another option, an option that would make him my slave. Animals to call had free will to a point, they had choices. I needed Nicky's choices gone. I needed his choices to truly be mine. I did to Nicky what I'd had vampires do to me when I was just beginning to hunt them. I did to him what I'd seen vampires do to police officers and other executioners. I chose my free will over his. I chose the lives of the men I loved over Nick's freedom. I chose my life over his, and I took him. I took his body, his mind, the heat of his beast, and all the power that gave him. I drank him down through the sweat of his body, the release of him inside me. I drank him down. But there in the dark there was his need. A need to belong, to be held, a need for gentler things than Jacob had ever allowed him. Belle Morte's line deals in sex, love, and power. I was still too new at it to guard myself from the one weakness. We could only control as much as we were willing to be controlled. Only love as much as we were willing to love. Satisfy lust only as much as we were willing to be satisfied. If I had been thinking better, I would have kept to the sex. I knew how to do that now, but I needed him to risk his life for me. I needed him to maybe kill his king, his friend. Men don't do that just for sex, but for love... for love people will do terrible things. I needed Nicky to be willing to do anything I asked, and for that I was willing to damn us both.

When it was done, we got dressed. Nicky said, "Jacob will kill me before he lets me go."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," I said.

"I can't love you," he said.

"Do you mean you aren't capable of loving me, or that you can't possibly love me yet?"

"The second one."

I held my hand out to him. "Take my hand, Nicky."

He put his hand out immediately and took mine. "I can't refuse you?"

"I don't think so," I said.

He frowned. "Why doesn't that scare me? It should scare me." He sounded afraid, but he kept my hand in his, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles like an idle gesture of long practice. I doubted he even knew he was doing it.

For my part, I didn't just feel healed, or full, but better. I felt energized, as if rolling Nicky so thoroughly had fed the ardeur more completely than simple sex. Was this what it felt like to truly embrace the power? Was it just better this way, or was there something about Nicky that made him yummier? Was this how Jean-Claude felt when he used his powers fully? I'd ask him when I got home, if I got home. There were still a lot of problems between me and surviving the night. One of those problems was striding toward us through the tombstones.

Jacob's energy rode before him like the promise of lightning on an edge of storm. "What the fuck did you do?"

"I fed like we agreed."

"I felt what you did and it was more than that." He had a gun out now, pointed very steadily at me.

"You said you knew what I was, Jacob," and I felt something when I said his name. I felt that thread that the ardeur had attached to him pull, as if I could call him by simply saying his name.

"Jacob, put the gun down."

He actually started to lower it, and then caught himself. "Do that again and I will shoot you. We'll eat the second half of the money before I let you roll us all."

"Then let me raise Bennington 's wife, so we can all go home."

"We don't have a home," Nicky said, "we have hotel rooms. Places we rent."

"We keep moving so we don't have a territory, Nicky, you know that."

"We're lions, Jacob, we need a territory. We need a place to be."

"You've witched him," Jacob said.

"You gave him to me for food, Jacob. What did you think would happen?"

"Not this," and he sounded pained, as if he took it as a personal failure that he hadn't understood. "This is how you have all the men. You feed on them and they're yours. I've seen male vampires do that. Brides they're called."

"You mean like the Brides of Dracula?" I said.

"Yes," he said, and the gun was still pointed at me.

"The Grooms of Anita just doesn't have a ring to it, Jacob."

"No, it doesn't, but Nicky is looking at you like you're his whole world. It's not just sex, is it?"

"No."

"I should shoot you for this."

"Jacob, you wanted me well enough to raise the dead. You wanted me to feed on Nicky. You wanted me to have enough power to do what Bennington wants. You wanted to earn the second half of your money, Jacob."

The gun began to tilt toward the ground again.

"I've done exactly what you wanted, Jacob."

"Lying bitch." And the gun came back up, but it wasn't steady now.

"You took his guns after he barely touched me. You and he nearly fought to the death over me, when I'd barely touched either of you. What did you think would happen if you gave him to me to fuck, Jacob? What did you think would happen to Nicky if you gave him to me?"

He rolled his lower lip under, and bit it, I think. "Fuck," he said.

"I don't mind, Jacob," Nicky said, "it's okay."

"No, she's right. She barely touches us and we fight. She didn't even kiss you and I didn't trust you with a gun anymore, then I let her fuck you over." He lowered the gun to point at the ground. "Raise the zombie, Anita; we'll sort out who's guilty of what later."

I threaded my way through the gravestones with Nicky still holding my hand. In a way it wasn't just him that had been rolled, because it felt very good to touch him. It had that familiar feel to it, his hand in mine, like an old lover that you'd just found again. It was a lie, but the ardeur could make lies seem like truth. It was part of the gift, or part of the curse, depending on how you wanted to look at it. If it got us all out alive, I'd call it a gift, at least until I had to take Nicky home with me, and then I was going to have some explaining to do. He followed me home, can I keep him? had never worked for puppies when I was a child, and it seemed totally inadequate for a whole human being.

The grave with the crowd around it was bathed in moonlight distant from the tall trees. Bennington 's pale face was turned toward us. Someone was sitting propped against the gravestone, and there was a body crumpled on the other side of the grave. I couldn't see many details, but I'd seen enough bodies by moonlight to know that much.

Ellen was walking toward the grave from farther out in the cemetery. Had she been checking on her circle of power? Did she need to be that close to it to check it? If she couldn't just think and know, then she really wasn't that powerful. Being a werelion should have made her a more powerful psychic, so either she was that insecure or she'd sucked before becoming one of them.

Nicky and I got close enough and the figure sitting by the grave turned and looked at us. I saw the dark hair and the angular face. Silas was too hurt to stand, so why wasn't he at a hospital?

I asked Jacob, who was just behind us. "Why isn't Silas at a hospital?"

"We can't explain the wound, and we don't want the police involved."

"That was a silver blade," I said.

"We figured that out," he said, and his voice was unhappy enough that I didn't have to know the nuances of it to hear the tone.

"You damn near gutted him, Anita," Nicky said.

"We'll get him to a doctor, but not until after the job is done." There was a thread of anger that I didn't quite understand.

"You're punishing Silas, why?"

Ellen answered as she came up on the other side of the grave. "He overdosed the hooker. He was only supposed to give her enough to make her compliant."

"What?" I asked.

"He was supposed to get the human sacrifice," Nicky said.

I stopped walking and turned to see Jacob. I'd forgotten about Silas's errand. How could I have forgotten? "So some poor working girl gets into Silas's car and never goes home again?"

"Would you rather we pick some random stranger off the street for it?" Jacob asked.

I let go of Nicky's hand and stared at them all. "What kind of people are you to have agreed to this?"

"She's a meth-addicted hooker. Dying quick and easy tonight is better than what she'll do to herself." Jacob said.

"Fuck that," I said, and was up in his face. "That was not your choice. You had no right."

"I am the Rex of this pride; I have every right."

I looked at him, and he met the look, and then dropped his gaze. "You didn't feel right about this one, and the more you learned the less you liked it."

"Get out of my head!"

"I'm not in your head, Jacob; I'm looking at your face. It must be a lot of money."

He glared at me. "It is."

"Enough money?" I said.

"Raise the zombie, and we'll find out."

" Bennington 's wrong, you know. I don't need a human sacrifice to raise his wife."

"He thinks you do."

"Jacob," someone said, and it was the first time I'd heard Silas's voice. It was deep to match the size of him. He was more than a head taller than either of the others. "Why are you talking to her?"

"I am Rex, not you. You don't get to question me, with your mistakes while you're dying on the ground and bleeding out your gut."

Silas struggled to his feet, using the gravestone to help him stand. Bennington backed away from him with a look of disgust. I wasn't sure if it was the bloody bandages on the front of him or something personal about Silas that he didn't like.

"She's rolled you both."

"She's rolled Nicky."

"No, she's rolled you both." Silas pushed himself away from the grave, one big hand tight to his stomach, just above his belt, as if he were holding something inside.

"How's the stomachache, Silas?" I asked.

Jacob gave me a look. "Don't help," he said.

Bennington said, "Oh, my God!" We all looked back and found Silas raising a gun. Ellen screamed, "Silas, no!"

He was pointing it at me as Nicky moved in front to shield me. "Put it down, Silas," Jacob said. "I won't ask twice."

"She has mind-fucked you both," Silas said. I couldn't see around Nicky's body, but he was looking behind us, and suddenly we were headed for the ground, him riding me down. Gunshots sounded, and I couldn't see who was shooting. I was trapped under Nicky's body, completely shielded from whatever was happening. The guns were thunderous in the silence. For a second I wasn't sure how many guns had gone off, and then I heard Jacob cursing. "What the fuck, Silas? What the fuck?"

Nicky rose up enough to look behind us, and then he was on his knees and offering me a hand. "Are you hurt?" he asked.

I shook my head, and we stood up together, turning toward the grave. Ellen was beside Silas, her face silvered by tears in the moonlight. Her hands were bloody as if she'd tried to stop the wound, but the look on her face said it was too late for that. Jacob knelt beside his fallen man. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

Nicky knelt on the other side of Silas. The three werelions huddled around their fallen man, only Bennington and me left standing, untouched by the tragedy of it all. Jacob pointed the gun at me. "He's alive, but he won't be for long."

Nicky stood up and started moving toward me.

"Don't do it, Nicky," he said.

"It's not her fault, Jacob," he said, and kept moving toward me.

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