14

I woke to early morning sunlight. It left me blinking, and only after I could see through the warm dazzle of it, did I wonder, where am I? and why am I on the floor? Why was I naked on the floor? Without turning my head, I saw the chair legs and the little raised area that was my breakfast nook. Okay, I was in the floor of my own kitchen, naked. Why?

I heard the soft sounds of movement before I felt a hand brush mine. It seemed to take a lot of effort to look to my right, down my body, and see Nathaniel lying on the floor, more nude than I was. I still had the remnants of my tuxedo clinging to my legs. The tuxedo made me remember the wedding. I remembered talking to Micah after we got home. I remembered Micah had had to go out and save one of Richard's wolves. I remembered the ardeur rising and that something had gone wrong. I remembered that Damian had been there. He must have woken before we did and dragged himself down to his coffin. Trust the undead to recover quickest.

Someone groaned, and it wasn't Nathaniel, and it wasn't me.

I suddenly found I could turn my head, a lot quicker than I had before. Adrenaline will do that to you.

Damian lay on the floor, his upper body bathed in golden morning light, as if his white skin had been dipped in honey. Part of my mind registered the beauty of him, lying there in a pool of bloodred hair and golden light, but most of me was terrified. I was on my knees and grabbing for his leg before my body could argue. Nathaniel was beside me, and we jerked Damian out of the sunlight.

He was awake now; awake and screaming. He was out of the direct sunlight, but the kitchen faced east and north, and the room was bright with early morning light. Damian had backed into the cabinets, pressing his body into them as if he thought he could melt into them, and hide in the dark. I tried to take his arm, to get him to his feet, to get him out of the light, but he fought me. His hands were beating at his skin like someone covered in spiders, trying to bat away their darkest fears, when those fears are crawling on their body. But sunlight isn't spiders, and you can't brush it off of you.

I grabbed a flailing wrist and held on. I yelled above the screaming, "Nathaniel, help me!"

Nathaniel fought for a grip on the other arm, and we pulled the vampire out of the light and into the curtained dimness of the living room. He didn't stop screaming. Even when we put him up against the wall, in the cool near-dark, he still shrieked. The moment we let go of his hands, he started beating at his skin again, as if he were putting out invisible fire.

But it shouldn't have been invisible flame. I'd seen a vampire burn in sunlight, and they flash burned, hot white flames, like magnesium. There was nothing invisible about it. They burned, and if they didn't get out of the light, they melted, even bone. It takes a hot fire to melt bone, but vamps in sunlight burn good.

Nathaniel was kneeling, trying to comfort Damian, to hold him, to just get him to stop swatting at things we couldn't see. I stared down at Damian and tried to think past the fear that was choking me. I was choking on Damian's terror. I couldn't think past it. I could barely breathe past it. I threw up shields, put metal in my mind against his fear, and tried to think. I looked down at Damian's white skin, and there was not a blister, not even a red spot. He wasn't burned. He wasn't burning. I didn't know why not. He should have burst into flames the moment the sunlight touched him, but he hadn't, and if he hadn't burned with the sunlight drowning him, then he wasn't going to burn here, in the dark.

I could hear the phone ringing in the other room, but it was dim over the sound of Damian's screams. For once I let it ring. If it was the police, they'd call back. If it was a friend, they'd call back. If it was another emergency, it could wait. One disaster at a time.

I knelt in front of him and tried to talk over the awful screaming. "Damian, Damian, you're safe. You're okay. You're not burning." I put my hands on either side of his face and screamed back at him, "Safe, you're safe!"

His eyes stayed wide, the pupils like pinpoints. He wasn't hearing anything. It was like shock, but worse. If it had been an old movie, I'd have slapped him, but I wasn't sure that would help. What do you do with a hysterical vampire? What do you do with a hysterical anybody?

The front door burst open behind us. My eyes were dazzled by the sunlight that spilled over us. Gregory, one of my leopards, stepped out of that blaze of light. I don't know what I would have said, because Damian let out a sound that was beyond a scream. It was a sound that should never have come from a human throat. He was up and moving like a white and red blur, darting farther into the house, out of the warm blaze of light.

Nathaniel followed him in that faster-than-the-eye-can-see speed that shapeshifters have, and they'd both turned the corner before I got to it. I expected to see the basement door open, but it wasn't. Movement up the stairs caught my eye, and I saw Nathaniel clear the last step and vanish down the hall. In his panic, Damian had run up, not down, up into the part of the house where the vampires rarely went. Up into the part of the house where the drapes were open and the morning light streamed in. Shit.

15

I was nearly to the top of the stairs when I heard Gregory behind me. He called up after me, "What's going on?"

I didn't know how to answer the question, so I ignored it. The upper hallway was a blaze of light, the big window at the end open to the risen sun. The hallway was empty. I thought, where are they? and I knew. I could feel them, both of them in the smallest room to the left, our guest room. I had made one step toward the doorway when Damian came running out as if all the demons of hell were chasing him. He ran screaming into the room across the hall, which was the bathroom. Unfortunately, it had a window, too. All the rooms up here had windows. If we could get him into a closet, maybe.

He came running out of the bathroom and fell, and scrambled on all fours like an animal toward the next open door. He vanished inside, only his piteous screaming coming back out to tell us he'd found another open window, another wash of sunlight.

"Was that Damian?" Gregory asked.

I nodded.

Nathaniel came to the first door Damian had run out of, blood ran down his shoulder, and he was cradling his arm. He looked at me, and his eyes held all the sorrow in the world. "He's gone crazy again."

The last time Damian had gone mad, he'd killed several people, butchered them, not just fed. But that had been because I was his master, and I'd left town. I hadn't known I was his master then. I hadn't known that leaving him alone without the touch of my magic, or whatever you want to call it, would make him a revenant, a mindless killing thing.

If it had been my fault before, somehow it was my fault again. I was his master now more than ever; I had to be able to fix this.

"Gregory, close the drapes. Start with the ones at the end of the hall." His blue eyes were wide, and his face held a dozen questions, but Gregory could follow orders when he wanted to, or you made him. He didn't argue, just started down toward the end of the hallway.

I went for the room that Damian had gone into, but I never made it, because he came tearing back out of it and nearly ran me down. I grabbed him, but my touch didn't calm him, and his didn't calm me, not today. He slammed me into the wall, and if I'd let go of his arm, he'd have run again, but I didn't let go. I hung on and got slammed into the wall on the other side of the hallway. Shit.

I yelled, "Damian, stop it!" But either he couldn't hear me, or I'd lost the power to make him obey me. Either way, it wasn't good. When he tried to slam me into the wall again, I braced my legs and used his own momentum, turning him into the wall, so that his own strength drove him into it so hard, the plaster gave under the impact.

He came off the wall snarling, fangs bared, his face thinning down, his humanity folding away, until what pinned me to the floor wasn't Damian. The only thing that saved me from having my throat torn out was that little extra bit of speed I'd gained from all the metaphysical shit. It gave me the time to throw one hand across his throat and one hand into his chest. I held him off of me by an arm's length, my fingers curled around his throat. Normally, I'd have thrown an arm into his throat and not trusted that I could get a hand there in time, but the last two times I tried that maneuver with a vampire, they'd torn up my arm. So I set my fingers in his throat and my palm against his chest, and tried to hold him off me.

His teeth snapped and snarled at me, like a dog on the end of its chain. Saliva splattered my face, trailed from his mouth as if he were a rabid animal. He struggled mindlessly to reach me, to sink those teeth into my flesh. If he'd been thinking like a person he'd have used his hands, his arms to overwhelm me, but he wasn't thinking like a person. So he fought my hands, pressing his body against the force of my hands, as if that were all that mattered. He pressed the strength of his madness against the push of my hands, and he began to press my arm inward. I don't know if he'd been sane whether my new metaphysics would have helped more, but he wasn't sane, and crazy anything is stronger than sane. It was like trying to bench-press pure muscle, a snarling, breathing force of nature. My arms began to bend, and I knew that if he got close enough, he'd tear me apart. His eyes had bled to green, and there was nothing in them but a mindless ferocity.

I had no weapons on me. I might have been able to tear his throat out. I didn't know if I was that strong now, or not. But he wasn't a master vamp, and I didn't know for certain that he'd heal if I pulled his throat apart. If he'd just been a bad guy, I'd have torn into him and done my best to take him out before he took me out, but Damian wasn't a bad guy, and whatever was wrong was somehow my fault. I couldn't kill him, because I wasn't master enough to handle him.

He pressed himself into me, and I put everything I had into keeping him away from my face and throat. My arms started to shake with the effort, and my elbows were bending. His face filled my vision, and his saliva dripped on my face. I did the only thing I could think of, I yelled for help.

Gregory was there, his hands on Damian's arm and shoulder, trying to use supernatural strength against supernatural strength. He slowed Damian's push toward my face, but only slowed it. Damian was like a human on angel dust, stronger even than he'd been, because there was no one home to help him regulate his force. He was all about that force, and his goal in life seemed to be my face.

Nathaniel grabbed Damian's other shoulder. Blood was still dripping down his arm, but it had slowed. Which meant Damian had found a way to injure him that didn't include teeth or nails, those wouldn't have started healing, yet. I think with the two of them pulling and me pushing, we might have made it, but Nathaniel's bloody arm was next to Damian's face. He was enraged, but all vampires, even revenants, react to fresh blood.

His neck turned in my hand, and I'd been so intent on pushing him away, that it surprised me. He would have sunk fangs into Nathaniel's arm, except Gregory was a fraction too quick, and a fraction too slow. He managed to get his arm halfway around Damian's neck, which put his wrist almost in the vampire's mouth. Damian did what any animal would do, he bit him.

Gregory screamed and tried to pull away. It worked, and it didn't. He pulled away from us, but the vampire went with him. They moved so fast, that Nathaniel fell against me, smearing blood down my skin. He was on his feet and moving toward the sounds of fighting farther down the hallway, before I'd gotten to my knees.

Damian had Gregory pinned on the floor, worrying at his arm like a dog with a bone. Even over Gregory's screams I heard the bone crack. Nathaniel was there, wrapping his arms around Damian's waist. He lifted him into the air, but the teeth stayed in Gregory's broken arm, so that Gregory was pulled to his knees by the pain and the fangs locked into his arm.

I was almost to them, when Damian remembered he could fly. He pushed off from the floor and smashed Nathaniel against the ceiling hard enough that plaster dust rained down on them, and when Damian touched ground he rolled out of Nathaniel's loosened grip. Damian had been a warrior once, and though Nathaniel and Gregory had the strength, they didn't know how to fight. Strength without training was no match.

I was suddenly the only one standing in the hallway, except for Damian. He came for me in a blur of movement. I got one foot planted and had a heartbeat to see him, think what I'd do, and do it. Years of practice in judo, and my body remembered, before my mind had caught up. I used his own momentum against him, one arm and his hip as the pivot points, and I threw him, as far and as hard as his own motion would let me.

He ended at the top of the stairs, crouched, and turned toward me, before I had time to marvel at how far I'd thrown him. Let's hear it for not being human anymore.

But a figure rose above him, coming up the stairs. It was Richard Zeeman, local Ulfric, Wolf-King, ex-fianc¨¦, and in the wrong place at the worst time. I had a few seconds to see that his hair had grown out just enough to give some curl to his woefully short locks, that the white T-shirt made his fading tan summer-dark with contrast, that he was still one of the most handsome men I'd ever seen. Then the vampire turned, noticed him, and launched himself at Richard. He balanced them both for a second, then the other man's weight took them both, and Richard fell backward down the stairs, with the vampire riding him. They vanished from sight, and over the sound of their bodies falling down the stairs, I heard a woman start to scream.

16

I went to the stairs, expecting to see them struggling on the steps, but the stairs stretched empty. I ran down the stairs toward the sound of fighting. Richard had taken the fight out into the living room, so he had room to use his long legs and arms.

He kicked Damian in the face hard enough that the vampire staggered backward. I got a profile glimpse of Damian's face; blood ran from his mouth and the right side of his face. Richard took the extra seconds that the vampire gave him to do a beautiful roundhouse kick to the other side of Damian's face. This one was hard enough that blood flew in a thin arc. Damian staggered, and I think would have gone down, but he bumped into the wall. He hesitated long enough for Richard to get set up for another kick. Back foot set, front foot, set but loose, body partially turned to give that pivoting strength, the way when you land a fist you turn the fist into the skin for that extra little bit of harm.

Looking at Richard with all his attention on the vampire, his body tensed and ready, hands held in loose fists, even though he was setting up for a kick, I was reminded that here was someone with preternatural strength that did know how to fight. There was blood on his left hand, and I couldn't tell if it was Damian's blood or his own.

A small sound jerked my attention to the far side of the living room. A woman I didn't know was standing near the television set. She was pale, dark-haired, and scared. I didn't have time to notice more. I was standing too close to the fighting to sightsee.

If Damian had just been a big bad vamp in my house, I'd have gotten my gun and finished him, but he wasn't a villain. It was Damian, and somehow it was all my fault. I couldn't get a gun and just shoot him. For one of the few times in my life I was frozen, overwhelmed by my choices, or the lack of them.

Damian had been against the wall for so long--fifteen, thirty seconds--that I thought the fight might be over, that Richard might have actually kicked some sense into him; I was wrong. The vampire came off the wall in a white and red blur. Richard met the charge with a kick to Damian's chest. It wasn't a pretty kick, not like the roundhouse, but the sound of its impact was thick and meaty. If he'd been human it would have dropped him, but he wasn't human, and it didn't.

He staggered backward, and I could have almost reached out a hand and touched his back. Damian went very still, like the old vamps can, as if he were some beautiful statue. Then I knew, knew that he was about to move and not toward Richard.

I had an extra few seconds to react, when he turned in a whirl of white skin and red hair, turned so fast that the colors blurred so he looked like a whirlwind of snow and blood.

I threw myself to one side, rolling over the back of the couch. I ended up on the other side of it, on the area rug. I had a heartbeat to stand, and Damian was on me.

I braced for it, but it was like trying to brace for a freight train. There was no stopping it, or fighting it. I was just suddenly falling backward with Damian on top of me. I didn't fight the fall, I used it. When my body met the floor I had one foot in Damian's stomach and two hands on his arms. A tome nage throw is the only throw in judo where you commit your whole body to it. Most throws have variations you can do at the last minute if they don't work, but the tome nage either works or it doesn't. You fail, and your opponent is on top of you in a perfect position to pin you. But I hadn't chosen the throw, it had been the only move Damian's attack left me. I had seconds to do it right or have him eat my face. So when I kicked up with my feet, I gave it all I had. I'd forgotten that all I had was more than it used to be.

Damian flew through the air again, but it wasn't his supernatural powers this time. I rolled over in time to see Damian hit the wall yards away. He hit hard enough to crack the paint and leave a partial imprint of his body on the wall, when he slid to the floor.

I heard someone behind me say, "wow," and it wasn't Richard, because he was nearly up beside me, rounding the couch. I didn't have time to glance behind me to see if it was Nathaniel or Gregory, because two bad things were happening at once.

The first bad thing was that Damian was getting slowly to his feet. Slowly enough that I think I'd hurt him, but he was still getting up, still not unconscious. The second bad thing was the woman had started screaming again, and thanks to me throwing Damian across the room, she was the closest person to him. She'd backed up when he sailed through the air, otherwise she'd have been almost where he landed, but when he turned around, she'd be a yard away. Not good.

Richard made a move toward her, but she was already backing up, and not toward us. She was backing up toward the open front door. There was something about the way she was moving that made both Richard and I say something. Richard had time to say, "Clair, don't..." I had time to say, "Don't run." But it was too late. She ran, just as Damian turned to see her. It was like putting a cat into a room full of mice; they'll chase the running one first.

Richard was moving, but even with his speed there wasn't time to get ahead of Damian and block the door. All Richard had time for was to rush Damian, to crash into him and take them both to the floor.

He had the vampire down but not pinned. Richard screamed. His shoulders blocked my view, and I had to move around to their heads to see Damian's mouth buried into Richard's upper chest.

I knelt to help pry Damian's mouth from his flesh, but Richard made the preternatural rookie mistake. He grabbed Damian by the hair and pulled him off of him. Vampire bites are like snake bites; if the snake has a good grip, you don't just yank it off. Yanking it off causes more damage than letting the snake let go on its own, or prying it loose. I guess the exception would be a venomous snake, if you go on the assumption that the longer it bites you the more poison it pumps in, which may or may not be true, but vampires aren't venomous. It was an impressive show of strength, tearing the vampire's mouth away from his flesh, but impressive shows of strength have their price. Richard's shirt ripped away from that entire side of his body, and a great, bloody hole showed in his upper chest, almost to the shoulder. His hand, which had been pushing against Damian's shoulder, suddenly went limp, and all that kept Damian from sinking teeth into Richard again was Richard's grip on his long red hair.

I put a hand on Damian's shoulder and pressed, and unlike every other time I'd tried to hold down a rampaging vampire, this time it worked, at least a little. Let's hear it for preternatural strength.

A gobbet of flesh fell out of Damian's mouth as he tried to turn and sink fangs into me. Richard yanked on his hair and kept those straining fangs from me. He tried to use his left arm again, and it moved, but he couldn't push with it. Something important had gotten torn up. Super strong or not, he was suddenly fighting with only one arm.

Between the two of us we could keep Damian from sitting up completely, but we couldn't keep him pressed to the floor. He kept straining upward, teeth slashing the air, sounds coming from his throat that were more animal than human. We weren't losing the fight, but we weren't winning either. We needed a different plan of attack.

I moved off of his shoulders enough that he raised up more, and Richard's eyes were wide. "I can't hold him one-handed, not alone."

"I'm going to put an arm around his neck to control his head," I said, "but I need him higher off the ground."

"A choke hold won't work on a vampire. They don't breathe."

That was half true, but I let it go. We could argue later. "I'm just trying to control his head, that's it."

He gave a small nod. He didn't look convinced, but he didn't argue about it, and that was good enough. I slid in behind Damian, and he was so busy straining after Richard, that he didn't seem to notice. I knelt behind the vampire, and for the first time was very aware that I was nude. The fight had sort of made it unimportant. What made it important now, was that Richard's hand was still in Damian's hair, and his hand had to stay there until I had my arm wrapped around the vampire's neck. I needed to have one arm wrapped around Damian's neck and the other arm holding my wrist, and I needed to be squeezing like a son of a bitch, while my face was buried against the back of his head, so he, theoretically, couldn't reach me. Only Richard's grip and the vampire's desire to bite him would keep him from tearing into me during the process. So Richard had to keep his hand there, but now, suddenly, my bare breasts were going to be pressed into the back of his hand and arm. The fact that that bit of knowledge froze me for a second tells you how badly I behaved around Richard, or how screwed up about him I was. A life and death struggle and I was worried about pressing my breasts against his hand. Focus, Anita, focus. Survive first, be embarrassed later.

"Hurry," Richard said, and there was strain in that one word. Super strong doesn't mean you don't get tired.

I took a deep breath, let it out, and moved into both Damian's body and Richard's hand. I had to move fast and firm, no hesitations, because Richard's grip wasn't perfect control. If Damian noticed me before my arm was under his chin, I wasn't sure there was anything Richard could do to save me some damage. My hand touched Damian's blood-slick skin, and I had to follow through. I had to ignore the almost electric reaction I had when my bare breasts brushed the back of Richard's hand. One small touch and my skin ran with goosebumps. But it was more than just physical attraction. It was as if the world held its breath. Even Damian went still for that frozen moment. I felt Jean-Claude wake. Felt his eyes open, knew he woke in a welter of silk sheets in the sunless dark of the underground in Circus of the Damned. He turned in that nest of silk and darkness and touched Asher's body, found it still cold, still hours from waking.

Jean-Claude's voice echoed through my head. "What have you done, ma petite?"

I don't know what I would have answered, because in that moment the world came back into focus. I could still feel Jean-Claude all those miles away, but I was back to the here and now.

Damian helped me concentrate on the here and now. He twisted in Richard's desperate grip and lunged at me, mouth wide, fangs straining like a striking snake. I suddenly had my own grip on his hair and helped Richard hold him away from my skin by fractions of an inch. I snugged my right arm under his chin, tight against the front of his neck. And he reacted like the only danger was the arm sliding in from his right, so that he never tried to turn in against mine and Richard's grip on the other side. There was no human thought to him in that moment. No human. No vampire. I wasn't even sure animal was the word. I had no word for what Damian had become. In a different century it would have been demon, possessed, damned.

Jean-Claude's voice in my head again, "He will be damned if you cannot bring him back."

I had to shake my head, like his voice was an insect buzzing inside my skull. It distracted me. I thought very hard, stop talking. I don't know if he heard me or figured out on his own that he was distracting me, but he stopped.

I let go of Damian's hair and used my arms to close around his neck in what would have been a choke hold, if he'd needed to breathe. Vampires do breathe, but they don't have to. My arm slid into place more easily because of all the blood, but the blood also made it harder to hold him still, harder to maintain my grip. I put my head down, tight against the side of his head, using all my upper body to simply control his head.

Richard let go of Damian's hair, and the vampire sprang up off the floor. I tightened my grip around his neck, but was along for the ride. I could control his head from moving side to side, but I couldn't choke him, and I didn't weigh enough to slow him down.

Damian was on top of Richard, pinning the bigger man to the floor. Richard had his good arm pushing out against Damian's chest. I got my feet under me on either side of them. It was awkward, because I just wasn't tall enough to do it comfortably, but I began to fight to pull Damian's neck backward. I could feel that I could snap his neck. I was almost sure I could, but I could not simply fight him backward. I knew if you decapitated most vamps, they died. I'd never had the strength before to snap a neck this easily, so I'd never tried. If I snapped his spine would he die? Would he be crippled? Would spinal damage cripple a vampire?

Richard's arm was beginning to shake and collapse at the elbow. I pulled backward, and felt Damian's windpipe begin to give. I was going to crush his neck before I broke his spine. I looked past us and found Nathaniel bent over Gregory at the foot of the stairs. Gregory wasn't moving, but one problem at a time. I screamed, "Nathaniel!"

He turned, and there was blood all over the front of his body. I didn't think most of it was his. His face looked surprised as if he had lost track of our fight, but he came to me. He grabbed Damian's arm, and it was as if he'd given the vampire another target. Damian leapt off of Richard and was suddenly on top of Nathaniel. I was beginning to feel positively useless. If I couldn't choke him, wasn't heavy enough to slow him down, wasn't willing to break his neck, I was useless. I used what weight I had to stagger him, throw him off balance so that Nathaniel had time to get his arms up and a leg into Damian's stomach. If Nathaniel had known how to fight, he'd have been able to do more, but at the moment just keeping the vampire from biting him was good.

Jean-Claude's voice, soft, in my head, "You have done something to damage the bond between yourself and Damian. You must reopen it, ma petite."

"A little busy right now," I said.

Richard wrapped his one arm around Damian's waist and helped me pull him off of Nathaniel. The three of us rode him down to the floor. I changed my grip on his neck to a choke hold that wouldn't have worked at all, if Nathaniel hadn't been pressing on his shoulder and chest and Richard sitting on the rest of him. My body was curled around his neck, using my own weight as an anchor to make it harder for him to rise and strike. But I'd tried this hold on large human males in judo class before, and it wasn't effective, not if they had the upper body strength to sit up with me dangling from their neck. I did it now, only to control his head, his mouth, those fangs, and because I had Richard and Nathaniel to help me.

He fought us, but three on one, we had some control. Not much, but some. My voice came breathy, but clear, "What do you mean I've damaged the bond between Damian and me?"

"Who are you talking to?" Nathaniel asked, through gritted teeth.

"Jean-Claude," Richard answered for me.

"Can you hear him, too?" I asked.

"Sometimes."

I wanted to ask, "like now?" but Jean-Claude was answering me. "You have put up shields specifically against Damian, why?"

"He woke up in a flood of sunlight. It seemed to terrify him. He was so afraid. The fear was choking Nathaniel and me."

"Both you and Nathaniel?" Jean-Claude asked. I could see him lying on the white silk sheets, his black hair spread out like a dark dream across the pillow. One hand idly touching Asher's bare back, the way you'd drum your fingers on a desk or pet a dog, if you were thinking about other things.

"Yes, both of us."

"I asked you when I woke, what had you done. Now, I may know."

For once I was at least up to speed on the metaphysical disasters in my life. I got to say, "We know already."

"Know what, ma petite?"

Damian gave a particularly violent movement, bucking me up off the floor, slamming me back down only after I felt, rather than saw the other two men, force him back down. I thought it, because I didn't have breath to speak at the moment, That we're a triumvirate.

"I heard that," Richard said, and there was a sullen note under his breathless exertion as if he'd thought I'd only thought it to keep it from him, or maybe I was just projecting. I was always willing to believe that Richard was being difficult. As he was always willing to believe I was being bloodthirsty.

Jean-Claude didn't ask stupid questions or try to discuss metaphysics. If we all knew that somehow I'd managed to forge a second triumvirate, then we could move on. "When you shielded from Damian's fear, you shielded too well. You have cut him off from your power, as you did by leaving once."

"I'm right here," I said, trying to turn my face away from the blood that had decided to trickle down Damian's face and onto mine.

"There physically, but not metaphysically, and your servant needs both."

"How do I fix this?" I asked.

"Drop your shields," he said, and even in my head, his voice was matter-of-fact.

It sounded so simple, so obvious. I remembered shielding from Damian's fear. I had thought of metal, hard, cold, solid, unpenetrable. Not a metal wall, or door, but truly just the essence of metal. It had taken me months of work to understand how to shield not with an imaginary door or wall or building, but just to think, rock, water, metal. Block the things you don't want to get through, or drown them. Marianne could also shield with air and fire, but I didn't get that. Air just wasn't strong enough for shielding, and fire, well, fire's fire. I used the tools I understood.

How do you unshield? Once I'd had to picture the wall crumbling, or the door opening, but very lately, I'd understood something that Marianne had been saying, but I hadn't been understanding. I simply stopped thinking about metal. I stopped. It went away. Poof, gone. One second I was safe behind my thought of metal, the next I was drowning in Damian's rage. No, not rage, rage implies anger, human emotion, and that wasn't what roared through my head. I'd thought more than once that I was going crazy in a detached sort of sociopathic way, but I'd been wrong. That hadn't been being crazy--this was.

I forgot about holding Damian down. I forgot about why I'd dropped my shields. I forgot about everything. There were no thoughts. No words. There was just sensation, and impulse. The smell of fresh blood. The taste of our own blood in our mouths, bitter. Hands pushing us to the floor, crushing us. Hunger, hunger like fire in our gut, like something that would eat us alive if we didn't feed, and feed, and feed. The smell of fresh blood, the warmth in their hands pushing on us, all that was maddening. Pain, my body was just pain. Like a fire that was burning me up from the inside. I screamed, and the sound was loud and not loud enough. It didn't help. Only one thing would quench that fire, fill me up, stop the pain. Blood. Fresh blood. Warm blood.

My hands touched warm skin, and if it hadn't been Richard, I'm not sure I would have stopped. But the feel of Richard's muscled arm under my hands called something of me up through the hunger. I was staring into Richard's solid brown eyes from inches away, almost as if I'd moved in for a kiss, but it hadn't been his mouth I'd been aiming at. Even now, the long solid line of his neck beckoned to me. The smell of fresh blood overwhelmed the subtler scent of the blood that pulsed under his skin, but somehow lapping at the bloody wound wasn't enough. It needed to be fresh. I needed my teeth in flesh. I needed to make my own hole to tear at. Only that would satisfy. Only that would be enough.

I forced my gaze up to Richard's face. I looked into his wide eyes, made myself look at his face, trace the line of his jaw, the fullness of his lips. I looked on the face of someone I'd loved once, and I had to work harder than I'd worked at almost anything ever, to see him as something other than food.

Damian bucked, and Richard had to pay more attention to the vampire he and Nathaniel were still pinning to the floor than to me. A cool voice flowed through my mind. "I am helping you shield, ma petite. Forgive me, I did not understand what dropping your shield would do to you."

"He's a revenant," I said, and I don't think I said it out loud.

"Oui."

"How do I help him?"

"You must rebind him as you did when he came out of the coffin. Let him taste your blood and say the words over him."

"Are the words really important?" I asked.

I felt him shrug, where he sat on his silk-covered bed. "They are the words that masters of the city have spoken over their followers for thousands of years. I would not want to chance that the words are not part of the magic that will bind master to servant, by leaving them out."

I nodded. "Did Richard hear this?"

"Non."

"Tell him." A moment after I said it, I was still cool and a little distant from what was happening, but I could hear it again, see it. I was sitting on my living room floor, not too far from the door, and Richard and Nathaniel were still trying to keep Damian on the floor. They were mostly succeeding, though it was hard to tell through the blood if there were any new wounds. They were all three covered in blood.

I stared down at myself and realized that the front of my body was covered in it, too. I didn't remember getting that messy. For a moment I wondered if I'd done something that I didn't remember, but I pushed the thought away. Time later for too much truth. Survive, keep moving, worry about what you did later. Yeah, that's the ticket. But after a peek inside Damian's mind, a ticket to the Situational sociopath express didn't look half bad. I knew now, for dead certain, that there were worse things.

17

Damian bucked so hard that he threw Nathaniel to one side. Richard's weight alone wasn't enough. Damian sat up, and Richard rolled off of him to keep the vampire from sinking fangs into him again.

I waved my arms and yelled, "Damian, here, I'm here!" I don't think it was his name that attracted his attention, I think it was the movement. I'd been in his mind, I knew he was past words.

He rushed toward me, so fast he was a blur of white and red, and his eyes like green streaks. Nathaniel ran for him. I yelled, "No, let him come!"

Richard hesitated still on the floor but with his hand outstretched toward the vampire's legs. They could have caught him again, but why? It was my blood he needed. I was calm, peaceful, it was like that quiet place I went when I killed. No fear. Nothing. I watched the vampire come at me like a comet streaking across the heavens, something elemental and otherworldly.

To say he smashed into me didn't come close to the impact of flesh on flesh. I was on the floor breathless, sightless, and only years of training on how to fall kept me from smacking my head against the floor, or breaking a bone. I caught my breath in time to scream. Damian plunged his mouth low in my neck, just above the shoulder. It had been a long time since I'd been vampire bit without head games or sex. It hurt.

A wereleopard appeared over us, standing on crooked, almost-human legs. He was yellow and pale gold and white, with beautiful black rosettes scattered over a body that was more than a foot taller than he was in human form. The color told me it was Gregory, because Nathaniel was black in leopard form. Gregory's chest was broader, his arms were longer, muscled, and tipped with talons like frightening knives. The face was leopard, but with something strangely different around the muzzle and the neck. He towered over us, snarling and reaching down for the vampire's pale back. He was going to pull Damian off of me, like Richard had pushed the vampire off of himself.

I wrapped my arms around Damian's shoulders and back, got one leg free to wrap around his waist. I held him to me and said, "No, Gregory!" If he pulled him off I'd end up hurt as bad as Richard. "You'll tear me up worse."

The leopardman hesitated, growling. He said in that thick voice they all had in half-human form, "He's hurting you."

Damian snuggled his mouth deeper into my flesh, forced a sound that was not happy out of my mouth. But I said, in a breathy voice, "When I need your help, I'll ask for it."

I could tell Gregory was puzzled even through the fur. I wasn't always good at facial expressions once my friends went furry. But this one even I could read.

"Damian," I said, my voice was soft. I wanted to see that he was in there before I said the words. His eyes were closed, but he relaxed against me by inches, until he wasn't so much pinning me to the floor as lying on top of me. It was more my arms and leg that held him pressed to me. "Damian," I said again.

I felt him come back into himself as if a switch had been thrown. One moment, monster, the next, Damian. Even before he opened his eyes and looked at me, I knew he was in there again. He was back from wherever he'd gone. Relief flooded through me until my arms and leg started to slide off of him. Weak with relief wasn't just an expression.

He was still sucking at the wound, but it was gentler now. It had stopped hurting. He drew, slowly, from the wound, his mouth crimson with my blood. I was suddenly aware in a way that I hadn't been before that we were both nude, and he was male, and he had fed. His body was thick and heavy against my thigh, where a moment ago it hadn't been. Blood pressure is a wonderful thing.

If I had not put a leg over his body to help hold him against me, it wouldn't have been quite so compromising. If Gregory hadn't tried to help me, I wouldn't have... oh, hell. I was suddenly afraid in a very different way. Afraid to move, afraid of making things worse, or better. Afraid of how my body pulsed in his arms. It was as if all the blood in our bodies was pulsing in time. It was hard to breathe. I was almost choking on... power. Magic. I'd bound him once before and it hadn't been like this.

His hand slid slowly, tentatively down the side of my body, and it wasn't so much a caress for sex, as just for touching. He used his whole hand, getting as much of his skin against mine as he could. I felt him marveling at the grace of our bodies so close, so completely without barriers. His skin hunger was there like some new kind of beast. A need so intense and so long denied that it was a kind of madness of its own.

I felt his loneliness like a great echoing thing. It brought tears to the edges of my eyes and made me want to fix it.

I moved my hands along his back, so that I was no longer holding him, but closer to an embrace. "Blood of my blood," and he moved upward to bring his mouth to mine for the kiss that would seal the words, but that small movement slid his body against the front of mine, so that the swell of him brushed against me, and that brief touch made me writhe underneath him, and it suddenly wasn't a kiss I wanted to seal this bargain with.

The thought helped me pull back. Helped me realize that what I was thinking was not entirely me. I gazed up into his emerald eyes and knew who was doing the thinking.

Nathaniel knelt beside us. I reached out a hand, and the moment he touched me, I could think a little, and Damian's pull was a little less. Damian snarled at him, and those green eyes wavered, as if sanity wasn't permanent in them, not yet.

Jean-Claude was in my head, and I felt a tiny thread of fear from him. "You must finish binding him, ma petite, and you must start from the beginning of the words."

I wanted to ask, "Why are you afraid?" And I must have thought it very hard, because he answered, "If he goes insane now, ma petite, your lovely throat is very unprotected. Finish it."

Maybe Richard was hearing the interior conversation, because he came to kneel on the other side of us. Suddenly, it couldn't have gotten more awkward. "I'm here," he said, and he said it like it should have made things better, as if he didn't understand how horribly embarrassing it was to have him kneeling there.

Damian gave him an unfriendly look, and a sound that was more growl than anything trickled from his mouth. I was losing him. "Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh," and he gazed back down at me, and with each word, sanity filled his eyes, his face, him. He slid his body against mine, and I felt him pushing against me. And again I felt that almost overwhelming need. That certainty that it was not a kiss we needed to seal this with. The need roared over me. I thought for a heartbeat we'd raised the ardeur, but then I could hear it--them. Two needs. I turned my head and found Nathaniel gazing down at me with those lavender eyes. It was there in his eyes, his face, but I could have told you what was there without using my eyes, because I could feel it. Feel him. Them. Both of them, pushing at me, not just physically, but in ways that hands could never hold you down, or bodies pin you to the floor. Their need undid me more easily than any physical strength or threat. Their need undid me because I cared for them, and if you could feel another's pain, as if it were your own, wouldn't you do anything to stop that pain? Wouldn't you?

My voice was breathy, and it was Nathaniel's gaze I held when I said, "Breath to breath, my heart to yours." Damian slid inside me in one long push of his hips. The sensation made me writhe underneath him, made me grip Nathaniel's hand hard enough to dig nails into his flesh. My hips ground upward to meet Damian's thrust. It was as involuntary as the next breath I took.

A sound drew my attention away from Nathaniel, and it wasn't a sound from above me. The sound came from the other side of us. Richard had pushed himself away from us, until his back met the side of the white couch. I don't know what I expected to see on his face, lust, disgust, anger, jealousy, maybe, but what I saw was fear. A fear so raw and naked, that it hurt to meet his eyes.

Damian grabbed my face, turned me back to look up at him. "It's me I want you to be thinking about," he said, and he began to pull himself out of me, slowly. For a second I thought that would be it, but part of me knew better. He'd raised himself up, almost in a push-up, the tip of him barely inside me, and gazing full into my face, his eyes pinning mine as surely as his body pinned the rest of me, he said, "Blood of my blood," and thrust into me. I cried out underneath him, and Nathaniel echoed that cry, while his hand gripped mine. His lavender eyes were wild when I turned to look at him. Damian touched my face again, but a touch was enough to turn me to face him, to feel his body sliding out of mine, to hear his whisper, "Flesh of my flesh," before he married our flesh as close, as fast, as he could. I felt Nathaniel convulse hand to hand, and I felt his pulse like a second heartbeat against my palm, but I kept my eyes on Damian's face, my gaze on his as he drew his body out of me, almost, and, said, "Breath to breath," and slammed himself inside me. I screamed and Nathaniel's voice echoed mine. I finally realized that Nathaniel was getting if not the full ride, a shadow of what I was feeling. Damian drew himself out, out, until... "My heart to yours," and he slid himself inside me.

He stayed frozen above me, body as deep inside me as he could get. His breathing was harsh and shallow. A shudder passed down his body from head to toe, and I writhed underneath him from it. Nathaniel moaned, jerking on my hand, as if it were his body being explored. Damian's voice was shaky, "Oh, don't do that. If you do that again, I won't last." He buried his face against my hair, and another shudder rippled down his body and made me dance underneath him, crying out, and that was it. He was suddenly above me, his upper body arched, and he shoved himself into me, deep, hard, and it was partly his body inside me, partly watching his body above mine, his eyes closed, his head thrown back, his hair like a bloody waterfall around the pale candle of his body, and knowing that he was thrust as deep inside me as he could get that tore a scream from my lips. And Nathaniel's voice screamed with me, our hands convulsing around each other, our nails biting into each other's skin. I felt Nathaniel's body thrust against the carpet, felt him let go, and that orgasm traveled back up my arm and into Damian. It was his turn to scream, and that made him writhe with his body still plunged inside of mine, which made me move underneath him. It was like being caught in an endless loop of pleasure; one body's release, bringing the other, until we ended in a sweating, bloody pile on the floor.

Damian let out a shaky laugh. And I felt, heard, knew, that underneath the lust was sorrow, and an almost certain knowledge that he might never get to do this again, once my head cleared. For some reason that made me think of something I had forgotten. I turned my head and found that Richard was still there, but it wasn't fear on his face now, but a sort of wonderment. I realized in that moment that, though Richard wasn't getting all the sensations that Nathaniel was getting, he could still hear inside my head. So could Jean-Claude, but it was Richard's thought that came the clearest. "You've never fucked either of them." On the heels of that thought came another, that he'd assumed I was screwing everything in the house, because he'd pretty much been doing the same down at the lupanar.

I was naked in the middle of sex with one man, maybe two, depending on how you counted things, yet, suddenly, I had the moral high ground. Weird.

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