60

Jean-Claude's hands on mine, his body spilled out along the head of the bed. The pillows had all been thrown to the floor, so there was nothing but the silk sheets and the three of us. "Trade places," Richard had said. It had seemed so simple. I should have known nothing about Richard was ever simple.

He put his hands on my arms, just under where Jean-Claude held me. He wrapped those big hands around my arms, then began to slide his hands down my arms. He was only touching my arms, such an innocent place to touch, but he made the movement slow, and sensuous, trailing an edge of fingernail like the tiny press of something harder, and so much more dangerous against my skin. His hands reached under my arm, the trail of nails tickled, and made me writhe and giggle. Half because it tickled, and half because of the slow, sure movements of his hands. I'd forgotten what it was like to have all of Richard's attention in a bed. When you think you'll never be able to touch someone again, you try to forget.

I waited for him to curve his hands over my breasts, but he didn't. He moved his hands just a little lower on my sides, so that his hands barely brushed the edges of my breasts and kept moving down my body. That one small brush against the edges of my breasts caught my breath in my throat, and closed my eyes, to shudder under his hands.

His hands, so large they cupped my ribs, and nearly met at my waist, his thumbs pressing over my belly button, my lower stomach. I waited for his hands to go lower, and just as he had above, he moved his hands to the sides of my hips. Swept that sure, heavy, glide of skin and nails away from even the beginning of my pubic bone, so that he was only touching my hips, my thighs, but nothing more. His hands kept sliding downward, but he'd skipped the parts I most wanted him to touch. It left me making small noises, low in my throat, not from what he was doing, but from what he hadn't done. From what I wanted him to do.

It made me raise my arms, or try to, but Jean-Claude's hands were there. He kept my hands pressed to the bed. I put more effort into it, and found that I could raise my hands off the bed an inch or so, but Jean-Claude pressed me back to the bed, going up on his knees to get the leverage he needed. I'd made him change positions, made him work a little harder, but that was all. I put more effort into raising my wrists, freeing my arms. I don't know why, maybe because I hadn't really thought about not being able to get away. Being trapped in theory is one thing, knowing it for a fact, is different. Or different for me.

"Why struggle?" Richard asked, in a voice that held a tone I'd never heard from him. "You know that Jean-Claude won't let anything bad happen." His big hands finished their glide down my body, to end with his fingers wrapping around my ankles. He didn't press them to the bed, just held them, held my ankles in his hands.

I tried to get away from him. I couldn't help it. It was just one of those things. Tell me I can't, or show me I can't, and I have to try. I wasn't trying as hard as I could, but I was trying. Trying enough to feel the strength in his hands, a strength that could bend steel. I couldn't get away.

He spread my legs, using his hands on my ankles. He spread my legs, wide and wider, while I tried to stop him. It was a game, because we'd all agreed to this. I wanted him to make love to me, but game or not, there was something about the way he spread my legs with the strength in his hands, while Jean-Claude pinned my arms, that sped my pulse, and made the struggles go from halfhearted to not so halfhearted. It was stupid, but I couldn't help myself. I had to try to stop him from spreading my legs, from exposing me, and the fact that I couldn't both scared me and excited me. The two feelings should have been mutually exclusive, but they weren't.

"Tell me to stop," Richard said, and his voice had grown deeper.

I shook my head. "No."

"Then why are you struggling?" he asked, and there was a look in his face, eager, dark, happy, all at once. He pushed my legs farther apart, until it was just this side of hurting. Until the muscles in my thighs began to ache with the stretch. "Why are you struggling, if you don't want me to stop?"

I said the only thing I could think of, "I don't know." My voice was breathier than I thought it would be, as if my pulse was interfering. I realized then, that he'd spread my legs so far apart that I really couldn't struggle, not unless I wanted it to hurt. It made me push harder against Jean-Claude's hands. I raised up a few inches, so that he actually had to come to his knees, and press down, to hold me secure. Him coming to his knees meant that suddenly his body was exposed just above my head. He hung loose and soft just above me, and until he fed he would stay soft. I loved the sensation of him in my mouth when he was like this, because it didn't last, except when he had not fed. Now, I could explore the softness of him as long as I wanted, and it wouldn't change. I strained back for him, neck bowing, mouth reaching, and he was out of reach. Dangling just above me, but his hands held me down, and I couldn't get to him. Jean-Claude had to know what I was trying to do, but he kept his weight on my wrists, and his body arched above me, out of reach.

My voice came out strained, breathless, "Please."

"Please, what?" Richard's voice from the other end of the bed.

"Ma petite has a penchant for men when they are soft. Until I feed, she could indulge this... desire."

"And you're keeping it just out of her reach," Richard said, his voice dropped an octave lower so that it was almost painfully low, his voice just before it began to growl.

"Oui."

"Why?" he asked.

"Is that not the game that you wish to play?"

A thin line of growl trickled from Richard's throat. "Yes, yes, it is." He was up on all fours, too, but unlike Jean-Claude he was thick and heavy against the front of his body. "But I don't want it to be you she's begging for, I want it to be me."

"Why can it not be both of us?" Jean-Claude asked.

The two men stared at each other, and I had a moment to feel their, not power, but almost as if their wills were suddenly power. I could feel the strength of their wills aimed at each other. "You chose not to let me feed," Jean-Claude said, "deliberately. You thought she would not have a use for me until I could be erect." He smiled. "You underestimate ma petite's love of the male body. She loves us in all our many forms." That last held some note, some jab, that I didn't understand. I should have, but the feel of their hands on my body, and the view of both of them nude had me distracted. I never seemed to think as clearly around them when they were naked, embarrassing, but true.

Richard's face darkened with anger, and the first trickle of his power slipped past his so tight shielding. It danced along my legs like a breeze off the plains of hell. Hot, so hot. It raised goosebumps in a shivering line down my body. Me, shivering, brought their attention back to me. Jean-Claude's face was pleasantly neutral, hiding. Richard looked down at me, and the anger was still there, but underneath that was something else. It held sex, but it also held something darker. Something that promised things beyond sex, beyond anything safe and sane. A moment to glimpse in his eyes things he probably didn't want to see in any mirror, before he turned away, so I couldn't see his face. As if he knew what I'd seen.

"If you're going to fight, get off of me," I said. It was a little tough to put much authority in my voice when I was naked and they were holding me down, but I managed. My voice was suddenly mine again, not breathy, not sexy, just mine.

"That is not up to me, ma petite," Jean-Claude said. "Are we going to fight, Richard?"

That hot, hot wind eased out from his body again. A line of heat to trail like something solid and reaching across my skin. It was like fingers, fingers made of heat climbing up my skin, touching places Richard had very deliberately avoided. When that seeking heat caressed between my legs, I gasped, and managed to say, "Stop it, whatever it is, stop it." The heat climbed higher, using my body like a fleshy ladder.

"Does it hurt?" Richard asked, but he was looking at Jean-Claude, not me.

"No," and the power caressed my breasts as if some great monster had breathed their breath hot across them. I shuddered under that touch, eyes closing, neck bowing.

I opened my eyes staring up into Jean-Claude's face. His face was still pleasant, unreadable, hidden. "Are you well, ma petite?"

I nodded. I might have said something else, but Richard's power caressed my throat, flowed over my lips, so that my mouth felt hot, as if some hot, thick liquid lay on my tongue. I looked up into Jean-Claude's midnight blue eyes, and whispered, "Richard."

Jean-Claude lowered his face over mine, more of his weight pressing in his hands, against my wrists, so even as he came closer, I was held more tightly. I opened my mouth for him, but he paused just short of a kiss. He licked the air above my mouth. I thought at first he'd missed, but he raised up enough to look down my body to Richard. "What game is this?"

"You and she aren't the only ones who gained power when she bound herself to Damian and Nathaniel." His voice wasn't happy when he said it, in fact the anger was back. The anger fed directly into his power so that a line of scalding heat flashed up my body and tore a scream from my throat.

Jean-Claude put his mouth to mine, and his power was in his kiss. A blessed coolness to glide over my tongue, down my throat, to spill in a chilling line through my body and quiet all that heat. And as if Richard's power had been waiting for that very thing, it surged forward, and I was suddenly covered in their power. It was as if my body was the wick for Richard's candle and the spout for Jean-Claude's cool water to flow down. But you can't be both flame and water. You can't burn and drown, not at the same time. My body tried, it tried to be cold and hot, flame and water, life and death. But wait, that last, that last we understood, my power and me. Life and death, especially death.

My power didn't simply rise, it burst my shields, like a dam smashed, and the power of that torrent, so long contained, poured over us all. It swept us not away, but together. We were on our knees on the bed with Richard pressed to the front of me, and Jean-Claude against my back. They say there is no light without dark, no good without evil, no male without female, no right without wrong. That nothing can exist if its direct opposite does not also exist. I don't know if that's true, but in that moment I understood that though each opposite needs the other, they also can't exist simultaneously. They are two sides to a coin, but what of the coin? What is the coin that separates good from evil, light from dark, what is it that binds them together, yet keeps them eternally apart? Good and evil, light and dark, I don't know, but with Richard and Jean-Claude, it was me.

I was the metal that both separated them and bound them together. I was their coin, and they were my different sides. Always apart, always together, different, but all of one piece. Richard pressed to the front of my body, and it was as if he burned, as if his body was so hot, it should have burst into flames, as if the sun itself lay within his skin. Jean-Claude pressed at my back like water, cool, cold water, that had risen from the very depths of the sea, where it runs cold and black, and slow, and strange things glide there. If you look at the sun too long you go blind; if you swim too deep into the sea you drown.

I screamed, screamed because I didn't know what to do with the power. I was their coin, but I didn't know how to forge us into one piece. It was like trying to fit three people into one body. How do you start? Who gets shoved in where?

But I wasn't master here, it wasn't my job to find a way to fit three such huge pieces into one. Jean-Claude's cool power flowed over me, soothed the burning, touched the edge of Richard's power, and brought us all back up to the surface of our metaphysical sea. He said almost exactly what I was thinking, "I can only hold it back for a moment, when next we drown, we must not fight it. We must embrace it, and each other."

"Define embrace," Richard said, and his voice was thick with effort, as if he were holding back his side of some huge weight, and maybe he was.

"You into Anita's body, and I will feed upon yours."

We didn't have time to say yes or no or anything. The power was just suddenly back, as if we'd opened a door and found the building falling down around us. We were out of time. We either rode the power, or it would bury us. Bury us along with everyone we loved, everyone we'd vowed to protect. Distantly, I had the thought, if we would but take the fourth mark, it would be easier to ride, but the thought vanished under the press of Richard's body. His body was ripe and thick and ready, and he'd made certain that Jean-Claude's wouldn't be. There might have been other ways to bind us, but Richard had taken some of Jean-Claude's choices, and mine, by simply not allowing the other man to feed. Funny how you try to avoid one evil, and fall headlong into another.

Richard pushed himself inside me. I was tight, and he was thick, but the moment he began to push inside me, the terrible weight of power eased. It was as if Richard's body broke the plane of some barrier, as if my body were a door, and we'd pushed inside.

Richard's voice came strained, "Tight, so tight. I don't want to hurt you." He was above me in a sort of push-up, and the view between our bodies was perfect. Perfect for watching him push his way inside me.

I grabbed his arms, and said, "Don't stop, God, don't stop."

"You're too tight."

"Not for long," I said.

"Is she wet?" Jean-Claude asked.

Richard gave him a look, and it wasn't friendly. "Yes."

"Then you will not hurt her."

"You said it yourself, Jean-Claude, you aren't this well-endowed, you don't know how you can hurt a woman without meaning to."

I slapped Richard's shoulder, because I couldn't reach his face. He looked down at me, anger so ready in his eyes. "I am not Clair. I want you, Richard. I want you inside me, please, Richard, please. Don't stop, please, don't stop."

He looked down at me, and the look on his face was very male, and very Richard all at the same time. I watched him, felt how much he wanted to shove himself inside me, but that part of him that was still Richard, still thinking so hard, was afraid. Not afraid that he'd hurt me, but afraid to see the same look on my face he'd seen on Clair's. I tasted the fear of that on my own tongue. Felt the pulse in my neck speed, not with lust, but fear. Fear that Clair was right. That he was an animal. If I could have slapped her around in that moment, I might have. The last thing Richard needed was more emotional shit to shovel.

"If you will not do it, mon ami, then let me feed, so that we may finish this."

"I am not your friend," Richard said, and his anger spread like hot oil on my skin. It didn't hurt like earlier, and I knew that was Jean-Claude's doing. He was dulling the edge of Richard's power, or rather turning it from burning pain, to something more fun. Heated oil rolling down my skin instead of biting bits of fire; how could I argue?

"Be my enemy then," Jean-Claude said, "but one of us must do this. If you will not, then you must help me do it."

I sat up, and he wasn't far enough in for it, so that he slipped back out. That pressure came crashing back. Jean-Claude grabbed a handful of my hair, pulled my head back, and kissed me. Hard, deep, tongue searching my mouth. I melted into that kiss, gave my mouth to his, my face to his hand, my head to the hand still wrapped in my hair. His other hand slid from my face down my neck, my shoulder, to caress the front of my breast. He bent me back against his body, and I understood. As we'd discussed, his power lay in seduction. He was literally building a deeper binding on the foundation of sex. Each touch, each caress, each penetration, another stone to keep us safe. I'd have argued with his choice of building materials, but I wasn't master here. This was his ball game, not mine. Of course, there was more than one way to play ball.

Jean-Claude's hands slid over the front of my body, until he held my breasts. He squeezed them between his hands, squeezed them hard and sharp. I came away from his mouth with a gasp, and a sound low in my throat. "You will not hurt her, Richard."

Richard hadn't moved back. He was still sitting where my body had left him, his body between my knees, close enough that he could have joined Jean-Claude in the foreplay, but he just knelt there.

I stroked my hand over him, found him not as hard as he had been. I wrapped my hand around him, tight and hard. Brought a small sound from him. "I want this," and I squeezed him again, watched his eyes lose focus, "this inside me."

I could feel that he wanted to, but his fears held him closer than any lover's arms ever would. I let go of him and turned with a cry to Jean-Claude. I felt suddenly half-crazed with need. A need to have someone inside me. Jean-Claude hadn't fed yet, but there was still something I could do for my own pleasure. I turned my back on Richard, and laid a light kiss on Jean-Claude's mouth, but that wasn't what I wanted. He rose up on his knees as if he knew where I was headed.

I licked my way down his body, and his hand on the back of mine, guided me to him. I drew him into my mouth, and the texture of him so small, so loose, was wonderful. I sucked him, rolled him with my tongue. Small, I could have my way with him, and not have to fight for it. I sucked him as hard and fast as I could, in and out, in and out, until he cried out above me. I used my hand to lift the loose tenderness of his balls up, so I could draw them gently into my mouth. It was hard having all of him in my mouth at once, even this small, there was barely room. I had to be so careful of him, so careful, not to hurt him, not to crush such delicate pieces. Like rolling some precious priceless work of art between your teeth. When I didn't trust myself not to bite down on those tender bits, I spilled them out of my mouth. But I kept that soft, flexible, givable, forgivable bit to roll and coax, until he cried out above me, and his body thrust forward, but he couldn't complete it. I could have teased him all night, and he couldn't have finished it. I was ready to offer to open a vein myself, when I felt hands on my hips.

I felt Richard push himself against my body. He wasn't soft now, he was oh, so hard. He kept one hand on my hip, and used the other to guide himself in. He pushed against the opening in my body.

I started to raise up, but Jean-Claude's hand pushed on my head, kept me where I was, kept my mouth wrapped around his body, sucking him deep into my mouth, as Richard pushed his way into my body. I was wetter now, more open, but Richard still had to work his way in, push, and shove, for each tight, wet, inch. The feel of him inside me forced small sounds from my throat, made me whimper and moan, all of it with Jean-Claude still in my mouth.

Richard pushed his way in, until there was no more. Until he hit the end of me, and had nowhere to go but to draw himself back out of me, slowly, so slowly. I didn't want slowly. I wanted fast. I wanted hard. I wanted Richard at his best, not this careful dance.

I raised my head up off of Jean-Claude, and this time he let me, but he kept his hand against my hair. I raised up enough to gaze back over my body and see Richard there on his knees. Seeing him with his body inside of me, rolled my eyes shut for a moment, but the feel of all that thick potential being so carefully used, made me want to scream at him.

"Fuck me, Richard."

He looked at me, and the control on his face in his body, stopped for a moment. He looked at me, and said, "Anita."

"Fuck me," I said, "fuck me, God, fuck me, just fuck me. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, please, please, please just fuck me."

"I am."

I shook my head, hard enough to send my hair flying around my face. Jean-Claude moved his hand enough for me to do it. "No, no, no, no!" Freed of Jean-Claude's hands I could move. I shoved myself onto him. I shoved myself down hard and fast until the sound of our bodies hitting slapped together. Having him shoved that hard, fast, deep, inside me, made me cry out, but not in pain.

I leaned my upper body forward, and angled my hips, and I fucked him, as hard and as fast, as I could. It wasn't quite as good as he could have done on his own, but it was still good. Still so good.

Richard caught the rhythm of my hips and started shoving himself inside me, as hard and fast as he could. Harder and faster than I'd been able to manage on my own. So hard, so fast, so deep, hitting that spot deep, deep inside my body, until I cried out around him.

Jean-Claude's hand pushed me back down, and helped my mouth find him again. Helped me feed on his soft, soft flesh while Richard pounded himself inside me. Jean-Claude moved up high on his knees, and his hand helped me stay where he wanted me.

It wasn't until I heard Richard's voice, "Jean-Claude," and felt Richard's rhythm falter, that I suspected what Jean-Claude was doing up there, behind my back.

Jean-Claude was suddenly not soft, or limp. He grew in my mouth like ripened fruit, like something sweet and tender that had waited a very long time to spread and grow thick and heavy. He filled my mouth. I drew back to breathe, and he forced my head farther down, forced himself deeper into my throat.

I suddenly had both of them as deep inside me as my body could hold. Richard pounded himself between my legs, and Jean-Claude thrust himself between my lips. They found a rhythm together, so that they mirrored each other. I fought to open my mouth wide enough, to keep teeth out of the way, while Jean-Claude mouth-fucked me. I'd never let anyone do that before, not like this, not so that what was happening at my mouth was almost exactly what was happening between my legs.

Richard had taken me at my word. He pounded into me so fast and so hard, until the sound of it was like a continuous thud of flesh on flesh, and though it felt wonderful, if Jean-Claude hadn't been in my mouth I might have begged him to go. It was almost too much, almost pain. Jean-Claude was more careful up front, because he had to be, but he still forced me to hold the same rhythm, fast, hard, thudding, swallowing almost continuously, barely time to breathe between one thrust and the next. One minute I was fighting to breathe, fighting not to start begging, the next, orgasm hit me, and I was screaming, but it wouldn't stop. I screamed my orgasm around Jean-Claude's body still shoved deep in my mouth. I screamed, and my body spasmed around them both. I sucked hard and harder, I drove my hips into Richard. A moment before I'd been ready to stop, and now I helped them fuck me. I drove my body into them both, as hard and fast as I could, while my body danced between them. The orgasm grew, grew until it wasn't enough to just scream, and I raked my nails down Jean-Claude's thighs.

I felt their bodies tighten at the same time. Richard spasmed at my back, driving himself so deep inside me that I screamed for real this time, but Jean-Claude drove himself down at the same moment, and my scream was lost to the sensation of him spasming inside my throat. He wasn't as long as Richard, but he was far enough down, that it wasn't a matter of swallowing. It was simply a matter of not choking it back up. Of letting that hot thickness go down my throat, and not struggling against it. I let them have my body in that instant. I let their pleasure fill me and pour down me, through me.

It was at that moment when our bodies were joined, sharing things as intimate as blood, that it clicked into place. That we'd done enough to bind us without bleeding Jean-Claude. Maybe it was what it needed to work, or maybe we just all three had to let down our guard enough to stop fighting.

We collapsed in a breathless, panting heap. Jean-Claude drew himself out of me, gently, and lay on his back with me on top of him, pinning his legs. Richard was still on top of me, still inside me, but now he was almost dead weight, and I was short enough, and he was tall enough, that he was lying partially on Jean-Claude. I was just pinned between them.

Richard got to his knees, just enough to pull himself out of me, then collapsed onto his side, half-spooning me, but not quite touching Jean-Claude. In a voice that was still breathless, he asked, "Did I hurt you?"

I couldn't help it, I laughed. I laughed, even though my jaw was beginning to ache as the endorphins faded. I laughed, as I began to feel the ache of him between my legs. I laughed, not because it hurt, but because it felt so good.

Jean-Claude started to laugh, too.

"What?" Richard said.

Jean-Claude and I lay on top of each other, too tired to move, and laughed. It took Richard a few minutes, but finally, a deep chuckle escaped him. He moved his body enough to throw an arm across mine, and laughed. The three of us lay unable or unwilling to move, and we laughed. We laughed until we could move, then we moved up on the bed and lay quiet, in a big, warm, naked, puppy pile. Me in the middle, but when Jean-Claude's head touched Richard's arm, neither of them moved away. It wasn't perfect, but damn, it was close.

61

I'd tried to call my friendly neighborhood vampire hunter in New Orleans to see what I could learn about the vamps we were after, but Denis-Luc St. John, vamp hunter and federal marshal, was in the hospital, still in intensive care. They'd damn near killed him before they left town. Worse and worse.

The sun was a bloody strip of red against the western sky when Zerbrowski and I got out of his car to question the first witness. I always felt like I should have to wash my jeans when I got out of his car. The backseat was so full of paper and old fast food bags that it looked like a landfill. The front seat wasn't actually dirty, but the rest of the car was so messy that it just felt like the entire car was icky.

"Do Katie and the kids ever ride in this thing?" I asked as we started up the steps to the first apartment on the list.

"Naw, she and the kids take the minivan."

I shook my head. "Has she seen the inside of it recently?"

"You've seen our house, it's perfect, everything in its place. Even our bedroom is immaculate. The car is the one place that's mine. It gets to be as messy as I want it to be."

Strangely, it made more sense to me now than it would have a few months ago. I understood the fine art of compromise between a couple in a way that I never had before. I'm not saying I was good at it, just that I understood it more.

Zerbrowski read off the number of the apartment, and it was on the second floor, in a line of concrete walkway and metal railing. The doors were all identical. I wondered if the neighbors knew that they had a vamp living next door. You'd be amazed at the number of people that don't figure it out. Vampires hit my radar hard, so they don't pass unnoticed for me. More humans than I'm comfortable with get fooled. I don't know if it's because they want to be fooled, or if it really is harder for them to spot a vamp. I don't know which would bother me more, that normal humans can't spot them, thus implying that I am even more outside the norm, or that people want to be fooled that badly.

Since we were looking for vampires that had killed at least two people, I stretched out that part of me that sensed the dead. It wasn't the same part that raised zombies. Though explaining the difference was like explaining the difference between sky blue and turquoise. They were both blue, but they weren't the same color.

Zerbrowski reached for the doorbell, and I touched his hand. "Not yet."

"Why not?" he asked. His hand swept back his wrinkled trench coat and suit jacket, to touch the butt of his gun on his hip. "You hear something?"

"Ease down, it's okay. He's just not awake yet."

Zerbrowski looked puzzled at me. "What does that mean?"

"I can feel vampires, Zerbrowski, if I concentrate, or they're doing something powerful. He's not awake yet. I was hoping he would be, he's supposed to be the oldest one of the three, longest dead. Longest dead usually wakes up first, unless one of them is a master. Masters wake up first."

"I knew the part about longest dead," he said. "So a master vampire that is two years dead can wake up before a vampire that is five years dead, but not a master?"

"Yeah, though some vamps don't accumulate enough power in five hundred years to rival masters I've met that were under five years."

"That'd be a bummer. A flunkie for all eternity."

I nodded. "Yeah." I felt that instant spark inside the room. It hit me almost like a punch to the stomach, or lower. Once I could only sense vamps that I had a connection to, to this degree, and once it was just a small quiver of recognition. Apparently, I'd gone up a power level or two.

"You okay?" Zerbrowski asked.

"Yeah, just, yeah. Now you can use the doorbell."

He gave me a look.

"I was concentrating too hard when he woke up, okay? My bad."

I don't know if he really understood the comment, or was just used to me being weird, but whatever, he pushed the button. We heard the strident sound inside the room beyond. So many people think that being a vampire automatically gets you the big house on the hill, or a coffin in a dungeon somewhere, but most of the vamps I knew had apartments, houses, and lived pretty much like everyone else. Vampires living in a central location surrounding their master, the way Jean-Claude had it, was becoming a thing of the past.

I missed it. Not nostalgia. If I had to kill a bunch of vamps, having them spread miles apart made my job harder. But we weren't here to kill anybody, not yet. Of course, that could change. All we needed was proof, or, depending on the judge, strong suspicion. Once I'd been okay with that. Now, it bothered me. To my knowledge, I'd never killed vamps that hadn't done the crime, but I had to admit that at the beginning of my career, I hadn't checked as carefully as I did now. They were just walking corpses to me once, and making them lie down and be still hadn't felt like murder to me. My job had been easier then, fewer conflicts. Nothing helps you sleep at night so much as being absolutely certain that you're right, and everyone else is evil.

The door opened, and the vampire stood blinking at us. His blond hair was tousled from sleep, and he'd thrown jeans over his boxers, or maybe slept in both. They were wrinkled enough. He squinted at us, and it took me a second to realize the squint was permanent, like someone who'd worked outdoors all their life, and not worn sunglasses. His eyes were pale and washed almost colorless. He looked tanned, but he was five years dead, and it couldn't be a tan. Artificial tan was starting to be big business among the recently dead. The ones who hadn't gotten accustomed to that paler than pale look. His looked better than most, a professional job, not homegrown.

"Jack Benchely?" Zerbrowski made it a question.

"Who wants to know?"

He flashed his badge, and I flashed mine. "Sergeant Zerbrowski of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team."

"Federal Marshal Anita Blake."

Jack Benchely blinked harder, like he was really trying to wake up. "Shit, what did I do to get the Spook Squad and the Executioner at my door just after sundown?"

"Let's go inside and talk about that," Zerbrowski said with a smile.

The vampire seemed to think about that for a second. "You got a warrant?"

"We don't want to search your place, Mr. Benchely. We want to ask you some questions, that's all." Zerbrowski was still smiling. The smile didn't even look strained.

I wasn't trying to smile, I didn't feel like it.

"What kind of questions?" he asked.

I said, "The kind about you being across the river at a strip club, when I know for a damned fact that Malcolm has ordered you all to stay away from shit like that." Now I was smiling, but it was a smile the way a flash of teeth is a smile. Sometimes it's a smile and sometimes it's not. Put your hand close to the dog's mouth and find out.

Benchely didn't look like he wanted to find out. He looked awake now, awake and almost scared. He licked his thin lips and said, "Are you going to tell Malcolm?"

"That depends on how cooperative you are," I said.

"What Marshal Blake means, is if we get enough information from you, there won't be a need to trouble the head of the Church of Eternal Life." Zerbrowski was still smiling and pleasant. I guess I was bad cop for the day. That worked for me.

"I know what she meant," the vampire said. He moved to one side of the open door and was careful to keep his hands where we could see them. Jack Benchely, human, had a record. Minor stuff. A few drunk and disorderlies, an assault charge that started out as a domestic disturbance call. Nothing too serious, and all of it involving too many drinks and not enough common sense.

When we were inside, he shut the door and went to the couch. From a coffee table that had almost as much crap on it as the backseat of Zerbrowski's car, he fished out a cigarette and a lighter. He lit up without asking if we minded. How rude.

There were no other chairs in the room, so we stayed standing. Again, rude. Though the place was so messy that I wasn't sure I'd have taken a seat if it had been offered. There was so much clutter that you expected it to smell stale, but it didn't. It did smell like the inside of an ashtray, but that's not the same thing as dirty. I've been in houses that looked spotless, but still reeked of cigarettes. Being a nonsmoker, my nose isn't dulled to it.

He took in a big drag on the cig and made the tip glow bright. He let the smoke trickle out through his nose and the corners of his mouth. "What do you want to know?"

"Why'd you leave the Sapphire early last night?" I asked.

He shrugged. "It was after eleven. I don't call that early."

"Okay, why'd you leave when you did?"

He looked up at me, eyes narrowed as smoke oozed past them. "It was boring. The same girls, same acts." He shrugged. "I swear that strippers were more fun when I could drink."

"I bet," I said.

Zerbrowski said, "What time did you leave exactly?"

Benchely answered. We asked the usual questions. What time? Why? With whom? Was there anyone in the parking lot that could verify that he got in his truck and didn't linger in the parking lot?

"Linger," Benchely said, and he laughed. Laughed hard enough to flash fangs. The fangs were as yellowed from nicotine as the rest of his teeth. "I didn't linger, officer. I just left."

I debated on whether I could tell him to put out his cigarette in his own house, and if he'd do it if I asked. If I ordered him and he didn't, we'd look weak. If I grabbed the cig and smushed it out, I'd be a bully. I tried to hold my breath and hoped he'd finish it soon.

He took another healthy pull on the cig and spoke with the smoke coming out of his mouth. "What did I miss? One of the other vamps get out of hand with a dancer? One of the other upstanding church members trying to frame me for it?"

"Something like that," I said softly.

He fished an ashtray out of the mess. It was an older one, pale green ceramic, with upturned sides and a tray of cig holders in the middle, like dull teeth. He stubbed out his cig and didn't try to hide that he was angry. Or maybe five years dead wasn't enough time to learn to hide that well. Maybe.

"Hell, it was Charles, wasn't it?"

I shrugged. Zerbrowski smiled. We hadn't said yes, we hadn't said no. Noncommittal, that was us.

"He's a member of their damn club, did he tell you that?"

"He didn't volunteer it," I said.

"I'll bet he didn't. Damned hypocrites, all of them." He ran his hands through his hair, made the thickness of it stand up even more. "Did he tell you that he's the one that recruited me for the damn church?"

I fought the urge to share a glance with Zerbrowski. "He didn't mention that," Zerbrowski said.

"I'd tried to quit drinking. I tried just quitting, twelve steps, you name it, I tried it. Nothing worked. I'd lost two wives, more jobs than I could count. I've got a son who's nearly twelve. There's a court order against me seeing him. Isn't that a hell of a thing, my own son?"

Zerbrowski agreed it was a hell of a thing.

"Moffat was at the club one night. He made it sound so easy. I would have to stop drinking, because I couldn't drink anymore. Simple." He reached for another cigarette.

"Can you wait until we're gone for that?" I asked.

"It's the last vice I got," he said. But he stuffed the cig back in its pack. He kept the lighter in his hands, playing with it, as if even that was a comfort. "I'm what my counselor calls an addictive personality. Do you know what that means, officers?"

"It means that if you can't drink, you've got to be addicted to something," I said.

He smiled, and really looked at me for the first time. Not just like I was a cop come to hassle him, but like I was a person. "Yeah, yeah, my counselor wouldn't like that definition, no siree she would not. But yeah, that's the truth. Some people are lucky, and it's just they're addicted to drinking, or smoking, or whatever, but for those of us who are just addicted to being addicted, anything'll do."

"The blood lust," I said.

He laughed again, and nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I can't drink liquor but I can still drink. I still like to drink." He slapped the lighter down on the table, and both Zerbrowski and I jumped. Benchely didn't seem to notice. "Everyone thinks you get to be pretty when you're made over. That you get to be suave and good with the ladies just because you got a pair of fangs."

"You get the gaze with the fangs," I said.

"Yeah, I can trick 'em with my eyes, but legally that's not a willing feed." He looked at Zerbrowski as if he represented all the laws that had held him down all his life. "If I use vampire tricks, and she comes out of it yelling force, I'm dead." He looked at me, and it wasn't exactly an unfriendly look. "It's considered sexual assault, as if I slipped her a date rape drug. But I'm a vampire, and I won't see trial. They'll give me to you, and you'll kill me."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. It was true, though they'd amended the law so that you had to have more than one count of gaze-induced blood taking to execute someone. That's what they called it, gaze-induced blood taking. The far right was crying that it was letting sexual predators loose on our communities. The far left just didn't want to agree with the far right, so they'd help push for the change in the laws. Those of us in the middle just didn't like the idea of a death warrant being issued on the say-so of one date who woke up the next morning with a bad case of buyer's remorse.

"I don't have the money to throw around that the church deacons do," Benchely was saying, "I've got to get a woman to donate her blood through charm." He said the last word like it was curse. "I know drink ruined my life, but I am a hell of a lot more charming when I've had just a few drinks."

"That's not usually true," I said.

He looked at me. "What isn't true?"

"A lot of drunks think they're charming drunk, but they aren't. Trust me, I've been the only teetotaler at a lot of parties. There is nothing charming about a drunk, except maybe to another drunk."

He was shaking his head. "Maybe, but all I know is that I'm reduced to feeding off the church. The church makes taking blood as tame as it can. Something that should be better than sex, and they make you feel like you're at one of those places where you only get your food after you've listened to the sermon. It makes the food taste bad." He picked up his lighter again turning it over and over in his hands, until the gold of it swirled in the dim light, shining. "Nothing tastes good when you have to swallow your pride with it."

"Are you saying that Moffat, a deacon of the church, misrepresented what life would be like after you became a vampire?" I tried for as casual a question as I could make it.

"Misrepresented, not exactly. More like he let me come in believing all the stuff in the books and movies, and when I talked about it like it would be that way, he didn't tell me different. But it is different, real different."

If you were Belle Morte's line you spent eternity with people lining up to donate. If you were from some of the bloodlines that gave power, but not beauty or sex appeal, then in a country where using vampire tricks was illegal, you were screwed. The only vamp I knew well that was descended from a line like that was Willie McCoy. I had never wondered what Willie, with his ugly suits and uglier ties and slicked back hair, did for food. Maybe I should have.

The Church of Eternal Life didn't promise much more than most churches promised, but you could join the Lutherans, and if you didn't like it, you could quit. Joining the Church of Eternal Life as a full member meant never being able to do anything about regrets you might have.

Zerbrowski got us back on track. "You didn't see anyone in the parking lot who could confirm when you left the Sapphire?"

He shook his head.

"Did you smell anything?"

Those washed out eyes flicked up to me. He frowned. "What?"

"You didn't see anything, or anyone, but sight isn't the only sensory input you've got."

He frowned harder.

I bent down so I could meet him eye-to-eye. I would have knelt, but I didn't want to touch the carpet with anything but my shoes. "You're a vampire, Benchely, a bloodsucker, a predator. If you were human I'd just say what did you see, or hear, but you're not human. If you didn't see or hear anything, what did you smell? What did you sense?"

He was looking positively perplexed. "What do you mean?"

I shook my head. "What did they do, make you a vampire, then not teach you anything about what you are?"

"We're the eternal children of God," he said.

"Bullshit, bull-fucking-shit! You don't know what you are, or what you could be." I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. He was five years dead. I didn't think he was involved, but he'd walked through that parking lot damn close to the time of the killing. If he hadn't been such a pitiful excuse for the undead, he might have been able to help us catch the bad guys.

"I don't understand," he said, and I believed him.

I shook my head. "I need air." I went for the door, leaving Zerbrowski to mutter, "Thanks for your help, Mr. Benchely, and if you think of anything, call us. I was on the cement walkway, breathing in all the night air I could, when Zerbrowski came to find me.

"What the hell was that?" he asked. "You just decide we stop questioning a suspect?"

"He didn't do it, Zerbrowski. He's too damn pitiful to have done it."

"Anita, listen to yourself. That doesn't even make sense. You know as well I do that murderers can make you feel sorry for them. Some of them specialize in pity."

"I don't mean I felt pity for him, I mean he's too damn pitiful a vampire to have pulled it off."

Zerbrowski frowned at me. "You've lost me."

I wasn't sure how to explain it, but I tried. "It's bad enough that they let him believe that becoming a vampire would fix everything that was wrong with his miserable life, but then they killed him. They took his mortal life, but they've done everything they can to cripple him as a vampire."

"Cripple him, how?"

"Any vampire that I know would have noticed things, Zerbrowski. They're like this hyperfocus predator. Predators notice things. Benchely may have fangs, but he still thinks like he's a sheep, not a wolf."

"Would you really want every member of the church to be a good predator?"

I leaned my back against the railing. "It's not that. It's that they took his life and didn't give him another one. He's not better off than he was before."

"He's not getting arrested for drunk and disorderlies anymore."

"And how long will it be before he can't take it anymore and he uses his gaze on somebody, drinks their blood, and blows it? They wake up and decide they were abused. He's not a good enough vampire for them not to wake up and regret it."

"What do you mean he's not a good enough vampire? Anita, you're not making sense."

"I don't know if it'll make sense to you, Zerbrowski, but I've seen the real deal. They're terrible, or can be, but they're like watching a tiger at the zoo. They're dangerous, but they have a beauty to them, even the ones that aren't from a bloodline that makes them prettier after death, even those have a sort of power to them. A certain mystique, or an aura of confidence, or something. They have something that every member of the church that we've talked to since last night lacks."

"I say, again, would we want them to be powerful and mysterious? Wouldn't that be bad?"

"For stopping crime and keeping the peace, yes, but Zerbrowski, the church talked these people into letting themselves be killed. Killed for what? I've tried to talk people out of joining the church for years, but I've not really talked to many of the members once I can't save them."

He was looking at me funny. I guess I couldn't blame him. "You still think that vamps are dead. You're dating one, and you still think they're dead."

"Jean-Claude hasn't made a new vampire since he became Master of the City, Zerbrowski."

"Why not? I mean, it's considered legal now, not murder."

"I think he agrees with me, Zerbrowski."

He frowned harder at me, took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, put them back on, and shook his head. "I am just a simple cop, and you are making my head hurt."

"Simple my ass. Katie told me you double majored in law enforcement and philosophy. What kind of cop has a degree in philosophy?"

He looked at me kind of sideways. "If you tell anyone else I'll deny it, say sleeping with the undead has made you hallucinate."

"Trust me, Zerbrowski, if I hallucinated, it wouldn't be about you."

"That is a low blow, Blake, I wasn't even picking on you." His cell phone rang. He flipped it open, still smiling about my low blow. "Zerbrow--" He never even got to finish his name, before his smile vanished. "Say again, Arnet, slower. Shit. We're on our way. Holy items out. They'll glow if the vamp is close." He started to run, as he flipped the phone closed. I ran with him.

"What happened?" I asked.

We clattered onto the stairs before he answered. "Woman dead at the scene. Vamp missing. Apartment appears empty."

"Appears?" I said.

"Vampires are tricky bastards," he said.

I would have argued, if I could have. But since I couldn't, I saved my breath for running and beat Zerbrowski to his car. If we hadn't both been afraid of what we'd find when we got to the scene, I would have teased him about it.

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