21

Another fight, another shower. Rotting vampire was not an odor you wanted to wear to bed. My hair was still damp when I called Jean-Claude to fill him in on what we'd done. Okay, on what I'd done.

I told him the shortest version possible. His response, "You did what?"

I repeated it.

Silence on the other end of the phone. I couldn't even hear him breathe.

"Jean-Claude, you still there?"

"I am here, ma petite." He sighed. "You have surprised me once again. I did not see this coming."

"You don't sound happy," I said. "You know the news could be worse. We could all be dead."

"I did not think Colin would be so foolish."

"Live and learn," I said.

"Colin was right to fear you, ma petite."

"I told Colin what would happen if he messed with us. He pushed the button, not me."

"Who are you trying to convince, ma petite, me or yourself?"

I thought about that for a moment. "I don't know."

"Are you admitting you were wrong?" His voice held mild amusement.

"No." I tried to think how to say it. Finally, I said, "We were losing, Jean-Claude. They were going to kill us. I had to do something. I wasn't even sure it would work." I held the phone, and wished that he were here to hold me. I hated the thought that I wanted him like that. That I wanted anyone like that. I hated needing people. They all had a tendency to die on me. But I'd have given a great deal for a pair of comforting arms right at that moment.

"Ma petite, ma petite, what is wrong?"

I motioned Asher over to the phone. "Talk to your second banana. Ask Asher if there were other options. If there were other options, I couldn't see them."

"There is something in your voice, ma petite. Something fragile." He whispered the last word.

I just nodded, and handed the phone to Asher. I walked away from it hugging myself tight. Fragile, he said. Scared, more like. I'd scared myself tonight. Something in the power I released had extinguished the torches around the lupanar. Those of us still standing had moved by the light of burning corpses. It had been a scene right out of Dante's Inferno, and I had done it. The power inside of me had done this thing. Yeah, scared about covered it.

Damian came up to me. He whispered, "Jason's crying in the shower."

I sighed. Great, just what I needed, another crisis. But I didn't ask questions. I just knocked on the door of the bathroom. "Jason, you all right?"

He didn't answer me. "Jason?"

"I'm all right, Anita." His voice, even over the shower sounded strained. I'd never really heard him cry before, but that's what it sounded like, a voice thick with tears.

I pressed the top of my head to the door and sighed. I did not need this tonight. But Jason was my friend, and who else was I going to send in to comfort him? Damian had come to me with it. Zane didn't seem the hand-holding type, and Cherry, well ... if I was going to send another woman into comfort him, it seemed cowardly. Asher? Naw.

I knocked on the door again. "Jason, can I come in for a minute?"

Silence. If he'd been feeling anywhere near okay, he'd have made some kind of joke about me finally seeing him in the shower. That he didn't tease me at all was a bad sign.

"Jason, can I come in ... please?"

"Come in," he said finally.

I opened the door and the warm air fogged around me. I closed the door behind me. The room was soft and thick with warmth. It was hot, the moisture beading on every surface as if he'd cranked the shower up to as hot as it would go. Hot as it would go was enough to scald the flesh from your bones, if you were human.

The light left his shadow on the white shower curtain. He wasn't standing. He was sitting on the floor of the shower, huddled.

I moved the towel from the lid of the stool and sat down with it in my lap. "What's wrong?"

He took a deep sobbing breath, and even over the shower I could hear him weeping. Crying didn't cover it, weeping.

I wanted to see him while I talked to him, and I didn't want to see him naked. Choices, choices.

"Talk to me, Jason. What's wrong?"

"I can't get it off me. I can't get clean."

"You mean metaphorically speaking or literally?" I asked.

"It's all over me and I can't get it off."

I was being a coward and a prude. I reached a hand for the curtain and slowly drew it back until I could see him without splashing the entire bathroom with water.

Jason had his knees drawn up tight to his chest, arms locked around them. The heat from the water was enough to make me draw back. His skin had turned a nice cherry pink but that was it. I'd have had blisters or worse by now.

There were clinging patches of black goo on his back. The back of one arm had a patch on it. He'd scrubbed and boiled himself nearly raw and couldn't get clean.

He stared straight ahead at the faucets, rocking ever so slightly. "I was okay until I got in the shower and it wouldn't come off. Then I kept seeing those two vampires in Branson. I thought about Yvette, watching her rot. But it's the two in Branson. I can still feel their hands on me, Anita. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the day in a cold sweat, remembering."

In Branson, Missouri we'd taken on the local Master of the City. She'd had two young women that she was going to torture unless we gave her some of us to torture. They'd suggested that if Jason made love to two of the female vamps they would let one of the girls go. I think he'd enjoyed it, at first, but then they'd started to rot.

Jason had struggled away from them, crawling against the wall. His bare chest was covered in bits of their flesh. A strand of something thick and heavy slid slowly down his neck onto his chest. He batted at it like you would swat at a spider that you found crawling along your skin. He was pressed into the black wall with his pants nearly to his thighs.

The blond rolled off her back and crawled towards him, reaching a hand out that was nothing but bones with bits of dried flesh. She seemed to be decaying in dry ground. The brunette was wet. She lay back on the floor, and some dark fluid rushed out from her to pool beneath her body. She'd undone her own leather shirt, and her breasts were like heavy bags of fluid.

"I'm ready for you," the brunette said. Her voice was still clear and solid. No human voice should have come out of those rotting lips.

The blond grabbed Jason's arm and he screamed.

I shook my head trying to clear the memory. It had haunted my dreams for a while just witnessing it. But for Jason it had become his private phobia. One of the Council's flunkies had been one of the rotting ones. She'd tortured him, too, because she liked how very, very afraid he was of her. Yvette's little torment had only happened about two months ago. Tonight's fun and games had been far too close to home.

I took off the wrist sheaths and laid them on the back of the stool. The fact that I was wearing the wrist sheaths when I should have been getting ready for bed said something about my own paranoia. The heat from the water as I reached for the knob was almost frightening. Years of being told, don't touch, hot. I knew that fire killed wereanimals, but apparently heat didn't. I turned the knob until the temperature was something I could touch.

Jason started to shiver almost as soon as the water began to cool. Frankly, I was amazed that the cabin's hot water heater had kept up this long. The floor was wet and the water soaked into the legs of my jeans. I had another pair I could change into.

I found the bar of soap but the washrag was black. I threw it into the sink and got the last clean one. I'd have to remember to ask for extra towels. I should have done that anyway.

Jason finally looked at me, a slow turning of his head. His blue eyes looked almost glassy, as if he were slipping into his own version of shock. "I can't go through it again, Anita. I can't."

I soaped the clean washrag until it squished white suds. I touched his back and he flinched. I would have given almost anything in that moment if he had grabbed for me, or teased, or even made a pass. Anything to let me know he was okay. Instead he sat there naked and wet and miserable. It made my throat tight, but damn it if I cried, I was afraid I wouldn't stop. I was in here to comfort Jason not to make him comfort me.

Worse yet, I couldn't get it off his back. It had been hard enough to get off my own skin, but the extra hour Jason had sat around waiting for me to finish my shower had turned the fluid into glue. I finally resorted to using my fingernails, glad that I'd refused Cherry's offer of fingernail polish. I would have chipped it all to hell. I scraped it off a piece at a time with my fingers while the hot water ran and Jason shivered. But it wasn't the cold that made him shiver. I was so hot in the moist heat, I didn't feel well.

I'd cleaned everything but one last patch low on his back, very low. It was like the fluid had soaked into the band of his pants, low enough that the curve of buttocks started just below the patch. I was squeamish about that one. Because, though Jason seemed unaware that he was nude, I was very aware of it.

I was also having trouble keeping the oversized T-shirt I'd put on for bed from getting wet. Normally I wouldn't have cared but I'd forgotten to pack a second nightshirt. I finally turned the shower off and adjusted the temperature on the faucets so I had water without having to try and dodge the shower.

I moved back to Jason and started peeling that last patch off his skin. I tried talking to get my mind off of where my hands were. "We killed all the vampires, Jason. It's okay."

He shook his head. "Not Barnaby. We missed him, and he was their creator. I can't stand the thought of him touching me, Anita. I can't do this again."

"Then go home, Jason. Take the jet and get out."

"I won't desert you," he said. His gaze stayed on my face for a moment. "And it's not just because Jean-Claude wouldn't like it."

"I know that," I said. "But all I can do is swear to you that if it is within my power to protect you from Barnaby, I will."

I was leaning very close to him, my arm down the length of his back. I'd finally gotten over the embarrassment with the sheer concentration of prying the dried bits from his body. It was like dissecting that frog in high school. It was gross until the teacher told me to cut out the brain. Then I got so interested in scraping the skull away, ever so carefully, so as not to damage the brain, that I forgot the smell, the poor pitiful frog, and just concentrated on getting the brain out in one piece. My lab partner and I were the only pair to get the brain out whole.

Jason turned his head towards me, brushing my hair with his face. "You smell like Cherry's base makeup."

I spoke without looking up. "I don't own any base so she put some of hers on me earlier. She wears base that is way too pale for her, so it works for me. I thought I got all of it off."

"Hmm," he said. His mouth was very close to my ear.

I froze in mid-movement. My body pressed against his back, my hand touching the smooth skin just above his buttocks. There was a tension now that hadn't been there. My pulse sped up with the awareness of his body, because I suddenly knew he was aware of me. I got the last piece of dried goop off his skin and took a deep breath. I started to lean back and knew that he was going to try something. Part of me was nervous about it and part of me was relieved. It was Jason after all, and he was naked, and I was close, and it was Jason. If he'd let the opportunity pass, I'd have known he was hurt beyond anything I could fix.

His arm slid around my waist, and he used that incredible speed that they were capable of. I felt him lift me and we were just suddenly on the floor with him on top. It was his legs on my legs that pinned me. He used his arms to keep his body raised enough that his groin didn't press into me, which of course meant my view of his body was unobstructed. A mixed blessing. He began to lean his face down for a kiss.

I put a hand on his chest and stopped the movement. "Stop it, Jason."

"The last time I did this you shoved a gun in my ribs and said you'd shoot me if I stole a kiss."

"I meant it," I said.

"You're armed," he said, "I'm not holding your hands down."

I sighed. "You know my rule. I don't point a gun at anyone unless I plan to shoot them. You're my friend now, Jason. I'm not going to shoot you for stealing a kiss. You know it, I know it."

He smiled and leaned in closer. My hand was on his chest but my hand just kept getting closer to my own chest. "But I also don't want you to kiss me. If you're really my friend, you won't do it. You'll just let me up."

His face was just above mine so close it was hard to focus on his eyes. "What if I tried for more than a kiss?" He moved his face so his mouth was hovering over my chest. I could feel his breath just above the soft line where my breasts began.

"Don't push it, Jason. If I shoot you in the right spot, it won't kill you, you'll be hurt, but you'll heal."

He raised his face back up to me. He grinned, and started to roll off of me. The door opened and Richard was just suddenly standing there staring down at us. Perfect, just perfect.

22

"Would you believe I slipped?" Jason asked.

"No," Richard said. That one word was very cold.

"Get off of me, Jason."

He rolled to one side but made no move to grab for a towel. Richard threw the towel at him. Jason caught it, and his eyes sparkled with the effort not to smile. Jason had a streak in him that made him enjoy yanking someone's chain. He liked to stir the pot and see what happened. Someday he was going to do it with the wrong person, and he was going to get hurt. But not tonight.

"Get out, Jason. I need to talk to Anita."

Jason stood and wrapped the towel around his waist. I'd sat up but hadn't stood up. Jason offered me his hand. I almost never let a man help me stand, sit, or do much of anything. I took Jason's hand, and he gave it that little extra pull that made me bump into him when I got to my feet.

"You want me to go?" he asked.

I moved a step back but let him keep my hand. "I'll be all right," I said.

Jason grinned up at Richard as he walked out the door. Richard closed the door, leaning against it. I was effectively trapped and he was angry enough that the room filled with prickling energy.

"What was all that about?" he asked.

"It's none of your business anymore, is it?" I asked.

"Earlier today I thought you turned me down because you were being loyal to Jean-Claude."

"I turned you down because it was the right thing to do." I went to the sink and started trying to clean the bits of black crud out from under my fingernails.

"If Jean-Claude finds out you're doing Jason, he'd hurt him, maybe kill him."

"Are you going to tell on us? Run home tattling to our master?" I looked at him in the mirror when I said it. My reward was that he flinched. A little too close to home, that comment.

"Why Jason?" he asked.

"Do you really believe that I'm having sex with Jason?" I turned and used the slightly damp towel to dry my hands.

Richard just looked at me.

"Jesus, Richard, just because you're jumping everything in sight doesn't mean I am." I sat down on the closed stool and tried to blot my jeans dry with the towel.

"So you're not sleeping with him?"

The towel was not helping the jeans. "No, I'm not." I threw the towel in the corner. "I can't believe you'd even ask."

"If you'd found me on the floor with a naked woman on top of me, you'd have thought the same thing," he said.

Hmm, he had me there. "All the women I'd find you with would be strangers who are either dating you, fucking you, or both. What you saw on the floor was Jason being Jason. You know how he is."

"You used to threaten to shoot him if he touched you."

I stood. "Do you really want me to shoot him because he made a pass? I thought one of our main problems was that you thought I shot first and asked questions later. I think you called me bloodthirsty." I pushed past him and where our skin touched power flared like an invisible flame.

He moved back clutching his arm like it had hurt. But I knew it hadn't hurt. It had felt wonderful, a rush of power to make your hair stand on end. It was little touches like that that let us both know what it could be between us.

I walked out. So there was power between us, so there was heat, so what? It didn't change the fact that I was sleeping with Jean-Claude. It didn't change the fact that Richard was sleeping around. The fact that I was jealous of his girlfriends and he was jealous of any man he thought I might be having sex with was just a nasty cosmic joke. We'd get over it.