18

I DREAMED. I knew it was a dream, but I also knew I wasn't alone in the dream. I walked through a building I'd never been in, turning on lights, but just behind me each room went dark again. I couldn't turn the lights on fast enough and in the last room where I turned on the light, there was a moment of brightness and then darkness came.

I woke, pulse in my throat and the amulet around my neck glowing softly. The glow faded, but I knew it had been her. The Mother of All Darkness had hunted me in my dream. She wasn't strong enough to talk to me without another vampire's body or powers to help her. Alone she was just that shiver that makes you walk faster at night. You don't know why you do it, but some part of you remembers that the dark is never really empty.

As my pulse slowed, and the glow faded, I saw and felt where I was, and my pulse went right back up into my throat. There was a weight across my shoulders and something across my lower legs and I was staring into Wicked's face from inches away. What I could see of him seemed to be nude, and the only reason I couldn't see below the waist was that there was a woman collapsed face down across him. Her long yellow hair hid just how nude he might be, but she was nude.

I raised my head on the white carpet, knowing we were still in the living room of the Circus. Raising my head showed me that the drapes that made up this side of the "walls" had been torn down. There were more bodies in the twisted drapes, arms and legs, hair, a face that I recognized as one of the female vampires who worked at Danse Macabre. She'd been in the coffin room last night getting ready to bed down for the day, which meant that the ardeur had spread outside this room. Shit.

I was almost afraid to rise up more. Almost afraid to find out whose arm was across my shoulders, because I could feel it was probably male and the  line of body touching mine seemed to be nude, just like I was. Fuck. The weight across my lower legs was someone else's legs, no, not just legs. Male, whoever it was. Crap.

Fuck this, I had to get up. I even had to see who it was, I couldn't hide. Nope, it was too late for that. I rose up on my elbows. The arm across my shoulders rolled limply down my body. I took a deep breath and turned to see who belonged to the arm.

People look different out of their clothes, especially facedown on carpet. Short dark hair, curly, broad shoulders, darker complected, tall . . . It was the pile of ripped clothes on the other side of me with the pale trench coat on top that let me know it was Jesse the werelion. I had no memory of how he got out of his clothes. Did that mean we hadn't had sex and he'd just collapsed here, or that I just wasn't going to remember what I'd done?

Asher was lying near the fireplace on his side, wrapped around Meng Die, who lay on her back. Her shoulder-length black hair was spread around her like a fan, her body pale and perfect, and if they'd had sex together then all bets were off. It hadn't been about who you were attracted to last night, apparently. There was someone else on the other side of the mound of clothes but I couldn't see enough to know who it was, and since they weren't touching me I stopped trying to look. I looked down my body and again nude I wouldn't have been sure, but I thought Lisandro's face was turned toward me. His long black hair had come undone from his ponytail and trailed across his shoulders, almost hiding scratch marks on his back. One of his legs was partially across mine, his groin still pressed against my hip. I'd had enough sex to be pretty sure he'd been doing me from behind and then collapsed beside me, and then the lights had gone out. That meant the scratch marks weren't mine. A small blessing. He wasn't one of the guards that willingly fed me. Something about a wife. Shit. Oh, I'm sorry, dear, I had to have sex with my boss because there was this metaphysical explosion and it was either fuck or kill each other. Yeah, that was a conversation disaster waiting to happen.

I debated on whether they'd wake if I tried to crawl out from between them. If they were vampires, I wouldn't have worried, but wereanimals are like people; they just wake up.

"I do not believe they will wake, ma petite, if you wish to move."

I turned my head, craning back over my shoulder. My neck hurt. I raised my hand to find a bite mark. Jean-Claude was sitting in one of the  overstuffed chairs. He was nude, legs carefully crossed, his long black curls disarrayed on one side as if there were something in it that . . . I just stopped that thought in its tracks. I didn't want to think about it, any of it.

I explored the wound and knew it was a vampire bite. As I started to crawl out from between Jesse and Lisandro, there were other sharp little pains in different places. Some of them weren't in typical places for a vampire to take blood. What the fuck was that about?

There were bite marks over one nipple, and higher up the chest. I was on all fours, looking down the line of my body, debating whether my legs would hold me. There was dried blood between my thighs, but it didn't have the feel to it of someone too large and too vigorous. It felt like I had multiple bites along both sides of my thighs. This many bites, I shouldn't have woken up at all. That many bites should have bled me dry.

I had a moment of my skin running cold with fear, and then I suddenly felt a whole lot better about waking up nude, in the middle of what looked like a hell of an orgy. It was better than not waking up at all.

Jean-Claude was in front of me, his hands on my arms, helping me to my feet. I had a moment of looking into his face, unreadable, shut down, and then I wrapped my arms around him, put my head against his chest, and started to shake. He held me, kissed the top of my head, and murmured, "Ma petite, I am so sorry."

"Not to complain," I said in a voice that was a lot less solid than his, "but why didn't I bleed to death from all the vampire feedings? I've got at least eight. That's enough to drain me dry."

He stroked my hair, and answered me, "I am not certain. I believe the  ardeur saved you. There are multiple bites on most of the wereanimals, but none are dead. The ardeur is about life. I turned the Lover of Death's urge to life. My last solid thought was that we would not feed on death; we fed on life, on love, and I would not have my people serve the dark. We would serve the light."

I turned my head so I could look up into his face. "You really thought all that? I didn't have time to think much of anything."

He smiled at me. "It was in French, but that is the gist of what I tried to do with the power."

I hugged him tighter. "Is it night again?"

"No."

I frowned up at him. "You're awake again. What time is it?"

"We all passed out from the ardeur, but I do not believe I died at dawn."

"Sometimes you don't die at dawn when you and I are touching, but we weren't, were we?"

"Non, but there was a great deal of power to feed on, ma petite."

I was almost afraid to look around, but I couldn't be a coward. I couldn't tolerate that, so . . . I turned in his arms and looked farther into the room. There were bodies everywhere. They lay so still that if Jean-Claude hadn't told me no one was dead I'd have wanted to start checking pulses. Micah was on the other side of the room, as if he hadn't moved far from where we'd all started with the werelions. There was a pile of bodies near him, like a prettier version of the plague engravings depicting wagonloads of bodies to dump. Micah lay partially on top of that pile. I thought at first that the body entwined with him, arms and legs, was one of the male guards, but realized that I had the only man with long, straight, dark hair by me. I looked at that muscular back, those shoulders, those arms, and suddenly could see that it was Claudia. Her head was on Micah's chest, his arms and one leg around her, his head back against someone else's back.

"Where's Nathaniel?" I asked.

"In the hallway with Jason, J.J., and a few others."

"Richard, Damian?"

Someone groaned, the bodies on the loveseat began to shift, and one tanned, muscular arm came out from all the paler bodies. Richard's face, his hair wild around him, rose from the other bodies as if he were struggling to the surface of thick water. He looked bleary-eyed and confused for a second, and then I watched comprehension fill his face. I wondered if I'd looked as shocked.

He looked at the woman in his lap, and I realized it was the blond vampire, Gretchen. She was completely limp as he stood with her in his arms. His moving made the others slide into the spot he'd emptied on the loveseat. I recognized Byron, one of the vampire strippers at Guilty Pleasures. The woman who collapsed against Byron had bright red hair. It had to be Cardinal. Richard put Gretchen gently on the floor since there was no more room on the loveseat. His back was covered in scratch marks, some of them bloody. Were some of them mine?

He turned and there was dried blood coming down one side of his neck, and his thighs. He had a bite at the bend of his elbow, too. He, like me, should have been dead from blood loss.

He had more scratches on his arms, and even down the sides of his body. Someone, or someones, had liked nails. He had to pick his way between the bodies. I realized the big glass coffee table was missing. I glanced around Jean-Claude and found the remains of the table in the tangle of torn draperies.

"I do not think I will buy another glass table." Jean-Claude said. "Metal, perhaps."

Richard was almost to us; he just had to concentrate on where his feet went in the labyrinth of body parts. "I don't remember anything after you turned the craving for death into the ardeur," he said, still looking at the floor as he finished the last few careful steps.

"Me, either," I said.

"Nor I," Jean-Claude said.

Richard caught his foot on a leg that had been hidden under the pile of clothes. Jean-Claude and I both caught his arm, an automatic gesture. I got a sudden flash of memory: Jean-Claude and Richard kissing passionately. Richard ripping Jean-Claude's black shirt away to show white skin through the tattered black, and then Richard's part was gone. I was suddenly thrown deeper into the sensory memory of Jean-Claude behind me, inside me, and Noel in human form in front of me. I was going down on him, and the blond female lion was coming in to kiss him.

I was suddenly standing by myself not touching anyone. I had to blink hard to see the here and now. "What was that?" I asked.

"Memory," Jean-Claude said.

"It stopped when I pulled away. I didn't want to see what happened next." Richard sounded so angry. What did he think had happened? Oh, and had it? All I remembered was them kissing and him helping me undress Jean-Claude, but I had a vague memory of other hands pulling at Richard, pulling him away.

"I don't think you did what you think you did," I said.

He glared at me, and I knew he was shielding as hard as he could so that his anger didn't touch us with heat, or raise my beast. I appreciated the control, but I also knew that if he thought he and Jean-Claude had had full-blown sex, it could ruin all the positive work he'd done. It could throw everything back the way it had been. I liked us getting along better, but I wasn't sure how to save it.

"We did not have sex, Richard," Jean-Claude said.

"I saw us," he said.

"You saw a kiss and a little petting, but it was Gretchen who touched you and pulled you away."

"I woke up with her in my lap. She loves you in a stalker, obsessed sort of way. Shouldn't her depth of love for you keep her safe from the ardeur? I thought love kept you safe."

"She was likely pulling you away from me, but once she touched you the ardeur spread to her, and she likes men well enough that she did not have enough defenses to leave you for me. She does not love me; she is obsessed with me. Obsession is not love, Richard, it is a type of possessing. Love is not about owning someone, but about loving them."

"If love makes us proof against it, then . . ." I couldn't bring myself to finish the sentence.

"Then does it mean that none of us love each other?" Jean-Claude said. "No, ma petite. This was not ardeur for feeding, but the feeding taking the place of the slaughter that the Lover of Death wanted us to perform. It was all the energy we had raised and more turning from the beast's hunger, or the vampire's thirst, to sex. It was a food that the Lover of Death could not stomach, so he was pushed away."

"I heard him and I got your memories of him," Richard said, and shuddered.

"I just got how dangerous he was and how he feeds on death the way Belle feeds on lust. Did you get something I didn't?" I asked.

Richard looked at Jean-Claude. He wasn't angry now. "Every time I think I've been abused, then I get another memory from your past and I realize that it could have been worse."

Jean-Claude looked away, which meant he wasn't sure he had control of his face. He almost always had control of his expression. He'd once told me that after a few hundred years of your facial expressions being used against you by bigger, badder vampires, you learned to hide your emotions so deep that sometimes it was hard to show them at all.

"What am I missing?" I asked.

Richard just looked at the other man. It made me look at Jean-Claude. I had a moment to think about it, then said, "The Lover of Death doesn't feed on sex."

"You met Yvette, his minion," Jean-Claude said.

"She was a sadist and enjoyed rotting on people especially during sex."

He nodded. "She wanted to do that to Jason because it frightened him so."

"But you wouldn't let her; we wouldn't let her. You protected him from her," I said.

He finally looked at me, and his face was empty, not charming, but just empty. "When I went back to Belle to save Asher's life, she ceased to protect me from anything for a time."

I just stared at him, and knew that my face showed the thought. "She gave you to . . ."

"He doesn't truly like sex, but he still is functional, and he does enjoy fear."

I went to him, going on tiptoe, and putting my arms around his shoulders, drawing his head down to me. In that moment I wasn't bothered by whatever was dried on the side of his hair. Nothing we'd done was as terrible as what he'd been through. "I'm so sorry," I whispered.

Then there were other arms around us, tentative at first, and then Richard hugged us both. "I'm not happy about what just happened, and it reminds me why I stay the hell away from you, but nothing we've ever done, including today, is as terrible as the glimpses I get of your past." Richard raised his head up, and it made me glance at his face. "Aren't most of your worst stories things the council did to you?"

"Most," he said softly.

"And now they're going to try to take us over," he said.

"It would seem so."

"No," Richard said, "whatever it takes, no."

Jean-Claude looked back at the other man. Their faces were close, and I remembered the kiss, not as some visceral memory, but just as a memory. "You do not know what might be required to fight them, Richard."

"You may be a manipulative bastard sometimes, but you're our manipulative bastard."

Jean-Claude actually smiled at that. "Such flattery will go to a man's head, mon lupe."

Richard smiled, but his eyes stayed serious. "Morte d'Amour is evil, Jean-Claude. I felt him in my head, I felt what he wanted us to do to Noel, and once we'd killed Noel it wouldn't have stopped with him. He'd have made us kill each other and fed on every death."

"That was his plan," Jean-Claude said.

"Sex is not worse than that," Richard said.

"What can we do to keep them away from us?" I asked.

"We can keep them away, I think, but I am worried for our poor country. There are weaker Masters of the City, ma petite. I am wondering how they fared this night."

"You mean when he couldn't roll us, he hunted for other prey?" I asked.

"The Mother wants us, but he has children of his own line in charge of cities here, not many, but a few, and more in Europe."

Richard said, "You want to try to protect the entire United States from the Vampire Council?"

"If we can, oui."

Richard and I exchanged a look, and then we looked back at Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude with all his fancy fetish yummy clothes, standing there nude and covered in more body fluids than a CSI episode. It should have seemed like whistling in the dark that he, that we, could figure out a way to keep the most powerful vampires in Europe out of the entire United States metaphysically, but we'd already chased out three of them, plus the remnant of the Darkness.

We looked again into each other's brown eyes and then back to the blue of Jean-Claude's. "I'm in," I said.

"What do we do?" Richard asked.

"I believe we have freed Belle of the Mother's influence for now, so all that is left them is death, terror, and violence. We will lose if we try to meet them on with their own strengths."

"Are you saying we make love, not war?" I asked.

He nodded.

"I'd rather just kill them, but the Darkness will just jump to a different body, won't she?"

"I fear so."

"Can we really keep her out of the United States?" Richard asked.

"If the other Masters of the City are willing, there is a chance."

"Why wouldn't they want to keep this out of here?" I asked.

"They will want that, ma petite, but they will not like my plan."

"Why not?" Richard asked.

"It would require that they give up much of their autonomy and run America more as Europe is run."

"Why, what will that help?" Richard asked.

"It isn't just political autonomy that they give up, is it?" I asked.

"Non, they would have to give us some of their power."

"You're talking about setting up a council here in America with you as its head," Richard said.

He nodded.

"Didn't some of the council try to kill us when they just thought we were trying to do that?" I asked.

"They're going to kill us anyway, ma petite, don't you understand that yet?" He looked at us, and his eyes held something I didn't see much: fear. "If we cannot be conquered, then they must destroy us."

"For fear that we'll do exactly what you're planning to do," Richard said.

Jean-Claude nodded again.

"It'll be a race to see if they can conquer us or kill us before we have enough power," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"The other Masters of the City aren't going to want to give up their power to you," I said. "If they haven't felt the council's power they won't believe you. They'll think it's just an excuse to take their power.

"Exactement," he said.

"Some of them will fight rather than give you their power," Richard said.

"Some."

"Are we about to start a vampire civil war here?" I asked.

"Non, ma petite, between us and our allies they will not be able to mount such a strong defense, nor will they band together. Most will live, or die, in their own territories."

"Are you planning to force them to give up power, even if they refuse?"

"To keep Morte d'Amour and the Mother of All Darkness from raping this country, oh yes."

"This will make you the bad guy," Richard said.

"I am aware of that."

"Are you planning on us metaphysically raping the reluctant masters?"

"If necessary."

"Isn't that exactly what we're fighting to keep the council from doing?" Richard asked.

"Yes, but we are not doing it for evil purposes."

"So they just have to trust that we mean well," Richard said.

"No," Jean-Claude said, "they just have to do what I tell them to do."

"If you do evil for a good reason, it doesn't become good," I said.

"Do you want Marmee Noir to possess other masters in this country?"

"You know I don't."

"Then one man's evil becomes another's necessity, ma petite. We must be as ruthless as ever you have been, and as persuasive as ever I have been."

"What am I supposed to be?" Richard asked.

"Be honest with yourself and with us; help us not become the monsters that the other American masters will fear we have already become."

Richard held out his hand, and after a moment of hesitation Jean-Claude took it. I laid my hand on top of theirs, and all I could think was,  Is this how revolutions begin? Not with a proclamation or a riot, but with a few people in a room somewhere with their hands clasped and a purpose. We were trying to save our country. I was betting the other Masters of the City wouldn't believe we were saving anything but ourselves, and patriot  wouldn't be what they called us. No, motherfucking bastards, more like.