Danse Macabre

3

AN HOUR AND a half later we were parked in the employee lot behind the Circus of the Damned. Nathaniel had helped me with my eye shadow. He could blend about a dozen different colors and make it look like I wasn't wearing anything, yet make my eyes look amazing. He did his own eyes for the stage, so he had the practice. My dress was actually a skirt outfit. Black, stiff material, so that the gun in its holster at the small of my back didn't show through the dark cloth. Nor did the knife in its spine sheath. My hair hid the hilt. I'd left my cross in the glove compartment, because the chances of no one «accidentally» using vamp powers on me tonight were between zero and nothing. Yeah, they were our «friends» but they were still Masters of the City, and I was the Executioner. Someone wouldn't be able to resist trying me out, just a little. Like someone who shakes your hand too hard. But this «handshake» could make the cross burn against my skin. I did not want another cross-shaped burn scar.

Both the men were in Italian-cut suits, tailored to their bodies. Nathaniel was in black with a lavender shirt shades paler than his eyes. His tie was rich, purple silk. He'd braided his hair, so that it gave the illusion that his hair was short, until you saw the braid waving around his ankles. His black leather shoes gleamed, the cuffed pants long enough to hide the fact that he wore no socks. Micah was in charcoal gray with a thin black pinstripe. His shirt was a green with yellow undertones, almost the same shade as his eyes. Depending on how the light hit the shirt it brought out either the green or the yellow of his eyes, so that the color of his eyes changed with almost every breath. It was a nice effect.

I was wearing jogging shoes, but there was a pair of four-inch black heels in the overnight bag. Four-inch spikes, with open heels, and laces that wrapped around my ankles. When Jean-Claude couldn't persuade me into a skimpier outfit for the night, we'd compromised with the totally impractical shoes. Though strangely, they weren't uncomfortable. They looked like they should have been, but they weren't. Either that, or I was getting better at walking in high heels. Jean-Claude's fault. I'd put the shoes on when we reached the bottom of the stairs, before we saw our guests.

I had a key to the new back door of the Circus of the Damned. No more waiting around for someone to let us inside. Yea!

I'd actually turned the key and felt the lock click over, when the door started opening inward. Security was pretty good at the Circus of late, since we'd made a deal with the local wererats. But it wasn't a wererat that opened the door; it was a werewolf.

Graham was tall enough and muscular enough to make it impossible to move through the door without brushing him. He stood for a moment looking down at me, at us, I guess, though it felt more personal than that. His perfectly straight black hair managed to fall decoratively over his brown eyes, and still be very, very short on the bottom, so the strong line of his neck was left bare and strangely tempting. His eyes tilted up at the edges, and I now knew that he had his Japanese mother's eyes and hair, but the rest of him seemed to have been copied from his ex-navy and very Nordic-looking father.

Graham was the only one of the lycanthropes I'd ever known to have his parents visit his place of work. Since his usual job was security at Guilty Pleasures, a vampire and furry strip club, that had been an interesting night.

I thought for a moment Graham would stay in the doorway and make me push past him. I think for a moment, so did he. I was almost sure he would have moved, given us room, but Micah stepped up, just a little in front of me. «Give us some room, Graham.» He didn't say it mean, or even call any of that otherworldly energy. He even made it a little bit of a request, but Graham's face darkened just the same.

I watched Graham think about it. Think about not moving. He was already dressed in what all the security would be wearing tonight; black slacks, black T-shirt, though the shirt should probably have been a size larger. The one he was wearing looked like it was having trouble holding on, as if one flex too many and it would shred. Micah looked fragile beside him.

Micah let down some of his careful control. He let just a whisper of the power that lived inside him breathe through the night. My skin shivered with it. His voice came lower, deeper, an edge of growl to it. «We are Nimir-Raj and Nimir-Ra and you are not. Move.»

«I am wolf and not leopard; you have no authority over me.» He actually tensed, as if he were bracing for the fight.

I'd had enough. «But I have authority over you, Graham,» I said.

His eyes did not move from Micah, as if I weren't a threat. There were so many reasons Graham had not made the leap from bodyguard to breakfast snack for me.

His ignoring me pissed me off, and the first thread of anger brought my own version of the beast. That warm, prickling thread of power breathed over my skin and danced around the men around me. I was not a true shapeshifter, because I couldn't shift, but I carried four different strains of lycanthropy in my bloodstream. If you catch one type of lycanthropy, it protects you from any other strain. You can't carry more than one disease at a time, but I did. A medical impossibility, but blood tests don't lie. I carried wolf, leopard, lion, and one mystery strain that the doctors couldn't identify running through my veins. That, and some metaphysical impossibilities, meant I had power to call. Power to use, up to a point.

Nathaniel rubbed his arms and said, «Easy, Anita.»

He was right. Because I couldn't shift, it was possible to call the beast, but impossible to finish the call, so it was like having a seizure. Not pleasant, and I'd ruin the dress. But I was tired of Graham. Tired of him in so many ways. The energy had made him look at me, and for the first time I saw him remember that I was something besides a piece of ass he wanted, and hadn't had, yet.

«I am the lupa of your pack, Graham, until Richard picks another mate.» I stepped up, and Micah moved back so I could do it. I kept moving, pushing my power into that tall, muscular body, so that it was Graham who moved out of my way. «But I will always be Bolverk of the Thronnos Rokke Clan, Graham. I will always be the doer of evil deeds for your Ulfric, your wolf king. I am the executioner of bad little werewolves who don't remember their place. I think you've forgotten that.»

I'd backed him up among the boxes in the storeroom. His head actually hit the lone light that hung from the ceiling. The light swung and filled the room with shadows, and darkness.

I could feel that part of me that had begun life as Richard's beast, but now, somehow, was mine, pacing just below the surface of my mind. It was as if my body were a cage in the zoo, and my beast paced the narrow confines of its prison. Paced, and did not like it. Trapped, so trapped, and so wanting to break free.

I staggered. Micah and Nathaniel caught me before Graham could reach me. Micah growled, «Don't touch her!»

Nathaniel said, «She's called wolf; if another wolf touches her right now, it will make it harder to control.»

I clung to them, my two cats. I put my face against the warmth of Micah's neck, and drew in a deep breath of his scent. But underneath the warm scent of him, the sweetness of his cologne, was the nose-wrinkling musk of leopard. It helped chase back the wolf, helped me fight free before things got out of hand.

Graham dropped to his knees, head bowed. «Forgive me, lupa, I forgot myself.»

«Size doesn't make you dominant, Graham, power does. You are submissive to me in our pack. You are always submissive to Micah, because he is the leader of another people that has a treaty with the wolves. You will treat him accordingly or it will not be as lupa that I talk to you next, but as Bolverk.»

He looked up, startled, as if he hadn't expected me to say that last. He'd been playing, and I'd upped the stakes so high he didn't like the game anymore. Maybe if I hadn't been so tense about the maybe-baby I wouldn't have invoked Bolverk, or maybe I was just tired of Graham.

Once Nathaniel moved from pomme de sang to my animal to call, then I'd needed a new pomme de sang. As my animal to call he was bound metaphysically too close to be just food. Jean-Claude and some of the other vamps had put their heads together and finally realized that there was a reason that an animal to call, human servant, and pomme de sang are three separate jobs. The first two are so closely bound to you metaphysically that though they can feed you, it's a little like eating your own arm. You can do it, but it has a price. It fills your belly, but it also takes energy from other places. It was actually Elinore, one of the vamps we invited in from England to join our vampire kiss, who figured out why I was having to feed so often from all my men. Because almost all the men I was feeding the ardeur from were bound to me metaphysically — Jean-Claude as my master, Richard as my Ulfric and Jean-Claude's animal to call. We were a triumvirate of power, but we needed fuel from outside that triumvirate sometimes. I'd accidentally made another triumvirate of power with Nathaniel as my animal to call, and Damian as my vampire servant (another impossibility), and again they weren't a complete meal. So no matter how much I «fed» off any of them, I just didn't stay filled up. Asher, Jean-Claude's second-in-command, and our sweetie, was a full meal. Requiem would probably have been a full meal if I'd allowed myself to have full-blown intercourse with him. Byron had been emergency food, and frankly just wasn't enough my type to be a permanent part of my bedroom. He enjoyed sex with me, but he liked boys better. I don't mind not being someone's main squeeze, but being the wrong sex, that just made my head hurt.

Jason, Jean-Claude's pomme de sang, was great, but he couldn't feed both me and Jean-Claude every day. I needed to find someone else to fill the spot, or maybe a couple of someones, until I got more control of the ardeur.

Graham had been one of the local men that Jean-Claude had encouraged me to «interview» as my new pomme de sang. Jean-Claude thought that if I'd «interview» them a little more intimately, I'd have a new pomme by now. He'd called me stubborn. Asher had called me foolish, to refuse to sample such bounty. Maybe it was foolish. I hadn't told Ronnie that all the men in my life had given me a short list of other men to try out. She'd have freaked even worse than she already had, because if Louie had been that generous with her, she'd have been a happy camper. But Ronnie wasn't me, and what might have made her happy just seemed to confuse me.

Of all the men who had come to my bed, to sleep and cuddle, Graham had been the most pushy. He'd made it clear he wanted more from me than I wanted to give. Of course, if I hadn't been so stubborn, he'd be in the running for would-be daddy. The thought made me cold down to my toes. Let's hear it for not fucking everyone who bunks over.

«I beg forgiveness, lupa.» His face still showed the shock of hearing me invoke Bolverk, but the words were not begging words. Not really. To beg forgiveness among the wolves meant only one thing — something closer and more intimate than I wanted from Graham — but if I refused the gesture, then it would be a breach between us, one that could grow and eventually harm Richard's pack. Shit.

«Then beg, Graham.» My words didn't come out uncomfortable, they came out angry. Anger was always my shield. I was trying to learn other things to hide behind, but anger was still my tried and true, and for that moment, it worked.

He stood, and standing he towered over me. So broad, so muscled, so big, but there was fear in his face. Finally, he believed that I might, if he pissed me off enough, hurt him. That I might have the right to hurt him. It was not a bad thing to see fear on his face. He was overdue for it. We'd tried being nice, Micah, Nathaniel, and me, but some people won't take nice treatment. If a person won't take nice, there are always alternatives.

He could have used the submissive gesture to take me in his arms, but he did it the way it had been shown to me. He touched my face lightly with his fingers, just enough to steady himself. If we'd been in public he would have laid a very light kiss against my lips, but we weren't in public so it got to be more interesting. He leaned over me, and the prelude was too like a kiss for my comfort.

It made me want to back up, but I was dominant to him. A dominant does not back away from a submissive, no matter how much bigger he is. It's not about size and strength. It's about who's tougher, and no matter how big he was, Graham was not the toughest person in the room. Not even close.

He bent down, and down, his mouth hovering over mine so that I could feel his breath warm against my lips. I think even at the last second he thought about stealing the kiss I'd never allowed him, but he thought better of it. He did what he was supposed to do, though frankly the kiss would have been less embarrassing. In some ways, at least.

He was supposed to lick across my lower lip. It was a version of the gesture a submissive wolf uses toward a dominant. It's based on the food-begging behavior of wolf pups. But saying all that didn't change the fact that his fingers were gentle against my face, and his breath was warm against my mouth. The tip of his tongue touched my lip, and slid across it. Wet, gliding, sensual, wetter than the first real kiss should be. Wet, as if I'd taken a drink of wine and spilled just a little across my lower lip. Just enough so that I had to lick across my lip in an echo of what he had just done to me. As if I were drinking down the touch of his mouth.

He shivered, his breath trembling on the air. «That was nice.»

«It was supposed to be you begging the forgiveness of your pack's lupa,» I said, but my voice was a little shaky, and not nearly firm enough.

He gave a quick smile, the one that ruined the hip-tough-guy image, and made him look his age. Graham had yet to see twenty-five. «I do ask forgiveness, but it's still the most you've ever let me touch you.»

I shook my head and pushed past him. Micah and Nathaniel followed me. Nathaniel was carrying the overnight bag that held, among other things, the pregnancy tests. I knew when he came out of the store with them why I'd put off buying them. It made the whole problem more real. Stupid, but it did.

«You've slept in the same bed with me, Graham,» I called back over my shoulder as I headed for the big door that led underground.

«Sleeping's not what I want,» he said.

I stopped at the door, and just turned and stared at him. The other men moved to either side to let me see him better.

Graham looked at me, his eyes peeking through the silky fringe of his overly long bangs. It always made me think of an animal peering at me through the grass. The upper layer hadn't been this long when I met him.

«I do not need your shit tonight, Graham.»

«Why are you always mad at me?»

«I am not always mad at you, Graham.»

«If you're not mad at me, then why don't you like me better?»

«I don't dislike you, Graham, I just don't want to fuck you. I'm allowed not to fuck you, even though you want to fuck me.»

«Don't fuck me then, just feed the ardeur off me. Feed it the way you fed off Nathaniel for months without intercourse.»

I shook my head. «I don't want to introduce the passion of the ardeur to someone I'm not keeping. It's cruel.»

«The ardeur is the greatest orgasmic experience that any of the vampire lines can give to a mortal.» Graham's face was full of such eagerness, his hands reaching out to the air as if he could draw the ardeur out of it, and hug it to him. «I just want to know what it feels like. The real deal, not the little tastes I've had by accident. Why is that wrong, Anita? Why is it wrong to want that?»

«She's afraid you'll become addicted,» Micah said, voice soft.

Graham shook his head. «I've never been addicted to anything in my life.»

«Lucky you,» Nathaniel said.

«Please, Anita, don't go to strangers to feed the ardeur. Don't go to strangers when there are people right here who would do almost anything to feed your need.»

I made an exasperated sound, almost a scream of frustration, and went for the door. I opened it and we headed down the stone steps that led down, down, to the actual home of the Master of the City.

The steps were too wide, too something, as if they'd been carved for something that didn't walk on two feet. The stairs were always awkward, which was why I was still in jogging shoes. Micah took my hand anyway, and I let him. If it looked to Graham like I was needing help down the stairs, fuck him, or rather don't. I needed the comfort of touch tonight. Nathaniel stayed on my other side, but didn't try to take my right hand in his. I'd need that hand for the gun or the blade. Yeah, these vamps were supposed to be Jean-Claude's friends. But they weren't my friends, not yet.

We were at the landing just before the stairs took a turn. It was a blind turn, but if you hugged the far wall, you didn't stay blind for long.

«Wait,» Graham said, «please, wait. I should go first.»

We all turned and watched him walk the few steps down to us. He gave a smile that was almost nervous. «I am the bodyguard, remember?»

I looked him up and down, and said, «Are you carrying?»

He sighed. «No. Richard says we're dangerous enough without guns.»

I shook my head. «Not if everyone else has them, Graham. Silver bullets don't let you get close.»

He shrugged those massive shoulders. «Richard is Ulfric; if you want to change policy, take it up with him. I'm just doing what I'm told.»

I sighed. I loved Richard, really I did, but we had some serious differences of opinion.

Graham eased past us, but stopped on the step below the landing. He looked up, but not like he was happy. «I was hoping that Jean-Claude would have joined us by now.»

I gave him a look. «What do you mean, joined us? Jean-Claude is waiting downstairs with our guests, right?»

He shook his head. «There was an emergency upstairs.»

«Asher is managing the Circus; he should be able to take care of any emergencies.»

Graham licked his lips. «I don't know the details, because I was left down here to wait for you, but Meng Die did something. Something that made Asher call for Jean-Claude to help him.»

Meng Die was a petite Chinese doll, or that's what she looked like. But she, like me, didn't really match the packaging. She'd been the second-in-command in San Francisco, before Jean-Claude called in all the vamps he'd made in this country to help bolster his defenses. Her master had been happy to let her go, because she'd been nights away from a palace revolt that would have left him dead and her in charge. In fact, he wouldn't take her back, though Jean-Claude had offered.

Meng Die wanted to be Jean-Claude's second-in-command, but that was Asher's job. Then all the vamps had come from London after their master went crazy and had to be killed. Suddenly Meng Die was just another master vampire in a kiss that was lousy with master vamps. She was powerful enough to be third, or maybe even second, but temperamentally, she wasn't suited to be that close to any throne. Too dangerous. Too ambitious.

«What the hell did she do now?» I asked.

Graham shrugged. «I don't know.»

«I thought you were almost her pomme de sang» Nathaniel said.

«I was,» he said.

«You don't seem too worried about her.»

He shrugged those big shoulders. «She keeps promising to make me, or Clay, her pomme de sang, but she never makes the decision. She was still fucking Requiem, too, until he started turning her down.»

«Requiem isn't sharing Meng Die's bed anymore?» I asked.

«No.»

I frowned. «Did he find a new girlfriend?»

Graham licked his lips again. «Sort of.»

«I know that look, Graham, that's your I-have-more-bad-news-and-I-don't-want-to-tell-it look. Spill it, all of it.»

He sighed again. «Damn it, if you're not my girlfriend you shouldn't be able to read me that easily.»

It was my turn to shrug. «Just tell me.»

«Requiem thinks that the reason you've turned him down as your new pomme de sang is because he was fucking Meng Die. He said you're not a woman who shares your men.»

I didn't know whether to scream, or curse, or laugh. «Did he tell Meng Die that?» I asked.

«I don't know. He told me. He told Clay.»

«Did you tell Meng Die?» I asked.

He shook his head. «I am not that stupid. She takes bad news a hell of a lot worse than you do.»

«Is Clay that stupid?» I asked.

«Requiem told her,» Micah said, voice soft.

We all looked at him. «You know that?» I asked.

He shook his head. «But it would be something he would do, not to cause trouble, but to be honest with her.»

I thought about it, then had to agree. «Damn, he would. I wonder if he told her recently?»

«Did you turn her down?» Nathaniel asked Graham.

He gave the quick grin again. «No. She may not hold the ardeur, but the sex is still amazing. I've done vamps before, but never Belle Morte's bloodline. If Meng Die is an example of what they have to offer in bed, then my new goal in life is to be one of their pommes de sang.»

«I thought you wanted to be Anita's pomme,» Nathaniel said.

Graham looked a little startled, as if he'd said more than he'd meant to say. «If Anita would feed the ardeur off me, just once, I might never look at another woman, but until she does…«He let the sentence fade, but it summed up why Graham was not a strong contender for me. He didn't really want me, he wanted the ardeur. If any of the other female vamps from London had held the ardeur, he'd have chased them instead of me, or as well as me. Not very flattering — to him, or to me.

«Until I do, you're keeping your options open,» I said.

He shrugged. «I gave all my options up for Meng Die, and she kept Clay and Requiem on her string. I shared her with Clay in a way I've never shared anyone.» He looked sad for a moment, then it passed. I wasn't sure if it passed because his sorrow was that shallow, or he had pushed it away. «Anita isn't going to give up all of you guys for me. Why should I give up everyone else just for a chance to be in her bed? I mean, just for a chance, not even the certainty of it.»

«I didn't ask Requiem to sacrifice his libido to me.»

«You never ask anyone to give up other people for you, but if they don't, you don't sleep with them,» Graham said.

And that was a little closer to the truth than I wanted to hear. I hadn't asked Requiem to give up Meng Die, but the fact that he was fucking her had been a point against him. Why? One, because I simply did not like her. Two, Graham was right, I didn't share my men. Not with other women. The fact that I then expected them to share me with about half a dozen other men, well… Not fair. Not fair at all.