29

IT TURNED OUT to be coffee first. Requiem wasn't in the bedroom, and Micah came through the door with a tray of breakfast. He didn't say that I'd waited too long to eat, and maybe endangered Damian, or risked raising my beasts again and hurting myself, or losing the baby, or that by neglecting myself I could make the ardeur more uncontrollable. No, he didn't say any of that. He just brought in the food and put it on the bedside table. Two cups of coffee, croissants, cheese, and fruit. All food in the Circus was catered because there was no kitchen. The old Master of the City hadn't kept many humans with her, and hadn't given a damn for anyone's comfort but her own. Jean-Claude had remodeled the bathrooms first. Priorities. Frankly, you could get good take-out food, but a decent bathroom, that they don't deliver. Still, as I looked down at the tray of food, I thought, We need a kitchen.

I took one of the chunks of cheddar first. We'd found that protein worked best at keeping my energy up. Some of us just aren't meant to be vegetarians.

"Are you all right, Anita? You look very..." Micah seemed to give up on finding a word.

I smiled at him. "Thanks for the food, and I've got a two o'clock appointment with my gynecologist."

"Today?" he asked, "Is that wise?"

I nodded, picking up the first cup of coffee. I'd been good and eaten a piece of cheese first, but that wasn't what I'd really wanted. I took that first sip of hot, strong coffee. Later in the day I'd drown it in sugar and cream, maybe, but first thing, I wanted it black, naked, the way I used to drink all my coffee. I closed my eyes as I sipped, letting the warmth flow through me. Was I addicted to coffee? Probably, but as addictions go, it could have been worse.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. "Good coffee."

He smiled. "I'm glad you're enjoying it, but by two we'll have most of the vampires awake and moving around down here. We'll have daywalking visitors, too."

I nodded, and took a smaller sip this time. "I know." I told Micah what the doctor had told me.

He blinked at me, that long slow blink that I used sometimes when I was trying to process too much information too quickly. "You have to go."

"I know," I said. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and made myself take a bite of croissant. The croissant was good, soft and buttery, but I wasn't hungry. I wanted the coffee, but the rest of it I was eating because I had to. Eating to keep everybody alive and well. I'd never been a big breakfast eater, but today I think I was just too nervous. Fine, too scared.

"I'll go with you, as boyfriend and leopard."

I nodded. "Nathaniel probably won't be back in human form by then, I know."

"You know that Richard had arranged today off from his job."

I nodded. "He arranged a substitute."

"He's going to want to go, you know he will."

I nodded. "Probably."

"He can be your wolf," Micah said.

Someone cleared his throat. Remus was closer to the bed than I remembered. "I couldn't help overhearing."

"I'll have to have at least two guards with me, so you needed to know anyway."

He nodded. "Good, but Anita, from what Claudia told me, Richard wouldn't let you bring his beast. What good is his wolf, if he won't let you bring it?"

I nodded. "Point, but he'll still want to go."

"How about if I make sure one of the guards is a wolf?" Remus said.

"Do it quietly."

"I'll make sure Richard doesn't know," Remus said. "Though maybe he'll come through."

I shook my head. "If he wouldn't change here in the underground, then he is so not going to want to change in the middle of St. John's maternity ward."

"Can't say that any of us would want to; it's a good way to get the cops called on you," Remus said.

I nodded. "I know, and I will do my damn level best to hold my shit together, but I'm scared, and it's going to be stressful."

"You need a lion. The new guy isn't going to be in human form in time for the appointment," Remus said.

"Didn't someone mention that Joseph is bringing some of his lions by today so I can pick someone?"

Micah nodded.

"We need to call him, and see how early he can be here," I said. I'd made myself finish the croissant, and one cup of coffee was gone. I took the lid off the second cup, and leaned back against the headboard. I had some food in me now, so I could allow myself to sip this cup without ruining it with food.

"I'll check." He pulled a tiny folding cell phone from somewhere on his person, and stepped away from the bed to give us some privacy. It was illusionary privacy, because he would hear anything we said, but I appreciated the effort.

Micah was wearing a man's white dress shirt unbuttoned around the tan of his upper body. The sleeves were buttoned tight, but he wore it more like a jacket than a shirt. The jeans had started life black, but were now sort of gray. When he curled up on the bed beside me, his feet were bare. "You're dressed in clothes you wouldn't mind shifting in," I said.

He nodded. He'd pulled his hair back in a ponytail, but missed a few curls, so they framed his face here and there. He looked very winsome, except for his eyes, which were way too serious for comfort.

"You think I'm going to have another"--I waffled my hand back and forth--"attack."

He smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Let's just say, I'm prepared."

I drank my coffee a little faster, because it was cooling. "Have I eaten enough?"

"No," he said softly.

I hung my head. "My stomach feels like a hard knot today."

"Either one more croissant, or a whole piece of fruit, or all the cheese."

I finished the coffee, and reached for the bread. When you didn't want to eat, bread was less objectionable. I started nibbling at it.

"Jean-Claude needs to know about the appointment."

"I know."

"I could tell him."

I frowned at him. "You don't trust me to do it."

He sat up, raising his hands. "I will do whatever will make this easier for you, Anita, but he needs to know as soon as possible that you are going to take his human servant, his animal to call, and at least two or three blood donors with you this afternoon."

I tossed the half-eaten croissant back on the tray. "If there is another way to do this, tell me, and I'll do it."

"I didn't say that. All I said was that Jean-Claude needs to know."

"Then go tell him," I said, and the first flare of anger came.

He didn't give me hurt eyes, he gave me careful eyes. He tried to hold my hands, and I jerked away. "If you hold me, I'm going to fall apart."

He pulled back. "No one would blame you if you fell apart."

"I would."

He sighed. "You always have to be so strong."

I nodded. "Yeah, I do."

He slipped off the bed to stand beside it, gazing at me. I didn't want him standing there looking scrumptious. I wanted to be angry, and I always had trouble being angry when he looked cute. Hell, I had trouble keeping any fight going with any of the men in my life; all they had to do was strip, and they usually won. It was true, and that pissed me off, too.

"Anger is a luxury, Anita."

I screamed, full-throated, deep and loud. I screamed until it echoed off the walls. I screamed until the door opened and more guards poured in. I yelled at them, "Get out, get the fuck out!"

They turned in a black-shirted mass to Remus. He motioned them out, but he kept two of them, so I was back to four guards. I guess I couldn't blame him.

"Tell Jean-Claude, and send Requiem to me." My voice sounded deeper, thicker.

"Anita..."

"If you comfort me, I'm going to lose it." I looked up at him. "Please, Micah, please, just do what I ask."

"I'll talk to Jean-Claude, but are you sure about Requiem?"

"You mean am I sure I want to feed the ardeur on him?"

He nodded.

"No, I'm absolutely sure I don't want to feed on him, but Jean-Claude and I talked. If I feed on Requiem and he's mind-fucked again, then I'm too dangerous for the other pomme de sang candidates. I need to feed on Requiem before Auggie rises for the day. Because, if I truly freed Requiem's mind from the ardeur, then we may be able to use the same technique to free Auggie of us."

"A lot of ifs and maybes," he said.

"And maybe I can heal Requiem while I feed. I seem to heal during metaphysical sex, with or without intercourse, sometimes. Meng Die's little temper tantrum is not going to impress the visiting masters, and we can't hide it if he's as hurt as he is now."

"You could feed off someone else, someone who's already one of your sweeties."

"You mean, I don't need another shock for the day," I said, and I started to laugh, but it ended in a sob that I bit my lip to keep inside. Panic was eating at me, eating holes in all my bones and organs, so that I was getting more and more fragile, and when I needed it most, there'd be nothing there to use; there'd be nothing but the fear.

I whispered, because I didn't trust my voice any louder. I was either going to start screaming again, or crying. I didn't want to do either. "Jean-Claude thinks Requiem's power can overcome my reluctance. I have to feed the ardeur, and I so don't want to. If Requiem's power can make me want him, then send him, because right now, I don't want anyone. I just want to be left the fuck alone."

Anyone else would have looked hurt, but Micah didn't. He took it, with that quiet face. He said, quietly, "We all have a breaking point, Anita, all of us."

I shook my head, over and over. "We can't afford for me to break today, Micah."

He sighed. "Someday, I'd like for us to have a little time for you to be able to break down, if you wanted to." I realized his eyes were glittering with unshed tears.

"Don't cry," I said.

"Why not, one of us needs to." He turned away, with the first tear shining down his cheek.

I grabbed for his arm, and crawled over the bed, and pulled him in against me. And just like I'd known I would, I lost it. I cried, and screamed, and clung to him, and hated myself for doing it. So weak, so fucking weak.

30

SOMEWHERE IN THE middle of breaking down, I realized there were other hands holding me besides Micah's. I pushed at the hands, half-fought, and half-clung, as if I couldn't decide whether I wanted not to be touched, or never to be let go. I heard a voice, a hysterical voice, saying, "Don't want to do this... can't do this. I can't do this." I realized it was me, and even realizing it, I couldn't stop the babbling. "Can't do a baby, tests, don't want to do the ardeur anymore, no more, no more men, no more adding to my life." The talking fell into sobbing, and finally even that stopped. In the end, I just lay in the curve of their arms, and was quiet. Too tired to move, too tired to protest. Because somehow in the midst of it all, Richard had ended up holding me. His body cradling me. I didn't feel anything about him holding me. Nothing, I felt nothing, and I was glad. I'd been feeling too much lately, too much.

"Her energy feels different," he said, and his voice sounded farther away than it should have. He was tall, but I was only in his lap, not that far away.

Other hands touched my face, my hands, my arms. My eyes were closed and I kept them that way; I didn't want to see them. Didn't want to see any of them. "She is cold." Jean-Claude's voice, his hand moving away from my cheek.

Cold, yes, I was cold, so cold. Cold down to the core of my being, as if I'd never be warm again. Fur brushed my arm, and it made me open my eyes enough to see Nathaniel kneeling on the bed. His face was still a stranger's face behind the mix of animal and human. Once, just once, that face had been above me while we made love. Just the one time.

Hands touched my face, moved me to look at Jean-Claude and Richard. Their hands, one on either side of my face. Their hands were so warm against my skin. It took me a long second to realize that both of their hands felt warm. Had Jean-Claude gained so much power from feeding on Augustine, so much that he was hot to the touch?

I was having trouble focusing on their faces. I whispered, "Warm, you're both warm."

Richard spoke slowly, carefully, as if he thought I might have trouble understanding him, "Anita, you're colder to the touch than Jean-Claude."

I frowned at him, and tried to focus on his face. I could almost do it, but it was as if my attention kept wandering before I could make my eyes do what I wanted. "Wrong, something's wrong." Still a whisper, but I said it out loud.

"Yes," he said, "something is wrong." He looked at Jean-Claude. "I can't feel her. She's in my arms and I can't feel her energy."

"She is drawing away from us," Jean-Claude said.

"Drawing away, what does that mean?" Richard asked.

"I believe ma petite is trying to break the bonds that bind her to us."

"You mean break the triumvirate?"

"Out."

"Can she do that?" someone asked.

"Anita can do anything she wants to do," Nathaniel's growling voice said.

"I do not know if it is possible, but I know she is trying," Jean-Claude said.

"It will destroy your power base," Asher's voice, though I couldn't make my eyes search the room for him.

"So be it," Jean-Claude said. I fought to see him clearly, watch him look to Richard. "Why the tragic face, Richard? You could be free of the triumvirate, Richard, free of me."

"You know it's what I want, but what would it cost us? She's cold to the touch."

Jean-Claude's face loomed into view. "Ma petite, drop your shields. Drop them just enough for me to sense you. Let me share energy with you. You are unwell."

I shook my head, and the world swam in streamers of color. I had a moment of nausea, and that was the moment that I realized I was sick. Sick at heart, sick of soul, sick of it all. Somewhere deep inside me, I was trying to undo all my decisions. I was trying to do a take-back, on a game that had played too far for a do-over. The front part of my brain knew it was too late, but it wasn't the front part of my brain that was in charge. How do you argue with the subconscious? How do you argue with a part of your brain you don't even know is there most of the time? The real bitch of the situation was, I wasn't sure I wanted to argue.

I smelled the musk of leopard, and knew Nathaniel was beside me before his voice growled, "Damian."

I opened my eyes, and found myself staring into a black blur of a face. Nathaniel moved back far enough for me to have a chance to focus on him. I repeated what he'd said. "Damian."

"Damian will die," Nathaniel said.

I blinked at him. I'd heard what he said, but it didn't seem to make sense to me. It must have shown on my face because Jean-Claude said, "I do not know if what your despair attempts is truly possible, but if you succeed, Damian will die. His blood flows only with your power, Anita. Without your power, your vampire servant will rise no more from his grave. He will die, and remain dead."

I stared at him, and again, it was as if his words didn't truly reach me.

He gripped my arm, tight, and tighter, until it hurt, but even that was a distant hurt. "Anita, I will not be blamed for this. If you accomplish this miracle, and break free of all of us, then you will kill Damian. I will not have you later say you did not understand. I will not take the blame, not for this." He was angry, but his anger could not touch me, and I was glad. His anger was no longer mine. I could cut him out, cut them all out of me.

Micah's voice, from the other side of me: "Breaking the triumvirate won't change the fact that you're pregnant, Anita. You'll still need to go to the hospital at two o'clock. That doesn't change."

I turned and looked at him, though it seemed to take a long time for me to do it. "The ardeur will go away."

"Are you sure of that?" he asked, quietly.

Jean-Claude's voice: "In truth, I do not know if the gifts and curses you gain through the vampire marks will vanish if the triumvirate breaks. It may leave you as I found you, alone and safe in your own skin, if that is what you truly desire. Or you may retain some abilities, but lose the aid of..." He hesitated, finally finishing with, "all of us, in your struggle with the ardeur."

I turned until I found his face, still out of focus, like I wasn't working quite right. "The ardeur will go away," I whispered.

"I simply do not know what will happen, because what I feel you doing is impossible. Only true death should be able to break you free of my marks. Since what you attempt has never been done, I do not know what the outcome will be." His voice was utterly bland, empty, as if his words meant nothing.

I tried to think about what he'd said. Even my thoughts seemed sluggish. What was wrong with me? I was hysterical, that was what was wrong with me. The moment I thought it that clearly, I started to calm. I didn't feel any better, really, but I could think. That was an improvement. I thought about being free of the ardeur, and that was a good thought. I thought about being free of Jean-Claude's marks, and all the metaphysical mess that came with it.

My life being my own again, that sounded good. I thought about being just me, as Jean-Claude said, just me in my own skin. Just me, alone, again. Alone again. I had a moment of absolutely joyous nostalgia for my life before I'd acquired so many people. To come home to an empty house didn't seem awful, it seemed relaxing.

Micah touched my face, turned me to look at him. I could see him clearly, finally. His kitty-cat eyes were so serious. "Nothing that is happening is worth dying over, Anita, please."

I thought he meant Damian, then realized he didn't. I wasn't cold just because I was trying to break the triumvirate. There was only one way to be free. One of us had to die. Could I break free? Maybe. Would I die trying? Maybe. The thought should have scared me, but it didn't. And that scared me. I know it sounds stupid, but it didn't scare me to think I might die, but it did scare me not to be scared. Stupid, but true.

I had to do better than this, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I had to do better than this.

Richard hugged me from behind, bending all that six-feet-plus of warmth and muscle around me. "Please, Anita, don't do this." His breath was so warm, almost hot, against my hair.

I looked up at him, from inches away. His eyes were perfectly brown, warm, and full of so much emotion. "You'd be free."

He shook his head, his eyes shiny. "I don't want to be free that badly."

"Don't you?" I asked.

"No, this price is too high. Don't leave me, not like this." He held me close, his hair long enough now that it tickled along my face. I buried my face in the warm, sweet scent of his neck, but I knew it was a lie.

I cuddled against him, as tight and close as I could. I buried myself against the warmth and strength of him, and it still felt wonderful. It still felt so right, but I knew it wasn't. We were both too stubborn for it to work.

I was crying again, and wasn't sure why. Crying my regrets out against the warmth of Richard's neck. The coulda-beens, shoulda-beens, woulda-beens. I wrapped myself around him, legs, arms, all of it, and clung to him, clung to him and cried.

A hand stroked the back of my hair, and a voice said, "Ma petite, ma petite, drop these shields, let us inside again."

I turned my head to look at him while I clung to Richard. I stared up into that face, those midnight-blue eyes. His hand stroked along the edge of my face, and it wasn't enough. Whatever I'd done to myself, I'd walled myself up tight. Since I hadn't tried to cut myself off on purpose, I didn't know how to undo what I'd done. How do you undo an accident?

I tried to explain. "I'm head-blind. I can't feel anything metaphysically. I didn't mean to cut us up." I knew now I'd survive what I'd tried to do, but would everyone else? I reached out to Damian. Even dead in his coffin for the day, I should have been able to sense him. Nothing. Fear washed over me, and all the warmth I'd started to regain flowed away on that tide of fear.

I grabbed the edge of Jean-Claude's robe. "I can't feel Damian! I can't feel him, at all!"

"We must breach your shields, ma petite. We must reawaken your powers."

I nodded. "Yes."

"I am your master, Anita, my very marks can keep me out of your shields. We are running out of time for Damian. I would ask that you allow Asher and Requiem to help me breach your shields."

"I don't understand."

"I do not have time to explain, but it does not truly matter which of us breaks down these new stronger walls, only that they break. Once broken, then your own power will be set free, and it will find Damian."

I wanted to argue, but that emptiness where Damian should have been scared me. I nodded. "Do it."

"You must take off your cross first."

I didn't ask how he knew I was wearing one. Richard let me slide down his body enough so I could use my hands to unhook the chain. Jean-Claude had stepped away, not far, but far enough that he would not accidentally touch it. I spilled the chain into Richard's waiting hand.

I met his eyes, while his hand closed around my cross. "Put it in the bedside drawer," I said.

He nodded. "So it won't glow."

I nodded. I admitted to myself in that one moment why I'd stopped wearing a cross most of the time. Oh, I kept one in my vampire-hunting bag, but I didn't wear one much. To bed, but, oh, hell. I kept waiting for the cross to glow when I did something. I kept waiting for the cross to glow because of some vampiric ability that I'd inherited from Jean-Claude. I kept waiting for it to glow against me. What was left of my nerves couldn't have handled it, today.

Richard moved across the bed enough to lean over and open the bedside table drawer. He set the cross in carefully, and closed the drawer. He crawled back across the bed, until he was kneeling in front of me again. "I spend so much effort keeping you out of my mind, my heart, and now it's like this void inside me. I keep trying to break up with you, stupid me. It's like trying to break up with your own hand. You can live without it, but you're not whole."

"Can you sense Damian?" Jean-Claude asked.

"I can sense vampires with a cross on, Jean-Claude; that's never made any difference to my necromancy."

"Humor me," he said.

I humored him. I shook my head. "Empty, like he's not there." I'd managed to chase the fear back, but it fluttered through my stomach, tingled the tips of my fingers. "Is it too late? Please, God, don't let it be too late." Inside my head, I added, Don't let me have killed him.

I watched Jean-Claude's eyes spill blue, until his pupils and the white were lost to the glowing, deep blue of his power. I sat on the bed only a few yards from him, while his power rose enough to fill his eyes with fire, and I felt nothing. At least my necromancy should have felt it, if not the vampire marks. I'd been psychically blind, head-blind, from shock or illness before, but never to this degree. It both scared me, and gave me hope. Maybe I couldn't sense Damian because I couldn't have sensed anyone right then.

Richard shivered beside me, then slid to the floor. "You don't feel that, do you?" His eyes were a little wide. The small hairs on his arms were standing at attention.

"No," I said.

He looked at Micah and Nathaniel, who were still on the bed, though they'd moved back to give us room. "I think we all need to clear a space for them to work."

Micah kissed my cheek. Nathaniel brushed his cheek against mine, scent-marking me. They slid off the far side of the bed. Jean-Claude moved up until he was beside the bed. He raised a hand above my face. I felt it, the press of his aura, but faintly, as if my skin were wrapped in cotton, and he could not touch me.

He laid his hand against my face, and that one touch spread in a shivering line across my skin. "Ma petite." The words breathed along my spine, as if he'd spilled a line of water down my skin. I shivered for him again, and it felt great, but... I opened my eyes and looked up at him. "It's like years ago. I always felt your voice, your touch, but..."

"You have shut yourself away, ma petite, in a tower formed partially of my own vampire marks. You have used my own power against me."

"Not on purpose," I said.

Asher glided into view. His eyes were already full of pale blue light. He'd called power, and I'd felt nothing. He came to stand beside Jean-Claude. "More drastic measures, I think."

I looked up at him, in his satin robe, the deep burnished gold of it that was nothing to the shine of his own hair. "What did you have in mind?" I asked.

Jean-Claude stepped back, giving his place to the other man. Asher raised his hand, laying it against my face in an echo of what Jean-Claude had done moments before. They had always been able to echo each other like that, I thought, and on the tail of that thought, memory crashed over me. I'd shared Jean-Claude's memories before, but not like this. It wasn't one memory, or two, but hundreds. Hundreds of images flooding my mind, drowning me in the scent of Asher's skin, the spill of Belle's hair around our bodies like a second body to caress us all. A woman with hair the color of copper spilled across our pillows, and our mouths locked on her neck, her hands struggling at the scarves that bound her to the bed. A blond, whose breasts we marked together, so that she bore twin love bites. A man in a long, powdered wig, his pants down around his knees, and both of us between his thighs, not for sex, but for blood, and it was what he wanted. Women with their clothing in disarray, red hair in every shade from nearly blond to darkest auburn; blondes from white to gold; brunettes from deep brown to true black; skin like ripe grain, or dark coffee, or wood. Tall, short, thin, fat, starved; bodies flowing under our hands, against our bodies, so that it was as if I experienced a thousand nights of debauchery in heartbeats. But in every memory they moved like shadows of each other. Jean-Claude took the woman, or the man, for sex, or blood, or both, and knew that his golden shadow would be there. That Asher would match his movements, that he would be there to help, to catch the pleasure and make it more. I hadn't realized until that moment that they weren't lovers, but more than that. They had been truly the best and closest person in each other's lives.

I drowned in their memories, drowned in the scent of a thousand lovers, a thousand victims, a thousand pleasures won and lost. I drowned, and like any drowning man, I reached out to save myself.

I reached out metaphysically for someone, anyone. The memories hit Richard like a flood hitting a boulder. I felt the memories crash against him, sweep up and around him. I heard him cry out, and waited for him to push me away, to lock me out, but he didn't. He let me cling to him, let me try to make him my rock in the flood of sensations and memories. I felt his confusion, his fear, his revulsion, and his desire to push it all away, to not have these memories, of all memories. The thought came: there are worse memories.

Jean-Claude's voice. "Non, ma petite, mon ami, enough, enough." His voice was soft, coaxing. I was lying on the bed, with him holding my hand. He was rubbing my hand the way people do when they're trying to warm you.

"I'm here," I said, but my voice sounded echoing, tinny.

The bed moved violently. Richard had collapsed on it. His breathing was ragged, his eyes showing too much white. He grabbed my other hand. He felt frightened, shocky, and I realized that he'd taken over some of my reaction. He'd sucked it away like metaphysical poison.

I licked dry lips and said, "I'm sorry."

"You asked for help," he said, in a strained voice. "I gave it."

He usually cut himself out of the memories I got from Jean-Claude; of all the times to not shy away, he picked these memories.

"I would have preferred other memories to share, ma petite, but when you breached your unnatural shields, I did not dare restrict your access to me. I did not dare shut the marks down again." He stroked my hair like I was still sick, but he cast a worried look at Richard.

"I won't run," Richard said, "I knew what you were, what you both were." He glanced at Asher, who still stood near the bed.

Asher put his hand on Jean-Claude's shoulder, and it was too soon after the memories to see them touching. Except this time they weren't Jean-Claude's memories, I just had to wade through the fact that some of that flood of memories had stayed with me.

Richard flinched as if he'd been slapped, and I knew that I wasn't the only one who had kept some of it.

Micah yelled, "Nathaniel!"

I looked around the room for Nathaniel, and couldn't see him. Micah was on the floor. I fought to sit up, and Richard helped me. Jean-Claude was already around the bed, and kneeling with Micah, beside Nathaniel. He was human again, all that lovely hair spread around his body. He wasn't moving.

I screamed his name, and reached out to him not with hands but with power. I felt him breathe, but his heart hesitated, as if it was forgetting how to beat.

I screamed, "Nathaniel!"

Jean-Claude just suddenly appeared beside the bed. "Nathaniel is trying to keep Damian alive, but he does not know how. You must feed them energy, now, ma petite, right now."

"Or what?" I asked, and I leaned into the death grip I had on Richard's arm.

"Or they will die," Jean-Claude said.