Anita Blake 14 - Danse macabre (20 page)

She nodded, and ordered them out, and replaced them with two guards who wouldn't feel conflicted. She'd understood what I'd meant. If Richard understood what I'd done, he didn't show it, not even by a flicker of his eyes.

"I'm trying to decide what I can say that won't piss you off, Richard. That's all."

He took in a breath so deep it made his shoulders shake. "Fair enough." His voice sounded like his own now, not all growling deep. "Did the other master really pick a fight with you?"

I nodded. We'd leave the whole theory as to why he might have picked it until we were alone. "You felt his power, Richard—if it had come down to a fight, a true fight, vampire on vampire, would we have won?"

He looked down at his hands where they lay still and open on his thighs. "I don't think so."

"He raised the
ardeur
. If I feed off him, then he loses."

Richard nodded. "Food can't be dominant. I know." He looked past me to Jean-Claude. "Why would he raise the
ardeur
? Why would he pick the one way that he could lose?"

"I do not believe he wished to win," Jean-Claude said.

"That makes no sense," Richard said.

"He is already master of one territory. It is against our laws to rule a second that does not touch your own. There are lands in between our territories, so defeating me would win him nothing. But losing to the
ardeur
would give him…"

"Anita."

"A woman of Belle Morte's line who holds the
ardeur, oui
."

"I thought you said he was your friend," Richard said.

"I believe he is." Jean-Claude sighed and said, "We need privacy for this discussion, Claudia, if you would leave us?"

She looked at me, not at the men. I liked Claudia. "It's okay."

She sighed. "We'll be right outside the door, but if the power level rises again, we are back in here."

"No arguments," I said.

"I'll control myself," Richard said.

"Sure," she said, and went for the door. Lisandro stared back at us as the door closed, and it wasn't a bodyguard look. It was a man's look at a naked woman that he'd never seen naked before. Until that moment I hadn't even thought about any of the other men in the room. Richard had been all I thought of; the rest of them might as well have been eunuchs as far as I'd been concerned. But with that one look Lisandro broke two rules. First, shapeshifters didn't notice nudity; they did it too much. It would be like your cat thinking about not wearing pants. Second, it was against the bodyguard code to let clients see that you thought about them in any way other than as a target to keep safe. You did not let a female client see that you lusted after her, even if she paraded naked. That was her problem, not yours. You do not fuck those you guard, because you can't guard them while you're fucking. I
guess there are exceptions to the above rules, but Lisandro hadn't earned those exceptions.

I gave him a look that let him know I'd seen his look. He just smiled, not a smidge of regret. Great, just great.

The door closed behind the guard, and we were alone. None of us moved, as if now that it was just us, we weren't certain what to do.

Richard spoke into the sudden heavy silence. "I need you to put on a towel, at least, Anita, please." He added
the
please
like it hurt him to ask politely. I guess he was still angry. But he had swallowed all that rage the way he'd learned to swallow his beast. Part of me was beginning to wonder if there would come a day when he couldn't swallow all the rage, and what would happen when that day came. Once I'd thought Richard would never hurt me; now I knew better. He wouldn't hurt me on purpose, but purpose wasn't always what drove him.

Jean-Claude handed me a towel. His face was empty as he did it, nothing to help me, or give me a hint, but nothing on his face for Richard to take offense at either. I guess we were both being as careful of him as we could.

It was a big towel. I ended up covered from armpits to nearly my ankles. I tucked the end of the towel securely under and over, and voilà, I was dressed.

"Thank you," Richard said.

"You're welcome," I said, and sat down on the edge of the marble, smoothing the towel under me. Marble can be very cold to sit on bare.

Jean-Claude handed me another slightly smaller towel. I took it, and watched as he began to wrap an identical towel around his wet hair. He was right; if I didn't dry my hair well, it would be a mess tomorrow.

"How can the two of you do that?" he asked.

I looked at him from underneath the towel, while I wrapped it around my head. "What are we doing now?"

"Taking care of your hair like nothing's wrong."

I got the towel fixed in place and turned to meet Jean-Claude's look. He took the hint. "If we let our hair dry badly, it will not change what has happened, Richard. The practicalities of life do not cease needing to be done just because other things are going wrong."

Richard moved so he was sitting on the floor, rather than kneeling. He hugged his knees to him, and it was something that Nathaniel might have done, not my dominant Richard. Whatever he had experienced with us tonight, it had shaken him.

Jean-Claude came to sit beside me on the edge of the marble tub. He was careful not to touch me, only the faintest edge of our hips touching through the towels. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me, but he was probably right. Richard didn't always like to see us cuddle.

"You wanted privacy for this talk, so talk," he said. One of the side effects of the vampire marks was that we seemed to be sharing bits of our personalities. He seemed to have inherited some of my impatience and lack of anger management. A bad combination for a werewolf. But we didn't get to pick and choose what we got.

"
Ma petite
, if you will tell him, and me, what happened before I arrived."

I told the shortest complete version I could of all that had happened before Jean-Claude showed up. Somewhere during the talk, I leaned in against Jean-Claude's body. It just seemed wrong to be this close and not touch. He put his arm along my shoulder.

Richard didn't seem to notice. "I thought this Samuel and Augustine were your friends?" he said.

"They are."

Then Richard said what I'd thought earlier. "If these are your friends, Jean-Claude, what are the other masters going to be like?"

"I'd thought of that, too," I said. "I mean, if these are your friends, your enemies are going to kill us."

"One of the reasons for tonight's little meeting was to see how
ma petite
reacted to other Masters of the City."

"Badly," Richard said.

"Not necessarily," Jean-Claude said. He leaned forward, curving me more into his arm to keep from knocking me off the edge. Jean-Claude started to tell his part in tonight's little drama, but Richard stopped him.

"I felt most of what happened after you touched Anita. I don't need a reminder."

"As you like," Jean-Claude said, "but the point is we may have rolled Augustine as thoroughly as Belle Morte could have done."

"I wouldn't brag about that," Richard said. He'd moved to lean his shoulder against the marble around the tub, so that he was close enough to have reached out and touched us, but he didn't try to close the distance. And because he didn't, we didn't.

"If Augustine is truly ours in the way that Belle made allies, than none of the other masters will try us. They will fear us, Richard. Fear even the touch of our hands."

Richard frowned at us. I wanted to touch the thick waves of his hair, but kept my hand around Jean-Claude's waist, and the other hand in my lap. "But you told us, before we agreed to this gathering of masters, that everyone would behave. Especially if they thought one of their people would be
Anita's new
pomme de sang
. Now, the first two masters who touch her are breaking all the rules."

"I believe there is a reason for that."

He gave us a skeptical look that was like a mirror of my own. "What reason?"

Jean-Claude told him about his theory that the
ardeur
was hunting powerful prey.

"But that means that any Master of the City who comes into contact with her will be, what, compelled to try to mind-roll her?"

"Not just Masters of the City," he said, and he told about Meng Die and Requiem. "It may have been only that these two are of our bloodline, and both had tasted the
ardeur
more than once."

"So has Asher, and he's not crazed."

"Asher was drawn to
ma petite
from the moment he came to us."

"He saw her as a way of duplicating what you and he and Julianna had," Richard said. He had moved almost as close as he could without actually touching us. I wondered if he was even aware of it.

"That, and the only way back into my bed was through Anita. But what if it was more than that, Richard?"

I had to add now, "Requiem isn't the only one of the new London vamps that had tasted the
ardeur
, and they're all of Belle's line. They don't seem particularly drawn to me."

"Perhaps they must get at least a small taste of the
ardeur
from you before it is triggered?"

"Or maybe you're wrong," Richard said, "maybe you just don't have any friends. How long has it been since you saw these guys?"

Jean-Claude gave that graceful shrug. "Almost a century for Augustine, and not since I entered this country for Samuel."

I looked at him. "Jean-Claude, just because someone was your friend a century ago doesn't mean he hasn't changed."

He nodded, as if I'd made a point. "Perhaps, but I felt something when we were with Augustine. It was such power. I believe that the
ardeur
is reaching some new power, evolving into something new, or at the very least new to us."

"What if Auggie isn't rolled completely?" I asked.

"Then what we did tonight will not be as large a deterrent."

"Tell Richard the other part, that if we really did roll another Master of the City, you're wondering if the council in Europe will use this as an excuse to kill us. Or maybe our American neighbors will decide to kill us before we try to take them all over."

Richard looked at us with that flat I-don't-believe-it look. "Well, this is a lose-lose situation. Why did you bring them all here, Jean-Claude?"

"Because their presence makes an important event of my evening of dance. It is unfair that just because an artist becomes a vampire he is no longer allowed on the stage. I want my kind to be able to pursue passions that have nothing to do with blood and power. I hope, as you for your wolves, that we can be more than just monsters."

I'd been thinking about what he said about the taste of the
ardeur
too much to be sidetracked into talking about ballet. "You know I fed the
ardeur
off Byron, too. He's not besotted with me."

"But he is not a master vampire,
ma petite
, nor will he ever be a master. He accepts that."

"If Anita has this effect only on your bloodline, we're safe for tomorrow, because there are no other Masters of the City from that line."

"But there are master vampires of Belle's line scattered throughout this country. Some will be there tomorrow. Some are part of the ballet troupe itself."

"So I stay home," I said.

"Cinderella must come to the ball,
ma petite
."

"Nathaniel says I'm not Cinderella, I'm Prince Charming."

He smiled, and gave me a little hug. "Of course,
ma petite
, whatever you say." Yeah, he was humoring me, but I let him. "But the point remains, you must go to the party tomorrow night."

Richard's knee touched my leg, his hands still clasped around his legs. His hands were mottled with the tightness of his own hold. "She can't go, not if she's going to get jumped by all of them." His hand started to reach for my leg, then he stopped himself, and went back to holding his own hand. He was fighting so hard not to touch me, to touch us. The vampire marks, at least for Belle's line, made you want to touch each other. It didn't have to be about sex, just about feeling more complete when you touched. I know Richard felt almost compelled to touch me, but I'd never had the courage to ask if he felt the same way around Jean-Claude. If he did, it might explain some of why he was so enraged about Augustine.

"We have in our camp other masters of similar power to Requiem, who have tasted the
ardeur
. One is even of Belle's line."

I shook my head. "If you're talking about London, forget it. He seriously creeps me."

Richard was shaking his head, too. "No."

"Frankly, Jean-Claude, I don't know why you agreed to take him. I mean, his own kiss nicknamed him 'the Dark Knight.' I think that says something."

He sighed and leaned his back against the wall. "You know that Belle Morte tried to demand all her bloodline back, when their master was executed. How could I refuse to save them from her?"

"Yeah, but I'd think Belle's court would be right up London's alley. A nice dark alley."

"He did not wish to go back to her. He spoke to me over the phone, he begged me not to let him go back to her court. You see,
ma petite
, Richard, London was traded to Belle for several years, then she exiled him. She tried to recall him, but he got his new master to intercede."

"Why?" Richard asked. "Auggie would give anything to go back. I felt how much he misses her." Richard shuddered. "It's like some sort of addiction."

"
Oui, mon ami, exactement
, that is precisely why London does not wish to go back. He is like an alcoholic that has become a teetotaler. He knows he has another drunken binge in him, but he does not know whether he has the strength to stop again. How could I leave him to her?"

"That's awfully sentimental for you, isn't it?" Richard said.

Jean-Claude gave him an unfriendly look. "I try for kindness when I can, Richard."

Richard sighed, and leaned his forehead on his knees. "God, this is a mess."

"You said we had other master vamps who had tasted the
ardeur
but who weren't of Belle's line—who are they?" Our list of non-Belle masters was pretty damn slim.