"Show me," I said.
He leaned into me again, but this time he didn't try to touch my mouth. He rubbed his cheek along mine, rubbing his face across my ear until his face was buried in the hair behind my ear. His movement had put my face against his hair. His hair was in cornrows, and the texture was rough and soft at the same time.
Jamil spoke with his mouth still against my hair, "You have to bury your face in the hair and smell the skin."
He burrowed his face into my hair until he had to be touching skin. I heard him breathing in air. His breath was almost hot against my skin.
I tried to return the favor, but had to raise on tiptoe, one hand against his chest for balance. Zane slid away from me, and I used my other hand on his shoulder. The cornrows made it easier to put my face next to the skin of his scalp. The braids moved around my face like small thin ropes.
I could smell his hair straightener, his cologne, and under all that was him. The moment his scent hit me, I felt a rush of power, and it wasn't his. I suddenly knew that Richard was sitting on a bed, holding his mother. I felt him look up as if he'd see me standing at the foot of the bed. But I was miles away, standing at the foot of a different bed. We drew in the rich warm smell of Jamil's skin, and Richard's power broke over me in a march of goose bumps.
Jamil drew back from me, hands still on my shoulders. His nostrils flared while he drew in scent. "Richard -¨C I smell our Ulfric. How?"
Zane pressed against my back, rubbing his face against my hair. Cherry had curled herself around my leg like a fetus. "She is your lupa. Bound to your Ulfric."
Jamil stepped back from me, something very close to fear on his face. "She cannot be bound to Richard. She is not lukoi."
I moved towards him, and Zane went to his knees behind me. Cherry let me go, hands sliding away reluctantly. They huddled together, holding each other.
I spared them a glance and asked, "You guys all right?"
Zane nodded. "I saw you call the power of the marks once before, but I've never been touching you when you called the Ulfric's power. It's a rush."
Cherry just stared at me, eyes gone large in a pale face.
"Don't I know it," Jason said. He was still across the room, hugging his naked chest, hands rubbing up and down his bare arms as if he were cold. He wasn't cold.
I turned back to Jamil. "I am bound to Richard. It isn't the same kind of bonding that he'd have with another lycanthrope, but it is a bond."
"You are Jean-Claude's human servant," Jamil said.
I hated the term, but it was accurate, technically anyway. "Yes, I am, just as Richard is Jean-Claude's wolf to call."
"He cannot call our Ulfric like a dog. Richard does not answer to the vampire's whims."
"Me, either," I said. "Sometimes I think Jean-Claude may have bitten off more than he can drink with the two of us."
The door to the cabin opened, no knock, no preliminaries. Asher stepped through with Nathaniel in his arms. He was bundled into Asher's suit jacket. What I could see of his legs were pale and bare.
I ran forward. "What happened?"
Asher laid Nathaniel on the bed on his back, trapping the jacket under his body. He was nude except for the jacket. Nathaniel tried to curl up onto his side into a ball, but Asher stopped him, trying to smooth his legs down, to make him lie still. "Lie still, Nathaniel."
"It hurts!" His voice was strangled, twisted tight with pain.
I knelt by the bed, touching his face. He looked at me, eyes so wide they flashed white. His mouth opened and a small moan escaped him. His hand clawed at the bedspread as if he needed to hold something, anything. I gave him my hand and his grip was so tight I had to remind him not to crush my hand.
He muttered, "Sorry," then his spine bowed, body twisting. Normally, seeing Nathaniel completely nude would have embarrassed me. Now I was too scared to be embarrassed. There were bleeding cuts on his chest, but they looked shallow. Nothing seemed wrong enough for this kind of pain.
Cherry disappeared into the bathroom. I didn't think you were that squeamish if you were a nurse.
"Who did this?" I asked.
"He is our message from the local vampires," Asher said.
"What message?"
Nathaniel twisted on the bed, his other hand grabbing at my arm. Two slow tears trailed down his cheeks. "They kept asking me why we'd come here." He threw his head back and forth, and I caught a glimpse of something on his neck. I got one hand free and moved all that long, auburn hair so I could see his neck. A vampire bite showed in the smooth flesh of his neck. The bite was clean, neat, but the skin was slightly darker than it should have been.
"Did one of you do this?" I asked.
"I took blood from the bend of his arm," Asher said. "That is Colin's doing."
Nathaniel's body eased against the bed, the spasm or whatever passing. "I told them we were here to rescue Richard. I told them the truth, over and over." His hand convulsed around mine, eyes closing as if he were riding a wave of pain. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes, his hand easing around mine. "They wouldn't believe me."
Cherry came out of the bathroom. She tried to push me gently but firmly out of the way, but Nathaniel clutched at my hand. Cherry settled for making me kneel by the head of the bed. He could still hold my hand, but I was out of the way. She began to explore the wounds on his chest. She was very submissive, almost untrustworthily so, but let someone be injured and it was like a different Cherry rose to the occasion. She became Nurse Cherry, as if the leather-slut-from-hell was her secret identity.
"Do you have a first aid kit in this cabin?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"I've got one in my suitcase in the other cabin," Cherry said.
"I'll get it," Jason offered. He started for the door.
"Wait," I said. "Jamil, go with him. I don't want anyone else taken tonight."
No one argued with me. It was a first. The two werewolves just went for the door. Damian had to move out of the way for them to leave. He shut the door behind them and leaned against it. His eyes had gone a drowning, solid green, like emerald fire. His pale skin was taking on that translucent, almost glowing quality that the vamps get when their humanity begins to fold away. Strong emotions will do that to the lesser vamps: fear, lust, anger.
I looked at Asher. He was ... normal. He stood just back from the bed, that handsome, tragic, face blank and empty. It was so like the expression Jean-Claude used when he was hiding something.
"I thought Colin was either supposed to attack us directly or leave us alone," I said. "No one said anything about this kind of shit."
"It was ... unexpected," Asher said.
"Well, explain it to me."
Damian pushed away from the door, stalking into the room, every movement tight with anger. "They tortured him because they enjoyed it. They're vampires, but they fed off more than just blood."
"What are you saying, Damian?"
"They fed off his fear."
I looked from his glowing face to Asher, then back to Damian. "You mean literally, don't you?"
Damian nodded. "The one who brought me over was like that. She could feed off of fear as if it were blood. She'd go for days feeding off of terror, then suddenly she'd take blood. But she didn't just feed, she slaughtered. She'd come back to the chamber covered in blood, slick with it. Then she'd make me ... " His voice trailed off. He looked at me, his eyes were beginning to look like naked green flame, as if his power were eating the bones of his eye sockets. "I felt it when we met Colin. I smelled it. He's like her. He's a night hag, a mora."
"What the hell is a night hag or a mora? And what do you mean, you met Colin? I thought you rescued Nathaniel."
"No, they gave him back to us," Asher said. "If we did not see him, the message would not be complete."
Cherry interrupted us. "His pulse is thready, his skin is clammy. He's going into shock. The cuts on his chest are shallow. Even two vampire bites in one night shouldn't put him into shock. We heal better than this."
"There is a third bite," Asher said. Through it all, his voice had been utterly calm, as if nothing touched him.
Cherry looked down the length of Nathaniel's body, then touched his thigh. She moved his legs apart. "Of course, the femoral artery. Why is the skin discolored on both bites?" She touched the skin of his inner thigh. "The skin feels almost cold."
Nathaniel writhed on the bed. He let go of my hand, reaching for me as if he wanted a hug. He grabbed one arm, and a handful of my blouse. His eyes were wild. "It hurts."
"What hurts?" I asked.
"The bites are contaminated," Asher said.
"What do you mean, contaminated?"
"Think of it as a poison."
"He's a wereanimal, they're immune to poisons," I said.
"Not this one," Asher said.
"What kind of poison is it?" Cherry said.
There was a knock on the door. Jason said, "It's us."
Damian looked at me. His eyes had calmed down to a soft glow, his skin almost back to the milky perfection that passed for normal.
I nodded.
He opened the door. Jason came in with a first aid kit bigger than most overnight bags. Maybe Cherry had been a Girl Scout in another life. Jamil followed behind Jason like a dark, solemn shadow.
"The kind of poison that nothing in that little bag will stop," Asher said.
I stared up at him, suddenly realizing what he'd just said. "You mean he's going to ... " I couldn't even say it.
"Die," Asher said in that same utterly calm, almost mildly amused voice that he'd been using since they first walked into the cabin.
I stood, Nathaniel's hands clinging to me. I looked at Cherry and she moved in to help me draw free of him. I wanted to say things to Asher that I didn't want Nathaniel to hear. Zane crawled onto the bed on the other side. Nathaniel grabbed his hand and held on. Another spasm threw Nathaniel writhing on the bed. Zane and Cherry held him down, let him use that crushing strength on their hands. The two wereleopards stared at me while Nathaniel thrashed, eyes rolling back into his head. Zane and Cherry watched me. I was their Nimir-ra, their leopard queen. I was supposed to protect them, not drag them into shit like this.
I turned away from their accusing, expectant eyes and moved with Asher to the door. "What do you mean he's going to die?"
"You've seen the kind of vampires that rot and re-form themselves?"
"Yeah. So?"
"One of them bit Nathaniel."
"I've been bitten by one of them. Jason's been bitten by one of them. Nothing like this happened to us." I glanced back and found Jason holding Nathaniel's hand while Cherry started cleaning the chest wounds. Somehow I didn't think bandaging the cuts was going to help.
Jamil and Damian joined us. We stood in a little circle, talking, while Nathaniel screamed. Asher said, "It is one of the rarest of talents. I thought that only Morte d'Amour, Lover of Death, the council member could do this. Colin chose his messages carefully. The slashes are harm from a distance with just a flexing of power."
"Jean-Claude can't cause harm from a distance," I said.
"No, and no one else can spread corruption from their bite. No one else in this country."
"You keep saying corruption," Jamil said. "What does that mean exactly?"
Cherry came to us with white gauze pads in her hands. Her pale freckles stood out like ink on her suddenly pale skin. There was yellow and green puss on the gauze. "This came out of the chest wounds," she said quietly. "What the hell is it?"
We all looked at Asher, even Damian. But I was the one who said it out loud, "He's rotting. He's decaying while he's still alive."
Asher nodded. "The corruption is in his blood. It will spread and then he will rot."
I looked back to the bed. Jason was speaking low and softly to Nathaniel, stroking his head like you'd comfort a sick child. Zane was looking at me.
"There has to be something we can do," I said.
Asher's face was as closed and careful as I'd ever seen it. One of Jean-Claude's memories of Asher went through me so forcefully that my fingertips tingled with it. It wasn't a memory of any one event. I recognized the set of Asher's shoulders. I knew his body language with a familiarity built up of years of observation. More years than I'd been alive.
"What are you hiding, Asher?" I asked.
He looked at me, pale, pale eyes blank, empty, lined with those amazing golden eyelashes like shining lace. He smiled. The smile was everything it should have been: joyous, sensual, welcoming. That smile went through my heart like a knife. I remembered that face whole and perfect. I remembered when that smile had made me catch my breath.
I shook my head. The physical movement helped. I shook off the memories. They faded, but it didn't change what I'd seen, what I knew. "You know how to save him, don't you?"
"How badly do you want to save him, Anita?" His voice wasn't neutral now, it was almost angry.
"I brought him down here, Asher, I put him in danger. I'm supposed to protect him."
"I thought he was supposed to be your bodyguard," Asher said.
"He's walking food, Asher. You know that. Nathaniel can't even guard himself."
Asher let out his breath in a long sigh. "Nathaniel is a pomme de sang."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"It means apple of blood. It is a sobriquet among the Council for willing food."
Damian finished the thought. "The vampire that feeds from a pomme de sangis duty bound to protect them, like a shepherd keeping the wolf from his sheep." Damian looked at Asher while he said it, and it was not a friendly look. They were fighting about something, but there was no time.
I touched Asher's arm. It felt stiff, wooden, not even alive. He was drawing away from me, away from the room, away from what was happening. He was going to let Nathaniel die without even trying. Unacceptable.
I made myself grip that wooden, unalive arm. I hated it when Jean-Claude felt like this. It was a reminder of what he was, and what he wasn't. "Don't let him die, not like this. Please, mon chardonneret."
He jumped like I'd hit him when I used the old nickname that Jean-Claude had used so many years ago. It meant literally, my goldfinch, which sounded silly in English. But the look on Asher's face wasn't silly. It was almost shocked.
"No one has called me that in over two hundred years." His arm softened under my hand, feeling warm, alive again.
"I don't beg often, but for this I will."
"He means so much to you?" Asher asked.
"He's everyone's victim, Asher. Someone has to give a damn about him. Please mon --" He put his fingers over my lips.
"Don't say it, Anita, don't ever say it again unless you mean it. I will save him, Anita, for you."
I felt like I was missing something. I could remember Jean-Claude's pet name for Asher but I couldn't remember why Asher was afraid to try to heal Nathaniel. As I watched him walk to the bed, golden hair trailing like a glittering veil across his shoulders, that missing memory seemed very important.
Asher held his hand out to Damian. "Come, my brother, or does the famed courage of the Vikings fail you now?"
"I was slaughtering your ancestors before you were a gleam in your great-granddaddy's eye."
"Shit, this is dangerous, isn't it?" I asked.
Asher knelt beside the bed. He looked back at me, the golden hair sliding over the scarred side of his face, hiding it. He knelt, all golden perfection, and smiled, but it was bitter. "We can take the corruption into ourselves, but if we are not powerful enough, it will enter us, and we will die, but your precious wereleopard will be saved either way."
Damian crawled onto the far side of the bed, moving Zane away from his spot by Nathaniel's head. Nathaniel had stopped screaming. He lay very still, skin pale, shiny with sweat. His breath came in shallow pants. The wounds on his chest were oozing pus. There was a smell in the room now, faint but growing. The bite on his neck still seemed solid, but the skin of his neck was a deep blackish green like a bruise that was killing deep.
"Asher," I said.
He looked at me, one hand running along Nathaniel's bare thigh.
"Damian's not a master."
"I cannot save your leopard by myself, Anita. Who would you save? Which will you sacrifice?"
I looked at Damian. His green eyes were human again. He looked very mortal, curled beside Nathaniel.
"Don't make me choose."
"But it is a choice, Anita. It is a choice."
I shook my head.
"Do you want me to save him?" Damian asked.
I met his gaze, and didn't know what to say.
"His pulse is very weak," Cherry said. "If you're going to do something, you better do it soon."
"Do you want me to save him?" Damian asked again.
Nathaniel's fast, gasping breath was the only sound in the sudden silence. They all looked at me. Waited for me to decide. And I couldn't decide. I felt my head nod, almost as if I wasn't doing it. I nodded.
The vampires began to feed.