20
Jean-Claude called in my mind, "Ma petite," but the fear swelled upward and covered his words. I knew he was talking in my head, but I couldn't understand what he said. The fear was drowning him out like one radio station overwhelming another. His words were like the ghost sound of a distant station, just under the sound of the terror, but all I could hear, all I could feel, was Moroven's fear.
Nathaniel collapsed against me, mouth still open, gasping as if the air were too thick to breathe. Me dying was one thing, but it wouldn't just be me. Nathaniel and Damian lay across my lap, their hair mingling like bright and dark ribbons.
Gregory knelt in front of me; I'd almost forgotten he was there. I usually had trouble reading his face when he was in half-leopard form, but this face, this face I could read. Even under spotted fur and yellow kitty-cat eyes, the hunger showed through. Not lust, hunger. He said in that growling voice, "They smell like food."
"I know." Richard's voice, and it turned me to him. I stretched my hand out toward him. He'd dragged us out of Damian's memory, maybe he could drag us out of this.
He looked... unhappy, angry. I let my hand begin to fall, but he took it, at the last minute, he took my hand in his. Instantly there was the sweet scent of forest and the musk of fur. The fear receded a little, like a wave of the ocean pulling back, but there was another wave just off shore, and you knew it was coming.
I could talk now, and what I said was, "Help me."
Jean-Claude's voice swelled inside me, pushed back the fear enough so I could hear his words. "You must raise the ardeur, ma petite, you must. She does not understand a clean lust, free of pain and terror. Use our Richard, and I will be able to join my powers to yours, and we can defeat her."
I stared up into the face of the man that Jean-Claude had so casually called "ours," and knew he wasn't. I could smell that wonderful musk, the calm of pine and leaf mold, but the look on his face was anything but calm. His brown eyes were full of a fine, shimmering anger. Touching his hand like this, I should have felt that anger dance over my skin, but I didn't. All I could feel was Moroven's power like a storm hovering over me. The only emotion left in me was terror.
"Ma petite, can you hear me?"
"Yes," I managed a whisper.
"Then what is wrong?"
I wanted to ask him, What am I supposed to do, wrestle Richard to the floor and ravage him? But all that came out was, "Can't, I can't."
"Can't what, ma petite?"
"Can't feed off Richard." It seemed silly to say that out loud while staring up into that handsome, angry face, but I couldn't concentrate enough to say it silently in my head. Talking was hard enough.
"Richard has agreed to this, ma petite."
I shook my head. "Don't believe it, he's angry."
Richard looked even angrier, but he said, out loud, "Jean-Claude's telling the truth, Anita, I agreed to feed the ardeur." His face was dark and frowning with his rage. He'd agreed, but he didn't want to do it. Come to think of it, neither did I. I did not want to go down this metaphysical path again. We'd worked so hard to separate ourselves out, and sex with Richard would bind us close again. I didn't want that, wasn't sure my heart would survive being broken again. There's only so much emotional super glue in a person's soul, after that everything just stays broken.
"I cannot hold Moroven's fear off forever, ma petite, you must act before my strength fails us all."
"Easy for you to say," and it almost sounded like my own voice, not breathy with terror, but nicely sarcastic. Good. "It's not your lily-white ass on the line."
"If I could fly to you, I would, but it is broad daylight, and I cannot. You and Richard must do this, for already I am losing against Moroven. I can feel her nightmare coming closer, and when it comes close enough, I will flee and save myself, in hopes that when darkness falls there will be something left to rescue. But if you and Richard do what I fear you will do, then darkness will come too late, too late for Damian, too late for Nathaniel, and if you do not survive the deaths of your servant and your animal, then Richard and I may never see moonrise again. Is it so horrible to feed from our Richard, ma petite, is that a fate worse than death?"
Put that way, no, but... damn it. Why did it always come down to sex? Why wasn't there ever another way to fight?
Jean-Claude answered inside my head, "Because we can only fight with the tools at our command. I am an incubus, ma petite, and seduction is both my curse and my greatest power. If I had another magic to offer you, I would, but it is what I know. It is almost all I know."
"If the only tool you've got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail," I said.
Jean-Claude started to ask something, but he was swept away. Everything was swept away by terror. My heart was in my throat like I'd swallowed a fish. I was choking on my own heart. My skin was cold with the iciness of her power. So afraid, so very afraid.
Richard jerked away from my hand, stepped back from me, and I couldn't read his face now. It wasn't anger.
Gregory knelt closer to us and stretched his upper body out, over Nathaniel and Damian, stretched out until his half-leopard face was only inches from mine. He sniffed the air in front of me. "Smells, so good, so yummy. Fear and flesh," he let out a long sigh that tickled his breath along my skin, "fear and flesh."
I wasn't afraid of Gregory, I knew that, but I was afraid, and the fear was formless, but it didn't want to be. When Gregory drew his lips back from his teeth in what was supposed to be a smile, I gasped. The fear coalesced around that flash of fangs, that hungry gleam in those eyes. I was suddenly not just afraid, I was afraid of Gregory. Afraid of the claws, the teeth. I was afraid in a way that I'd never been of him, or any of my leopards. He licked my face, one quick movement.
I yipped, a small, high-pitched, frightened sound.
Gregory growled next to my skin, "Hmm, do it again."
Richard grabbed him and pulled him away from me. "Stop playing with her."
Gregory stayed crouched on the floor, as if he were half-thinking about springing up and turning it all into a fight. But what he said was, "Alright, I won't play with her." He turned and put his face next to Nathaniel's. Gregory snapped his teeth just short of his skin, and Nathaniel screamed. Our fear had found a cause to wrap itself around. There was no logic to it. Anything fearful would have done, we just happened to have a leopardman so conveniently at hand.
Gregory laughed.
Richard jerked him back and dragged him as far away as the bathroom would allow. "I said stop playing with them."
"You said, stop playing with her. I did."
"Leave them all alone," Richard said.
Gregory stood, and in leopardman form he was as tall as Richard. "Don't tell me you don't want to play with them, too?"
"Yes, yes, I want to play, but I'm not going to."
"Why not?" Gregory asked.
"Because you don't torment your friends, Gregory," Micah said from the doorway with Richard's newest girlfriend beside him. She was about my size with dark brunette hair cut just above her shoulders. She was wearing a pale blue skirt and a white blouse with little blue flowers all over it. Sandals and carefully painted toenails completed the outfit. She was clinging to Micah's hand and arm with both her hands. You didn't usually hang on to someone like that unless they were your boyfriend. I realized there was an emotion I could feel through the fear--jealousy. What the hell was she doing hanging on to Micah?
She shivered in the doorway, and her eyes lost focus, as if she was hearing things no one else could hear. She whispered, "What is that?"
"Fear," Gregory said.
"Oh," she said in a small voice, and she pulled away from Micah and walked into the room. She stopped staring down at us, then looked away. She blushed and met Richard's eyes, and blushed harder.
Gregory came to stand beside her, his furred form towering over her. "You want to play, too, don't you?"
She looked down at us again, and this time her eyes weren't human. I'd seen that particular trick a thousand times, but this time I screamed. Screamed like a tourist, and Nathaniel pressed himself against me as if he were trying to push himself out the other side. Damian just lay in my lap, like the fear had already killed him.
"Get Clair out of here," Richard said, and his voice held that first edge of growl. "She's too new, if you bring her beast like this, she'll bleed people."
I made a small sound in my throat, a helpless sound.
Micah took Clair by the arm and started leading her toward the door. She didn't fight him, but she made him pull a little, while her animal eyes in that pretty face stared at us. She wasn't embarrassed anymore, there was nothing human enough left in her to be embarrassed about nudity.
"What's happening to them?" Micah asked.
"Damian's first master is trying to kill them," Richard said.
"How?" I wasn't sure if he were asking how she'd kill us or how it had happened.
"Scare them to death."
Micah almost had Clair to the door. "How can you stop it?"
Richard looked at Micah then. "I let Anita feed on me, and Jean-Claude comes riding to the rescue." The growl had left his voice, and all that remained was tiredness and a sort of world-weariness, as if he'd seen too much, done too much, and didn't want to do it anymore.
Micah and Richard stared at each other for a moment, then Micah gave a small nod. "Keep everybody alive," he said, and he pulled Clair through the doorway.
She grabbed the door frame. "They smell so good."
Micah threw her over his shoulders, and the movement startled her enough that she let go of the door and he carried her out of sight. Her words floated back, "No, I don't want to go."
Richard tried to get his jeans unfastened one-handed, and it wasn't working. "I need some help here Gregory."
The leopardman looked at him. "Going to fuck while you have the chance?"
Richard growled at him, and I made a small sound. Nathaniel whimpered. I knew in the front of my head that this was stupid. That Richard would not hurt me, not in that way, but the fear had a mind of its own. Nathaniel was a wereleopard, but he was terrified, too. No logic, just fear.
"If I shift, the pants will shred, and I don't have extra clothes over here anymore," Richard said.
"I thought your control was better than that, Ulfric," Gregory growled.
Richard turned some of that anger loose and yelled, "I can taste their fear on my tongue, down my throat, as if I've already swallowed them." He balled his good hand into the torn front of his T-shirt and pulled. He was suddenly standing over me naked from the waist up, with a look in his eyes that would have frightened me even if I'd been myself. It was a wild, fierce look, made up of hatred and lust. Hatred and lust in a man's eyes is a bad combination.
It seemed to take physical effort for him to turn away from me and look at Gregory again. "Did you feel that?"
Gregory's only answer was a low growl that made Nathaniel whimper again.
"God help me, she's afraid to see me nude, and I fucking love it. I love that she's afraid of me, and I hate myself for loving it. The ardeur will rise, but God alone knows what we'll do before it does. With this much fear, with her, I don't trust my control. And whatever happens I want clothes when it's over, because I'm going to want to get the hell out of here."
He undid his belt with one hand and squeezed the top button of his pants. The button popped open, and, still gripping the top of the pants, he made a rolling motion with his hand and the buttons snapped open in a long rolling line. The front of his pants spilled open, and he spilled out. Either he wasn't wearing any underwear, or it couldn't keep him contained.
I'd seen Richard nude enough times to lose track. The sight of him nude had excited me, made me nervous, afraid in that oh-my-god, where-am-I-going-to-put-it-all sort of way, envious when I'd lost my naked privileges, angry when he was being shitty, or trying to rub my face in the fact that I still found him handsome, but he wasn't mine anymore. All those emotions, and lust, and love, but never fear. Never that feeling that he was physically so much larger than I was, so much stronger, so much... he'd never hurt me physically, and I'd never been afraid of him physically, but I was now. I was afraid the way virgins are supposed to be afraid when white slavers snatch them away. Afraid of being ravished. Afraid of him using that body in mine. Afraid in a way that I'd never been afraid of anyone that I loved.
I put my hands over my eyes like a child. If I couldn't see him, he couldn't hurt me. Stupid, silly, but I couldn't stop the way I felt. Couldn't change the way I felt. I felt a scream growing in my throat. A scream that was waiting to be touched. I knew I was going to do it, and I couldn't stop it.
But it was as if he felt that scream waiting to come out, because he didn't touch me. I felt his face on the other side of my hands like heat, a moment before I felt his breath against the back of my hands. If he'd touched me, the fear would have spilled out my mouth, but he didn't touch me, not with his body.
His breath was hot against my skin, so hot. I felt Damian being lifted out of my lap. I wasn't sure how I knew he hadn't crawled out on his own, but I did.
"Anita, look at me." His voice was very soft, and very close, each word breathing out against my hands. "Please, Anita, please look at me."
His voice floated through the fear, eased the tightness in my throat, relaxed the muscles along my shoulders.
"Anita, look at me, please," he whispered.
I could breathe past my pulse again.
"Please," he whispered, and he touched fingertips to the back of my hand. The lightest of touches, and my hands lowered an inch, two inches, and I could see his face from between my fingers. His eyes were pure chocolate brown, and at that moment, they were gentle. There was no trace of anger, or lust, nothing but patience and gentleness. This was the part of him I'd fallen in love with once.
He touched my wrists, gently, and lowered my hands away from my face. He smiled and said, "Better?"
I started to nod, then Damian grabbed my leg, and the fear roared back, and the scream ripped out of my throat. It wasn't just Moroven's power, it was Damian's fear of that power, and the fact that I couldn't shield against it.