45
We'd made our plan for the rest of the night. When we'd recovered enough to walk, we'd throw on our clothes. Pick up Nathaniel and drive to the Circus of the Damned. We'd tuck Nathaniel in somewhere, and Jean-Claude and I planned on a nice, hot bath. But before we'd even gotten to the throwing the clothes on part, my cell phone rang.
I almost didn't answer it, because no one calls at three in the morning with good news. The number blinking in the little window was Detective Sergeant Zerbrowki. "Shit," I said.
"What is it, ma petite?"
"Police." I flipped the phone open and said, "Hey, Zerbrowski, what's up?"
"Hey back at you. I'm across the river in Illinois, guess what I'm looking at?"
"Another dead stripper," I said.
"How'd you guess?"
"I'm psychic. I assume you want me to come down and look at the body."
"Never assume anything, but in this case, yeah."
I looked down at my blood-covered chest and the wound that was still seeping. "I'll be there as soon as I get cleaned up."
"You covered in chicken blood?"
"Something like that."
"Well, the body isn't going anywhere, but the witnesses are getting restless."
"Witnesses," I said, "we have witnesses?"
"Witnesses or suspects," he said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Come down to the Sapphire Club and find out."
"The Sapphire, isn't that the high end club, the one that calls itself a gentlemen's club?"
"Anita, I'm shocked, I didn't know you frequented the titty bars."
"They wanted to use vampire strippers, and I got to go talk to them about it."
"I didn't know that was part of your official job description," he said.
If it had been Dolph, I would have let it go, but it was Zerbrowski, and he was okay. "The Church of Eternal Life doesn't allow its members to strip, or do anything else the church considers morally questionable. So the club needed Jean-Claude's permission to import vamps from the next territory over."
"He gave it?"
"No."
"And you went with him to help decide?"
"No."
"You went alone?" he asked.
"No."
He sighed. "Oh, hell, just get down here. If you said vampires were supposed to stay away from this place, your boyfriend isn't going to be happy."
"Just no vamps on stage," I said, "other than that, not our business."
"Not on stage, at least not paid," Zerbrowski said.
"You said witnesses or suspects, and now you say no vamps paid on stage. Shit, are you sitting on some vamps that were in the audience?"
"Come and see, but I'd hurry, dawn's coming." He hung up.
I cursed softly.
"I take it a languorous bath is not going to be happening tonight," Jean-Claude said.
"No, unfortunately."
"If not a bath for you, then may I offer a quick shower here."
I sighed. "Yeah, I can't go see the police like this."
He looked down at his own blood-spattered body and smiled. "Perhaps for me, as well, tonight."
"We could conserve water, and share," I said.
He raised an eyebrow at me and smiled again. The smile said worlds.
"Okay, okay, I guess we'd get distracted."
"I am not sure I have the strength to be, as you put it, distracted quite so soon."
"Sorry, I keep forgetting boys don't recover as quick as girls."
"I am not human, ma petite, with another blood donation I could indeed recover."
"Really?" I said. My pulse sped just a little bit at the thought. Shit, I was too tired and too sore to be thinking of it again.
"Truly," he said.
"I think if I donate any more blood to anything tonight, it would be bad."
"It does not have to be your blood," he said.
I stared at him, and he stared at me. I said what I was thinking, which I'd almost broken myself of. "So what, you take blood from me, then we fuck, and you have a blood donor standing by, and we fuck. We could like, what, have a room full of donors and just screw until we were so sore, or so tired, we couldn't move?" I was sort of kidding. The look on his face wasn't. The look on his face, the expression in his eyes, made me blush.
I had a sudden image so strong, if I hadn't already been on the floor, it would have put me there. I saw Belle Morte stretched in the big bed, surrounded by candlelight. Asher and Jean-Claude were on the bed, too. There were men tied to the big posts of the bed, nude and pale, they were. Blood glittered in thin lines on their bodies, from neck, chest, the inside of their arms, down their legs. Not one bite apiece, or even two, but more than I could count. One man's head had slumped forward onto his chest, and he sagged against his bonds. If he breathed, I could not see it.
Jean-Claude pushed me out of his memory, it was almost a physical shove. I came back to myself, on the floor of his office, covered in my blood, the phone still in my hand.
"I would not have had you see that."
"I'll bet."
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "We were young and knew no better. Belle Morte was our God."
"You bled them to death so you guys could have some marathon sex session," I said it, and my voice wasn't horrified, in fact, it sounded empty. Because I could still see the memory, not in livid detail like it had been, but now it was in my head, too. God, I did not need someone else's nightmares.
"There are many things I have done, ma petite, that I would not have you know. Things I am ashamed of. Things that burn inside of me like bile."
"It was your memory, remember. I felt what you were feeling. There was no regret."
"Then I pushed you out too soon." He didn't pull me in, he simply stopped pushing me out, and I was back in that room. Back in that bed. I was inside Jean-Claude's head when he noticed the man on the bed that wasn't moving. He crawled across the bed and touched the cooling flesh. I felt his sorrow, felt his shame. Had his knowledge that these were humans that trusted us. Humans that we had promised to protect. Give us your blood and your bodies, and we will keep you safe. I looked back at Belle Morte stretched nude and luscious, under Asher's body. Asher's body before the human church had scarred him. I watched Asher's face lift up, meet our eyes, and in the middle of what Belle thought was the most sensuous of nights, the seed was sown that we must escape. That there were things that you did not do, and lines you did not cross, and she was not a god.
And I was back in his office, with my blood drying on my body, and my breast beginning to ache, and I was crying.
He stared at me, dry eyed, and he expected me to run. To turn away, and run. Like I had so many times in the past. Nothing was pretty enough for me, nice enough, clean enough. I didn't like messy people in my life, and once that had been true, until I woke up one day and realized that I was one of the messy people.
My voice was steady, and didn't sound like I could have tears drying on my face. "I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn't know anything for a long time."
He just looked at me, his face closing down, hiding from me, because he was certain where I was going, what I would say.
"There are days, hell weeks, when I still don't know anything. I've been pushed so far outside what I thought was right and wrong, that some days I don't know my way back. I've done things in the name of justice, in the name of my version of justice, that I wouldn't want anyone to know. I can look a man in the eyes and kill him, and I feel nothing. Nothing, Jean-Claude, nothing. You didn't mean to kill, and you felt bad about it."
"You take life to protect life, ma petite. I have taken lives for pleasure, for the pleasure of she whom I served." He shook his head and slowly drew his knees into his chest, hugging himself tight. "Did you ever wonder why I did not replace the vampires that you and Edward, and even I later, killed, when we destroyed Nikolaos?"
"I hadn't really thought about it," I said. "I know we're suddenly lousy with vamps when we seemed a little empty before."
"I called vampires home to me, because I had taken them long ago. But I have not made a new vampire since I became Master of the City. It had kept us dangerously low. If we had truly had another territory's master declare full war, we would have lost. We simply lacked the manpower."
"So why not make more?" I asked, because he seemed to want me to ask.
He looked at me, and there was something in his eyes that reminded me of someone else. It was a look of pain and confusion, and centuries of hurt. I'd never seen his eyes so raw, so human. "Because, to make them vampire, I must first take away their mortality, their humanity. Who am I to do that, ma petite? Who am I to decide who will live on, and who will die in their appointed time?"
"Who are you to play God?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "yes, who am I to know what it will change. Belle used to use our power to change countries, wars, who ruled, who was assassinated. There was a time when she ruled more of Europe secretly than anyone knew, even among the vampire council itself. She killed millions through war, and famine. Not by her hand, but by her choices."
"What stopped her?"
"The French Revolution, and two world wars. Even death itself must bow before such wanton destruction. Now the council rides tighter rein on its members. The time when any in Europe could build such a secret power structure is finished."
"Glad to hear it," I said.
"What if I take someone and make them as I am, and that person would have cured cancer, or invented some great thing. Vampires invent nothing, ma petite, we are consumed by death and pleasure, and senseless power struggles. We seek money, comfort, safety."
"So do most people."
He shook his head. "But not all, and my kind are attracted to those who hold power, or wealth, or are unusual in some way. A beautiful voice, a gift of artistry, of mind, or charm. We do not take the weak, as most predators do, we take the best. The brightest, the loveliest, the strongest. How many lives have we destroyed over the centuries that could have made some wonderful, or terrible, difference to humanity, to the world at large."
I looked at him, and not that long ago I would have distrusted this sharing. But I could feel him in my head. I worried about whether I was a monster. Jean-Claude knew for certain. He did not regret what he was, for he could not imagine another life, but he worried about others. He worried about making the choice for others. He worried about playing some dark god. He worried that one day he would become that which he ran from. One day, he would become a version of Belle Morte.
What do you do when you are suddenly able to see that far into someone's darkest fears? What do you say to that much truth about someone else? I said the only thing I could think of, the only thing that would give him any comfort. "You'll never become like Belle Morte. You'll never become as evil as that."
"How can you be certain of that?" he asked.
"Because I'll kill you before I let that happen," and my voice was soft when I said it, because it wasn't a lie.
"Kill me to save me from myself," he said, and he tried to make light of it, and failed.
"No, kill you to save everybody else you'd destroy." My voice wasn't soft anymore.
"Even if it destroys you at the same time?"
"Yes."
"Even if it drags our tortured Richard down with us?"
"Yes," I said.
"Even if it cost Damian his life?"
I nodded. "Yes."
"Even if Nathaniel died with us?"
I stopped breathing for a second, and time seemed to do one of those stretches where you have all the time in the world, and none of it. My breath came out shaky, and I had to lick my lips, before I said, "Yes, on one condition."
"And that would be?" he asked.
"That I could guarantee that I wouldn't survive it either."
He looked at me, and it was a long, long look. A look that weighed me down to my soul, and I realized that in a way, that's exactly what he'd done years ago.
"You told me once that I'm your conscience, but that's not all I am, is it?"
"What do you mean, ma petite?"
"I'm your fail-safe. I'm your judge, your jury, and your executioner if things go wrong."
"Not things, ma petite, me. If I go wrong." There was a peacefulness in his eyes, as if some weight had gone from his shoulders. I knew exactly where that weight had gone.
"You bastard. I'd have been happy to kill you once, but not now. Not now."
"If it is too much to ask, then consider it unasked, unsaid."
"No, you bastard, don't you understand? If you do go mad and start slaughtering the innocent, I am exactly who they will send. I am the Executioner." I stared at him.
"But, ma petite, you were always the one they would send. You have always been the Executioner."
I got to my feet. My knees weren't weak anymore. "But I've never been in love with someone I had to kill before."
"But you have told me that your love for me would not stop you from doing your duty."
My eyes burned. "No, it won't. If you go bad, I'll do my duty." I closed my eyes, and shook my head. "You Machiavellian bastard, I would have killed your ass without being in love with you."
"I did not want you to love me because you would be my fail-safe, as you put it. I wanted you to love me, because I was in love with you." His voice was close, and when I opened my eyes he was standing in front of me. "It is only lately that I have worried that you were so besotted with me that you might forgive me crimes in this lifetime, now."
I shook my head. "No, no."
"I had to know, ma petite."
"Don't call me that, not right now."
He took a deep breath and let it out. "Anita, I am sorry. I would not cause you pain, not deliberately."
"Then couldn't this conversation have waited until the afterglow faded?"
"No," he said, "I had to know if you loved me more than your sense of justice."
I swallowed hard. I would not cry, I would not fucking cry. "I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more."
He took my hands, and I almost jerked away, but I made myself stand there and let him touch me. I was so angry, so pissed, so...
"Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind," he said, "That from the nunnery, Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind."
I looked up at him, and said the next line, "To war and arms I fly."
"True, a new mistress now I chase," he said.
"The first foe in the field," I said, and let him draw me closer.
"And with a stronger faith embrace," he said.
"A sword, a horse, a shield." And the last word was whispered against his chest, still looking up into those eyes, searching his face.
"Yet this inconstancy is such, As thou too shalt adore," he whispered against my hair.
I finished the poem with my face pressed against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, that truly beat with my blood. "I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more."
"To Lucasta, on going to the Wars," Jean-Claude said. His arms were around me, holding me close.
I eased my arms around him, slowly. "Richard Lovelace," I said, "always liked his stuff in college." I kept moving my arms until they were around his waist, and we just stood there holding each other. "I don't think I would have remembered the whole poem if you hadn't helped."
"Together we are more than we are apart, Anita, that is what love is."
I held him, and the tears started down my face, hard and hot, and choking. "Not Anita."
I didn't have to see his face, to know the smile was there, I could hear in his voice, "ma petite, ma petite, ma petite."
There comes a point where you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just means you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.