41

"WHAT DO YOU mean, I was about to bind Requiem to me forever?" We were having our super-secret meeting in the hallway. It was empty, and I didn't want to walk all the way back to Jean-Claude's room.

"I have tried to teach you different ways to feed, ma petite, and you have learned well."

I could have argued that, but I let it go. "Just explain what you said, Jean-Claude. You don't have to protect my ego, just say it."

"You have fed on Requiem, but always before you were holding back, or I was so deeply enmeshed with you when you did it, that I was in some way controlling what happened."

I nodded. "And?"

"It is possible to know the innermost desire of a person. The ardeur can give you a glimpse into his soul."

"I know that, it happens a lot."

He shook his head. "But that is exactly the point, ma petite, it should not happen a lot."

"But it does; that's how the ardeur works when I feed completely."

He shook his head again. "Non, ma petite, it is not necessary to know someone's heart's desire to feed completely."

"It makes a better feeding, more energy, if you know their deepest wish and give it to them."

He nodded. "Oui, but what is the rule for all the gifts of my bloodline?"

I frowned at him. "I don't... oh, that they're two-edged swords. All of Belle's powers cut both ways."

"Oui."

I was still staring at him. "If you have a point to make, please make it, because if that was a hint, I don't get it."

"When you first met Micah, what did you need in your life?"

"Stop trying to make me reason this through, Jean-Claude, just tell me."

"You will not like it," he said.

"I'm getting that impression, but remember I'm a jerk-the-Band-Aid-off kind of girl. Just tell me."

"You needed help with the wereleopards, and with all the other shapeshifters that you were beginning to try to help. It was your willingness to help many kinds of shapeshifters that laid the groundwork for our so-lovely coalition. You yourself said that so much that was wrong with the lycanthrope community could be fixed if they would only talk to each other."

"I remember all this, so what?"

"You needed a man in your life who simply said yes, instead of arguing with you or running his own agenda. You needed someone to put your needs first." He looked at me, as if he'd been very clear. It wasn't clear to me.

"Doesn't everyone?" I said.

"I think I get it," Micah said, softly.

I turned to him. "Then tell me."

"My heart's desire was safety for my people, and a partner powerful enough, passionate enough, to help me save them. We both got what we wanted most, out of each other."

I frowned, trying to think, then said slowly, "Are you saying that I caused Micah to be everything I needed him to be?" I looked at Jean-Claude. "Are you saying that even now, he's like under my power? That that's why he never argues with me? That he's under a spell?" I looked back at Micah, to see if his face was as horrified as mine felt.

He looked the same as ever, calm, ready to do what was needed. So practical, so... so everything I needed in a man. Shit.

He smiled at me. "Don't look so horrified, Anita."

"Do you normally argue more than this?"

He shook his head. "I was always pretty easygoing, and years trapped in Chimera's group took care of most of my rebellion. It was too expensive to the people around me to be a smart-ass."

"Is everything we have just vampire tricks, except I'm the vampire? Is it all a lie?"

"This was the reaction I feared you would have," Jean-Claude said.

"What reaction am I supposed to have?" I asked, and it was almost a yell.

"You missed part of his point," Micah said.

"What part?"

"If the ardeur made me into your perfect mate, then it made you into mine. It's a double-edged sword, remember."

Was I under a spell? My own spell? It was too complicated for me. I turned back to Jean-Claude. "I don't understand this. I mean, if this is true, then how could we not have noticed?"

"But, ma petite, you did notice. Your Nimir-Raj is the first man you have ever had sex with on first meeting. He is the first man you have ever allowed yourself not to push away, is he not?"

I wanted to argue, and I couldn't. Damn it, but I couldn't. "Shit," I said.

I turned, and looked at Nathaniel. He gave me a gentle smile, like you'd give someone in the doctor's office who just got bad news.

"If this is true about Micah and me, then..."

"Oui, ma petite, the same would be true of Nathaniel."

"No, it was different, very different with both of them."

"But they are very different men. One heart's desire is not the same as another's."

"I resisted Nathaniel for months before we had sex."

"Oui, but it was not sex that Nathaniel wanted, not truly; he wanted to be loved and valued for himself, not just for his body. By denying him sex, but loving him, you gave him what he wanted most."

I felt like I was choking. I couldn't breathe. My back hit the wall. I leaned against it, trying to think, and failing.

"The only two men in my life that I haven't seen all the way through are you and Richard."

Jean-Claude nodded. "I knew how to keep you out, and Richard was strong enough, and conflicted enough, not to know his own heart's desire."

"But everyone else," I stared at him. "Asher, Damian, maybe even Jason, hell, I don't know."

Requiem spoke then. "I think that your ardeur holds not just lust, Anita, but love, as Belle's ardeur did. As my Ligeia's ardeur did."

"I've been inside Belle's head. She wouldn't know real love if it bit her on the ass."

He gave a small smile, as if I'd amused him. "She knows the ardeur as a warrior knows his weapon. She knows the art of causing love and devotion, even addiction, in others, without suffering it herself."

"Are you saying I'm doing it wrong?"

He seemed to think about it, then nodded.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"There was a moment when you looked deep into me. I felt you see all the way down into my soul, Anita. I felt you caress the deepest pain I own. Belle Morte would have coaxed that pain to life and used it to torment me. You were going to try to heal it."

"I was supposed to heal you, right?"

"Physically, ma petite, not emotionally." He touched my face, staring at me, as if he were trying to read something from my face. "And certainly not his deepest hurt." He let his hand drop away, but continued to study my face.

"I don't know how to do anything halfway, Jean-Claude. It's all or nothing for me, you should know that by now."

He nodded and looked unhappy. "You are quite right, ma petite. I am your master and this is all my fault. I should have seen it."

"Seen what, exactly?"

"You have been obsessed with learning to control the feedings, ma petite. It has made me obsess with you, but there are other things to learn about controlling it. Things I have neglected to teach you."

"You could not have taught her control of this, not when the ardeur was fresh, Jean-Claude," Requiem said. "I was with Ligeia from the moment she gained the power. The first few months are a wild thing. I thought she would go mad with it." He gripped Jean-Claude's shoulder. "My understanding is the ardeur rose for the first time with Micah. There was no controlling it." He looked at me, and at Micah. "It has actually worked out extremely well for all concerned."

I turned and looked at Micah, and Nathaniel. "I trapped you both. I rolled you."

They exchanged a look, then both looked back at me. "We love you," Micah said.

Nathaniel moved in, as if he'd hug me. I moved farther down the wall, out of reach. "But it's all vampire powers. It's a lie--doesn't that ruin it for you? I trapped you. I trapped you both; it's worse than what Auggie did to us. It's not fake, it's like real love. I made you both fall in love with me, that's like evil."

"If you made us fall in love with you, but didn't love us back, maybe it would be evil," Micah said, "but you do love us back."

"But it's a lie, Micah. It's all a lie."

He gave me a look, that look that said I was being silly. But I wasn't being silly, was I? "I've been in love before, Anita, remember."

"Becky, your high school sweetheart, college fianc裬" I said.

He nodded. "That was real, Anita. She was the love of my life, and if she hadn't dumped me, I wouldn't have known that love could get any better than that."

Becky had dumped him when he survived the attack that made him a wereleopard. She just couldn't handle his being furry once a month. Of course, she'd had other problems with him before that. What I thought was a huge bonus, she'd thought was a huge downside.

Micah stepped toward me.

I slid along the wall, my hand out. I didn't want him to touch me, not right then. Mainly because if he did, I'd lose this fight. I'd always wondered at how my body reacted to him. No one had that effect on me, not to that degree. Now I knew it was vampire mind tricks, but I was the vampire who had done it. Fuck.

"I know what true love feels like, Anita. This is it. We are all happier than we've ever been. The only thing that will spoil what we have is if you freak about this."

"How can I not freak about this, Micah?"

I felt movement, a second before hands touched me. The hands brushed my bare arms, and I felt calmer. I leaned back against Damian's body, let his arms enfold me. The fear, anger, confusion, just washed away. The iron control of his emotions that he had learned at the hands of his creator was what he shared with me. I leaned back into that peaceful control for a handful of seconds. The panic was still there, but I could ride it. I was still horrified, but it wasn't the only thought screaming through my brain.

I leaned my head back against his chest, and looked up at him. He'd tied all that bloodred hair back from his face. I stared into a face that my magic had actually made prettier, more perfect. He'd been handsome before; now he was beautiful. I looked up into those eyes, like looking into the perfect green of an emerald, if it could look back at you. If a jewel could burn with intelligence and need. "Hey, Damian," and my voice sounded almost drugged, I was so calm.

"Hey," he said, smiling down at me.

I blinked at him. "I feel so good. I don't remember you ever making me feel this calm, so fast."

"You love Micah, don't you?"

I frowned at him. "Yes."

"You love Nathaniel, don't you?"

I frowned harder. "Yes, but it's all a lie."

His hand swept up the line of my neck, as his face bent toward me. "Does it feel like a lie?"

"No," and my voice was small.

He whispered the last few words against my lips. "You all love each other, isn't that more important than how you fell in love?"

With Damian touching me, it was utterly reasonable to say, "Yes."

He kissed me. Those lips that my own magic had made fuller, more kissable, covered mine. He drew back enough to whisper, "Love is too precious to waste, Anita."

He was right, of course. He was right, but it wasn't like me to see logic this quickly. This wasn't like me, at all.

Damian lowered his mouth over mine, his hand kneading my throat, as he pressed my back against his body. Always before when he was helping me be reasonable, kissing him was a cold thing. Today, I gave myself to his kiss, to his hands, even as part of me knew this was just more vampire mind games. Damian was my vampire servant. He gained power as I gained power. It hadn't occurred to me that he might be able to use that power against me.

42

I BROKE THE kiss, pushed him away hard enough to make him stumble. His eyes were drowning emerald fire. "Didn't it feel good?" he asked.

I shook my head, not trusting my voice. But the moment he wasn't touching me the panic was back. The fear, and it was worse now. I was surrounded by vampire tricks. Surrounded even inside myself, and that was one person I couldn't run from.

Micah tried to hug me again, but I moved around him, toward the living room. Nathaniel brushed my arm, and I moved away. I was shaking my head, and wasn't sure why.

"This does not have to be a disaster, ma petite."

"Yes," I said, "it does."

"Anita," Micah said, "I don't care that it was vampire magic that brought us together. We're together, that's what matters." He held his hand out to me.

I shook my head. "No, because if you touch me, I'll give up. I won't fight. I can never win a fight when you touch me. The effect you have on my body overwhelms everything else."

"And that's a bad thing?" He made it a question, his hand still held out toward me.

"I wondered why your touching me always overwhelmed me, and now we know. It's vampire powers. It's mind tricks. It's an aftereffect of the ardeur, Micah."

He let his hand drop slowly. "I love the way your body reacts to mine, Anita." He closed his eyes, hugged his hands into fists in front of his chest. "I abso-fucking love that you react to me like I'm intoxicating." He opened his eyes and gave me the full stare out of those yellow-green kitty-cat eyes. "Don't you love it, too?"

I opened my mouth to say no, but it would have been a lie. The vampires could sense lies, but wereanimals could smell them. I told the truth. "Yes, I loved it."

He shook his head. "Not loved, not past tense. You love it. You love it so much, you're afraid to let me touch you now."

"Please, Micah, don't do this."

"Do what? Make you happy? Make us both happier than we've ever been for longer than we've ever been happy in our entire lives? We're both almost thirty, Anita; it doesn't get better than what we have. We've all tried other people, other ways of living. This works for us. Don't throw it away because it started with the ardeur." He took a step toward me. "We always knew that you and I began with the ardeur, Anita."

"Maybe, but not all of it. Not..." I turned away from him. I couldn't keep being this stubborn and look at the anguish on his face. But looking away put me looking at Nathaniel. It wasn't an improvement. First, he was nude, and any of the men I loved only had to take their clothes off to win most arguments with me. I might never admit that out loud, but it was the truth. Nathaniel nude was a treat, but what made it even harder was the look on his face. So hurt, so terribly hurt.

"Anita," he said, "would you really throw us away? Could you just walk away? Just like that?"

My throat was tight, but not with panic anymore. The panic had company now. Can you choke to death on unshed tears?

He stared at me; those lilac eyes sparkled through the fall of all that hair. I stared at his eyes, so bright, like firelit amethyst, as he tried not to cry. Then the first tear glittered down his cheek, and I was undone.

I went to him. I hugged him, and he collapsed so suddenly in my arms that it pulled us both to the floor. He clung to me, weeping, and I was left drowning in the vanilla warmth of his hair. Micah stood there, looking down at us.

Was it a lie? It didn't feel like a lie. The man in my arms felt real, and his tears were real. The thought that I could turn away from him because of something so... petty, had broken his heart, just a little. Micah had said it; we knew that the ardeur had been the beginning of us. Hadn't I always known it was the beginning of Nathaniel and me, too? If I hadn't needed to feed the ardeur, I would never have allowed him to move in with me. I would never have slept with him, clothed and strangely chaste, feeding by a kiss, a touch, but never with release for him. I would never have done all that without the ardeur to feed. I would never have fallen in love with him, if the ardeur hadn't kept him in my way.

I hugged Nathaniel, and held one hand out to Micah. He smiled, and came to me, to us. He dropped to his knees, and put his arms around us both. Nathaniel cried harder. I held them both as hard as I could. Micah kissed me, and I kissed him back. The taste of his mouth was the taste of sex to me. Just the kiss, and my body reacted to it. Nathaniel's hands spilled over my breasts. Had I taught them that the only way to make up a fight was sex, or had the ardeur preordained that sex was our currency of healing? It was a chicken/egg sort of question. I let it go in the sensation of hands and mouths on my face and neck, and body.

We licked the tears off Nathaniel's face, and somewhere in all that closeness, I let go of my doubts. I could worry about it later. Right at that moment, nothing seemed more important than touching the two of them.

We both came up for air, to the smell of lion. Micah growled. It was Noel on hands and knees. He had his forehead pressed to the stone floor, one hand held out toward us. Travis collapsed to his knees behind him, cradling his broken arm. He leaned against the wall, heavily, and for the first time it occurred to me that maybe the broken arm wasn't the worst of his injuries. Wereanimals were tough bastards. I hadn't even asked if there were other things broken. I hadn't even asked exactly what the doc had said. They had just been another embarrassing problem. Another pint of blood to lay on the altar of the ardeur, and my beast.

I looked at Micah. "I agree with the lions. I don't want Haven."

I turned to Nathaniel. He smiled. "I agree with Micah. Though Jean-Claude, or someone, needs to help you not to bond with them completely."

"Agreed," I said.

I looked behind us, for Jean-Claude. "How do we do this?"

"I can help you not use the ardeur as deeply, but I do not know if I can control the lion within you."

"I can," and it was Auggie. He'd added a long black cloak. His shoulders were so wide that it made him look square, his head too small for all that body. The bottom of the cloak puddled on the floor, because any vampire here that the cloak could belong to was a foot taller. The cloak looked borrowed, and it was, but Octavius and Pierce were at his back, and they didn't look borrowed at all. They looked perfectly at home.

The two bodyguards at their backs looked right at home, too. Standing orders were that Pierce and Haven got four guards. I wondered if Haven, now unconscious, had two of his own? Probably.

"I want this to work, Auggie, if it can," I said. "I need your word that you won't spoil it."

"Tell me exactly what you want me to swear to, Anita," he said. His face was empty, pale with concentration. His eyes looked huge and even darker, like the sky before it goes black.

I thought about what he'd asked, then looked again to Jean-Claude. "Help me to word it, okay."

"I will second Augustine on this, ma petite. Tell me what you wish him to swear to."

"I want to really try to bond with Noel. I don't want him to interfere with that, but I don't want to bond to Noel the way I did with Micah and Nathaniel. I want to see if it's just lions I'm hunting, or if Auggie's lions are especially tasty."

"If my lions are more tasty, it may not be because they are my lions, but because your power seeks something more dominant than what's kneeling on the floor. I think in your Rex's zeal not to give power to a rival, he has sent you food that your inner lioness will never accept."

"My inner lioness," I said, though it's hard to be disdainful when you're on your knees with men still hanging on to you. But I managed it.

"Inner beast, then," he said, voice empty. His face showed nothing. He was finally acting more like all the other really old vamps that I'd ever met. Will the real Augustine please stand up?

"Are the lions more likely to want a dominant?" I asked.

"I thought you had read up on lions," he said.

I thought about it, then nodded. "If a new male takes over the pride, second thing he does is kill the cubs. It means he doesn't help the lion he drove off breed successfully, and it puts the females into estrus faster, so he gets to mate."

Auggie nodded. "It makes the females of most wereprides very tough to impress."

I shook my head. "You're not saying that werelion prides are run like real lion prides? That the new leader kills the children? That's ridiculous."

He shrugged those big shoulders under the long cloak. "It has happened."

I turned back to Noel and Travis. "You guys know about this happening for real?"

They both said, "No."

"They're too young to know what we did before we became legal." This from Pierce.

"Are you saying that some men do kill the babies of the old Rex?"

"I've seen it," Pierce said in a very clipped voice.

I almost asked, Which end of the fight were you on? but I didn't. There was a look in his eyes, almost a flinching. Either he'd been a victim, or he'd done things that haunted him. I had enough nightmares of my own; I'd let Pierce keep his to himself.

"I guess that would make you want the strongest lion around," I said, but my voice was a little thin. The pregnancy scare was too recent. How would it feel to go through nine months, then labor, and have some stranger kill your baby, after first killing your husband? I said it out loud. "If someone did that to me, he wouldn't survive very long."

"Prides with really strong females don't get taken over much," Pierce said, "because you gotta sleep sometimes." He almost smiled when he said it.

I nodded. "That's how I'd be thinking."

"Your local pride has very weak females," Auggie said, his voice still that empty master's voice, so it could have been almost anyone talking. "Your Rex's wife is weak, and since the females of the lions are just like the males, it's forced him to reject a lot of strong women."

"Are you saving that if someone killed Joseph, there wouldn't be enough fight in his pride to do much about it?"

"His brother would be a problem," Pierce said, "but other than that, yeah."

"You would definitely have to kill both of the brothers," Auggie said, "but after that the pride would be helpless." He looked past me at the lions.

Noel was staring at him with a sort of soft horror. It was Travis who said, "Sounds like you've thought this through."

"It's why you brought dominants," I said. "You came planning for Pierce or Haven to take over the local pride."

Auggie gave me flat eyes.

"You evil bastard."

"It's not me that's left his pride open, ripe for the picking, Anita. He did that himself."

"He loves his wife, that's not a crime," I said.

Auggie shrugged.

"Anita." Noel's small voice brought me back to look at him. He inched closer to me, his hand out, his face showing his fear. "Please, Anita, please, try me."

I wanted to say, I won't let them hurt you and your people, but I couldn't. Not and be truthful. We had an alliance with the lions, true, but if Joseph had truly let his pride get this fucked up, and it was truly the lion's way to take over the pride like this, then no other animal could interfere. We could help each other, but we couldn't interfere directly in the dominance hierarchy of the other groups. Not unless we wanted to start glomming us all into some kind of super-group. Wereanimals didn't do well in mixed-species groups. Too many cultural differences.

The only way I could send Haven home was to find another lion that my lioness liked. Shit. Noel stared at me, hand outstretched. The fear in his face made him look even younger and more inexperienced. No animal group could operate without dominants. You needed muscle and strength, and strength of will. If Joseph had truly done what Auggie said, then his pride was in the gravest of dangers. If it wasn't Haven or Pierce now, it would be someone else later. Of course, if one of them were my semipermanent pomme de sang, then other lions might hesitate to attack them.

Hell, master vamps from around the country who hadn't had the ballet troupe go anywhere near them were offering up pomme de sang candidates. We'd be seeing potential feeds for months even after this batch went home. We'd already had inquiries from animal groups that weren't aligned with any vampire. You know you're big fish, when all the sharks want to come play.

I did the only thing I could think of. I took Noel's hand and drew him toward me. I wasn't sure what we'd do when he got to me, but we'd think of something.