"Why does that"-I had to draw a breath to finish-"make you so happy?" She pouted out that full lower lip and said, "Poor thing, so hurt. I will help you." "Appreciate the offer, but"-and I had to work for breath-"help us, why?" "Because you alive are witness enough to destroy the power of the Harlequin."

"Why," breath, "do you care?"

"They were once the private guards of the Mistress of the Dark. She is waking, I know that now." "But when she wakes," breath, "she won't have them." "Precis.e.m.e.nt," Belle said. "But you need me, us, alive." "Yes," she said, and she looked at me the way that a hawk must look at a wounded mouse, eager, antic.i.p.atory.

"Make you mad?" I whispered, and had to cough. It wasn't my throat that was closing off. I didn't think it was Jean-Claude's. Some thing bad was happening to Richard.

"I don't hate you, ma pet.i.te? she said. "I don't hate anything that is useful to me, and you are about to be very useful, ma pet.i.te."

"Anita," I whispered.

"Anita, Anita," she purred as she leaned our faces closer, "if I want you to be my mapet.i.te, you will be. Jean-Claude is near death and he protected you from me. I will save you all, but I will do it in a way that you will not like." She leaned our faces close, and the hand that had been caressing my face was suddenly firm and solid as metal against my cheek, keeping me turned toward that lovely face. She began to lean in for a kiss.

I spoke before our mouths touched. "A win-win situation, for you."

"Oh, yes." She whispered it against my lips, then kissed me. But she didn't just kiss me, she opened the ardeur between us. One moment all I could think about was breathing, Just keep breathing, and that I really didn't want her to touch me, and the next she was kissing me, and I was kissing her back.

My hands slid over that satin dress, and the body underneath, and my hands knew that body-though my hands were smaller than they should have been. Jean-Claude's memories kept getting in the way, coloring what was happening. When her mouth found my breast, and sucked, it startled me, because the body I was remembering didn't have b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She bit me, driving dainty fangs around my nipple. It made me cry out, brought my body writhing off the bed. She raised a b.l.o.o.d.y mouth and smiled at me, her eyes filled with amber light. She climbed my body and pressed that b.l.o.o.d.y mouth to mine. I kissed that mouth as if it were air, and food, and water, all rolled into one. I marveled at how small her mouth was, how dainty. How I'd longed to kiss this mouth again. I knew in this moment what I had never known from Jean-Claude, how much it had cost him to leave her. They say that once you love Belle Morte you never stop, and I knew in that kiss, with her body on top of mine, that it was true. He still loved her, would al ways love her, and nothing would change that, not even me.

The ardeur started to feed then, at that b.l.o.o.d.y kiss, but this was Belle Morte, the creator of the ardeur. You did not feed from her and stop. You fed until she stopped you.

The knife cut us out of the dresses, and where it nicked the skin we licked and drank each other's blood, and it didn't seem wrong, or a bad thing to do. The taste of her blood was sweet, and slow, and I knew that vampire blood was not a meal, but it could be foreplay.

I ended up on top of her, and my body kept forgetting that it wasn't male. I pressed her to the bed, with my body between her legs. But I could not do what I was remembering. I swore in frustration, because more than anything in the world in that moment I wanted to pierce her body. I wanted to plunge parts that I did not have into parts of her that I did.

She lay underneath me with that dark hair spilling around her body, across the silk of the pillows. Her lips parted, her eyes filled with that eager light. I knew what she was, knew it better through Jean-Claude than most. I knew that she would slit my throat and make love in the blood while I died, but in that moment with her looking up at us, I didn't care. I just wanted her to keep giving us that look.

She laid me back against the sheets and began to kiss her way down my body. I watched her eyes roll up, watching my face, as she licked, and bit, and drew small pinp.r.i.c.ks of blood where dainty fangs pierced too close. It wasn't my memory that made me writhe at the sight of her over my groin. At first, it felt wrong, because I was expecting a different sensation, but Belle had spent two thousand years learning about pleasure, and she knew this pleasure, too. I gazed down at her with her mouth between my legs, and her tongue found me, traced me, licked me, and finally she sucked me, lightly at first, then deeper and deeper, until fangs bit deep as she sucked me, and I wasn't certain if it was the pleasure that brought the o.r.g.a.s.m, or the pain. The ardeur fed, and fed, and fed.

I screamed, and writhed, and clawed at the pillows, and only after I lay back boneless, eyes fluttering blind with pleasure, did she raise her face from my body.

She stared up at me with eyes that glowed so bright, she looked blind with power. She laughed, and the sound trailed down my body and made me cry out again. "I do see what he sees in you, ma pet.i.te, I truly do. I have fed you enough to keep you all alive, but Mercia and Nivia, and any of the Harlequin that took part in this, will have to kill you before you can testify against them. They will not know that I know."

I tried to say, tell people, but my mouth couldn't work quite yet. h.e.l.l, if there'd been an emergency I couldn't have rolled off the bed, and it wasn't the medical emergency part that kept me lying there. It was a few thousand years of practiced s.e.x that made me lie there and look at her, or try to look at her. The world was still white-edged with o.r.g.a.s.m.

"I believe that they have allies for their illegal activities among the council, so I must go slowly here, but you need to be well there." She smiled at me, and it was the smile that Eve must have used in the Gar den of Eden; Want a bite of apple, little girl? "I will send a call out to my bloodline in your territory. Jean-Claude is still too hurt to stop it. I will talk to them as of old, before they had Jean-Claude's new power to hide behind. When you wake, you will need powerful food for the ardeur. You must share that power with Jean-Claude and your wolf."

I managed to whisper, "I don't know how to do that."

"You will," she said, and she came to straddle my body, leaning in until our lips met. I could taste my body on her mouth. We kissed, and the dream broke, and I woke, with the taste of her kiss on my lips.

CHAPTER 24

I WOKE GASPING in a room that was too bright, too white. There was something in my arm that hurt when I tried to move it. I couldn't think where I was, couldn't think about anything but the smell and taste and feel of Belle Morte. I woke crying her name, or trying to. My voice was a harsh croak of sound.

Cherry's face appeared beside the bed. Her ultrashort blond hair and overly dark Goth makeup couldn't quite hide the fact that she was pretty. She was also a registered nurse, though she had lost her job at the local hospital when they found out she was a wereleopard. "Anita, oh my G.o.d, oh my G.o.d."

I tried to say her name, and couldn't make words.

"Don't try to talk. I'll send for the doctor." She got me water and one of those bendy straws, and let me take a minute sip. I heard a door open and close, running feet getting farther away. Who had she sent for the doctor?

Cherry's eyes were shiny, and only after her eyeliner began to run in black tears down the pale makeup did I realize she was crying. "They say it's waterproof, but they so lie." She let me have another sip of water.

I managed to croak, "Why does my throat hurt?"

"I..." She looked solemn again. "We had to intubate Richard."

"Intubate?" I made it a question.

"Put a tube down his throat. A machine is doing his breathing for him."

"s.h.i.t," I whispered.

She wiped at the black tears again, smearing them worse. "But you're awake, you're all right." She nodded, over and over, as if that would make it more true. I was almost sure that away from me, her leopard queen, she was more controlled as a nurse, but she sure did cry easily for a medical professional.

There were soft footfalls, and Doctor Lillian was at my bedside. Her graying hair was in a careless knot at the back of her neck, with strands of hair flying about her slender face. Her pale eyes smiled along with her lips. Relief was plain on her face for a moment.

"Did you slap me?" I asked.

"I didn't think you'd remember that."

"You did slap me, didn't you?"

"It was a close thing, Anita. We almost lost you all."

"Cherry says Richard is hooked up to machines, that he's not breathing on his own." "That's right." "Shouldn't he have healed by now?" "It's only the night of the same day, Anita. You haven't been out that long."

"It feels longer."

She smiled. "I'm sure it does. I think now that we've got his body breathing, he will heal, but if we hadn't been able to keep his heart and lungs going ..."

"You're worried."

"His heart stopped, Anita. If he were human I'd be worried about brain damage from lack of oxygen." "But he's not human," I said. "No, but he is very hurt. He should heal perfectly, but in truth, I've never seen a lycanthrope come back from an injury this severe. His heart was pierced by a silver bullet. It was a killing shot."

"But he's not dead," I said.

"No, he's not."

I looked up at her. "Jesus, you don't give good medical blank face either."

"Jean-Claude is in a sort of coma. Asher tells me that it is a type of hibernation while he heals himself, but truthfully, vampire medicine is confusing. They're dead, so how unhealthy can they be? We hooked him up to brainwave monitors, and that's letting us know he's still in there."

"But if you didn't have the monitors?" I asked.

"I'd think he was dead," she said.

"We're not dead."

She smiled. "No, you're not. Nathaniel has been eating for five, and he's still lost two pounds in less than a day. Damian has taken more blood than any vampire should be able to hold, and still he feeds. Asher says they are helping fuel the three of you."

I nodded, remembering what Belle had said. "He's right." I thought about letting my thoughts of Nathaniel and Damian find them for me, let me see them. But I was afraid I'd mess it up. Afraid that somehow I'd cut off the energy they were feeding us, or take too much. Apparently it was working, and I was simply grateful that it was working the way it was supposed to. Belle had said that I'd learned from Jean-Claude how to do it, but she was wrong. I think Jean-Claude had done it for us before he pa.s.sed out, because I had no idea how it was working. I very carefully didn't make my shields between me and the boys any stronger, or weaker. I just tried to maintain. It was working; don't f.u.c.k with it.

"The vampires are worried that if the lesser vamps go to sleep for the day, Jean-Claude is so injured that he won't have enough energy to wake them again."

I nodded and swallowed past a sore throat that wasn't my sore throat, but it felt like it. Like I was trying to swallow past something huge and hard, and plastic. "Richard is awake enough to feel the tube in his throat, because I can feel it."

"I don't know if that's good news or bad, Anita. It will be a while be fore his body catches up with the machines, I think." "We need Jean-Claude awake before dawn, awake enough so he doesn't drain the little vamps to death," I said. She looked at me very seriously. "That is what the vampires have been discussing." I felt vampires. I felt them outside the door. I heard voices arguing, men arguing. I said, "Tell the guards to let Asher and the others in."

She looked a question at me, but went to the door. But seeing who came through the door first made me smile, and somehow I felt it would all work out. We would be safe, because Edward was here.

CHAPTER 25

HE SMILED DOWN at me, shaking his head. Standing there, looking down at me, he looked pleasant, and like the end product of a few generations of WASP breeding; blond hair, blue eyes, maybe a little short at five foot eight, but he would have fit in in so many places. Then the polished charm began to melt away, like magic. I watched the real Ed ward fill his eyes and turn them from warm to cold as a deep winter sky. The color of his eyes was the same, but the look in them wasn't. The face was still and showed nothing. If I hadn't had vampires to compare with, I'd have said Edward gave better empty face than any one I knew.

Once, seeing Edward at my bedside would have meant he'd come to kill me. Now, it meant I was safe. We were all safe, or as safe as we could be. Edward couldn't do much about metaphysical powers, but I trusted him to take care of the Harlequin's weapons and fighting skills. The magic was my department, but no one did armed combat better than Edward.

"Hey," I said, and my voice still sounded dry.

His lips twitched. "Couldn't stay alive for just a few more hours, huh?" His voice held an edge of the smile that had been there, then settled to that empty middle-of-nowhere voice, no accent, no hint of where he'd started life.

"I'm alive," I said.

"They had to restart your heart twice, Anita."

Lillian, who had made herself scarce, came to stand beside him. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't scare my patient." "She likes the truth," he said, without even looking at her. "He's right, doc," I said. She sighed. "Fine, but let's ease her into it; she's been mostly dead all day."

It took me a second to realize she'd made a joke. Edward gave her a look, then turned back to me. "According to the vamps, we don't have time to ease you into it."

"Tell me what's been happening," I said.

"There's too much, Anita. If I tell you everything, it will be dawn and your little vampires will be dead for good." "Tell me what I need to know, then," I said. "Jean-Claude used a lot of energy to wake every vamp in the city before he pa.s.sed out."

"I was there when he did it."

"Don't interrupt," and he was way too solemn for my comfort. "The vamps and shapeshifters came up with a plan that they think will net the most power for you to feed into Jean-Claude and Richard in the shortest amount of time."

"Why are you telling me this? Why not Asher, or . . ."

"You interrupted," he said, eyes cold, and face still so serious.

"Sorry," I said.

Lillian made a noise that made us both look at her. "You said she'd take the news better from you, but I didn't believe you. I believe you now."

He gave her a look.

"Sorry, I'll stand over here and stop wasting time." She moved away from us.

He continued, "I don't like the plan and you're going to hate it, but I've listened to their reasoning and it's the best plan we've got."

I raised a hand.

He actually smiled, but it never quite reached his eyes. "Yes."

"You think it's a good plan?" I asked.

"I couldn't come up with a better one."

I looked at him. "Really?"

He nodded. "Really." The fact that he couldn't come up with a better plan said a lot. Said enough that I didn't argue. "Okay, tell me the plan," I said.

"You feed the ardeur on the head of another animal group, and take their energy the way you did the wererats'." He didn't flinch or hesitate, even though he'd only known about the ardeur for a few hours. He'd landed in the middle of a crisis of metaphysical proportions and it hadn't fazed him, or if it had, it didn't show. In that moment I loved him, in a guy-buddy sort of way. He'd never fail me, or f.u.c.k with me, and I loved him for it.

"Which animal group?" I asked.

"The swans," he said.

I gave him surprised face. "Say again?"

He smiled, that cold smile, but it was a real smile; he was amused. "I take it the swan king is not your buddy."

"Not in that way. He and all the heads of the animal groups have been over to the house for dinner, but..." I shook my head and swallowed past that feeling of something in my throat that wasn't there, like a phantom pain. "I've never thought of him in that way, and there are larger, more powerful groups in St. Louis than the swans."

"You knocked most of the wererats cold when you fed on their king," Edward said.

"I did what?"

"You heard me."

I remembered Jean-Claude's voice in my head, saying no when I went back for that last bit of energy from Rafael. "I didn't mean to," I said. Lillian peered around Edward's shoulder. "You're just lucky I was one of the few who didn't go down."