In one of those moments that lasts forever, and is the blink of an eye, I saw inside Malcolm's mind. He had thought me the lesser evil. He had thought he could control me and retain some control of his people. It wasn't words, but more pictures, like some dream short hand, if dreams could slap you as they ran across your mind. I'd always wondered if Malcolm's motives were as pure as they seemed. I'd a.s.sumed it was a bid for power; all vampires wanted power. But I saw him holding his people, cradling them while they wept. I saw him plunging fangs into their throats to give them that third bite. I felt him treat it as a holy thing, a ceremony as pure in his own heart as the marriage of a nun to G.o.d. It was his fault that the joining was so complete, his power thrusting into mine, and not understanding that my necromancy was like the biggest gravity well that any vampire would ever touch. It sucked him in, and I could not stop it.

But I was of Belle Morte's line, and all our talents are double-edged blades. I felt his power dive as deep inside me as mine in him, and I couldn't keep it out. And it wasn't just my mind. Nathaniel's and Damian's memories flooded to the surface. Nathaniel as a little boy, a man holding his hand, food for a hungry stomach, then hands where ... Malcolm broke the memory before he went further. He understood that I could not steer us through these waters. He couldn't break what was happening, but his centuries of being a master helped us skim along the surface and not drown. Damian on the deck of a ship in the sunlight; the wind was so fresh, the sea smelled so good. The darkness of his creator's dungeon. That dark stairway, the screams, the smells. Malcolm drew us away from it. My mother's funeral, and I drew us away from that. It was like blinking; you see something you don't want to see, and you blink, and look away. You look away, and there's another picture.

Malcolm thought of his congregation, and just like that we had images to go with the scents and tactile explosion in our heads. I knew that the girl who smelled of soap and some sweet shampoo wanted to go to college, but was fighting to get enough nighttime cla.s.ses to complete her degree. I knew that the family of vampires was trying for a house in a neighborhood that did not want them. I knew that the "child" was the master of the house. Malcolm gave us the problems and hopes. What we gave him back was the scent of their skin, the finger brush along a collar, a dozen different aftershaves, twenty different perfumes, from powdery sweetness to an herbal cleanness that was almost bitter. We gave him back sighs, as our power swept over them. We gave him back upturned faces as they shivered at the touch of power that was more sensuous than anything Malcolm had shown them. It didn't have to be s.e.xual, but it was a dance of the senses. To be touched by Belle's line of vampires was to understand that some one's breath against your arm, just your arm, could cover your body in shivers.

Malcolm drew back from Damian's neck like a drowning man surfacing. We all came to the surface of that binding. Nathaniel and I ended in a heap on the carpeted aisle. Hands had to catch Damian or he would have fallen.

"You have not saved them, Malcolm. When I wrest them from you, you will come with them like a dog on a leash." The voice was clear and bell-like, echoing to the ends of the big church. I didn't think it was vampire powers. It was more like a voice that had been trained centuries before microphones existed.

Jean-Claude touched Malcolm to keep the other vampire from answering. He answered with a voice that sounded almost ordinary compared to Columbine's. It was as bland and empty as his voice got, but somehow it filled the room. "We bargained that you would duel the first to use magic. Ma pet.i.te, my servant, did not know these rules."

"We also promised not to use our servants to bolster our powers," she said.

"So I was not allowed to contact her mind-to-mind."

"You might have plotted behind my back."

"But you did not attack ma pet.i.te, you struck at the congregation. That seems as if you have broken the bargain first." His voice held a shiver at the end, and the entire congregation reacted to it, shuddering. They began to gaze at him, some reluctantly, but they heard him now, felt him now. In that moment I understood that Malcolm had been right in one thing. Blood-oathing to me was blood-oathing to Jean-Claude. Blood of my blood and all that.

"Your servant was using her leopards and her vampire. I could have reached out to my servant, Giovanni, but I kept to our bargain. But if she was allowed to gain power from others, then it seemed fair that I could do the same."

"You can feed off the combined power of all the vampires." Jean- Claude made it a statement.

"Yes," she said, and sounded pleased with herself.

Edward and Olaf were standing on either side of us like good body guards. It was Micah who knelt and asked, "Are you safe to touch?"

I knew what he meant: Will whatever metaphysical c.r.a.p is happening spread by touch? "I think I'm safe to touch."

He grabbed my elbow and lifted, effortlessly. Graham offered Nathaniel a hand. We both swayed a little, but we were upright. Yea.

Columbine had meant to own the congregation and use them like a battery to make her own powers greater. Great enough to win a fight with Jean-Claude, maybe. But now they were mine, and through me, Jean-Claude's.

"You are too late," Malcolm said. "I have given them to my master."

"Oh, such bonds, when fresh, are not so firm," she said.

"Bold words, Columbine," Jean-Claude said, and his voice slid over my skin. Nathaniel shivered beside me. I felt two hundred vampires, or more, react to that voice. One vampire cried out, "Malcolm, save us from this lecher and his wh.o.r.e."

I turned and found the man who had spoken. He was staring at Malcolm, his hand out, beseeching. I started to be angry, but then sensed a thought, and I could feel his fear. Jean-Claude's voice had made this heteros.e.xual man's body react. Just the voice, ordinary words; Jean-Claude wasn't even trying, not yet. How would I feel if it were a female vamp? The thought made me think of Belle Morte.

She'd done a lot more than use voice powers on me. The thought brought heat in a rush up my face. I burned at the thought of her body, her hands on me. Then I could taste her mouth, the sweetness of her lipstick. The silk of her skin clung to my fingertips, so that I rubbed them against the leather of my coat to get some other sensation, but it didn't help. The feel of her skin clung to my fingers like a cobweb that I could not brush away.

Nathaniel started to touch me, but I jerked back. I was shaking my head. I held my hands out to all of them, and was backing down the aisle. I needed Jean-Claude, or Asher. I needed someone who understood her power better than I did. Maybe it was just a reaction to what she had done to me in dream, but I couldn't count on that. If she was going to try to take me over, I needed to be near someone who could help me fight.

I don't know if Columbine understood what was happening, or thought it was the ardeur, but she seemed to think it was an opening; a weakness. She attacked the congregation again, but what she'd done before had been a feint. She'd just been pretending to try. Her power cut through the vampires like a burning sword. Where it touched, they screamed, and the ties that bound them to me, to Jean-Claude, seared away. It was as if she literally could cut the metaphysical bonds like rope that was too fragile to hold.

One of the vampires she cut free stumbled into the aisle and fell on all fours at my feet, shrieking. I couldn't feel what she was feeling, but apparently it hurt. A man reached out, gray eyes wide. He screamed, "Master, help me!" He didn't reach toward Malcolm, or Jean-Claude. He was inches away, and he reached for me.

I took his hand. I didn't even think about it. His hand was bigger than mine, so it was his hand that encircled mine, but the moment he touched me, he stopped screaming. He came out of the pew and wrapped himself around me. He held me as if I were the last safe thing in the world. I hugged him back, tight, and the feel of Belle Morte's skin faded under the muscled realness of the man in my arms. The girl on the floor crawled to me, touched my leg. She stopped screaming.

She wrapped herself around our legs, the nameless vampire and me. I was of Belle Morte's line. I knew how to stop the pain. I knew how to bring them back and make them mine.

I raised my face to the gray-eyed man. He bent toward me, folded his tall frame downward. I held his face in my hands and went up on tiptoe. His mouth found mine, and we kissed. His lips were dry, nervous, afraid, but I did something I'd never been able to do before: I was able to draw a little bit of the ardeur. I understood, as if the light had finally dawned, that the ardeur didn't have to be an ocean. It could be a single drop of rain, to wet the lips. I gave that tiny bit of power to him, breathed it into his mouth. I found the broken piece inside him that Columbine had cut. She had cut it with pain and force, and offered them a warning. She had showed them torture, fire, to burn and destroy them, if they refused her. I offered a kiss. I offered gentleness. I offered love. If I hadn't tasted Malcolm's power only moments be fore, maybe I couldn't have done it, but his intent was so pure, so un selfish, that it was like the ardeur had learned a new flavor. I offered that flavor to them. I offered them a choice. I gave them cool water and safety. She offered terror and punishment. She was threat. I was promise.

I won them back with a kiss, a touch. They poured from the pews, and I moved among them. Damian and Nathaniel helped me, moving into the crowd, touching, a kiss here and there. There was a gentleness to the ardeur that I had never felt before. Columbine's power died under a wave of kindness. A wave of touch, and chaste kisses. A wave of offering help. We will save you. We will take away your pain. She should have remembered that people have given everything they own, everything they are, to be taken care of, and to have their pain gone.

It's the lure of cults: the promise of a good family; it's what people think love is, but love isn't absence of pain, it's a hand to hold while you're going through it.

Columbine screamed her frustration, and she broke the pact. She reached out to Giovanni. I felt her touch him. Not the hand that she took, but her power. The power that we had been pushing back suddenly took a leap. I felt it like a huge tidal wave rising above us. I turned and looked up as if there should be something to see, but there was nothing. Then that nothingness. .h.i.t. It was like standing in the middle of a whirlwind of fire. Every breath was agony, death, but you had to breathe. Power seared down my throat, and I fought to scream, but there was no air. There was nothing but pain.

A voice came out of that pain and said, "I will make the pain stop.

Be mine, and it will stop." I screamed my defiance to that voice in my head, but it was the kind of pain that eventually would break you.

Eventually, you'd simply say yes, anything, everything, just to make it stop.

Vaguely, I felt the carpet of the floor underneath me. I knew I was writhing on it, but the pain ate all other sensations. My vision ran in streamers, sliding images, as if my eyes could not see past the pain.

Hands tried to hold me down, but my body wouldn't be still. It hurt too much to be still.

The voice in my head said, "Let go, and it will feel so good. Just let go. Let go. They are strangers to you; let me have them, Anita. Let them go."

I didn't even know who "them" was. There was nothing but the pain, and some part of me that would not give in. It was as if every thing underneath my skin had turned to fire and was trying to burn its way out.

Hands held me down, and there were enough hands that I had to feel them. They were firm and real, and it was like an anchor in the pain. I could feel the hands, feel that they were real. Which meant... Light, burning light, the sun dazzled my eyes, and I burned.

I screamed, and something covered my mouth. Lips, a kiss, and down that kiss was the sweet musk of leopard. My leopard rose to that scent. The sun was warm, and good, not a burning thing. I rose with Micah's beast, two black furred creatures that writhed and danced, and rose up and up, toward the light. The pain fell away as I remembered fur and claw, and teeth, and meat. I wasn't a vampire, not really. I was nothing that she could make burn. Her power only worked on the dead. I was reminded that I was very much alive.

I blinked up into Micah's face from inches away. He was lying on top of me, his hands trapping my face between them. I couldn't turn my head to see who was leaning weight on my arms and legs, but there were a lot of hands. I smelled wolf and hyena and human. I scented the air before I tried to see who was holding me down.

Micah stared down at me with his leopard eyes. "Anita?" He said my name like a question.

"I'm here," I whispered.

Micah crawled off of me. I could see Edward on my right arm now. Olaf was on my right leg, and Remus was on my left leg. Graham was on my left arm. I turned back to the men who were still pinning me. "You can let me up now."

"Not yet," Edward said. I realized he was up on all fours, putting his full bodyweight on just the one arm. I wondered how hard he had had to work to hold me down.

"You acted as if you were about to shift," Remus said, from where he had my left leg pinned.

"If there is another animal left, we cannot let go," Olaf said. The big man, almost as big in human form as Graham's animal form, seemed very serious about holding my leg down. I think the strength had impressed even Olaf. What the h.e.l.l had I done?

I wanted to argue, but the looks on everyone's face said that I had scared them, or at least impressed them all. Impressed in a bad way. Nothing I could say would make them let up, but I so did not want to be spread-eagled on the ground, held down, sort of helpless in the middle of a fight.

"Our servants have fought, Jean-Claude, and mine is still standing."

"But ma pet.i.te won, Columbine. She withstood Giovanni's power. All the pain you caused her, and she did not let you use her to own the other vampires. They are still mine. You cannot feed upon their powers, as you had planned."

I could turn my head and see Jean-Claude on the stage, but Columbine was just a voice out of sight. I needed to be at his side. Call it a hunch, but bad things were coming. You could feel it in the air.

"Someone has talked out of turn," she said.

"I felt your power, Columbine, felt it forming them into a great fire to feed your power. No one had to bear tales for me to understand what you meant to do. You can take other vampires and make of their powers one great weapon."

"Yes," she said.

"But ma pet.i.te stopped you from taking these little vampires and forming them into your army, your source of power. What will you do now that you cannot win power in this way?" His voice breathed through my head, "You beside me would be well, ma pet.i.te?

I whispered, "Trying. Let me up, boys."

Power breathed through the church. It sought to feed your doubts, no, to feed on them. I'd met vampires who could feed on l.u.s.t, on fear, but never one who fed on doubt. Dear G.o.d, she fed on it, and she could cause it, just like the vamps who fed off l.u.s.t and fear. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the certainty that we would lose. Everyone was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it.

"G.o.d." Remus almost moaned it. He had his head in his hands. Ed ward and Olaf seemed the least affected. Micah reached out to me. I let him draw me into the circle of his arms, let myself sink into the strength of him, but the doubts didn't go away. I was suffocating in my doubts. People cried out, some begged for it to stop. I heard one man say, "Anything, anything, just stop it, stop it." There was more than one way to win this fight.

Nathaniel crawled to us. He reached out, head hanging down. I touched his hand and a surge of power knocked back the doubts. He raised his face and gave me the full look of those beautiful eyes. His face brightened like the sun coming from behind a cloud. He said, "I believe in you."

I drew him into the circle of Micah's body. "You make me believe in myself." As it had earlier, Nathaniel's touch chased back the doubts. His unwavering certainty kept us both safe from her. Even sitting in the room with her, her doubts could not get past the certainty that Nathaniel gave me.

Damian crawled to us. I think partially the doubts a.s.sailed him, but also he was a vampire. The burning illusion of being consumed by the sun had hit him, too. I could feel his pain, and the double pain of the memory of watching his best friend die in the sunlight. His tie to me let him be in sunlight and not burn, but the terror of the light made him unable to enjoy it. Sunlight was death, period, end of story. He was remembering watching his friend's skin peel away under the heat of a summer day.

Nathaniel grabbed his wrist, I took his hand, and we pulled him into the circle of our arms. The moment we touched him, he shuddered, but raised a tear-stained face. "Her power is terrible. You would do anything to make it stop."

I nodded. The crowd was still crying for help, for it to stop. If they'd set up similar rules to the last challenger Jean-Claude had had, then it was winning over the crowd that would decide it. An actual member of the vampire council had come to town. He was the Earth-mover, he could cause earthquakes with his power. To save the city and keep the destruction to a minimum, Jean-Claude had gotten him to agree that they would fight with less destructive powers, and one of the tests would be which one could sway the audience at the Circus of the d.a.m.ned. If victory was in getting this crowd on our side, we were about to lose.

I tried to feel Jean-Claude through his own marks, but he kept me out. I got one hard glimpse of him drowning in doubt. But they weren't his doubts, they were Richard's. Poor Richard, he'd come to support Jean-Claude, but he was so fall of self-doubt that he was hurting him, hurting them both. Jean-Claude shielded so I wouldn't feel it. That left him and Richard trapped in Richard's version of h.e.l.l.

I got to my feet, still holding on to Nathaniel and Damian. Micah stood with us, but let his hands fall away. I told him, "I love you."

"I love you, too, now go. Go to Jean-Claude."

We started hurrying toward the stage. Jean-Claude needed to touch someone who had no doubts about him, or themselves. With Nathaniel's hand in mine, I had enough certainty to share.

CHAPTER 44

WE HIT THE stage at a run, and I fell into Jean-Claude's arms. I fell into his arms with Nathaniel in my right hand, and Damian in my left. Jean-Claude staggered under the combined weight, or the momentum. Asher helped steady him, hands on his back to help him stay up right. Richard was on all fours, head down. He never looked up as we stumbled into Jean-Claude's arms, and Asher held us all for a moment.

Jean-Claude wrapped his arms around me. I felt Asher's strength at his back, at our backs, helping us, steadying us. I looked up into Jean-Claude's face, into those midnight blue eyes. Nathaniel wrapped his arms around Jean-Claude, me, and Asher. I think Asher would have moved back, but there was no time. Damian kept my hand but knelt by Richard. He touched the fallen man's shoulder. Nathaniel and I gave Jean-Claude certainty, a rock to build upon. Damian shared his coldness with Richard, his utter control. I felt both emotions in a rush of power that danced through my body, and into Jean-Claude's, and Asher's behind him.

Richard cried out, his head coming up, his hand grabbing Damian's arm like a drowning man taking the last help offered.

I felt Damian's coldness rush over Richard's panic and turn to a wall of ice. He gave Richard defenses to hide behind. He pulled Richard to his feet, and they stood there, hands on each other's arms, like a version of the guy-greeting that friends use sometimes when a handshake won't do but they're too manly to hug. Damian kept my hand in his, but he and Richard were outside the circle of everyone else's arms.

They were relieved to be outside the circle of the other men.

Richard's fear flared. He wasn't just afraid of Columbine and her servant. He was afraid of Jean-Claude and me, and Asher. It was one of those too-close glimpses that we sometimes got into each other's minds. It was Damian who cut off the sensation, Damian who blocked the fear with his own iron self-control. He'd had centuries of learning to control fear when he was the plaything of a master vampire who could raise fear in another and feed on it, as Columbine fed on doubt.

"We must win the crowd, mes amis."

"Like when the Earthmover came to town?" I asked.

He nodded, arms tightening around me. I knew why the hug. The Earthmover had won. Only his trying to make me his human servant, trying to make me kill Jean-Claude for him, had given me the chance to kill him instead. I pressed my face against the stiffness of Jean-Claude's lacy shirt. I'd almost broken him of the old-fashioned lace, but tonight he'd dressed as I first found him, all frothy white lace and black velvet jacket; only the leather pants showed he knew what century he was in. I pressed my free hand against his side, underneath the jacket, held the line of his body and was afraid.

"I don't know who the Earthmover was," Nathaniel said, "but just tell me what to do, and I'll do it." "If more of us were submissive, things would go so much faster," Asher said. It made me smile, though the smile was lost against Jean-Claude's shirt. "You aren't one of us," Richard said, and his voice was hostile. "We must unite, Richard, or we will lose this night," Jean-Claude said. "He is not your animal to call, or your servant. I don't have to play nice with him." Asher started to move away, but Nathaniel tightened his arm, held him in place. "Don't go." "Let me go, boy. The wolf is right, I am no one's darling." His voice held sadness, like the taste of rain on your tongue, lifetimes of sorrow in that one tone.

"Our certainty does not travel outside our triumvirates," Jean-Claude said. "Even our wolf is drowning. How can we save all the others if we cannot even save ourselves?" His voice was an echo of Asher's, full of sorrow, so that my throat closed with it, and I thought I'd choke on unshed tears.

"Fight, d.a.m.n you!" Claudia came up to the edge of the stage. Tears stained her face. Her emotions were so raw, it looked like physical pain. "Fight for us! Don't just roll over and give that b.i.t.c.h your throat."

Malcolm came to stand on the other side of Richard. "Fight for us, Jean-Claude. Fight for us, Anita." He looked directly at Richard. Richard suddenly looked wrong in the leather mask. He didn't look cool in the leather outfit, he looked like he was doing exactly what he was doing. He was hiding. The rest of us stood there in plain view. Only the bad guys, and Richard, were hiding who and what they were from the world. Malcolm gripped his shoulder. "Fight for us, Ulfric. Do not let your fears and doubts destroy us all."

"I thought you, of all people, would understand why I don't want to be touching them when they raise the only power we have to fight these things."

"I felt what Anita and her triumvirate raised earlier. It was friend ship, love as pure as any I've known. I begin to believe the ardeur is a jewel with many facets, but it needs light to shine, Ulfric."

"What the h.e.l.l does that mean?" Richard asked, and his voice was angry and frustrated. He shoved Malcolm's hand away and looked at Damian. "You're keeping the worst of it out, aren't you?"

Damian just looked at him.

"To reap the benefits, I have to take the bad with the good. I can't do it. I can't." He looked at me. "I'm sorry, but I can't go where this is heading."

"What do you think we're going to do, Richard?" I asked.

"What you always do, f.u.c.k everything."

"It was not s.e.x she offered to my congregation, only friendship."

"But it won't stay that way, it never does," Richard said. He looked at Malcolm and said, "You're asking me to do something that you would never do yourself."

Malcolm nodded. "You're right"-he nodded again-"you are absolutely right. I have stood on my moral high ground and been so certain. So certain that I was right, that Jean-Claude was not only wrong, but evil. I have said such hateful things to Anita, called her wh.o.r.e and witch. I have called all Jean-Claude's people that and worse to my congregation, but all my righteousness could not protect them."

Richard nodded. "I know. Anita saved my mother and brother, saved their lives, but she did terrible things to get there in time. Things I still think are immoral, wrong, and I have to live every day with the knowledge that if I had been there I would have stopped Anita from torturing that man. I wouldn't have let her dehumanize him, or herself. I would have stood on my moral high ground and my mother and my brother, Daniel, would both be dead." Tears shimmered, edged by the leather. "I used to be so sure of so much. Raina didn't shake my faith. She made me more certain. Only Anita, only Jean-Claude, only they have made me doubt everything."

I drew a little away from Jean-Claude, still touching, because I was afraid to stop touching him. If the doubts were this bad touching, I couldn't imagine what they'd be like if we weren't touching. We'd just die. "My cross still works for me, Richard. It still burns with holy light.

G.o.d hasn't forsaken me."

"But he should have," Richard said. "He should have, don't you see? If what I believe is right, if what you say you believe is right, then your cross should not burn. You have broken so many commandments. You've murdered, tortured, f.u.c.ked, but your cross still works. I don't understand that." "You're saying I'm evil, so G.o.d should have turned his back on me?" Even with most of his face hidden, I saw his face convulse with emotion, tears finally falling. He nodded. "Yes, that's what I mean." I just looked at him, and knew that it was partly vampire powers messing with his head, but that perhaps Columbine's powers only brought out what was already inside you. Some part of Richard believed what he was saying.

"Ma pet.i.te ..."