"Stop what?" he asked, voice still warm and peaceful, like a comforting blanket.
"Trying to use your voice on me. I'm not some tourist to be soothed by pretty words and a good delivery."
He smiled, then gave a small bow. "Non,but you are as nervous as a tourist. It is not like you to be so . . . jumpy." The smile had vanished, replaced by a small frown.
I rubbed my hands up and down on my arms, wishing the silk and velvet wasn't there. I needed to touch my own skin, with my own hands. The cave was around fifty degrees, I needed the long sleeves, but I needed the skin contact more. I looked up to the towering ceiling above us, and the darkness that seemed to press down from it, hovering over the gaslight, pressing at the edges of the glow like a dark hand.
I sighed. "It's the dark," I said, at last.
Jean-Claude came to stand next to me; he made no immediate move to touch me, because I'd drawn away once. I'd taught him caution. He looked up briefly at the ceiling, then back to study my face. "What of it, ma petite?"
I shook my head and tried to put it into words, while I huddled into myself, as if I could hold in the warmth. I was wearing a cross. The silver chain traced down my neck into the generous cleavage revealed by the low-necked dress. There was a piece of black masking tape over the silver cross itself, so that it wouldn't spill out at the wrong moment. After the earlier visits from Belle and Mommy Dearest, I was not going anywhere without a holy item on me. I wasn't sure what that might mean to having sex with Jean-Claude, or any vampire, but for the short term, I wasn't sure that any sex was worth the risk.
Jean-Claude touched my hand gently. I jumped, but didn't move away. He took that as an invitation. He'd always taken anything that wasn't an outright rebuke as an invitation. He moved to stand behind me, putting his hands over mine where I still gripped myself. "Your hands are chilled." He pressed me in the circle of his body, arms sliding around me, pinning me gently against him.
He rested his cheek against the top of my head. "I ask again, ma petite,what is the matter?"
I settled into the circle of his arms, relaxing by inches against him, as if my very muscles couldn't stand the thought of giving in to anything soft, or comforting. I ignored the question and asked again, "Why are there plates on the floor?"
He sighed and held me close. "Do not be angry, because there is nothing I can do to change this. I knew you would not like it, but Belle is old-fashioned."
Asher came to join us. "Her original request was to put humans on large trays, like suckling pigs, bound and helpless. Then everyone could have picked a vein and enjoyed."
I turned my head against the velvet of Jean-Claude's coat, so I could stare at Asher's face. "You're joking, right?"
The look on his face was enough. "Shit, you aren't." I rolled my head up so I could look at Jean-Claude. He obligingly looked down at me. His face was more unreadable, but I was pretty sure Asher hadn't lied.
"Oui, ma petite,she suggested three humans would be enough for all of us."
"You can't feed this many vampires off of three people."
"Not true, ma petite," he said, softly.
I kept looking at him, until he looked away. "You mean drain them dry from multiple bites."
"Yes, yes, that is what I mean." He sounded tired.
I forced myself to settle back into his suddenly tense arms, and sighed. "Just tell me, Jean-Claude, I believe you that Belle insisted on it, whatever it is. I believe you that she wanted worse things done, just tell me."
He bent his head so that he whispered against my hair, his warm breath touching my ear. "When you have steak, do you invite the cow to sit at table with you?"
"No," I said, then turned my head to the side so I could see his face. The look in his eyes was enough. "You don't mean . . ." He did mean. "So who's sitting on the floor?"
"Anyone who is food," he said.
I gave him a look.
He spoke quickly to the look in my eyes. "You will be seated at table, ma petite,just as Angelito will sit at table."
"What about Jason?"
"Pomme de sangswill eat from the floor."
"So Nathaniel, too." I said.
He gave a small nod and let me see how worried he was about how I'd take all this.
"If you were this worried about how I'd react, why didn't you warn me ahead of time?"
"In truth, there has been so much happening that I forgot. This was once very normal for me, ma petite,and Belle holds with the old ways. There are older still than she, who would not even allow the food to sit on the floor." He shook his head, hard enough that his hair touched my face, smelling of his cologne and that indefinable something that was simply his scent. "There are banquets, ma petite,that you would not wish to see, or even know of. They are indeed horrible."
"Did you think they were horrible while you were participating in them?"
"Some, oui." His eyes filled with that wistful look, that lost innocence, centuries of pain. It didn't happen often, but sometimes in his eyes I could glimpse what he'd lost.
"I won't argue if you tell me there's worse out there than this arrangement. I'll just believe you."
He gave me a look of disbelief. "No arguing?"
I shook my head and leaned back into his chest, held his arms around me like a coat. "Not tonight."
"I should leave this miracle alone, but I cannot. You have taught me bad habits, ma petite.I think I must ask, once more, what is wrong?"
"I told you, it's the dark."
"You have never been afraid of the dark before."
"I'd never met the Mother of All Darkness before." I said it softly, but her name seemed to echo into the darkness, as if the darkness itself were waiting for the words, as if the words could conjure her to us. I knew it wasn't true. All right, I was pretty sure it wasn't true, but it made me shiver just the same.
Jean-Claude tightened his grip around me, pulling me tight in against his body. "Ma petite,I do not understand."
"How could you?" came a voice behind us.
Jean-Claude turned me in his arms as he moved to face the voice, making it a dance-like movement, ending with my left hand in his right. His coat and my skirt swirled out and settled in a cloth whisper around us. Our outfits were designed to move and flow like some goth version of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Asher walked quickly to us, and even the way he moved was wrong. His posture was still perfect, but there was a hunching to it, like a dog that expects to be hit. He hurried in those white boots, hurried, and though still beautiful, there was little grace to his movement. There was too much fear in him to allow for grace.
Jean-Claude held out his hand, and Asher took it. We stood there, the three of us holding hands like children. It should have been absurd, considering the vampire we faced, but it wasn't Valentina that we wanted to huddle together against. I think for all three of us, it was the night in general. It was everything in the next room, and what it represented.
Valentina stood in front of the drapes. She looked like a tiny doll dressed all in white and gold so that she, like Asher, would match the table settings. Everyone in Musette's party matched the table, which meant that that, too, had been something they negotiated. Somehow clothes wouldn't have been high on my list, but then that was me.
Valentina's outfit was a miniature seventeenth-century dress with the skirt flared out to either side so that she was shaped like an oval. The skirt was very full and gave glimpses as she walked of tiny gold slippers and numerous petticoats. She even had a white wig that hid her brunette curls from view. The wig looked too heavy for that slender white throat, but she walked as if the jewels and feathers and powdered hair weighed nothing. She had absolutely perfect posture, but I knew that was from the corset that was under the dress. Those dresses don't fit right without the proper undergarments.
There had been no need for powder to make her skin white, rouge and red lipstick had been enough. Oh, and a black beauty mark in the shape of a tiny heart near that rosebud mouth. She should have looked ridiculous, but she didn't. She was like a sinister doll. When she flipped open her gold and lace fan with a sharp snap, I jumped.
She laughed, and only the laughter was childlike, a hint of how she might have sounded long ago.
"She has stood on the brink of the abyss and stared into it, and the abyss has looked back, has it not?"
I had to swallow hard to be able to answer, because my pulse was pounding, and I was suddenly shivering. "You talk like you know."
"I do." She walked towards us, gliding and graceful. She wore the body of a child, but she didn't move like one. I guess centuries of practice can teach anyone to glide.
She stopped farther back than an adult-sized person would, so she didn't have to strain to look up at me. I'd noticed she did that while everyone was mingling. "Once I was truly the child this body pretends to be. I wandered away from everyone, exploring as children do." She looked up at me with enormous brown eyes. "I found a door that was not locked. A room with many windows . . ."
"And none of them looked outside," I finished for her.
She blinked up at me. "Exactement.What did the windows look out upon?"
"A room," I said, "a huge room." I looked up at the cavernous roof. "Like this one, but bigger, and the windowed room sits above it all."
"You have not been in our inner sanctum, of that I am sure, but you speak as if you stood where I stood."
"Not physically, but I have stood there," I said.
We looked at each other, and it was a look of shared knowledge, shared terror, shared fear.
"How close did you get to the bed?" she asked.
"Closer than I wanted to," I whispered.
"I touched the black sheets, because I thought she was only sleeping."
"She is sleeping," I said.
Valentina shook her head, solemnly. "Non,to say she sleeps is to say any vampire sleeps. It is not sleep."
"She's not dead, not dead the way the rest of you are when you sleep."
"True, but she is not asleep either."
I shrugged. "Whatever you call it, she's not awake."
"And for that we are truly grateful, are we not?" She spoke softly enough that I leaned in towards her to hear the words.
"Yes," I whispered back, "we are."
She reached up and touched my neck, and I flinched, not from the touch, but from the tension of our words. She didn't laugh this time. "Only you and I have been touched by that dark."
"Belle Morte, too," I said.
Valentina looked a question at me.
"Belle has called me into some kind of dream when the Darkness rose around us."
"Our mistress has not informed us of this," Valentina said.
"It only happened today, early today," I said.
"Hmm," Valentina said, folding her fan tight, running it through her tiny hands, each tiny nail done in gold. "Musette should know of this." She gazed up at me, and there was so much more of her than there should have been. She would always appear to be eight, a petite eight, but her eyes held an adult's awareness, and more.
"There are some unexpected guests that are about to make their appearance. I cannot spoil the surprise, for that would anger Musette, and through her, Belle, but I think that you and I will be equally unhappy with them. I think that you and I more than any will see it for the disaster it is."
"I don't understand," I said.
"Jean-Claude will explain their presence to you, when they appear, but only you and I will truly grasp why the mere fact that they are here is bad, very bad."
I frowned. "I'm sorry, but you've lost me."
She sighed and unfurled her fan with a practiced movement. "We will speak again after the surprise." She turned to walk back towards the curtain.
I called after her. "What saved you from the dark?"
She turned, the fan folding away again, as if playing with it had become habitual. "What saved you?"
"A cross, and friends."
She gave a small smile that left her eyes as empty and gray as a winter storm. "My human nurse."
"Did she see what was on the bed?"
"No, but it saw her. She began to shriek. She shrieked, and shrieked, and stood there, staring at nothing, until she fell down dead. Her body lay there for a very long time because no one wished to enter the room."
Valentina opened her fan with a snap. I managed not to jump this time. "The smell got to be quite atrocious." She smiled, and made a joke of it, a vicious joke, but she couldn't make her expression match the humor. Her eyes were haunted, no matter how cruel the smile. She left through a flick of black drapes.
All three of us visibly relaxed when the drapes swung shut, and we shared a glance. "Why do I think I'm not the only one too tense to pull this off tonight?" I said.
Asher kept Jean-Claude's hand, but moved around so he was facing both of us. "Musette smells a lie, and she will not let it rest."
"Valentina and I just finished talking about the mother of all bad vampires, and you're already back to harping on Musette."
Jean-Claude squeezed my hand, and sighed.
"The Sweet Dark will not take me tonight, Anita. It will not pin me to a table and unfasten my clothes and force itself upon me. Musette will."
"You're in our bed now, rules say she can't have you."
"But she smells that it is a lie."
"I can't help that the fact that we haven't had intercourse comes up on vampire radar as lying about fucking you."
"Musette wishes it to be untrue, ma petite.She is searching for anything that will allow her more room to play. Your doubts, Asher's doubts, give her that room."
I closed my eyes and counted slowly to ten. When I opened them, they were both giving me their best blank faces. It was like looking at two superb paintings, suddenly made three-dimensional, very lifelike, but not alive.
I squeezed Jean-Claude's hand, and he squeezed back. "Don't go all strange on me, guys. I'm having enough trouble tonight."
They both blinked, one long graceful blink, and they were "alive" again. I shivered and took my hand back from Jean-Claude. "That is so disturbing," I said.
"Pourquoi, ma petite?"
"Why. He has to ask, why." I shook my head, and crossed my arms. I had to cradle my breasts, because, thanks to the bra and the neckline, there was no way to cross my arms over my chest.
Damian came through the black drapes. His scarlet hair glowed against the cream and gold of his old-fashioned clothes. He could have stepped out of a seventeenth-century painting, complete with white hose below knee-length pants and those odd high-heeled buckle shoes the noblemen wore. Only his hair, loose and blazing, was untamed, and recognizably him. He had not volunteered to be one of Jean-Claude's pretty men. Damian was a touch homophobic. Boy, had he fallen in with the wrong bunch of vampires.
He strode across the carpet and went to one knee in front of me. For tonight we were being formal, so I didn't argue, and offered him my left hand. He took it, laying a kiss on my fingers. "The Ulfric and his party are almost here."
"Where have they been?" Jean-Claude asked.
Damian looked up, giving us the full force of his grass green eyes. He almost looked underdressed without eye makeup. I think almost every other person at this little party was wearing makeup. The corner of his mouth gave the smallest twitch, and I realized he was trying not to laugh. "They had to find someone to repair the Ulfric's hair. No one in their pack was a hairdresser."
"What does this mean, 'repair his hair'?" Jean-Claude asked.
I sighed. "You know how you forgot to tell me about the plates on the floor?"
"Oui."
"I forgot to mention that Richard cut his hair off. I don't mean like go-to-the-beauty-parlor-and-get-it-styled. I mean hacked it off with scissors, himself."
Jean-Claude looked almost as horrified as I had. "His beautiful hair."
"Yeah," I said, "I know." I'd done my best not to think about it. I mean, Richard had said it, we weren't dating. It wasn't any of my business what length his hair was. My major concern was that sane happy people don't hack their hair off at home with scissors. Cutting your hair like that is usually a substitute for hurting yourself in other more permanent ways. Any counselor will tell you that.
Damian spoke, still on one knee, still holding my hand lightly. "They found someone to salvage what they could, but he is all but shorn."
Jean-Claude looked ill, which for a vampire is a neat trick. "Is he well enough for all this tonight?" I wasn't sure who he'd asked it of, maybe everyone, maybe no one. But Jean-Claude had grasped how bad a sign it was that Richard was "mutilating" himself.
"I'm not sure any of us are," I said.
He gave me an unfriendly look. "We are stronger than this, ma petite."
"Strong, yes, but tired. I guess, I can only speak for myself, but if Musette comes up to me one more time and asks me about Asher, I'm going to smack her."
"That is against the rules, ma petite."
"What would make her stop nagging us about Asher? Does she have to see us fucking in front of her to back off?"
Damian was stroking my hand in his. I jerked back from him. "I don't want to calm down. I'm pissed, and I have a right to be pissed."
"A right, oui,but not the luxury, ma petite."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Anger without purpose is luxury tonight, ma petite,and we cannot afford it. We do not wish to give Musette any reason to cross the boundaries that we have so carefully negotiated."
He was right, and I hated it. "Fine, fine, you're right, you're always fucking right about the political shit. But then what are we going to do to make Musette stop asking about Asher?"
"I have one possible solution," Jean-Claude said.
The solution had to wait, because Micah came through the curtain with Nathaniel and Merle in tow.
Nathaniel's outfit was mostly cream colored strips of leather that covered almost nothing. A white thong covered his front, but left his buttocks bare. He had cream colored boots that were over the knee but open in back, so you got glimpses of his legs to mid-calf when he walked away from you. There was a three-inch heel on the boots, and Nathaniel knew how to make the heel work for him. I knew he wore less than this almost every night at Guilty Pleasures, but it bugged me, until Nathaniel assured me he was fine with it. Stephen had styled Nathaniel's auburn hair, looping it back and over itself, to form the largest French braid I'd ever seen. French braids just aren't meant to hit the knees. The delicate eye makeup was almost overwhelming to his violet eyes, making them almost painfully, shockingly beautiful. Lipstick had shaped his mouth and made it kissable, even from a distance. He would have looked like a girl, except that the outfit left no doubt that the body it was almost covering was very male.
Merle was wearing a variation of what all the bodyguards would be wearing: black leather. Black leather pants over black boots with silver points, a black T-shirt under a black leather jacket. Merle had had his own outfit. He was six feet plus with gray-streaked hair that fell to his shoulders and a mustache and partial beard that were both a darker gray than his hair. He looked like what he was--a longtime biker and hard case. At the moment he was livid, so angry that his beast was rolling in the air around him like an almost visible presence.
"What happened?" I asked.
Merle growled, "If that bastard touches my Nimir-Raj one more time, I'm going to tear off his arm and shove it up his ass."
Jean-Claude and Asher said in unison, "Paolo."
"Yes," Merle growled.
Micah looked amused. I don't think it bothered him, but not much bothered Micah. He was one of the most easygoing people I'd ever met. I guess he had to be to survive as my boyfriend.
"It isn't bothering me, Merle."
"That's not the point," the big man said. "It's insulting. It shows he has no respect for us."
"It's Paolo," Asher said, "he has no respect for anyone, except Belie."
"Let me guess," I said, "Paolo's pawing Nathaniel, too."
Merle gave a low, skin-crawling growl.
The curtains opened, and Bobby Lee stuck his head and shoulders in. "Unless we can just start tearing people up, you better get back in here."
We exchanged a look, sighed almost as a group, and we got back in there.