Danse Macabre (Vampire Hunter 14)

"Give her the weight of your gaze, mon ami, let us see."

Asher turned, reluctance plain in the way he held his body. He gave me a face as blank and unreadable as any I'd ever seen on him. I'd perfected the art of looking at a vampire's face without meeting their gaze years ago. I was a little out of practice, grown arrogant with power, but old skills never truly desert you.

I studied the curve of his lips, then raised my eyes slowly to meet his. They were as beautiful as always, such a pale, pale blue. A pure, clear blue, but pale as a winter's dawn. I stared into those eyes and felt nothing.

"This won't work unless you try to capture me with your gaze."

"I do not wish to capture you," he said softly.

"Liar," I said.

He managed to look offended then.

"Don't try to kid me, Asher, you like power games entirely too much. You love the effect you have on me. You love that you can do to me what Jean-Claude can't. You love the fact that you are the only vamp who can vamp me."

His face went to cold neutrality. "I have never said such things to you."

"Your body said them for you."

He licked his lips then, an old gesture that he still made when he was nervous. "What do you want from me, Anita?"

"Truth."

He shook his head, and looked solemn. "You ask for truth a great deal, but it is seldom what you truly want."

I'd have liked to argue that, but I couldn't, not and be honest. "You're right, probably more right than I want to know, but right now, try to capture me with your gaze. Really try, so we'll know how careful I need to be around you."

"I do not want you to have to be careful around me."

I shook my head. "Please, Asher, we need to know."

"Why, so you can hide from me? So you can deny me the gaze of your own eyes?"

"Please, Asher, just do it, just try."

"I will ask as a friend," Jean-Claude said, "but the next request will be as master. Do as she asks." His voice sounded so sad. Sad enough that it made me look at him. I felt like I was missing something.

Once I would have just ignored the warning in my head, but I'd learned to ask questions. "Am I asking something bad here? I mean, you're both way too bothered by this. Am I missing something that's going to come back and bite us on the ass?"

Jean-Claude smiled, almost laughed. "Ah, ma petite, how delicately you phrase it."

"Yeah, yeah, just answer the question."

"We fear what your reaction will be if Asher can indeed capture you with his gaze."

I looked from one to the other of them. Jean-Claude's carefully pleasant face. Asher's arrogant blankness. I caught sight of Requiem against the far wall beyond them. His face was as blank as theirs, but it wasn't pleasant like Jean-Claude's or arrogant like Asher's; he simply tried to show nothing. His upper body was still decorated with the wounds Meng Die had given him. For the first time I wondered: if I fed the ardeur off him, would the wounds heal? I'd healed before with metaphysical sex. I frowned and turned back to Jean-Claude. "You had more than one reason for me to feed the ardeur from Requiem, didn't you?"

"You are not going to do it, so what does it matter?" There was the slightest flavor of anger to his words.

I turned to him. The pleasant mask was gone, and in its place something close to the arrogance that Asher hid behind. "I know I'm difficult, but let's pretend I'm not. Let's pretend that I'm not a huge pain in the ass. Just talk to me. Tell me your reasoning."

"My reasoning about what, ma petite?"

I walked toward him, talking as I moved. "All the reasons for me to feed from Requiem now. All the reasons why you're so nervous about Asher being able to capture me with his gaze." I was in front of him now, and realized that he must have moved back from the bed at some point, and I didn't remember him moving away. I'd been too caught up in Asher's eyes. "Just tell me. I promise not to panic. I promise not to run away. Just talk to me like I'm a reasonable human being."

He gave me a look, and it was an eloquent look. He let me watch thoughts chase over his face, but finally he said, "Asher is correct, ma petite; you ask for truth, but you often punish us for telling it."

I nodded. "I know, and I'm sorry about that. All I know is that I'll try to stop being a pain in the ass. I'll try to listen, and not overreact."

"Good intentions, ma petite, but you do know the old saying."

I nodded, again. "Yeah, the road to hell is paved with them, I know." I touched his arm where it lay folded across his chest. Even his body language had closed down. "Please, Jean-Claude, I feel like we don't have time to play to my insecurities. If we crash this weekend with all the other masters here, I don't want it to be because you were afraid to be honest with me. I don't want the disaster to be my fault. Okay?"

He uncrossed his arms, and touched my face. "So sincere, ma petite. What has come over you?"

I thought about that, then said it, out loud. "I'm scared."

"Of what?"

I put my hand on his, pressing his touch against my face. "Of failing us all, just because I didn't want something to be true."

"Ma petite, that is not it, not entirely."

I looked away from those suddenly knowing eyes of his. "I think it's the baby thing." I made myself meet his eyes. The gentleness in them was both easier to meet and harder. "If we really are going to do this, keep the baby, then we have to make this work. We have to make it all work. I don't have the luxury of being a pain in the ass, if it's going to get us hurt."

"You find out but hours ago, and you are suddenly more willing to compromise." He looked at me, considering, serious, tender, all mixed together. "I am told that pregnancy changes a woman, but so quick as this?"

"Maybe I just needed a wake-up call."

"Wake up to what, ma petite?"

"I keep telling Richard I've accepted my life, but he's right, I'm still hiding from parts of it. You"--and I looked at Asher then--"are all still tiptoeing around me afraid of what I'll do, aren't you?" I turned back to Jean-Claude. "Aren't you?"

"You have taught us caution, ma petite." He tried to hug me, but I stepped away.

"Don't comfort me, Jean-Claude, talk to me."

He sighed. "You do realize, ma petite, that these demands for complete honesty that come over you from time to time are another way of being a pain in the ass?"

I had to smile. "No, I hadn't realized that. I thought this was being reasonable."

"Non, ma petite, this is not being reasonable. This is another way of being very demanding."

"Well, hell, then tell me what to do, because I don't know how to be anything else."

"You are a high-maintenance item, as they say, ma petite. But I knew that before we became a couple."

"You're saying, you knew what you were getting into."

He nodded. "As much as any man can when he decides to love a woman. There are always mysteries and surprises in every love affair. But, yes, I had some idea what I was getting myself into. I did it willingly, eagerly."

"The difficulties were outweighed by what, the power you might gain?"

He frowned at me. "See, already you grow angry. You do not want truth, ma petite. You do not want lies either. You leave us all with no clue to what will take us safely through your rocky shoals."

"I've never heard you use a sea metaphor before."

"Perhaps seeing Samuel reminded me of my voyage to this fair land."

"Perhaps," I said, and even to me it sounded suspicious.

Asher made a sound low in his throat. "You seek a reason to be angry, so you can blame us, and run."

"Like Richard was trying to pick a fight earlier," I said.

Asher nodded.

I thought about that for a second or two. "It's not that Richard and I are too different, we're too much alike."

Jean-Claude gave me a look, like I'd finally come to something he'd understood long ago. "Too much alike in many ways, but you have compromised more, and your very alikeness in character makes him keep trying to force you to make the same decisions he has made. He sees the echo of himself in you, and understands even less why you do not see his rightness in all things."

"And it's maybe why he frustrates me, too. He's enough like me, so why can't he make the decisions I've made?"