Danse Macabre

47

I SCREAMED, AND I shut it down. I shut it all down. No more birds from Merlin. But in my panic, I shut down the tie with Auggie and Jean-Claude. For an instant, it was just me and her inside my head. I felt rain on my face, cool and warm. The moon rode full and bright, and I was too tall, and too male. I thought it was Jean-Claude's memory, but the hand I could see was too rough, too dark. Whose memory was I trapped in?

"Mine," she said again.

Oh, yeah, her. So why was I inside the head of the man she was about to eat? Why wasn't I inside her body?

Something moved in the moonlight. Something huge and pale, like some muscular ghost, sliding along the ground toward me. The head moved, and the eyes caught the moon, shining at me. I stared into the face of that great cat, and knew that nothing like it had walked the earth for thousands of years. "Cave lion," I thought, "huh, they were striped." The cat crouched to spring.

A wolf appeared between me and it. A white wolf with a dark saddle and head. Me, my wolf. This was a dream, which meant I was unconscious. Weird.

The wolf's hackles rose, and it gave that low, bass growl that all the canids use when they aren't kidding anymore. The wolf looked fragile beside that crouching figure. We were out of our weight class by a few hundred pounds.

I smelled wolf. I smelled pine, and forest loam. I smelled things that never grew here in this land, where the Mother of All Darkness had taken Merlin, or whoever he'd been once. I smelled the trees of home, the earth of pack land. I smelled the soft musk of wolf.

The cave lion tensed, and I knew this was it. The wolf braced for the spring, and the body I was wearing readied a spear that would not help.

Something touched my hand. I grabbed for it, without thinking, and the night exploded into white, hot light. Light, and pain, a great deal of pain.

Voices. "Let go, Anita, let go!"

Hands touching the pain. I tried to jerk away. It felt as if the blood in my hand had been replaced with molten metal. I knew that pain. A different voice, "Anita, let go!"

"Open your hand, Anita, just open your hand." Micah's voice.

My left hand was a lump of agony. I couldn't even feel my fingers. How could I open it, if I couldn't feel it? All I could feel was pain. It made me open my eyes. My vision was ruined, spotted, gray and black and white, as if I'd looked into a bright flash of light.

I had a moment to see the ring of faces: Micah, Nathaniel, Jason, Graham, and Richard. I saw them, but all my attention went to the agony that was my left hand. I looked at it, and on the outside it was fine. A thin gold chain trailed out of my fist. My hand looked fine, but I knew it wasn't.

There were heavy drapes behind us. We were still at the Fox. They'd just carried me out of the box, and put me somewhere where the audience couldn't see. I knew why there were no vampires kneeling with us. The Mother of All Darkness had tried to take me, again, and some fool had given me a cross to hold.

"Open your hand, Anita, please." Micah whispered it again, stroking my hair.

I found my voice, and whispered, "Can't."

Richard cradled my hand in his, and started trying to pry my fingers open. He peeled a finger up. I whimpered, then bit my lip. If I started making noises, I'd end up screaming, or weeping, loudly. They'd managed to hide me away from the crowd. If I started screaming that would all be for nothing.

"I'm sorry, Anita, I'm sorry." Richard whispered it over and over as he pried my hand open.

"Curse if you want to," Jason said.

I shook my head. Bad burns hurt too much for cursing to make anything better. I forced myself to feel past the pain. I could still feel my hand, but distant, as if the hand around the pain were almost asleep. The pain overrode everything else--as if the nerves just couldn't handle it all so they transmitted the important parts, that it fucking hurt, all else was secondary.

Richard made a sound and it made me glance at him. The look on his face made me look where he was looking--my hand.

Most of the blisters had burst, so that my palm and fingers were a mass of ruptured skin and clear fluid. But the glint of gold in my palm was buried inside the mass of torn flesh. The cross had melted into my hand.

I looked away then; I didn't want to think about what was going to be needed to clean it up.

Nathaniel leaned over me, blocking my view, which panicked me. I pushed him away, so I could see what Richard was doing by my hand. No way was that cross coming out without medical help. Painkillers, good painkillers, yeah, that was the ticket.

I reached my good hand back up to Nathaniel. He leaned over so I could whisper, "Doctor." I whispered because I was afraid if I talked any louder, I'd start yelling.

He nodded. "Dr. Lillian is on her way."

I nodded. Not caring how the doc was getting into the event. For once in my life, I just wanted the help. Most pain you can ride out, but burns just seem made to eat the world. The pain eats everything else. You can't think about anything but the pain. The grinding, biting, aching, nauseating pain. I'd had burns before, but this one was going to be the worst. Weeks of recovery, and depending on how deep the cross was embedded, maybe permanent damage to the hand. Shit, fucking shit.

Dr. Lillian came into sight. I didn't recognize her at first, and it wasn't just the pain. Makeup had softened her face, brought out what she must have looked like ten years ago. The soft blue of the dress complemented the soft gray of her hair, and the pastel shades of lipstick and eye shadow. I didn't look at her and think, She must have been lovely a decade ago. I looked up at her and thought, She is lovely now.

She shook her head. "What am I going to do with you people tonight?"

I swallowed hard. "Didn't do it on purpose."

She lifted the long skirt enough so she could kneel comfortably. "I would say not." Her face was neutral, pleasant, a good doctor's face. She started to reach for my hand, and I jerked away.

She leaned back, giving me a little smile. "If you promise to do everything I tell you to do, exactly the way I tell you to do it, I'll shoot you up with a painkiller before I touch your hand."

I nodded.

"Your word of honor that you won't argue with me, Anita. That you'll just do what I tell you to do?"

If I hadn't been out of my head with pain, I might have thought harder about her wording, but all I could think about was the pain. I nodded, and whispered, "I promise."

She smiled at me. "Good." She looked behind her. Claudia came into view, kneeling so the other woman could whisper to her. Claudia nodded, stood, and left.

Lillian turned away to get the shot ready. Normally, I made a fuss about needles. I was almost as phobic of needles as I was of flying. But tonight, I'll wasn't complaining. I was too busy fighting off the urge to start screaming, Make it stop, make it stop.

Lillian made Richard move, so she could kneel by my injured hand. Micah cupped my face so I couldn't see the needle. He knew how I felt about them. I let him do it, but I wasn't sure that I'd have cared tonight. I felt the pressure of the needle, then it was as if she shot hot water directly into my veins. I could feel it spreading liquid through my body. It was the oddest sensation. I'd never had anything that I could trace through my veins like that. My upper body flushed with heat. Then it was hard to concentrate, and I was dizzy. Even lying flat, I was dizzy. I started to ask if something was wrong, then the pain just washed away. The drugs bathed the inside of my upper body in hot water, and the pain just washed away.

Lillian leaned over me. "How do you feel, Anita?"

I managed a smile, and knew it was probably goofy. "Doesn't hurt now."

"Good," she said, smiling. She looked at Richard. "I think you need to go back to your date, Richard."

He shook his head. "I'm staying here."

"You're Clark Kent tonight, Ulfric, not Superman. You have to go back to your date and pretend you're a mild-mannered science teacher. I'll take care of Anita."

Richard glanced at us all. "Are they staying?"

"One of them will be," Lillian said, "but they aren't hiding what they are, Ulfric. The price of hiding is that you must stay hidden. Now, go back before the woman starts to look for you."

He started to argue.

"Don't make me be cruel about this, Ulfric," Lillian said.

"Go," I said, and my voice sounded strange. "Go, Richard, go."

He gave me a look that was full of such conflict, even pain. But tonight I didn't have any time for anyone's pain but mine.

"I'm sorry," he said. I wasn't sure what he was sorry about. That he had to go? That he had another date? That he was still hiding in his Clark Kent disguise? Or, maybe, that it was his cross embedded in my hand. The cross I'd given him for Christmas once. Yeah, that might need a sorry.

48

They spread a tablecloth across me and another under my arm. Apparently, Requiem had "charmed" them out of the restaurant staff. He'd kept his eyes averted from me, as if he feared the cross would flare to life.

Lillian had Micah and Nathaniel distract me, though the drugs did a lot of the distracting for them. I was afraid it would hurt, but it was like the fear couldn't hold on to me, or I couldn't hold on to it. Jason pressed down on my arm. I started to protest. Nathaniel kissed me, hard. The kiss swallowed my small noises.

There was a sharp, abrupt tug on my hand. I cried out, and Nathaniel ate the sound as he did sometimes during sex. A scream lost in a kiss.

I could feel them doing something to my hand. Wrapping it in something. Nathaniel drew back from the kiss, his mouth smeared with my lipstick. He put a finger over my lips, and I fought to make only small whimpering sounds. It wasn't so much that it hurt, it was almost as if my body knew it was hurt, and wanted to react to it. But every time I tried to concentrate on the pain, it just slipped away. Maybe it seemed weird to try to concentrate on it. I guess I was trying to fight the drugs, stupid of me. But I couldn't just slip away. I couldn't not fight, even when it wasn't good for me.

Nathaniel smiled down at me, as if he knew what I was doing. He probably did. He moved his finger back from my mouth. I nodded at him to let him know I understood. We were trying not to attract attention. Sure.

I looked down and found that my hand was wrapped in gauze, like a pristine version of the mummy's hand. I got a flash of fresh blood on the tablecloths before they were bundled up. I tried to care about how we'd explain the fresh blood, but I couldn't finish caring, before it floated away. It should have felt good, to be so relaxed, but I knew that this was a night when Jean-Claude needed me, everyone needed me. The Mother of All Darkness was still out there. What would they do if she came back and I wasn't there? Fear tried to swell again, and it didn't last. I couldn't hold on to any one thought, or emotion. It was like trying to row a boat in the fog. You knew what direction you wanted to go. You'd get a glimpse of the shore, and row your hardest, then the fog slipped back over you, and when it cleared again, the shore was somewhere else. As much as the pain would have distracted me, I'd have been more functional with that than the drugs. But the burn had hurt so much, so very much. I'd wanted it to stop.

Someone picked me up, and it woke me. Though I wasn't sure I'd exactly been asleep, passed out maybe. Nathaniel was carrying me. The sleeves of his white shirt showed, and I was covered by a black tux jacket. His, probably. I was vaguely proud of myself for figuring it out.

I looked around for Micah and it was as if Nathaniel understood. "Micah is going to sit with Asher, so that neither box will be empty." He started down the steps with me in his arms.

Requiem appeared over his shoulder, following us. Lisandro was beside him. I looked down the stairs, and caught a glimpse of Doc Lillian, before the dizziness became too much. What the hell had she given me?

I lost some more time, because the next thing I knew we were all the way down and stepping out under the covered awning outside the Fox club's private entrance. I got a glimpse of Wicked standing beside the valet attendant. The attendant's face was blank and peaceful. Vampire mind tricks to make sure no one remembered us. One-on-one mind tricks were illegal, technically, partially because of shit like this. That a vampire could persuade a person that the bad things hadn't happened. It made witness testimony a bitch.

Fredo was holding the door to the limo as if he were a real chauffeur and not a walking weapons store. Nathaniel crawled inside with me in his arms. He laid me gently on the backseat, and lifted the tux jacket off me. Doc Lillian knelt beside me. She touched my face, and tried to get me to follow her fingers. I don't think I did really well at it.

She smiled at me. "I dosed you like you were one of us, and you're not. Whatever you are becoming, it's not lycanthrope."

I frowned at her. "What?"

"The morphine should have worked out of your system by now, and it hasn't. It won't be four to ten hours like a human, but two, at least two." She shook her head. "Sometimes we all forget that you are still mostly human."

"Morphine," I said.

She nodded. "Yes, Anita, morphine. If the master that tried to take us all renews his attack, without you, I don't think Jean-Claude can take him."

Did she think that all that happened had been Merlin's doing? Did she not know about the Mother of All Darkness? It seemed like I should explain it to her, but I couldn't hold all my thoughts in a row long enough to do it.

"We need you back with us now."

I nodded, then closed my eyes, because it made the inside of my head fuzzier for a moment. "Agreed," I whispered, "how?" I opened my eyes, and fought to focus on that lovely face, the gray eyes that looked blue tonight with the dress and the eye shadow.

"Call the munin, Anita. It will clear your mind, and heal much of this damage."

I frowned at her. I must have heard her wrong. "Call munin, now?"

She nodded. "Raina could heal this."

I closed my eyes and fought, fought hard to gather my thoughts and explain why this was such a bad idea. Munin were the ancestral spirits of the wolf pack. But they could be a lot more "lively" than just normal ancestor worship. Especially if you had psychic ability, or, most yummy, talent with the dead, the munin could be much, much more lively. Raina was the old lupa of the pack. I'd killed her because she was trying to kill me. The munin could "possess" people who had the talent for it. I'd become her favorite ride. I'd spent a long, long weekend in Tennessee with my spiritual teacher, Marianne, learning how to control the munin in general, and Raina in specific. Micah and Nathaniel had gone with me to "help" me deal with it. I'd asked Richard first, wolf business and all, but he had flatly refused. Raina was dead. He wanted nothing more to do with her. Neither did I, but I didn't have a choice.

She'd been a sexual sadist, but she could also heal with sex. It didn't have to be full-blown sex, she just liked it that way. I'd tapped into her power a few times to save lives, but the cost had been high. Her memories alone were worth avoiding. The ardeur wasn't normally a thing of healing, and Jean-Claude had speculated that the fact that I could heal with sex and metaphysics might be more because of Raina's munin than vampire powers. It was almost as if the more often I was used by, or borrowed magic from, someone else, the more likely it became that their magic would become part of my arsenal. Raina had played with me enough that it had somehow effected the ardeur, or that was the theory. Why not use the ardeur to heal the hand? Healing with the ardeur was catch-as-catch-can; sometimes it worked without your wanting it to work, and sometimes it didn't work at all. I did my best to explain it out loud. "Not sure I can control her, like this. Bad, if she's in charge."

"You are badly hurt, Anita. If you were truly vampire, then you'd need more blood. A lot more than normal. Jean-Claude thinks that the ardeur will rise and try to feed that need."

I frowned harder at her. "I don't..."

"You promised to do whatever I asked, if I gave you the morphine. You gave your word."

I swallowed, licked my lips, and thought about calling her a bitch, but since she was the only doctor we had, and I was hurt, it seemed unwise to piss her off. I could control Raina's munin now, if I hadn't been on drugs. I said, "No."

"Then you will miss the ballet, and the party, and you will not be there to help Jean-Claude against the other masters. Richard will not be there because he is hiding. If you think it is a good idea to strip the master of this city of both of his thirds on this night, then refuse."

Hell with it. I said, "Bitch."

She smiled, and patted my cheek. "Once you are healed, your beasts may rise, so I will leave you with people who can take your beast, if they must."

"I don't understand."

"But I think we should start with someone that Raina never touched. I knew her, you see; she always loved new conquests."

I shook my head, gently. "Don't understand."

Nathaniel appeared beside her. He was not new to Raina; she'd had him every way a woman could have a man, and some that stretched the imagination to the screaming point. He was nude, except for the amethyst and diamond collar. It had been a gift from Jean-Claude and me, though frankly, more Jean-Claude's idea than mine. It would simply never have occurred to me.

"You're not wearing any clothes."

He smiled. "We're going to try to go back inside afterward."

"Afterward what?"

He glanced at Lillian. "How much is she following all this?"

"I'm not certain."

A voice from behind us. "I don't do rape."

Jason's voice then. "None of us do."

Lillian leaned over me. "Anita, Anita, you must give permission for this."

"For what, exactly?" There, that was a clear question.

"Raise Raina's munin, heal yourself, and heal Requiem."

"Requiem?"

"Raina will like that he's someone new, and that he's badly injured."

I stared into Lillian's face. "You really did know her."

She nodded. "Better than I wanted to. I would not ask this, if I thought we would survive this night without you. Raphael felt one of the masters in the ballet. One of them can call rats, Anita. Do you understand what that means to our people?"

"Yes," I said, "if they take Raphael, then they own you all."

"Exactly."

"And we invited them here," I whispered.

Requiem's bare shoulder appeared around Lillian. "Merlin, their dance master, rolled the human audience to make his dancers appear and vanish, but he did not try to roll the other masters. Until tonight."

I wasn't so sure of that. I'd felt Merlin's mind. If he'd rolled them, then let them go, they might never have figured it out. I tried to explain it. "His mind, powerful enough. He could let them go. They might never know."

"You mean that he rolled them, and was so powerful that they don't remember it?"

"Yes."

I watched fear march over his face, swallowed by that perfect blankness that the old ones have. "Perhaps, but I do not believe that Marmee Noir appeared in the other cities."

"Who is Marmee Noir?" Lillian asked.

"Our dark mother, the first of us. It was her power added to Merlin's that did what was done tonight. It was her power that made Richard's cross melt into Anita's hand."

"Is she here, with the troupe?"

"No," I said, "she lies in the room with windows." That probably made no sense to any of them, but they let it go. They took my drugged assurance that the nightmare of all vampires wasn't physically in St. Louis. Drugged out of my ability to concentrate and they took my word about it. They shouldn't have done that. But more than Mommie Dearest, there was Auggie and Samuel, and hell, Samuel's wife, Thea. If these were the masters Jean-Claude trusted, then what would the other masters do to us? Jean-Claude didn't need to be alone tonight. Something bad would happen.

"Get out, doc."

"What?"

"Don't want you here when the wicked bitch comes."

"I'll get out, and the only ones in the car will be people you've fed on before, Anita." She glanced behind her. "With one exception."

"Exception?"

"Go, Lillian," Jason said. "Jean-Claude's nervous. Something else has happened. Not as bad, but something."

Lillian moved out of sight, and Jason knelt beside me. He was as nude as Nathaniel. He was wearing the cuff bracelet that Jean-Claude had had commissioned for him. Wolves running over a gold and platinum landscape. The wolves looked so real you expected them to move. I stared at the bracelet. "Pretty," I said.

He grinned. "And the bracelet's nice, too." He looked down at me, and his face was so serious. I couldn't feel what Jean-Claude was feeling; the morphine and my own earlier panic had shut the marks down. I didn't like how serious Jason looked. What was happening to my sweeties while I was arguing?

"Let's get you out of the clothes. You've got to have something to wear back inside."

A moment ago, I might have argued, but Jason was scared, and I couldn't feel Jean-Claude. I was too befuddled to risk opening the marks. Afraid I'd screw up Jean-Claude's concentration as badly as mine was, and that would be a disaster. Bad things were happening, and it was our fault. The vampires had invited bad things to the city, and now everyone was in danger. "Help me out of the corset."

"Thought you'd never ask," Jason said, and he leered at me, the way he usually did, but I could see his eyes, and his eyes weren't having any fun at all. Bad things, bad things, what was happening inside? I thought, Hold on, Jean-Claude. I felt him like a distant caress of wind against the door I'd used to shut us down. That breath of power smelled sweetly of his cologne. His words seemed to fill the car. "Feed before you come back to me, ma petite. Do not loose the ardeur on the crowd." Then he was gone, shut down and tight, shielding his ass off. But he'd raised a good point. It was perfectly me to raise munin, heal, and not feed the ardeur, if I could stave it off. That brief message let me know that he wanted me back fed, and ready to fight, not hungry and dangerous to the crowd. Jason helped me sit up, and Nathaniel started unlacing my corset back. Was it too small-town Midwestern of me to think it was weird that my main squeeze was encouraging me to have sex with a limo full of men before I came back inside to him? We had the mother of all vampires lurking around. A master vamp powerful enough to roll every master in town. And mustn't forget the blond dancer, Adonis, who had almost rolled me with his gaze. Powerful, dangerous shit going on, and the thing that made me squirm inside was the sex? It was one of those evenings when I'd really get to decide if it was a fate worse than death.

The corset loosened enough to spill my breasts into the open air. "Requiem," Jason said, "get over here."

The vampire came, and he used his hands to hide his nakedness. He seemed embarrassed. I was uncomfortable with it, too, but the morphine took the edge off the embarrassment, like it took the edge off everything.

They lifted the corset over my head, and other hands went to the top of my skirt. Nathaniel took the clothes away as they came off. They took everything but the diamond necklace. Apparently the jewelry was a theme tonight. There was plastic over the far seat, and he was putting the clothes under it. How messy was everyone expecting to be?

I caught movement in the far back of the limo. It was Noel. "No," I said, "get him out."

"Justin didn't get here, Anita," Jason said, "he's the only lion we got except for Auggie's bodyguard. If your lion rises, we need somewhere for it to go."

"He's a baby."

Jason nodded. "Raina loved virgins."

I shook my head too hard, made myself dizzy. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. "He waits outside the car. If my lion rises, then I'll bring his beast, but we are not feeding him to Raina." I opened my eyes, and the world had stopped wavering. Good.

Jason touched Requiem's shoulder, drew my attention back to him. "I don't think we'll have to, Anita. Look at Requiem through her eyes. Look at those wounds, Anita. He's fresh meat and he's wounded. She'll like that."

I looked at the knife wounds on his chest and side. His arms were cut up. "Silver blades," I said.

Requiem nodded. "Meng Die meant my death."

"A little power and she changes her mind."

"It is not a little power, Anita," Jason said.

I looked back at Requiem. "Do you know what Raina will do?"

Nathaniel knelt by us. "I told him what she liked to do during sex."

I fought to focus on Requiem's still face. "Is it"--I searched for the word I wanted--"all right?"

"I have been at the court of Belle Morte, Anita, this will be as nothing." He found a smile for me. "Heal me so that we may both serve our master well this night."

I nodded. "Okay." I looked behind them all, at Noel. He was pressed in the far back of the limo, as far from the action as he could get. "Out, now."

"Wait outside with Fredo," Jason said.

"I was told to stay close," Noel said. His eyes were big, his mouth a little parted. I realized I was naked in front of him. I'd known that, but the drugs or the emergency, or my collapsing morals, had made me not think about it. The look on his face wasn't lust. It was fear.

"Outside the car is close enough," Jason said.

Still, he hesitated.

"Get out of the car, Noel," Nathaniel said. He sounded angry.

Noel got out of the car. When the door closed behind him, Nathaniel said, "How could Joseph have sent him for this job?"

"Joseph didn't understand," Jason said.

"Didn't want to understand," Nathaniel said. His eyes had gone almost purple with anger.

"Protect the innocent," I said.

He gave me those angry eyes, then made a smile for me, and nodded. "You can control Raina. I know you can."

"The drugs..."

"Will make it harder, but you can do this. I was there when you learned how to do this, Anita. Drugs or no drugs, your will is stronger than hers."

I stared into his face, studied that anger, that surety. I got that glimpse that I had sometimes, of what he might be in ten years. He was going to be something special at thirty, and I planned on being there to see it. I planned on us all being there to see it. Which meant we had to get through tonight. Whatever it took.

Jason laid me back on the seat. Nathaniel gave me a quick kiss, then he moved away, too. Requiem sat on the end of the seat, like he was on an uncomfortable first date.

I held out my hand to him. "Help me."

He took my hand, and knelt beside the seat, still covering as much of his nakedness as he could. "How can I help you?"

"Use your power on me."

His eyes filled with rich blue fire, and my body jolted with it. It hurt my sore hand, but the mixture of pain and pleasure and confusion would appeal to her. I'd learned to control Raina, which meant she had to be coaxed inside me now. It was sort of like leaving a perfectly good house when you know a tiger is just outside, and oh, by the way, let's strap a raw steak around your neck. This was all such a bad idea. Problem was, I didn't have a better one.