Cerulean Sins

I had an image in my mind of a huge animal head with long teeth, like the largest fangs I'd ever seen. The fur on the head was gold and tawny, and reddish, shaded, rather than striped, more lion than tiger. Eyes like golden fire stared into mine, and that huge mouth opened wide, and screamed its frustration, in a sound like a panther's scream, but octaves lower. Pioneers were always mistaking panther screams for a woman's cries. No one would have mistaken this for a woman—a man, maybe, a man being tortured and screaming for his soul.

I screamed back, as if that head were truly right in front of me and not thousands of miles across the world. My scream was echoed by two others. Nathaniel snarled up at me from the floorboard, his mouth showing teeth that were fast becoming fangs. Caleb had slid in between the seats, and his eyes were yellow cat eyes. He started to rub his cheek against my shoulder as if he was going to scent mark me, then stopped, snarling, as if he'd touched that other phantom cat.

Jason didn't scream, he growled, that low, fur-standing-on-end sound that has nothing to do with hunting and everything to do with fighting, not for food, but for survival. It was a sound for guarding territory, chasing out interlopers, getting rid of troublemakers. The sound that says get out or die.

She screamed back, a sound that should have frozen the blood in my veins, and reminded me that my ancestors had huddled around their small fires and watched in terror for the shine of eyes outside that flame. But I wasn't thinking like a person. I wasn't even sure thinking was the word for what was moving through my mind. It was more like I was in the moment, completely, utterly. I could feel the leather seat cupping my body, Nathaniel pressed against my legs, his hands tracing higher, Caleb at my shoulder, his cheek against my face, his jaw straining as he snarled, Jason's hand on my arm like it had taken root, become a part of me.

I could smell Caleb's skin, the soap he'd used that morning, and the fear like something bitter under that clean skin. Nathaniel moved up on his knees, higher, so that his face was superimposed behind the saber-tooth's head for a moment. But I could smell the vanilla scent of his hair, and there was nothing from the phantom cat.

Jason moved in closer, putting his face close to mine, sniffing the air, I smelled soap, shampoo, and the smell of Jason, a scent that had begun to mean home to me, the way the vanilla scent of Nathaniel's hair, or Jean-Claude's expensive cologne, or, once, the warm bend of Richard's neck affected me. I didn't mean in a sexual way, but the way fresh baked bread or your mother's favorite cookies make you feel safe and smell like home. I turned my head to Caleb, so that my nose touched his skin, and under the fear, the soap, the soft skin, he smelled of leopard, faint in his human form, but there, a nose-wrinkling, skin-prickling smell. I turned to the weight pressing against the still-glowing cross. I looked into those yellow eyes, gazed upon those fangs that were like nothing that walked the earth today, and it had no scent.

Jason was snuffling the air in front of me. His pale wolf eyes met mine, and I knew that he'd figured it out, too.

As a vampire she smelled of cool evenings and sweet water, vaguely like jasmine. As a wereanimal she had no scent, because she wasn't here. It was a sending, a psychic sending. It had power, but it wasn't real, not really real, not physical. No matter how much power you put into it, a psychic sending has limits to what it can do physically. It can frighten you into ru

Nathaniel had literally crawled up through the image I could still see hovering over my chest. He was the one who said it out loud, "It has no scent."

"It's not real," I said.

Caleb's voice came with an edge of growl so deep that it was almost painful to hear, "I feel it, some great cat, like pard, but not."

"But do you smell anything?" Jason asked.

Caleb sniffed along my body. Any other time, I would have accused him of getting too close to my breasts, but not now. He was as serious as I'd ever seen him, as he sniffed along my chest, pushed his face almost into that evil face. He stopped, staring into those yellow eyes from inches away. He hissed like any startled cat. "I can't smell it, but I see it."

"Seeing isn't always believing," I said.

"What is it?" he asked.

"A psychic projection, a sending. The vampire couldn't get past the cross, so it tried another form, but the kitty-cat doesn't travel as well as the… whatever the hell she is." I looked into those yellow eyes and watched that massive mouth roar up at me. "You have no scent, you aren't real, only a bad dream, and dreams have no power unless you give it to them. I give you nothing. Go back to where you came from, go back to the dark."

I had a sudden image of a dark, dark room, not pitch black, but as if the only light were reflected from somewhere else. There was a bed with a black silk cover and a figure lying under that cover. The room was oddly shaped, not square, not circular, almost hexagonal. There were windows, but I knew somehow that they did not look out upon the world. Windows to gaze down upon the darkness that never lifted, never changed.

I was drawn towards the bed, drawn the way you're drawn in nightmares. I didn't want to look, but I had to look; didn't want to see, and had to see.

I reached out towards that shining black silk, I could tell it was silk because of the way it reflected the light from down below, far down below outside the windows. The light flickered, and I knew it was firelight. Nothing electric had ever touched the darkness of this place.

My fingertips brushed the silk, and the body under the sheet moved in its sleep, moved the way someone will when they dream, but are not yet awake. I knew in that instant that I was a dream to her, too, and I couldn't truly be standing in her i

A sigh moved through that close, airless room, and on that first breath of air, came a whisper of sound, the first sound that that room had heard in centuries, "Me."

It took me a moment to realize that it was the answer to my question. Who do the soulless dead pray to? Me, the whisper said.

The figure under the sheet shifted in its sleep again. Not awake, not yet, but she was swimming upwards, filling in herself, coming closer to wakefulness.

I jerked my hand back from that sheet; I stepped back from that bed. I did not want to touch her. More than anything else, I did not want to wake her. But since I didn't know how I'd gotten into her room, I couldn't figure out how to get out of it. I'd never been someone else's dream before, though people had accused me of being their nightmares. How do you stop being in someone else's dream?

That whisper echoed through the room again, "By waking them."

She'd answered my question again. Shit. I was begi

"Not trapped," the whisper in the dark said.

"Then what?" I asked it out loud, and the body under the sheet rolled all the way over, feeling the silence with the hissing glide of silk over skin. My throat closed around the words, and I cursed myself for not thinking.

"Waiting," still the air breathing around me, not a voice, not really.

I thought really hard, waiting for what'?

There was no answer from the dark room. But there was a new noise. Someone beside me was breathing, deep, even breathing, as if they slept. Though I would have sworn that the figure on the bed hadn't been breathing a second ago.

I did not want to be here when she sat up, I so did not want to be here for that. What had she been waiting for all this time?

This time the voice came from the bed, the same voice as the wind, faint, long unused, so hoarse and soft that I couldn't tell if it were male or female. "Something of interest."

With that last, I finally felt something from that body. I'd been prepared for malice, evil, anger, but was totally unprepared for curiosity. As if she wondered what I was, and she hadn't wondered about anything in a mille

I smelled wolf, musky, sweet, pungent, so real I could feel it gliding over my skin. I suddenly had a cross around my neck, and the white glow filled the room. I think I could have seen the figure on the bed clearly by the light of the cross, but either I closed my eyes without remembering, or some things you shouldn't see, even in dreams.

I woke in the Jeep with Nathaniel and Caleb's worried faces hovering over me. There was a huge wolf sitting in the driver's seat, its long snout snuffling against my face. I reached up to touch that soft, thick fur, then saw the shine of liquid all over the driver's seat, where Jason had shape-shifted on the leather.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you couldn't have shape-shifted in the back in the cargo area. You had to shape-shift on the leather seats. It'll never come clean."

Jason growled at me, low and rumbling, and I didn't have to speak wolf to know what he was saying. I was being an ungrateful wretch. But it was so much easier to concentrate on my ruined upholstery than to think about the fact that I'd been in the presence of the Mother of all Vampires, the Mother of all Darkness, the Primordial Abyss made flesh. I knew through Jean-Claude's memories that they called her Mother Gentle, Marmи, a dozen different euphemisms to make her seem kind, and, well, motherly. But I'd felt her power, her darkness, and finally, at the end an intellect as cold and empty as any evil. She was curious about me the way some scientists are curious about a new species of insect. Find it, capture it, put it in a jar, whether it wants to go with you, or not. It's just an insect, after all.

They could call her Mother Gentle if they wanted to, but Mommy Dearest was a hell of a lot more accurate.