The Killing Dance

"You are shivering, ma petite."

"We raise the power again, then we need blood." I looked at Jean-Claude and Richard. "If Richard has to fight Marcus tonight, I'm not sure he should be the one who supplies this round of blood."

Jean-Claude cocked his head to one side. I expected him to say something irritating, but he didn't. Maybe even a very old dog could learn new tricks.

"He is not sinking fangs into you," Richard said. Anger made his brown eyes dark and sparkling, he was lovely when he was angry. That aura of energy flared around him, close enough to creep down my bare skin.

"You can't donate twice this close together, with Marcus waiting for you," I said.

Richard grabbed me by the upper arms. "You don't understand, Anita. Feeding is like sex to him."

Again, I half-expected Jean-Claude to chime in, but he didn't. I had to say it. Damn. "It won't be the first time he's done it, Richard."

Richard's fingers dug into my arms. "I know that. I saw the fang marks on your wrist. But remember, you weren't under any mind control that time."

"I remember," I said. "It hurt like hell."

Richard drew me to him with his hands still holding only my upper arms, drew me to tiptoe as if he'd drag me to his face. "Without mind control, it's like rape, not the real thing. It'll be real this time."

"You're hurting me, Richard." My voice was calm, steady, but the look on his face scared me. The intensity in his hands, his face, his body, was u

He eased down, but didn't take his hands away. "Take blood from Jason or Cassandra."

I shook my head. "That might work or it might not. If the blood comes from one of us, I know it'll work. Besides, should you be offering up other people's blood without asking them first?"

Doubt slid behind his eyes, and he let me go. His long hair fell forward, hiding his face. "You say you've chosen me. That you're in love with me. That you don't want to have sex with him. Now, you tell me you want him to feed off of you. That's as bad as sex." He stalked the room, pacing around the waiting vampires, swinging back in an agitated stride that filled the room with a warm, creeping power.

"I didn't say I wanted to feed him," I said.

He stopped in the middle of the room, staring at me. "But you do, don't you?"

"No," I said, and it was true. "I've never been interested in that."

"She speaks the truth," Jean-Claude said at last.

"You stay out of this," Richard said, pointing a finger at him.

Jean-Claude gave a small bow and fell silent. He was behaving himself far too well. Made me nervous. Of course, Richard was having enough of a fit for both of them.

"Then let me feed him again."

"Isn't it sexual for you, too?" I asked.

Richard shook his head. "It was you I was looking at, Anita, not him. A little pain is fine."

It was my turn to shake my head. "Are you truly saying that letting him sink fangs into my body would bother you as much as sinking . . ." I let the thought die unspoken. "I see donating blood as the lesser evil, Richard. Don't you?"

"Yes," he hissed. His power was filling the room like warm, electric water. I could almost reach out and grab it.

"Then what are you bitching about?" I said. "We wouldn't have done it the first time, but you wanted me to do it. You wanted us to do it." I stalked towards him, finally angry myself. "You don't want to kill Marcus, fine, but this is the price. You want enough power to cow the rest of the pack without losing your humanity, great, but that kind of power isn't free." I stood in front of him, so close that his power danced over my skin like fine needles, like sex that rode that edge between pleasure and pain.

"It's too late to back out now. We are not going to strand Willie and the others because you're getting cold feet." I took that last step, putting our bodies so close together that a deep breath would have made them touch. I lowered my voice to a whisper, though I knew everything in the room would still hear me. "It isn't the blood that bothers you. What bothers you is that you enjoyed it." I lowered my voice until it was almost a movement of lips with only a breath of sound. "Jean-Claude isn't just seducing me, he's seducing us."

Richard stared down at me, and the look in his true brown eyes was lost, hopeless. A little boy who's discovered the monster under the bed is actually real, and it's screwing Mommy.

Jean-Claude's power eased through the room, mingling with Richard's electric warmth like a cool wind from the grave. We both turned and looked at the vampire. He was smiling ever so slightly. He undid his robe and let it fall to the floor. He glided towards us, wearing nothing but his silk pajamas and a knowing smile. His own power making his long hair flare round his face like a small wind.

Richard touched my shoulders and even that chaste touch sent a line of warm, shivering energy along my skin. The power was there for the calling, just below the surface. We didn't need all the sexual charades.

Jean-Claude reached a pale hand out towards me. I met his hand with mine, and that one touch was enough. That cool, burning power flowed over me, through me, into Richard. I heard Richard gasp. Jean-Claude started to move forward, like he'd press his body against mine. I held him away from me with the hand that was entwined in his, straight-arming him. "It's here, Jean-Claude, can't you feel it?"

He nodded. "Your power calls to me, ma petite."

Richard's hands slid over my shoulders, his face brushing my hair. "Now what?"

"We ride the power this time, it doesn't ride us."

"How?" Richard whispered.

Jean-Claude looked at me with eyes that were deep as any ocean and as full of secrets. "I believe ma petitehas a plan."

"Yeah," I said, "I have a plan." I looked from one to the other of them. "I'm going to call Dominic Dumare and see if he knows how to put vampires back in their coffins." Dominic had been cleared of Robert's murder. He had an airtight alibi. He'd been with a woman. Even if he hadn't been, I might have asked for his help. I wanted to save Willie more than I wanted to revenge Robert.

A strange expression crossed Jean-Claude's face. "You, asking for help, ma petite? That is unusual."

I drew away from both of them. We could get the power back, I was pretty certain of that. I looked at Willie's empty face and the fuzzy dice hanging from his coffin. "If I make a mistake, Willie's gone. I want him back."

There were times when I thought that it wasn't Jean-Claude who had convinced me that vampires weren't always monsters. It was Willie and Dead Dave, ex-cop and bar owner. It was a host of lesser vampires that seemed, occasionally, like nice guys. Jean-Claude was a lot of things; nice was not one of them.

31

Dominic Dumare showed up wearing a pair of black dress slacks and a black leather jacket unzipped over a grey silk T-shirt. He looked more relaxed without Sabin looking on, like an employee on his day off. Even the neatly trimmed Vandyke beard and mustache seemed less formal.

Dominic walked around the three vampires I'd raised. We'd moved back out into the rubble-strewn main area, so he could see the zombies and the vampires all at once. He paced around the vampires, touching them here and there. He gri

I fought the urge to frown at him. "Forgive me if I don't share your enthusiasm. Can you help me put them back the way they were?"

"Theoretically, yes."

"When people start using the word theoretically, it means they don't know how to do something. You can't help me, can you?"

"Now, now," Dominic said. He knelt by Willie, staring up at him, studying him like a bug under a bioscope. "I didn't say I couldn't help. It's true that I've never seen this done. And you say you've done this before." He stood up, brushing off the knees of his pants.