Blue Moon

"I do not think anyone was meant to die, Anita. I think it was a test."

"A test of what?" I asked.

"How much power we truly have. In a way it was a compliment. He would never have contaminated Nathaniel if he thought we had no hope of saving him."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because, to kill a pomme de sang of another master vampire is a mortal insult. Wars have begun over less."

"But he knows we can't make war on him without the Council hunting us down."

"Which is why we ca

"That is cutting it pretty damn close, Asher."

He gave a graceful nod. "Oui."

"So if we kill him the Council comes back to town and cleans our clock."

Slight frown lines showed between his eyes. I don't think he understood the slang. "They will kill us," he said.

I'd met some of the Council, and I knew he was right. Jean-Claude had enemies on the Council and now so did I. No, I did not want to give the nightmares of all vampirekind an excuse to come back to St. Louis and wipe us out.

"What can we do? Because, mark me on this, Asher, they will pay for what they did to Nathaniel."

"I agree. If we do nothing to avenge the insult, it will be viewed as a sign of weakness and Colin may come against us and kill us."

"Why is everything so damned complicated with you guys?" I asked. "Why couldn't Colin just believe we'd come down here to rescue Richard?"

"Because we didn't leave town." Nathaniel's voice came thin but steady from the bed. He blinked lilac eyes at me. Cherry had bandaged his chest and the neck wound was covered with a large piece of taped gauze. I assumed the thigh wound was similarly covered, but the bedspread covered him from the waist down.

"When Richard got out of jail, Colin expected us to leave town. When we didn't, he thought we meant to take over his territory."

I went to stand by the bed. "Zane said you went off with one of Verne's werewolves. How did the vamps get hold of you?"

"Mira," he said.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"The werewolf's name is Mira." He looked away from me as if he didn't want to look me in the face while he talked. "She took me home. We had sex. Then she left the room. When she came back the vampires were with her." He looked up at me. I found myself staring down into his eyes and the need in them was so raw it made me flinch.

"There were too many of them for you to fight, Nathaniel," I said. "It's okay."

"Fight?" He laughed, and it was so bitter it hurt just to hear it. "There was no fight. I was already chained down."

I frowned. "Why?"

He let out a long sigh. "Anita, Anita, God." He put one arm across his eyes.

Zane came to the rescue, sort of. "You know that Nathaniel is a submissive?"

I nodded. "I know he likes to be tied up and ... " The light dawned. "Oh, okay. I get it. Mira invited you home for some S and M sex."

"D and S, dominance and submission," Zane said, "but yeah."

I took a deep breath, mistake. The room still stank of bodily fluids, the unpleasant kind. "So she wrapped you up like a present and gave you to them?"

"Yes," he said, softly. "The sex had been good. She was a good top."

"Top?" I asked.

"Dominant," Zane said.

Ah.

Nathaniel curled onto his side, drawing the bedspread around him. "The master, Colin, paid her to bring one of us to them. Anyone of us. It didn't matter who. It could have been Jason, or Zane, or Cherry. One of their animals, he said." He huddled down into the blankets, eyes fluttering shut, then open, then shut.

I looked at Cherry. "Is he alright?"

"I gave him something to help him sleep. It won't last long. Our metabolisms are too fast, but he'll get maybe half an hour, an hour if we're lucky."

"If you're not going to take a shower, I'd like to," Damian said.

"No, I'm getting in."

"But you can't wear what you've picked out," Asher said.

I frowned at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Jean-Claude sent a trunk of clothes just for this occasion," he said.

"Oh, no," I said, "no more leather and lace shit."

"I agree with you, Anita," Asher said. "If we were simply going to kill them it wouldn't matter what we wore, but we are putting on a show as much as anything. Appearance will matter."

"Well, shit," I said. "Fine, I'll dress up, we won't kill anyone, but you better come up with something that we can do to them. They can't abuse our people like this and just walk away."

"They will expect retribution, Anita. They are waiting for it."

I looked at Nathaniel cuddled so deep in the blankets that only the top of his head showed. "This retribution better be good, Asher."

"I will do my best."

I shook my head. "You do that." I went into the shower without any clothes to put on because the trunk was in the other cabin. I figured with both coffins in my room I didn't need the trunk. I'd really hoped we wouldn't be opening the damn thing. I hated dressing up in normal dressy clothes. Jean-Claude's idea of dressing up was always worse.

15

It took three rounds of shampoo to get my hair clean. The stuff on my body didn't seem to want to come off unless I scrubbed. There is that point in the middle of the back that you just can't do yourself. It is one of the few areas that married people have an edge on us single folk. I finally had to turn the shower on as high as it would go and just let it pound the middle of my back. The stuff finally sloughed off and floated down the drain.

The stuff clung like nothing I'd ever had to clean off before. That included real rotting corpses and zombies. None of it had ever been as tough to get rid of as Damian's ... fluids.

Cherry was the one who knocked on the door and brought in a pile of clothes. I didn't like any of them. Too much leather for my taste. It took two trips back and forth, wrapped in nothing but a towel, to find clothes that I was willing to wear. There was one red leather bodysuit that seemed to be nothing but straps. It might be interesting for private use just between Jean-Claude and myself, but wearing it in public was definitely out.

I ended up in a short-sleeved, black velvet, midriff top with such a low neckline that it took a special bra under it just so the bra didn't show. Jean-Claude had kindly packed the bra. It was one of those uplifting ones, and if there was one thing my chest didn't need, it was more lift; but it was also the only bra I had access to that plunged low enough that it didn't show with the shirt. There was a velvet dress that would have needed the bra for its neckline, too. Jean-Claude had been a busy little vampire.

Everything fit perfectly, if you were willing to wear it. I picked a leather skirt as the lesser of evils. There was a pair of thigh-high black boots that zipped in the back. The tops of the boots were wide and stiff and open at the back. The fronts of the boots came up to the absolute limit of my legs, brushing my groin at odd moments if I walked wrong. The boots had to have been custom-made for me. I didn't remember Jean-Claude ever measuring me for shoes. He'd held pretty much every inch of me in his hands at one point or another. Apparently, that had been enough.

But the leather skirt had belt loops for my shoulder holster, and the velvet midriff had enough sleeves that the shoulder straps didn't dig into any bare flesh. The side straps felt a little strange against my bare sides when I moved, but it was doable. Of course, there was no way to wear an i